Without Which We'd Be Finished

After you submit the book for e-sale they mull it over. I imagine they have a mulling machine. I imagine the mulling machine makes sure that the book is legible and unlikely to start a riot. Obviously you hope it'll be loudly denounced as obscene and banned in at least one territory and a few of your favourite booksellers will be very publicly arrested and the shame will blight your family tree and people will not touch anything you've touched and the shop will charge you extra and the postman never knock again. But all our freedom has taken away that sweet and eventually lucrative ostracism. And it's only about a man and a seagull and a young woman and an old woman and a series of very short-term jobs and some inexplicable music. And it's self-published which means it's for a daring and cleverly-dressed and wise-smelling, especially today, few. It's not like those books you see piled up on retail plinths with their covers all clamouring at your poor hobbled bank cards. It's in the gutter getting nuzzled by abandoned kebab-scraps and all it really wants is to be looked at.

If you bought or buy the physical one you get the e one for free. That's the future. Email me at ed dot garland at gmail dot com with the last sentence of the book as the subject line and I will email you right back with the whole business. (I hope that works). Thanks again for everything.

Easy Life Top Beats

It's half past bollocks on the millionth of January and all the headlines end with question marks. Hunger's turned up unexpectedly. It's odd how they put the food court next to the seafood hall. When you open your mouth for the pizza or the pad thai the fish wriggle off their stalls and float up your face-holes, shaking ice-flakes to the floor. A hundred tiny puddles and not one yellow cone. Outside it's brighter and people walk past by themselves. A man is bothering a bus stop. The stop has people in it and the man is on a two-step ladder and is making loud Jesus-based noise with his mouth. Someone walking past points at the ladder and goes hey is that a stairway to heaven? The bus stop chuckles and a thigh is slapped.
A white van approaches. Black string is trailing from its back doors and at the end of it is a black glove. It's waving at the sky and tickling the trees and removing hats. The man has his back to it. When it passes him, the glove grabs his neck, drags him off his ladder and forty feet to the corner before it lets him go.