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On the Proper Use of Mosquitoes

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  On the Proper Use of Mosquitoes  Roppotucha Greenberg (Originally published in TwistinTime Mag)                They won’t let me sleep. My father, a halo of insects around his head, is singing of Robbie Burns’ heart that’s apparently ‘in the highlands a-following a deer’, in Russian first, then in English. Drink always made him jolly, and it earned him our neighbours’ respect (before they met him they’d thought Jews didn’t drink). The night is silly, all soft grey light and drunk  Zglevian  songs. The insects buzz knowingly; he will be theirs soon. Should I warn him?  I could say: ‘Avoid, cancerogenic foods’, ‘Don’t smoke forty cigarettes a day’; ‘When they bring in free-trade try to make money slowly to avoid stress’. But will that scare him? I am the child He loved; I am the Girl from Earth; I am an emissary from the future. My knowledge is His undoing. In my night dress, my hair messed up, my toes curled on the gravel, I look like a ghoul. Ghoulishly, I walk towards the fi
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Soyla and others on the lakeshore

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There is a longer creature-based work, which can only come out if people read it as it is forming itself. In that way it's like an alien caterpillar] The excerpts do not necessarily come in order. Comments welcome Soyla liked how the old man from the tree family explained things to her: we are not really that small Solya, just far away. She didn’t know if it made her ashamed, worried, or if it made it all a bit easier. Aside from supplying them with fresh scraps of Ool’s letters there was little she could do, and meanwhile, for the time being, things seemed fine. She wished they weren’t so small, but then again if the giants were passing this way, they would find her very small, and she was all right. The giants were not seen in this part of the Thicket for quite some time. There were a lot of things that were not seen. And maybe it was the opposite from the tree family. If they weren’t small but far away, maybe the giants, and the rhinos, and the magnificent star-toads were no
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Ool at Night

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So here's another segment from the WIP creature book. Thank you for reading. “Ool, are you awake?” “I think so. Do they always talk inside your wardrobes at night?” “Yes. Always” “Then I am awake.’ “You scared?” “It’s been a month, hasn’t it?” “We were scared a lot, once. It was not nice. I want to do nice things for you? Water?” “Thanks, I drank so much coffee, I don’t know what I am anymore.” “Try it, it’s good for when you are really scared. The taste is a bit rubbish otherwise.” Ool looked into the tin cup. The water smelled of the lake. In his hand, the water moved a bit, like the lake going in and out of the sand on the shore. It was very dark in her room, so he couldn’t see him, but he knew a reflected Ool was staring at him. He has not changed his ways. He has not found out what was expected of him, and the consequences, would be bad. The reflected Ool shook in the dark. He took a sip, and it was like diving in. Fresh water sea-weed, fresh-water fi
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Ool in the Bar

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There is a longer creature-based work, which can only come out if people read it as it is forming itself. In that way it's like an alien caterpillar] The excerpts do not necessarily come in order. Comments welcome.  Ool sat at the bar and ordered a martini. He wouldn’t normally do that. Order that is, instead of steaking and sit in plain view instead of lurking between the legs of the bar stools. But the server felt different. She wiped the bar with a cloth; served him his drink: ice-cold, human, and Ool could reach the bar fine enough if he stood on the stool. He placed his long face on the counter and watched the server through the clear glass.   “Do you have money?” the server asked in a voice that was like the rustle of leaves back in the Thicket. “Yes. But thank you for asking”. He paid for the drink and watched her move from the bar to the till, from the till to the door of the kitchen. She was graceful and dignified, and every few beats she seemed to vanish. Othe
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Creatures Set Forth: A New Book from the Thciket

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Like the other creature books , this one is a stand-alone collection, though it has all sorts of secret links to the stories in the other two. This book does not feature advice, and has a bunch of tiny stories instead. It is about the end of the summer, the reasons people might leave one place and go to another place, and about journeys long and short.  It's available on Amazon as a paperback and an e-book .  Amazon UK links: paperback ; e-book Review snippets:  " The combination of word choice, unparalleled imagination, unexpected yet just right structure and form of the writing checks every possible box for me. And the delightfully endearing drawings are the icing on top of the cake" (Helen Whistberry) " There are many stories, one great story, and no story at all. A tender and indefinable work of art and language that may well leave you stranded in a fairy circle you have no desire to leave." (Cassondra Windwalker) " A su
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The Great Musical Launch of the Second Creature Book

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Creatures Give Advice Agian and it's warmer now  was out on 21 June. It's all about summer. It was my way of keeping a bit of the summer, so really it's a lot like jam. Also it has an index, that's sort of like a poem, even though it is also an index. It was launched on 31 August, amid much merriment. The good people of Twitter contributed the music: Bohemian Rhapsody played on a fairground organ (contributed by Marsha Adams (@marshawritesit) And this was my response And then Maureen Docherty (@mordoc1) put this one on: Response: Happiness is a good thing to have at a launch, so this song was great to listen to (with thanks to Tim Warren @fFredTweetzsche) And the response was: Next came this piece from Sarah Allen Reed (@SarahAllenReed)  . It's not for the faint-hearted, but Creatures are brave (there used to be secret concerts in the Thicket that they used to sneak into, back when humans came in and out. So her
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Filigree and her important work

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Visit  Allotment 1  to see where Filigree might be hiding. 
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