"Alien Beings Who Float to Mischief"

I've been feeling good about my writing recently, so naturally I was cruising for a fall.

I've had a number of good reviews of The Other Room, and more excitingly, living, breathing, real-life readers contacting me to ask when my next book is due out. My initial thought is obviously they are taking the piss, but they were actually serious. Sometimes all you can say is 'wow'. Maybe, I thought, maybe, I'm not bad at this writing lark after all...

So obviously the next book I had to read was so startlingly original and brilliant it made me feel like a rank amateur again, and brought all the old insecurities back, re-energised after their holiday away. Say hello to Cate Gardner and her book 'Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits'.

In all seriousness this is a fantastic book, and one to make every lover of strange short fiction shout about it from the rooftops with excitement (or just, you know, blog about it). It's very hard to describe, but suffice to say if you like fifty percent or more of the things on the list below I think you'll love it:

• Neil Gaiman
• The League of Gentlemen
• The original versions of those classic fairy tales
• The Halls of Mirrors at the fair
• Stanley Domwood
• Deja Vu
• Bagpuss
• The weird bits in Dickens no one talks about
• Pinstripe Suits
• Kafka
• Overdosing on popping candy so much you can hear it in your head
• Deja Vu
• Roald Dahl
• Tim Burton

So check Cate Gardner out; some of you who click on the link are about to find your new favourite author.

p.s. the title of this post is how Google Translate renders a line from my first ever German review. I just love the phrase and have been saying it to myself ever since I read it.