2026

Posted on December 22, 2025 by douglasthompson

As 2025 nears a close and 2026 rapidly approaches, I find myself looking back on a year of change and various small but significant achievements, such as hearing first-hand from a lecturer of contemporary Scottish literature that he has been teaching my short story ‘The Dissolving Man’ to his university students as part of their course work. Maybe one day this peculiar little stateless nation of Scotland will appreciate the many writers within its fold who are more deserving of attention than the usual suspects. Remember folks: never accept the myth of meritocracy. But in the meantime, every little victory counts and tastes most sweet.

Postbox Magazine, ‘Scotland’s International Short Story Magazine’ published my short story ‘Cinders’ in the Spring (Issue No.11), whose content can be summarised by its opening line: “It was nearly forty years ago and Cinders was my first love…” Writing honestly about deeply personal things like your first romantic experience is purgative but very difficult to pull off and it took me all of those forty years to be able to do it. What you learn along the way of course, is that often when you dig down to the true centre, other people recognise themselves there and some kind of unifying synergy of sympathy emerges, the mother lode all writers seek. Here is another line from near the end of the story “I wonder if writers and artists are born without their skins… more wide open to the world than most of the lucky others around them…”  If this strikes a chord with anyone out there then always remember that you are not alone.

In June, my short story ‘Fabian Dysart’ was published in an anthology called ‘Shadows On The Stage’, from Forest publications, edited by Nadine Brito and Claire Wallace. I had great fun reading this one out at the book launch in Edinburgh and meeting the (predominately younger) writers. Victoria Lilly, writing in The Independent Review, said of my story: “Douglas Thompson’s ‘Fabian Dysart’ explores the madness of celebrity and the thin line between acting and being…” which is about right. An ageing actor who finds himself parodied in a popular TV soap opera, gets drawn into to playing himself on said programme and thus begins a slide towards disintegration. My point, a la Camus’ La Chute (one of my favourite books of all time) is that none of us live entirely in truth, but the farther we each stray from doing so, the greater psychological danger we are in. Unusually, I dreamt the entire story one morning, including the title, before I even knew of the anthology or its submission guidelines, and it all fell into place thereafter as if pre-ordained.

Also in June my latest novel ‘Retrovival’ was published (by Elsewhen Press), which writer and academic David Manderson will review in the near future in Glasgow University’s magazine The Bottle Imp, and of which he has tweeted: “This is great. Speculative fiction from Douglas Thompson. Funny, fascinating, a joy to read and completely bonkers, in a beautiful way. I loved it…” In October I was amused to see another reviewer complain that the book had “..an unfortunate streak of racism running through it…” before they removed that sentence, having perhaps realised that in a book all about criticising racism they might be accused of having missed the point. Getting reviews of books is difficult these days for indy authors, and I am genuinely grateful to everyone who honestly reviews a book of mine, regardless of whether they like it or not. What is truly fascinating to me about this particular book is how some English readers appear to be struggling to grasp the idea that people being racist against white English people is a simple inversion of how the British empire has treated the rest of the world. If the notion of symmetry and equivalence is lost on them, one can only wonder if it is being obscured by ingrained subconscious notions of superiority. Which is exactly what I was getting at. Bingo! One great advantage of having never found major commercial success or a major publisher, is that I can take risks with touchy topics, write what I like without toning it down. England doesn’t have an immigration problem, it has a racism problem. Sometimes science fiction is the best way to turn a mirror on big ugly truths like that. My publishers, Elsewhen, are English of course, so all is not lost!

In September, I had a flash fiction piece published in an anthology called ‘274 Miles’ from new Scottish publisher Tantallon Tir, edited by John Gerard Fagan (whose excellent debut memoir ‘Fish Town’ is a rivetting read). Edinburgh reviewer ‘Tychy’ writes on their blog: “If the contributors to 274 Miles are being ranked in terms of their generosity then Douglas Thompson may come out on top. His ‘The Scottish Problem,’ a meditation on a household’s relationship with alcohol and emotion, swirls and glows hauntingly and familiarly, like a glass of whisky that is being held up to the light…” Tantallon Tir will also be publishing a longer piece of mine in their next anthology ‘Call Of The Isles’.

