We’ll be bringing our Faceless Monsters word and music extravaganza to Kelly’s Bar on Bridge St on Friday 12th November at 8pm. Also performing are the Lucky Crew and Kate Tempest & The Sound of Rum.

We performed on Sunday evening at The Word tent in the Mindfield area of Electric Picnic. We brought the rain! Thanks to all who came and enjoyed it. Give us a shout if you were there or want to know when we’re performing next.

A big thank you to everyone who came along to our launch party in Bar Massimo last Friday, 23rd of April. It was a fantastic night! See some photos from the night here

He was an electrician by trade, but his passion was chopping wood. I had travelled far from my northern home as he had from his in the red Outback, and we found each other in the grey stone hostel underneath Edinburgh’s mammoth castle.

Chiseled valleys and stiff peaks of ridged muscle were among the many benefits of wood chopping. I imagined my life with him as an imported wife while he, the father of my children, stood on top of the wood chopping medal podium. Then a friend let slip that the Wood Chopper was also sleeping with a short blonde from New Zealand.

I decided to get even.

Tears fell from his big blue eyes and eventually he offered two hundred pounds for the procedure. He said he couldn’t stay with me. His feelings were stronger for the New Zealander and his social life was finally improving. Within hours word had spread, a development I hadn’t anticipated. Jen Smith told me she was on my side and offered support. We walked to the hospital together and then she hugged me and left after I insisted on going on ahead by myself. I lingered in a ward full of old people in wheelchairs and watched her leave through a large window. Afterwards I walked over to St Andrew’s Square and spent some of the money on a silk scarf that was orange.

I saw the Wood Chopper for the last time in the pub a few nights later. He and the New Zealander were arguing. Rumour was they were having difficulties. I never told him what happened to his baby. In fact, he never asked.

We’ve been working on our second collection of short stories over the past few months and are delighted to have Nuala Ní Chonchúir on board as our contributing editor. ‘Faceless Monsters’ will be launched in Galway during the Cúirt Literature Festival next month and also in Dublin at The Irish Writers’ Centre. Further details soon!

At 7:30 in Massimo’s (William St. West) on Friday 24th of April The Atlantis Collective are throwing a party. Yes we want you! There will be free wine and food, live music, selected readings from the book, followed by Dick Coombes’  excellent blend of 60s and 70s gotta-get-up soul and gotta-get-down funk.

And, of course, we will be selling copies of Town of Fiction. Where else will you find out how to kill your boss in exactly the proper method; where else do the citizens fizz and burr with regret, with lust, with all the darting shadow thoughts we try and keep inside our heads? Nowhere else but here. Forget Sesame Street. I’ll tell you how to get to the Town of Fiction.

Henry fills his mouth with urine and looks across at Jasper. He swirls it slowly around in his cheeks, with a look on his face that conveys the impression that he’s sampling a particularly complex burgundy.

“It’s like pear juice.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like.”

They sit facing each other, nodding agreement. Wind whistles wickedly around the timber cabin, celebrating its triumph over electricity, probing for further weakness.

“Never drank pear juice.”

“Me neither.”

The door rattles on its hinges, and both turn towards the disturbance. Flame hurls shadows into the slipstream of their collective gaze, gifting an almost ethereal quality to their surroundings.

“Just the wind.”

“That’s all.”

Jasper reaches onto the floor, grabs a half-full bottle of beer and takes a hearty swig. He holds the bottle at arms length, subjecting it to intense scrutiny, struggling to focus on the label in the poor light. Read More »

Gary could kiss her right there and blame it all on that something in a summer’s day. They’d been drinking by the lake: Eamon and Susie, and Gary and Jenny. They usually did their Sunday drinking inside in town, chasing the weekend into early houses and parties where someone says ‘I’ve to work in the morning’ and everyone leaves. But today, with the sun out, they took Gary’s green Corolla out to a quiet spot between the lake and forest, which wasn’t a forest really, just some trees planted there together by the council.

They sat out at noon in a line, Susie beside Eamon, Gary beside Jenny. They uncovered their skin like new ground for the hot sun to shine on.  They drank gold cans from the blue square of a freezer box. The car ticked, its metal doors were open like wings to let the radio play in wrinkles on the still water. Read More »