Publication news, what’s coming on greydogtales, lurcher rescue and a different take on Pink Floyd. Welcome to our usual mid-week medley. We have a hint of Spring in Yorkshire this time – it’s above 0 degrees Celsius and it’s possible to see a burning ball of gas in the sky. Astonishing. We hope that it’s the sun.

All three dogs are jostling to lie in the doorway and catch some rays, which is slightly problematic as the work-desk is next to the open door. So greydog is trapped, and likely to break a leg trying to get to the kettle. What better time to write?

Might as well do lurcherings first. Training Your Human Pt 2 will be next week now, due to pressure of dogs and deadlines. This morning’s exploits with Django and Chilli have already worn us out, and the Daffodil Menace continues to worsen (lurchers, carnacki and other bulbs)

Every verge here is now covered by these terrible growths. Django charges into them, inevitably breaking quite a few off, and then pees over them. We’re then left with the question: do we pick the broken flowers, and risk being accused of floricide for personal gain? They only need a quick wash, after all.

This morning’s extra delight was standing by the ring road, observed by dozens of drivers and shoppers, as Django decided that a pee was not enough, given the size of his audience. So he did a very loose and prolonged poo into (and all over) a particularly fine display of daffs. Two lessons from this: i) don’t give him herring again for a while, and ii) only walk him at night and in disguise.

All our little donkeys have been rescues. We at greydogtales don’t play favourites, but we’re always willing to highlight rescue work, so today we’ll mention Fall in Love With a Rescue (UK-based), who do a hard job trying to rehome dogs from city pounds and save them from being put to sleep.

They’re usually inundated with dogs needing help, and at the moment they’re running an auction to try and support their work. Check out their Facebook page for more details.

fallinlovewitharescue

We hope to have an interview with Krisy of Fall in Love with a Rescue in due course, saying more about their work. Which leads nicely onto other plans.

What’s coming up

More weird art and fiction interviews are on their way. We will soon be joined by author Joshua M Reynolds, who we’ve mentioned here before. He’ll be talking about his Royal Occultist series and more. Michael Hutter, the fabulous German artist, is on his way as well, with coverage of his Carcosa series inspired by Ambrose Bierce and Robert W Chambers.

The Stranger Seas theme is still running, in and out of other articles. We’re torn between a feature on H P Lovecraft’s maritime monstrosities and coverage of aquatic superheroes at the moment.

Lurchers for Beginners was, and still is, a huge success, which is ironic considering that it makes us no money whatsoever and was started purely for fun. More lurchery goodness will follow as regularly as possible because… just because. Our alpha female Chilli has made that quite clear. We might even put out a revised version of the complete Lurchers for Beginners series eventually.

Torchwood, always a favourite, will feature sometime soon, to coincide with Big Finish Production’s release of The Victorian Age, the start of their second series of Torchwood audio releases and starring John Barrowman. We are, we admit, addicted to audio.

Listeners also seem to like the forbidden horror that is Sandra’s First Pony. In these skewed tales, plucky young Sandra, Mr Bubbles the slightly psychotic pony and occasionally Bottles the lurcher face the things of your nightmares on the Yorkshire Wolds. We’ll have a new one soon.

John Linwood Grant in Print

Almost finally, scary story news. Dedicated listeners may be aware that this ancient, sarcastic Yorkshireman re-emerged from long slumber into a semi-literary world last year. And he had a shocking thought. It might be nice to get paid again. So he hammered away for a few months, and set some of his new creations crawling towards unsuspecting publishers. This is a slow process, for those of you who don’t write, and often a frustrating one. But now he’s sort of there.

From May onwards, John Linwood Grant will be in purchasable form, including ebooks, as opposed to the strange fragments you get here on greydogtales. We’ve been waiting on firm dates, and there are some others in the pipeline, but here’s what we know so far…

• A new period novella A STUDY IN GREY is due out 15 April from 18th Wall Publications, and blends The Last Edwardian series with Sherlock Holmes in a thriller set in 1909 during yet another Balkan crisis. If you want to get in the mood, you can download three free stories featuring some of the same characters here: Tales of the Last Edwardian

• MESSAGES,  a Lovecraftian story of good parenting, will be in Martian Migraine’s super new anthology Cthulhusattva. The anthology looks at the other side of those who embrace the truth behind the Mythos – not the squint-eyed lunatics, but the true disciples. This is due 23 May. Scott R Jones, the genius behind the book, even made a cool video to announce the book:

• HUNGERY, a contemporary story of ogres, should also be due out in May/June. The proofs are done, but we haven’t got the official dates and table of contents release, so we’ll tell you more later.

• The quirky Edwardian ghost tale, A PERSISTENCE OF GERANIUMS, is likely to be coming out as a chapbook from Ravenwood in July. Ravenwood are launching a new quarterly which looks very promising, with a small number of chapbooks in between their first and second issues.

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That’s enough of that boring old fellow jlg. We finish with some music. Remember Pink Floyd and Another Brick in the Wall? We accidentally found something which we thought would be weird, but which turns out to be great – a medieval version of the titular track, by Belorusian group Stary Olsa. It works rather well, so have a listen.

And we’re out of here. See you soon.