It was a tough year for small independent publishers due to the vile fascist demagogue in the White House waving arbitrary trade tariffs around and torpedoing books sales to America, but in October I had four of my short stories published by Mount Abraxas Press in Bucharest, Romania, in two beautiful booklets entitled ‘Bargaining With Charon On The Styx’ and ‘Dark Glasses’.

Also in October I learned that my German publisher Zagava have made my two fractal novels ‘The Suicide Machine’ (2020) and‘Barking Circus’ (2020)  available again as affordable paperbacks which can be ordered from Amazon. In the last few days I learned that my very latest short story collection ‘The Apparatus Of Yearning’, featuring twenty drawings by my late brother Ally Thompson: is also now available in paperback from Zagava through the German arm of Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/coWFc2U

Also this year my 2022 novel ‘Stray Pilot’ received some positive reviews from respected contemporary authors Lorn MacIntyre and Andrew Hook. Lorn writing on Amazon here , and Andrew on Goodreads here.

In August a poem of mine inspired by the music of the late great jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane came out it in issue two of Jack Caradoc’s new magazine ‘The Candyman’s Trumpet’. Another four poems will be published in the January 2026 issue, but in the meantime I leave you with ‘Blue Train’ in full:

BLUE TRAIN

With John Coltrane in my headphones

I exit the morning train

walk into the heart of the city

on a wave of 1950’s jazz

old recordings crackling like rain

the ultimate urban music around me

head down I plod among

the thousand feet on wet pavements

slaves marching meandering

in diffident fugue of opaque emotion

heads up: traffic lights blur and fur

distorted behind sweating or tearful glass

wait, don’t wait, go, stay, comply, rebel

the red green orange atonal music says

all extremes blurring horns tooting

rumble of lorries and buses over tarmac

progress of authority over dreams

white collars choking us like dog collars

jazz: the weary sermon of the eternal streets

which could be New York, Chicago

Tokyo, Shanghai, Nairobi almost

anywhere the tyranny of commerce

commences daily at the starting whistle

of muted trumpet or saxophone

that nuanced voice half-agony half-joy

cry of the human animal lost

among high rise canyons of steel and glass

the notes falling like torn-up ticker tape

semaphoring the message that loneliness is universal.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Retrovival

Posted on June 16, 2025 by douglasthompson

My new novel ‘Retrovival’ is published today, Monday 16th June 2025, in eBook and Paperback by Elsewhen Press.

 https://elsewhen.press/index.php/catalogue/title/retrovival/

In some ways I’ve been trying to avoid writing this potentially controversial book for about the last five years, in case it might be misunderstood, but in the end it just wouldn’t leave me alone until I followed it through. It features a far-right president of a future independent Scotland, and frankly I was anxious that this character might be seen as a veiled attack on former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, which certainly wasn’t my intention. I am politically on the left and no fan of the Treaty Of Union of 1707 as it has played out within my lifetime. But really my aim was to avoid any narrow contemporary political statements, and instead to use the relationship between Scotland and England to create a larger universal allegory about what gives rise to racism and totalitarianism in our world. My choice of topic now seems almost prescient, since globally these issues have become ever more pressing and worrying every day.

When I began writing Retrovival, current major events in Ukraine and Gaza had not yet kicked off, and politicians such as Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen still seemed marginal figures. Maybe the rise of right-wing extremism around the world requires more of an author than simple condemnation. I wanted to understand how imperial nostalgia and jingoism is always rooted in an obsession with the past and an attempt to re-write that past. Also, as a boy growing up in the shadow of the Roman Empire’s Antonine Wall, I have always had a hankering to uncover what went on there, why the wall was abandoned so soon after its completion, and what possible parallels that might have with our present and future. Human nature never changes and history often seems to repeat itself in endless waves of amnesia and folly. They key to our future certainly lies in our past, but only if we understand it correctly and tell the truth about it. Here is the book’s back cover blurb:

“In a world of the future obsessed with the past, the race is on to resurrect a Roman centurion… In the year 2089 England has collapsed into a failed state riven by civil war. In neighbouring Scotland a populist demagogue comes to power on a wave of anti-English sentiment, promising to drive out immigrants who have fled from the south. Globally the endless search for mass entertainment has led to an intense fascination with the archaeological past, manifest in interactive simulations of historical eras, which looks set to take on an unwelcome political dimension under the new Scottish leader Fiona Drest. History lecturer and archaeological consultant Ailee Kenzie is drawn into these events when the body of a Roman soldier is discovered preserved within ancient bog land north of Glasgow. Advanced technology from the Retrovival company can recover fragments of the last experiences held within the dead centurion’s brain. Can Caius Flavius’ memories shed light on Britain’s past and the cultural divides that have uncanny parallels in the volatile present?”

