a writer’s life
-
What You Look For
My short story What You Look For has just been published in Horla. The story is loosely based on a house I shared as a student in Leamington Spa — with what I hope is a horrific twist. I did once see what I think of as a ghost, which appeared as I describe in…
-
Home thoughts from abroad
So at last found a bit of time to update this blog, as you can see from the photo, taken by my brother, of me tapping away on a terrace in Sicily. I am here taking a break with family. I love Sicily, and the terrace is quick with lizards, and has geckos crawling about…
-
Doorways to Hell
In a Bloomsbury bookshop last October, two days after the death of a close friend, I found myself in the store’s horror section. On a whim I bought a collection of disturbing short stories by Robert Aickman called Compulsory Games. Only on the train home did it occur to me that choosing to read horror…
-
‘The Dark Fish’ in Horla
In my last post I mentioned I had been reading short story collections lately, and particularly the strange tales of Robert Aickman. This prompted me to exhume some of my own short stories from the cobwebby Kenny Vaults. One of these was a story called The Dark Fish. I wrote the first version of this in my mid…
-
A lost friend, agent hunting, and new collections of short stories
My friend Janet Summerton died on October 1st at the age of 79. I was heavily involved in her care during her last two months, and that of her husband Ken who survives her. Janet was a lateral thinking champion of the crafts and craft makers – and a benign influence on a generation of…
-
The Mosque Cathedral of Córdoba
A mosque with a cathedral bursting out of its roof. Ever since Lorraine and I went to Spain a month ago, I have been haunted by the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. It is not rare for different religions to use the same holy sites over history, although what makes people originally decide a site is holy or…
-
Slow progress and wide heart lead
Seven items from the imaginary news desk at Kenny Towers. A nice, not to mention speedy, review of TRUTHS A Telltale Press Anthology in London Grip. If you’d like to buy a copy, simply get in touch with me through this site. In other poetry news, I have a poem called Commuted on the Amaryllis site, and…
-
Two things the demons taught me
January and February? Gah! What are they for other than self-flagellation? With festivities just a liver-scarring memory, the nights long, and the days hatefully grey… I usually use the first part of the year to brood like Milton’s Satan on the vast abyss of my shortcomings. But this year I did something different. I tidied up.…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 