Introducing

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Descartes' Demon

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Lone and Level Sands

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Uncommitted Crimes

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Omnibus! Volume 1

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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Man With A Skull For A Head Interviews #1: Iain Rowan

Iain Rowan, Yesterday
The Man With A Skull For A Head recently interviewed each of the Abominable Gentlemen in their usual haunt of the Jeykll and Hyde pub. History does not record how many pints of Blue Monkey either participant had drunk by this point, but you can judge for yourself from the transcript below.

First victim, Iain Rowan:





TMWASFAH: "If you could make any one person - alive or dead, male or female, real or fictional - an honorary Abominable Gentleman, who would it be and why?"


IR: I'm not sure if he was real, or fictional, or a combination of the two, but I think I would like our company to be joined by Merlin. He'd be great fun to have around for lots of reasons:


"Merlin, the Gentlemen are out of tea/stout/crumpets, would you mind just waving your staff and..."
"Merlin, our Amazon Sales Rank is slipping. Would you mind just waving your staff and..."
"Merlin, can I have a go of your pointy hat?"
"Merlin, you have amazing powers, the like of which have not been seen on earth before or since. So, you know. The whole Mordred and Arthur thing. The greatest king the country has ever known. Slain in battle.  Busy that day were you, Merlin, washing your beard? Merlin? Come on, I'm only kidding, you know that. Don't frown so. I am abominable after all. We'll go out after lunch and play swords in stones if it will make you smile again."


TMWASFAH: "What's the most abominable thing you've done that you want to reveal to the internet at large?"


IR: When I was a child, I once pulled the wings off a fairy. Horrible, but I knew no better.


It gets worse though. I felt very guilty about this, so I put the fairy into a shoebox with every intention of asking my mum to sew the wings back on, but then a friend came round asking if I'd go out and play football, and I got muddy and had to have a bath when I came back in, and then there were cartoons on the TV, and then it was time for bed and then...it was two months before I looked in the shoebox.


I generally avoid mounds, tumuli and rings now.


TMWASFAH: "As you know, the Gentlemen drink in the Jekyll and Hyde pub. If you had a Mister Hyde style alter-ego what would he (she?!) be called and why?"


IR: I am the Mister Hyde style alter-ego.


My Mr Jekyll style alter-ego is called Norman Jekyll and he works compiling railway timetable information. In his spare time, he enjoys his hobby of compiling historical railway timetable information, with occasional refreshments of weak lemon drink.


TMWASFAH: "If you had a free pick from all of literature of one story by a guest author for a future issue of Penny Dreadnought, what would it be?"


IR: Beowulf. Because it is wonderful it has beasts, and mead and Geats and revenge and dragons and tragedy.  And because the author is unknown so the whole issue of royalty payments would be um, moot.


But most of all, because more stories should start: Hwæt! 


TMWASFAH: "As writers, we often get asked for boring factual author bios. If you could write an author bio unconstrained by the boundaries of reality and truth, what would it say?"


IR: Iain Rowan is a diligent and disciplined writer.


TMWASFAH: "What one thing would you like to know about the other Abominable Gentlemen that you currently don't?"


IR: A gentleman never wants to know another gentleman's secrets. 


But I do often wonder if the rumours about Mr Everington, the two Tibetans and the manatee have any foundation in truth, whether Mr Ryker really can fly or whether it was some kind of optical illusion that the witnesses saw, and the whole truth about whether Mr Polson has created an additional day between Tuesday and Wednesday which only he can access.



TMWASFAH: "What one book of yours would you like to plug to the Penny Dreadnought readership?"


IR: If you have enjoyed my stories in Penny Dreadnought, you'll probably enjoy Ice Age, my collection of strange and chilling stories. Two of the stories in the collection have appeared in PD, but the others haven't, and I think you'll like them.


Buy Ice Age at Amazon: US | UK

1 comment:

  1. “whether Mr Ryker really can fly or whether it was some kind of optical illusion that the witnesses saw”

    Funny story about that: it was actually the Earth moving in relation to me, rather than the other way around. I was testing a device that amplified my personality, and it actually made me so repellant that it drove the Earth right from beneath me.

    That device still needs a bit of tweaking.

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