Please get in touch if you wish to review this book, in a magazine, newspaper, blog etc. The book is set both 2000 years into the past and 64 years into the future, thus both Historical fiction and Science Fiction, although it’s true Literary Fiction focus is on the present day. It features an insightful Afterword by Margaret Elphinstone and has received two very kind reviews from her and Mandy Haggith, both very fine historical fiction authors themselves, by whose praise I am astounded and honoured. 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ode To A Caramac Bar

Posted on December 28, 2024 by douglasthompson

Today I tasted a Caramac bar

for the first time in forty years

I didn’t even know they still made those things

it was like biting into 1975

pure sugar zero guilt

like a wind from another world

it spoke of a lost time

of space rockets and pesticides

of Artex and motorway flyovers

of gleefully, unknowingly

raping a planet of seemingly infinite resources

it spoke of a secure suburban summer world

with parents and siblings all still alive forever

when death was a whispered joke

age and decay a snigger happening to other people

and probably their own careless fault

it spoke of Hornby train sets

and Scalextric cars toy soldiers and crayons

and the smell of cut grass

of the rubber of footballs colliding

happily with your stupid face

it spoke of a Glasgow still as full 

of demolished blocks and car parks

as Swiss cheese even though you

didn’t even know what Emmental was yet, no.

Strictly lousy cheddar for you

made orange by as many pointless chemicals

as the Caramac bar itself probably

made entirely of ingredients

from an oil finery not a single fragment

of any organic thing no plant or animal

food for spacemen unless perhaps

a cow tortured in a pen for its fat or milk

or a chicken for its eggs

oh happy murderous world

where we slept the sleep of the unjust

every night without end

Caramac: the taste of a world

not of this world. Abstract

unthinking of any futures because

all futures seemed assured then 

pure sugar and damage and destruction

and bloody wonderful.

Posted in History, Poetry, Psychology, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Future shock

Posted on November 16, 2024 by douglasthompson

Here’s one for the stamp collectors among you… a parcel from San Paulo, Brazil. A tribute anthology to the writer Boris Vian, published by Raphus Press which includes my short story ‘Let’s Get Pataphysical’. It just goes to confirm my personal adage: No matter how little you think you’ve achieved as a writer, always remember there is some poor bugger out there feeling down about having achieved even less. Be grateful for every crumb life throws you because it owes you nothing. Below is my latest trawl of contributor’s copies: one from Brazil, one from Romania, and another from the giddy heights of Dunfermline. (I am amused to see that WordPress has just spell-checked Dunfermline as ‘unfeminine’… sounds about right).

But in fact of course, I have plenty to be grateful and upbeat about. But no man is an island. The recent election result in the United States is an unwelcome reminder that evil is very much abroad in the world and busily at work in misleading the minds of millions of people towards catastrophe. Every country in the world has its stupid people, but it seems that America’s stupid people are much more stupid and numerous than anybody else’s. When you re-elect a man who did his best to overthrow your democracy last time then you know exactly what you’re getting. No more home of the free, welcome to home of a fascist dictatorship. Checks and balances? Mike Pence, you mean. The moron-in-chief and those around him have made it abundantly clear that this is the equivalent of the end of the Roman Republic. The Rubicon was crossed on 6th January 2021 and now he has been belatedly applauded for it. So the great ‘democracy’ that Americans like to boast about all around the world and tell everyone else they ought to emulate, is in fact something they would willingly give away in an instant, rather than share it with people of colour. History shows us that once democracy goes it doesn’t come back, except many years later after internecine wars. Perhaps as Alvin Tofler predicted, some states will secede from the union at the next contested election rather than all bid farewell to democracy. Things are getting darker. Genocides continue in Ukraine and Palestine, while we pretend that Netanyahu is not every bit as much of a butcher as Putin. But what can writers do about all this? Write, of course.

