Interview with Tafad Tan

An interview I did today with three Cardiff creatives (Jason Philips - musician and producer, Alrick "Ninjah" Wilson - musician and occasional drag queen, and Max Lewy - poet), on such topics as Beijing, burlesque, decluttering, writing, being transgender, and boasting a little about famous relatives. YOUTUBE LINK

“A strength badly exerted” – Rousseau, Radicalism, and Repression in the Works of P. B. Shelley

Something a little unusual for this blog - This is an academic article I wrote back in late 2013, revised in 2015, then forgot about after the e-journal it was intended for vanished off the face of the interwebs never to resurface. Since I absolutely cannot be bothered with the rigmarole of trying to find...

Pretty Gems and Paranoid Androids

My writing has really taken a back seat to my burlesque for over a year now, since my last Gothic dabbling in the world of fanfic. However, being a big fan of "Steven Universe", I've been toying with the idea of doing some sort of crossover fiction with the Crystal Gems for some time now,...

Extended Halloween …

How curious. Halloween has never figured too heavily on my calender until this year, which - between various horror-themed burlesque shows and alt-80s nights - may have been the Gothiest year of my life, and the extended Halloween is not quite over yet ... Yes, I am still a writer, even if I have rather...

Book Review – “Ghostkin” (Ellen Mellor, 2018)

"Ghostkin" works from a premise that will be instantly familiar to fans of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": an inextricable collision between the otherworld and the mundane world has forced history (since the 20th century) down an alternative route in which humans have been forced to coexist with fay, demons, spirits, and various undead horrors. However,...

Convalescent Critic #3: “The Phantom of the Opera” (Ysgol Gyfun Bryntirion production)

(Flyer from school website) The sad aspect of this review is that even if it convinces you, there is no way you will be able to see this production, as we caught its last night (unless someone else caught it on their phone and puts it on YouTube, of course). However, I felt it deserved...

“Destiny of the Daleks” – reappraisal

(The Doctor, Romana, random Movellan soldier, and various humans catching the bus together. How deceptively innocent ...) I have already written on this story (Destiny of the Daleks - retrospective) but felt it deserved a revisit ... sadly because I was way too generous to it. While one would often prefer to be generous when...

The Time-Travelling Showgirl

Being an indie author, without anyone else to worry about all the dreary marketing schtick, one has to do one's best to keep track of whether or not one's books are getting any attention. Recently, I was Googling about to see if I could find any new reviews on Wolves of Dacia, obviously searching with...

Lucille and the Healers

There was a time not so long ago when I wanted to distance myself from the past - and particularly from my old name - so much that I would never share my old works, but now that the end of my transition is well and truly in sight the past seems less scary than...

Wolves of Dacia (First time in paperback)

2018 has got off to an eventful start - lots of requests for Tarot readings, new fanfiction published, Burlesque dance classes started, but best of all, my long-awaited first ever paperback novel has finally hit the shelves (or Amazon, at any rate) ... Wolves of Dacia is my second foray into historical Gothic fiction (after...