Trusted by 500+ fans to find the fun in the funereal, the absurd in the macabre, and delight in the darkness. Join fiction author Morgan Delaney three times a week for genre-bending stories of cozy horror, dark fantasy and a brain with mind of its own...
No Future Please, We're Irish!
 I’m reading sci-fi at the moment, though I probably shouldn’t. I’m Irish, and we’re not used to it. When I was growing up, we had six television channels. Four English ones, and two Irish wans. In twenty years, the only sci-fi was Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. Both on the English channels, of course. After all, we Irish only recently started believing in the present. Back in the eighties, we didn’t have roads; we had strips of potholes. Condoms were prescription-only, and six of the island’s counties were somehow missing— Whoa! Steady on there, now! – [ed.] —so it’s no wonder we didn’t believe we’d soon be doing great things up in space. But it’s now Anno 2026, and I’m ready for the future. My first read of the year was Daugment by August Niehaus. It’s a fast-paced sci-fi romp about a decorated military space commander whose mind gets transferred into an augmented dog’s body. There’s no other way to foil his arch-enemy’s dastardly plan to take over the galaxy. It’s a neat new twist on the talking animals idea, and the story brims with dogs, rebels, and a pleasure planet where you have no choice but to enjoy yourself… I enjoyed reading a chapter—or two, or three—each night, so you might like it, too. You can get Daugment here for free! Chat soon, Morgan Get 2 free ebooks from Morgan here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter |
Dark, Strange and Fantastic Fiction
Trusted by 500+ fans to find the fun in the funereal, the absurd in the macabre, and delight in the darkness. Join fiction author Morgan Delaney three times a week for genre-bending stories of cozy horror, dark fantasy and a brain with mind of its own...
My mother didn’t have it easy. She didn’t even have a sense of smell. And while the rest of 1980s Ireland had miraculous moving statues, we made do with mysterious margarine. Back in those days, butter was bad and margarine was good, so young Morgan et al. all ate margarine. Sometimes my breakfast toast tasted fine with it. Some mornings the margarine was weird. A brand new tub. Just opened the previous night. I had put it on my evening toast. My mother had put it on her evening potatoes. No...
Families are great. But a lot. If you’ve had about enough of yours, tell them this is a very important email you have to read. I’ll back you up. And it is important, as I present some crazy New Year traditions, that will make your party go with a bang! Killer List of 10 Bread-Based New Year Traditions. 1. At a party, wait until the countdown to the new year starts before throwing a bread roll over your shoulder. You might hit the person you one day marry in the face with it. 2. Villages used...
The Battle Smurfs are back in the cinema. James Cameron calls it Avatar, but we all know. We visited the cinema last week to see Osgood Perkins’ new film, Keeper, which was excellent. No cinema this week. Sorry, but No Papa Smurf + No Smurfette = No Morgan in the Audience. I’ll catch up on my reading instead. When we lived in Berlin, I went to DVD rental shop, Videodrom, every day. On the way home from work, I’d pop in, grab whatever looked most interesting and then go home. Watch the DVD. Or...