I hope that perhaps my new novel ‘Retrovival’ out next year from Elsewhen Press can stand as my own personal answer. Rather than attack the fascism-on-the-rise around us in our current world, it posits a near-future world in which a far-right government comes to power in an independent Scotland. By process of analogy, I try to show that fascism can happen anywhere, what its roots in history are, the tricks it plays and the devices it employs to fool the masses. We must never give up, in other words, but keep fighting each in our different ways for a better world. Or as my friend David Rix once said to me: “If even one person reads your book and is changed then it is enough.” Below is the cover of Retrovival, featuring the head of a Roman Centurion who is brought back to life in a society obsessed with its past, as imperial revisionists always are.

Finally, as my desk top photo above records, my other recent arrivals in the post have been this 4-part anthology of Scottish poets from Dreich books:

…And this beautiful chapbook on devilish red paper all the way from Bucharest (Mount Abraxas press) of my short story ‘Gateway to the Bird Kingdom’, about the search for a fugitive in the South of France and the lost dreams of a lost artist.

You can read a kind and glowing review by fellow Mount Abraxas author Forrest Aguirre of a previous booklet of mine from the same publisher here: http://forrestaguirre.blogspot.com/…/a-man-worth… I shall end this post with my poem from the Dreich poetry anthology by way of a message of relevant hope for the future:

SOLIDARITY

seeds stir long dormant

roots rouse each other

under soil under late snow

so when our green tips push through

few will notice, less will know

that we are not bulbs or buds destined

to be mere grass or flowers

made to be trodden underfoot

underground our conspiracy long hatched

has found the strength

and patience for subtler ways to power

doubtless you shall miss us

ignore us for a season or several

for several we are and so many

growing year on year

shall be so vast at last

some sacred spring

you shall no longer be able to fell us

or tell us to wait or what to do

for we are many and you are few

we who are not fruit nor fuel nor food

for you. We are a force not as you

for evil but for good. Saplings who

by the time you notice us too late shall be: a wood.

Posted in Art, News, Poetry, Psychology, Rants, Reviews, Short Stories, Under-read Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

As May Arrives

Posted on May 3, 2024 by douglasthompson

Almost as if Nature can read calendars and numbers, the 1st of May in Glasgow this year seemed to herald a distinct rise in temperature and the opening of numerous leaves and a rain of blossom. It also brought the official announcement of my next book: The Apparatus of Yearning, available for pre-order now from Zagava of Dusseldorf: https://zagava.de/shop/the-apparatus-of-yearning??edition=8

‘Genesis of the Gods’ by Ally Thompson 1955-2016

This is a collection of 20 short stories from the last 6 years, many of them previously published in a range of magazines and anthologies. Its cover is taken from a drawing by my late brother Ally Thompson called ‘Genesis of the Gods’, which is appropriate since the Greek gods are alluded to in quite a few of the stories as I try to make sense of the romantic interaction of human beings as they are shuffled about like the chess pieces of the gods. The book’s title is taken from the Arabic translation of the name Saddam Hussein gave his secret police… strange but true, and the poetry of the phrase has fascinated me for years as it seems to express something of the tortured state of all of us despite the evil of its creator. The devil has all the best tunes, as they say. Two of the shorter pieces from this book have just been published in Theaker’s Quaterly Fiction issue No.76, as you can access here: https://theakersquarterly.blogspot.com/2024/04/theakers-quarterly-fiction-76-now-out.html

Other good news this spring has been the acceptance of a short story of mine for Luna Press’s tribute anthology (‘The Utopia of Us’), to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s seminal 1924 Sci Fi masterpiece ‘We’. It is also now available for pre-order: https://www.lunapresspublishing.com/post/exploring-new-worlds-the-utopia-of-us-anthology-pre-order-available-now

The Luna Press blog is also hosting posts from each of the writers explaining their stories over coming days, so is well worth checking out: https://www.lunapresspublishing.com/blog . My story is based in a favourite old trick of mine of describing our contemporary world in fantastical terms, as if it is already futuristic Sci Fi, which it is, if you really think about it. Regain the eyes of innocence, as Picasso said.

