Friday 2 November 2018

Moving the Manor - update your links


Halloween has been and gone and all the strangers have visited the door of Marlowe Manor for the last time, their costumes charming and distressing by turn.    Now is the time for me to board up the doors and windows and leave the old place to the ghosts who prowl and moan among the creaking boards.

My blog is now moving to a new home, a brightly lit and spacious property sold to me by a property dealer with a cast in one eye and a shifty expression.   It was a bargain and entirely free of curses and ghosts he assured me, as he stood carefully in front of an old wooden sign announcing "Ancient Burial Ground" and bearing the scrawled picture of a skull and crossbones in dark and faded red paint.

The new address is in the name of my nom-de-guerre Finn Cullen and can be located at


Please update your address books, electronic memory devices or tattooed slaves with the new address and I look forward to receiving you there for new poetry, fiction, gaming insights and updates on my work in progress novel The Crow Journal a tale of Victorian sorcery and Faerie horror.


Monday 2 July 2018

Bare Handed


Every empire falls, there’s not a one that’s lasted,
A state has an expiry date, and yours has slithered past it
It happened to us once , and soon you’ll join us in the wreckage
Your influence is fucked your credibility is lessened
Make enemies of friends and you suck up to dictators
Brag about your bombs but you’ll only devastate us
With a tanked economy and a trade war that’s not needed
And tariffs on the borders just for headlines for the readers
Of the press – If I can call them press but really that’s a joke
Just a propaganda outlet for the racist redneck volk
“He’s a big tough guy, and he’ll make us great again”
Bullshit, he’s a moron, and you’re going down the drain
All his lackies they’re investigated, for fraud and collusion
And he fornicates with porn stars, cos his marriage is illusion
It almost made me numb to all the stories that kept breaking
At how fucking dumb a nation gets when it’s mistaken
In choosing an orangutan to try and run the country
He’s a moron not a politician, don’t you understand he
Only tears things down, can’t build things up not even when he
Says he’ll build a wall, he’s screwed you all, you’re just like Stormy
But I’m not numb no more, what  provoked me into rage is
When I heard the screaming of the kids you put in cages
Crying for their mothers and for help and they’re just babies
“They’re not cages they’re just wire and concrete summer camps to stay in”
Then you have the nerve to start to play the fucking victim
When some privileged white bitch gets grief at dinner, she’s evicted
“That’s just not polite the restaurant it should be shut down”
Fuck you, you’re a joke, and every tyrant ends up cut down
You spent the last three years saying “Toughen up you snowflakes”
Now you whine and cry, you dish it out but cannot  even take
words aimed back at you, you weakling moron traitor
Oh was I rude?  Well as of now I’m glad to be a hater
“It’s their fault we took their kids cos they’re all undocumented”
We see right through your rhetoric we know that what you meant is
We don’t want them in the country cos their skin is kind of brown
And they speak another language, they won’t fit into our town
“The left are so damned rude and they claim to be so tolerant”
Well that’s our fault so far, now I’ll say that I’m belligerent
Cos reason only works when your foe is reasonable
And reason doesn’t penetrate the Fox and Breitbart bubble
We see where you are headed, and we recognise each lie
When a cage becomes a summercamp and arbeit fucking macht frei
But this will pass, it always does, dictators always tumble
And the marching feet of demonstraters make a building rumble
Of thunder in the cities and you’re gonna face the fighting
Cos you cannot have the thunder without a bolt of lightning
Freedom’s terminally ill now, and the future world is urging
You to sort the country out, you need to book a surgeon
Cut deep and cut right now, because I heard the rumour
The USA is sick, and Donald Trump

He is the tumour.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

A Step Beyond Context


There are excited noises coming from Marlowe Manor at the moment.

I've just released my first novel "A Step Beyond Context" which is now available on Amazon as both a kindle ebook and a paperback.



It draws on ideas that first surfaced here in my Lucksmith stories featuring the irascible old meddler Lucas and his maverick team of dimensional travellers, and focuses on a young woman with a complicated past as a mercenary and computer hacker who has to balance this with her family background as a Regency lady.

Called home for a family gathering she is thrown headlong into intrigue and danger and takes it on herself to unpick the tangled web that ensues, crossing different worlds to find the truth.

It's published under a pen-name Finn Cullen and is available from the links below.

Kindle
Paperback
(these are the amazon.com links - other countries are available)

If you do feel inspired to give it a read please review and spread the word.