Announcing Creative Side Project: Laconic Owl
Moving creative work over to a new Substack.
Hi everyone.
As TechnoPathology has become synonymous with the Neil Gaiman Is Innocent project, I’ve taken the decision to open up a side-project Laconic Owl Creative Writing. The project will continue on this Substack, but if you interested in my other work do take a look.
This is a place for science fiction, fantasy, verfabula and creative non-fiction and poetry. Most of you know me for my journalistic work, and some of the short stories touch on the same themes of mob dynamics, exclusion and scapegoating. Most are completely unrelated though.
First one is a satirical sci-fi short story, a mere 1100 words, about a working class mother of three who uses frontier science to overcome her money troubles. It’s called The Bootstrap Machine.
The second is a poem about those who flee from war, the trials they face on their long road to safety. It’s called The Swarm. The title is a tongue in cheek reworking of UK prime minister David Cameron calling refugees a ‘‘swarm’’, which gives you an idea of how long ago I wrote this.
I’ll be releasing something every week, and when I have time spare and am not writing magazine articles for technology publications or working on the Neil Gaiman Is Innocent project, I might even write some more short stories and poetry to give to you.
I’ll continue with Black Road Red Road, a series of first-person creative non-fiction in which I describe my time with the Sinixt tribe elder Marilyn James on a protest in BC. The first three chapters were on TechnoPathology since early on, but they will be moved.
Apart from that expect to see a few unfinished manuscripts I might put up here for feedback, to see if there’s an interest in these weird experiments.
A few examples; a submarine on a distant planet (or is it the belly of a cosmic Whale) where the inhabitants turn into terrible monsters; Abomination: Scriptures From A Drowned Cathedral.
A YA novel, The Sapphire Cerebellum, where a teenage girl’s dead best friend has been replaced by a replicant and everyone wants her to carry on as normal. Dangerously over-the-top sci fi in a NUMTOTS/traffic infrastructure inspired future.
And also The Man In The Ditch, which is verfabula and weirdest of all, being set in Glastonbury, a real place I lived and is out of this world.