It’s been a while since I posted here, so much so that I see Dreich Magazine is now onto season nine, while it published me in issues 8 and 10 of season seven. Available here: https://hybriddreich.co.uk/season-7-so-far/ All hail to Jack Caradoc for the great service he has done poets everywhere with this splendid magazine and the hope and sympathetic audience it offers.

Another towering literary figure, here in Glasgow, is of course Linda Jackson, whose Seahorse Publications recently edited and published an anthology called ‘Glasgow: City of Music’ which published 2 of my poems, one of which you can read here: https://douglasthompson.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/blackbirds/

Here is the link to ‘City of Music’: https://seahorsepublications.com/product/glasgow-city-of-music-anthology

Also worth mentioning, is the radio ‘appearance’ (Ha!) that I made on Sunny Govan Radio back in what felt like the depths of winter on the 6th of February. You can hear the dulcet tones of myself and 3 other Glasgow poets (Chris Tait, Eileen Farrelly & Carla Woodburn) reading from their work via this link: https://www.mixcloud.com/SunnyG103/express-yourself-06-feb-2024/

It’s been a busy old time. Further big news shall be coming soon in the form of my having just signed a contract for publication of my next novel (which will be my 22nd book, no less). Hush hush for now, except that a sneak preview can be gleaned by buying the next short story anthology (out in June) from C.M.Muller, entitled ‘Tenebrous Antiquities’, in which I have a story entitled ‘The Barbarian Girl’. More news on this, on this blog, later this summer. In the meantime see the link to Tenebrous Antiquities here: https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/come-october-2/  

Finally, although spring is an intrinsically happy time, I note and lament the recent death of three very significant writers: Martin Bax, Christopher Priest and Paul Auster. Although I always found Auster’s fiction disappointing, the ideas in my head of how good his books ought to be before I actually opened them, has left an indelible mark on myself and others. Never disappointing on the other hand was Christopher Priest, one of Britain’s finest slipstream writers, who I was honoured to meet and discuss his work with first-hand. Last but not least, Martin Bax was the editor of Ambit Magazine who finally serialised large parts of my second novel ‘Sylvow’ after I sent him a submission letter saying ‘I wasn’t giving up’. Martin’s belief in me changed my life, and the fact that I first met him the day after my father died seemed somehow charged with significance. At Martin’s house I was shown around his vast archive of every issue of Ambit ever published (4 a year since 1959), and what a social document of art, fiction and poetry across the decades it was. To have made myself, and the art of my late brother, part of the archive, was perhaps one of my proudest achievements to date, if pride is an emotion good for anyone to harbour, which I doubt. I also sat in the original William Morris chair that the man himself had given to his grandfather. But no point living in the past. Let us mourn together for fate crushes the brave. So long, old friends.

R.I.P: Martin Bax, 1933-2024

Posted in Art, History, Music, News, Poetry, Short Stories, Under-read Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

As The Year Closes…

Posted on December 11, 2023 by douglasthompson

Here is what December has brought through the letterbox… As well as copies of my novella ‘A Man Worth Killing’ and the Eibonvale anthology ‘At The Lighthouse’ as mentioned in my previous blog post; I have received copies of ‘Salt Songs’, a collection of poems written in tribute to the work of the late great Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown. My poem is about his novel ‘Time In A Red Coat’, which my late mother bought a copy of in Stornoway in 1986 and I only got around to reading a year or two ago (like all GMB’s work it is a very fine book indeed). Also on display above is my box load of ‘What Winter Wants’ which is my first (and perhaps last) experiment in acting as an editor of sorts. ‘WWW’ was a crazy idea hatched between me and a few friends last winter which gradually grew into a fabulous collection of 50 poems all on the theme of how Winter inspires us. The rules were that each contributor had to nominate someone else whose work they admired, after they’d written their own poem (which had to be made up ‘on the spot’ to fit the theme). It drew in many lesser known, even first-time, writers as well as famous ones over 3 months and helped liven up a bleak northern solstice. Three cheers for the democracy of chance and love, over the tyrannic myth of meritocracy. That’s what I say. What better Christmas gift could you possibly imagine? Pick up a copy from Rymour Books here: https://www.rymour.co.uk/winter.html

