Sam Redlark

  The Terracotta Man was the colour of a plant pot. He was the shape of a Buddha, who has meditated his way out of the lotus position, in favour of something less taxing on the spine – a semi-reclined pose on a sun lounger. His true age was indeterminate, lost somewhere within the soft folds of his morbid obesity. As a broad estimate, I venture that he was between 60 and 80 years old. His only concession to the social nicety of clothing were a pair of pale-blue shorts and a white strip across the bridge of his nose, that was supposed to protect it from sunburn, though it only covered a small cross-section. During the summer, he was a fixture on the angled balcony of his ground-floor, seafront flat, facing perpetually towards the east, in readiness for the next sunrise. His first outdoor appearance heralded the onset of Summer. His departure, usually sometime during September, marked the end of the season. One day, as I walked past the low-rise block where the Terracotta Man liv...

The following was posted in the comments section of Notes & Queries, on The Guardian website, on the 1st May, 2022. It was promptly deleted by the jannies for infringing upon the community standards, as I assumed it would be. It is not that The Guardian can't handle the half-truth; it's just that this is the opposite half. If you would like to know more about Rambengun politics, wait 12 months and I will happily sell you an entire novel's worth. What is the single most effective thing I could do to reduce my carbon footprint? I met Dr Marcus Tuta in 2019. At this time he was the long-serving GP for the Rambengun ex-pat community that had put down roots in Hammersmith, in West London, and had remained there for many decades. Before I continue, I would like to make it clear that I will not be discussing Tuta's disappearance, nor will I be speculating on what may have become of the man. I am not privy to the details of what went on exactly, and do not think that they a...

Towards the end of 2020, I wrote a novella by accident. Which is a cutesy way of saying that, either on a whim, or as a dedicated act of procrastination to avoid doing something else, I dragged the mothballed fragments of an unfinished piece of fiction out from the archives, and worked on it until it was well over 30,000 words and no longer viable as a short story. During the decade or so since its conception, the story had acquired a number of notations that had been tagged piecemeal onto the end. Among these was the outline for a new opening paragraph that went on to become chapter one. A sketch of a scene that was intended to amount to nothing more than a couple of paragraphs, swelled to immense proportions and became chapter three, which remains my favourite part of the book. There was a point where I had to make a decision: Do I cram the story back into the vaults, or do I continue adding to it, in the knowledge that it is too large for any literary journal to even consider, and w...

Readers of my novella, The Missionary Dune ( which is available through Amazon as a paperback or eBook ) may have noted, in the 'other books by the same author section, a sprawling, 7000-page, WWII epic, titled The Buttoner , that I wrote under under the female pseudonym, Agnes Pimm. The book is a relic of a shameful era of our literary history, when it was unthinkable that a man might be permitted to toss his bowler hat into the female-dominated sub-genre of cross stitch fiction. Consequently, I was left with no option other than to don a sensible cotton blouse and a heavy tweed skirt, prior to making inroads into this forbidden territory. Sadly, my ruse was exposed by the treacherous Dorothy Welsby, who affected both friendship and support for my plight, prior to very publicly stabbing me in the back. An edict issued by the Global Council of Literary Standards resulted in the book being de-published a mere two weeks after it was released. An accompanying motion to have me de-aut...

(The Guardian jannies have struck down my Notes & Queries response for being in breach of community standards. I think the most-likely reason is the passing mention of Russia, which is enough to spread disquieting, PTSD-inducing ripples across the surface of an almond milk latte in the rarefied air of redeveloped King Cross. Anyway here it is if you want to read it) ~ I don't think I am divulging any state secrets when I say that Richard Pilbrow's cold war career in the diplomatic service went hand in hand with a certain amount of intelligence gathering. He published a book about his experiences in 2019. I would assume that anything sensitive in nature was redacted by the blinders of the Whitehall publishing arm, who are the only buyers for this kind of memoir. A couple of months ago, at Richard's request, I paid a visit to his home in Barnes, to witness him signing some legal paperwork. His study was a small, dim-lit room, screened off from the world behind heavy lace ...

The paperback proof copies of my novella, that I will shortly be publishing as a paperback using Amazon's print on demand service, have arrived. These are my thoughts regarding the quality of what they sent me, and my experience of using the service. 

  Whenever I am in Cornwall, I make a point of paying a solitary visit to the church of St Peter Under Aylward. As is the case with all worthwhile pilgrimages, this excursion is not without a degree of personal risk. On paper, the chapel remains in service, despite the considerable handicap of occupying Atlantic real estate currently submerged at a depth of between 15 - 27 feet, depending upon the disposition of the tide along the northern coast. St Peter's fell victim to a landslip in 1902, that also claimed a trailing thread of its parent village. The thick-walled buildings were constructed from the same rough-hewn masonry that was used to assemble a multitude of stone circles in this part of the country, many of which stand to this day. The seven underwater structures have endured their 12-decade exile from dry land (which has placed them at the mercy of the battering Irish Swell) largely unscathed, though all have lost their roofs. The church, in its present location, has becom...