There is a somewhat peculiar genesis for this particular story that centres on a live role-playing group that I and some friends created, and for which I wrote an extensive backstory at the time. As I quite liked what I'd written, but couldn't exactly publish it more widely in its original form, I've taken some of the plot points and adapted them for this story, and its (hopeful) sequels. We'll see how it works out.

Anyway, on that point, I should probably give a nod of thanks towards, particularly, Dave Young, Jamie Jones, Kieran Walker, Andy Hodgson and Dave Huxter, and of course the inimitable Andy Connell.

The story is here, and please enjoy.

Grahame writes, of himself:

"

Well, what can I say about me? Just the usual sort of fluff. In 1792 I was washed up on the shore of southern Sumatra in a coffin-like box made of fused manatee bones. With no memory of my former life I was brought up by a family of  humanoid lizard haruspices and introduced in my teens to the discrete yet complimentary worlds of high fashion, the reading of entrails and gurning. Needless to say, I excelled at all.

On my 118^th birthday* I was sent out into the world to make my fortune, and when that didn’t particularly happen I turned to the written word as both solace and muse. I both wrote and appeared in several films by no-budget Internet shysters Shock! Horror! Probe! (Bikini Zombies From The Moon, for which I will probably be apologising for the rest of my days, and Shine Dog, in which you may see the exalted Shadows of the Apt author stretching his acting chops), and last year I was a top-10 runner up in SFX magazine’s annual short story competition Pulp Idol, with my fanciful tale “Mickey and the Nixies”. My first time in a book. I liked it. Roomy.

Since that exalted day I have, due to recurrent existential crises (AKA laziness) fallen back onto my twin vices of self-abuse and cooking sherry. Despite my Web presence, which embarrassingly remains to this day, I hold no truck with your Internets. I have no “web-sight” and I neither “twitter” nor “blog” though in the future this may change as my mayfly interest flits hither and yon, in the manner of a fist in search of a face.

Today my time is spent recumbent in a leatherette chaise-longue stuffed with the armpit fur of 10,000 ocelots, plugged into the collected works of Kajagoogoo, thinking fondly of days past. It is a simple life, but it suffices.

Enjoy the story, a fanciful tale which came to me in the manner of a dream. Though a dream with less to wipe up afterwards.

“Too shy-shy, hush hush…” Ah, poetry.

*My long life I ascribe to the vast consumption of Shipham’s Bloater fish paste and

the total avoidance of the sex act. By salubrious happenstance, the first leads naturally to the second."

This month, however, roaches. Roaches make an entrance in Dragonfly Falling with Sfayot and family. The insect-resemblance is not so much their ability to survive anything (though they are a resilient breed) so much as the despite they are viewed with. In those lands that they habitually travel, there are few who are pleased to see them or have a good word for them. In the same way that the humble cockroach, marvel of efficiency that it is, is so savagely maligned, so the poor Roach-kinden, one of the least harmful of the kinden, carry the burden of a bad reputation.

The story, Spoils of War, that shows our friend Sfayot's escapades a few years before his appearance in Dragonfly, can he found here.

Anyway, the story is here.

(1) in the sense of recondite