Posted in News, Poetry, Under-read Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

October Round Up

Posted on October 10, 2023 by douglasthompson

It’s somehow just like me to catch Covid-19 for the first time three years after everyone else. I always was a late developer. Fortunately it looks like I am going to survive unscathed when I finally start testing negative again, unlike the 6,960,783 globally who never made it. Being in reasonable shape and without underlying health conditions, the experience for me has been akin to the kind of heavy flu virus I used to get perhaps every 4 years in amongst the other milder ones. The most interesting stage of these things for me is always the hallucinatory stage, the fevers which are like a comb being taken across your open brain geometry and firing off all kinds of random neurons as it goes. Hundreds of voices and phrases of everyone you’ve heard speak in the last two weeks, all replaying at once randomly, that sort of thing. Most interesting of all however, as the fever subsided, was the impression of seeing my life from its centre point, a non-linear view in which past, present and future all hold equal weight. This is a familiar idea to me anyway, gleaned and established over the years from a mixture of things I’ve read and real life clues and impressions. To put it simply: our life is not a story, but a shape. A kind of inkblot, a Rorschach stain on the linen of time, an eternal star on the black velvet of space. So how is my inkblot doing, and how is yours? You can move around inside your spacetime signature, but it can never be changed or cease existing.
My recovery has been cheered by the news that this October I have finally been published in foreign translation for the first time. The book is my novella ‘Dreams Of A Dead Country’ translated by Christian Veit Eschenfelder as ‘Träume Von Einem Toten Land’ and had been published by Tobias Reckermann’s press ‘White Train‘ based in Darmstadt. This novella was first published by Salo Press in 2019 where it sold out some time ago. It will probably reappear for English readers some time in the next few years via another publisher, but in the meantime I hope many of those for whom German is their first language can enjoy it from a different perspective. I am also reading it myself slowly, in German, as a way to expand my understanding of the language. ‘Dreams from a dead land’, as it literally translates into German, is one continuous dream or series of interlinked dreams, something I have been striving to capture for decades since first reading Georgio de Chirico’s extraordinary novel ‘Hebdomeros’, with a pinch of Anna Kavan and Michael Cisco probably thrown in there also. It is a book about haunted love and loss, best summed up by the quotation from Albert Giraud I used as its epigraph: “Fragrance of the past/ O winds of a time that never was/ bewitch me now again…” Fans of the music of Arnold Schoenberg may also recognise the quote from his melodrama Pierrot Lunaire. The cover painting is by my late brother Ally Thompson, from his Avignon phase (1999 to 2002).


Also in Germany, Zagava Books have re-released my short story ‘Towards Nature‘ as a standalone release in their ‘Infra-Noir’ series. This is a hand-sewn booklet, printed on a handmade cotton rag pages with deckled edges. It was first featured in Zagava’s anthology of stories inspired by the work of Joris-Karl Huysmans, and later also became an integral part of my compound novel ‘The Suicide Machine‘. It concerns a somewhat deranged narrator who takes it upon himself to deconstruct, literally, a French Chateau in the name of beauty and nature.


Meanwhile in Bucharest, Romania, my novella story ‘A Man Worth Killing’ has been published by Dan Ghetu’s Mount Abraxas Press. “An unnerving enquiry into the nature of evil. An unreliable narrator unfolds a forensic record of one ordinary man’s descent from staid normality towards a moral void…” -as it says in the blurb. The nearest thing I get to crime fiction, written from the criminal’s perspective. Disturbing to read as it was to write, but in the tradition of Camus’ La Chute it has a message with regard to humanity’s moral hypocrisy generally.
Meanwhile in the United States, in Minnesota more precisely, my short story ‘Man Of Leaves’ has been published in C.M.Muller’s anthology of autumn horror ‘Come October‘ from Cthonic Matter press. It’s an idea I’ve had since childhood, of how after death we might actually fuse with the natural world and look back on human affairs from within the veins and tendrils of what I call ‘The Earth-Brain Root System’.


In London, my short story ‘Cygnus’ has just been published within Eibonvale Press’ new anthology of lighthouse-themed stories, edited by Sophie Essex. It is an encoded homage to the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, which brings me neatly back home to Scotland, where last but not least: the latest issue of Postbox Magazine is out now featuring my short story ‘Lofty’. Postbox, ‘Scotland’s International Short Story Magazine’ is published in Biggar by Sheila Wakefield with editor Colin Will who stands down this month after a prestigious tenure. Writing mainstream short stories for Postbox is an ongoing project for me, bring me back to where I started out 35 years ago, as a literary rather than genre writer. It’s a harder field to get published in, but closer to the legacy I have always aimed at: saying things of universal and eternal significance about human nature, real life and the real world we inhabit. In this regard I have been reading a lot of Alice Munro lately, and trying to perfect the art of drawing events from my own experience and that of my contemporaries, with names and places changed where appropriate. So watch out, anyone can end up in my stories these days, although you might not recognise yourself at first….

Posted in Art, News, Psychology, Short Stories, Writing | Leave a comment

Edge Of Summer

Posted on May 20, 2023 by douglasthompson

Summer is nearly here and the garden has exploded into a miniature jungle, the greenhouse is full of thrashing fronds of triffids trying to get out and strangle us, or more hopefully feed us. In terms of crops, above are four other windfalls. Left to right: an anthology of writing on the theme of the Antonine Wall, edited by Zoe Strachan and featuring two of my poems; ‘Loss Of Definition’ and ‘Campsies’, both of which ponder the peculiar relationship between contemporary life and the traces of what was once the northerly boundary of the Roman Empire. Here is an extract:

…And now the wall’s a lost scar

criss-crossed by the farmer

the golfer, and the car

yet all there was to fear was us

the untamed savages who today

weed gardens, write poetry

and catch the bus, do all manner

of slavery willingly for meagre pay

just enough to oil our chains

and keep clean and bright

these cages of mortgages…

Next is the lettered edition of ‘Oneironauts’ my collaboration with the Black Isle artist Pamela Tait, and what a work of art it is (by Zagava of Dusseldorf), with its two-part die-cut cover and illustrated end papers. You can see more of Pamela’s extraordinary drawings for this novella on her website here. For those of you with less cash to splash, there is also a paperback version of Oneironauts available from Zagava and Pamela herself, all signed by the author and artist.

Third along is an apparently modest publication, but one of which I am inordinately proud. My short story ‘Aunt Vivienne’ appears in Issue 8 of Postbox Magazine, edited by Colin Will. It is a story drawn entirely from real life, which I regard as the greatest challenge in writing: to record and dignify the experience of ordinary people, since of course not a single one of us is ordinary at all.

Last but not least, Season 6 Issue 2 of Dreich Magazine, edited by Jack Caradoc contains 4 of my poems, 3 of which I wrote on a very rainy afternoon in Lochinver only to email them off and have them accepted the very next day, along with one (‘Aeolus’) which I found lying forgotten on an old laptop. Aeolus was the ruler of the winds in Greek Mythology, and here is that poem in entirety:

AEOLUS

Wind gusts in our face

brings news of old

wind travels the globe

in untrammelled freedom

brings news of youth

playing memory

as the pages of a book

read by the wind

a glitter of horses

sparkling of the sea

trade winds carry us

to exotic spice aroma

of the unattainable

the dove’s sprig

olive branch

after storm of war

wind unites islands

nations, continents

wind gusts cleanses

dresses us down

wind is change

the familiar made new

amid strange weather

disturbed by difference

in temperature

wind seeks to bring

equality and unify

and in its wrath

downs alike: towers

and church steeples

and trees grown

too old or heavy

and proud for anything

but shallow roots

wind carries seeds

and makes us

make space for them.

Posted in Archeology, Art, History, News, Poetry, Psychology, Short Stories, Writing | Leave a comment

Green Shoots

Posted on February 18, 2023 by douglasthompson

No matter how many years I live through I am always surprised by how I fail to remember the subtle details of spring. How for instance, it inhabits winter while winter is still alive and gradually overtakes and overcomes it from within. The seasons overlap in other words, and spring always seems the shortest one and most elusive to catch and define. Well, that’s enough musing for now.

There’s been a tide of new things in the door recently, with me in them, that being a quality I tend to like in things generally! Next week (Tuesday 21st February, 7pm) I will be speaking alongside Margaret Elphinstone, Mandy Haggith and D P Watt at the launch of our ‘quartet of quartets’: a book called Lost Eden, at the CCA in Glasgow. Lost Eden is published by Zagava, and is on a highly topical theme of the relationship of humanity to the natural world. My co-writers have produced some excellent work, and hearing such literary luminaries reflect on their craft should be an occasion to savour. 

Also on the book in-tray you can see the very beautiful new hardback anthology called ‘The Dusk’ from Side Real Press. I’m in there among the company of some of the leading lights of contemporary writers of the weird and mysterious, and I look forward to reading their work. My own story is called ‘She Sells Sunsets’ and is an allegory based on the Greek myth of the Daughters of Hesperus, nymphs of evening and sunset, who guarded the golden apples of Hera at the end of the world in the Garden of the Hesperides. It is also a contemporary metaphor for the effects of Multiple Sclerosis. Below are two examples of paintings inspired by the myth: The Hesperides by Arthur Rackham (1867 – 1939) and The Garden of_Hesperides by Ricciardo Meacci (1856 -1938). It was of course also a theme which fascinated my late brother the artist Ally Thompson.

Also just in (see below), is one of the best book covers I have ever seen, for the ‘Bang!” crime anthology edited by Andrew Hook and published by Headshot Press. That’s Andrew himself there with a gun in his hand and 1940’s noir detective outfit on. I’ve never seen myself as a crime writer or reader, but Andrew’s taste for the surreal seems to have stretched to include, like a lizard seizing a fly with its tongue, my peculiar offering called ‘Salamander’ about a detective who progressively discovers that both himself and the criminal he pursues are part of some immortal metaphor or syndrome that recurs in each generation. It’s set in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, somewhere I’ve not yet been, but have at least been published there. There’s various other things to report over coming months, but like the proverbial spring, I shall patiently abide for a few more weeks before daring to poke their tips up above the silent and all-knowing earth.

Posted in Art, History, News, Poetry, Short Stories, Under-read Writers, Writing | 1 Comment

Winter Warmer

Posted on November 28, 2022 by douglasthompson

Yes, they are getting warmer. Birds are still singing here in the mornings, usually unheard of in November. And other strange things such as deer visiting our garden, even falling asleep their with their offspring on the lawn. And foxes approaching and following us, like dogs, rather than scarpering off like they used to. It’s almost like a novel I wrote over a decade ago, called Sylvow, in which nature begins to behave strangely and fight back against us.

Well, what news of late? Talking about my historical novel The Brahan Seer at the Faclan Festival in Stornoway at the start of the month was great fun, and a full-page article appeared last week in the Stornoway Gazette in which Ken Kennedy praises my latest novel Stray Pilot. A big thank you to the Scottish Book Trust for supporting my journey to the Hebrides through their Live Literature programme, and to Angus Morrison and Agnes Rennie (picture above) of my publisher Acair.

Other unexpectedly good news was that Jess Docherty’s short film “The Suburban Surrealist” about my brother Ally Thompson has been shortlisted for The John Byrne Awards. The film features dozens of Ally’s painting and drawings, his poems, and interviews with myself and the artist Peter Howson. I hope Jess gets the acclaim she deserves for a skilful and thoughtful piece of film making, and is encouraged to make other films in future.

Meanwhile D F Lewis has reviewed in his own inimitable way my short story ‘Doctor Cuckoo’ in Egaeus Press’s Ornithologae anthology. Read it here.

I tend not to talk about future publications until they appear, but Andrew Hook has recently announced the line-up for this noir crime anthology ‘Bang’ and my story ‘Salamander’ will be in there, a very surreal story about an immortal detective gone astray and adrift in the Brazilian city of São Paulo.

Last but not least, my novella ‘Emilianna‘ has just been released from Eibonvale Press and can be purchased here. Again this is a highly surreal one and a homage to the atmosphere of Glasgow itself, that great late hulk of a Victorian shipwreck of a city, the ruined dinosaur within whose bones I have spent my life to date.

Posted in History, News, Short Stories, Travel, Video, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment