Fungal Misadventure
“Have you ever wondered?” he asked, as they picked mushrooms in the forest near her house. “How many prehistoric people died from fungal misadventure before finding out which of these were safe to eat?”
“Fungal Misadventure is the name of my back-to-the-land instrumental Pagan funk concept album,” she said.
“Pagan Funk is the name of the eagerly awaited holistic medicine shop I’m about to open for new age depressives,” he said.
“New Age Depressive is the name of the disappointing unplugged LP I released in 1977 to punk rock scorn and critical brickbats,” she said.
“Punk Rock Scorn and Critical Brickbats is the name of the memoir I wrote about my desolate adolescence as a rebel table-tennis player who gets his sweet revenge after being mocked by his peers for his makeshift equipment,” he said.
“Desolate Adolescence is the name of my exploitative fast-fashion chain store aimed at disenfranchised goth and emo kids,” she said. “Makeshift Equipment is its unsuccessful offshoot for morbidly inclined students, opened as a way of selling off furniture I’d shoddily reconditioned and painted black after finding it in skips while bored and penniless.”
“Paint It, Black is… No. That’s already someone else’s. Skips While Bored and Penniless is the name of the collection of poetry I wrote, inspired by my innocent, happy days growing up in the slum playgrounds of Liverpool immediately after the Second World War, when my sister and I would stalk the surprisingly verdant hedgerows on the city’s edgelands, searching for culinary alternatives to killing our favourite chicken,” he said.
“Culinary Alternatives to Killing Your Favourite Chicken is the name of my fashionable bestselling foraging book, which I was later cancelled for on social media after it was discovered that I stole nearly all the recipes from an out-of-print guidebook by a forgotten 20th-century wild food and fungi expert,” she said.
“Has it occurred to you that no idea is actually new, everything is driving us back to the source and we are all just stuck in an endless loop of time?” he said.
“Endless Loop of Time is the name of my seminal avant-garde drone rock masterpiece from 1958,” she said. “But I actually plagiarised it from another near-identical work recorded a century earlier, by the true, unacknowledged, anonymous inventor of electricity, after I heard every note of it in a dream. But I’m not beating myself up. After all, there’s nothing to prove she wasn’t me in a previous life.”
“These mushrooms are fucking good,” he said. “You really know your stuff.
What you read above was another little story from my new collection, Curious Events Lately Occurring In This Neighbourhood, which, thanks to you lovely lot, is currently number one on the Blackwell’s bestseller chart. If you haven’t pre-ordered a signed copy yet you can grab one here, with free international delivery. Breakthrough Book Collectiveand I were going to get the 1000 books I’d signed in my living room - with the help of a slightly poorly Jim - couriered up to Blackwell’s warehouse in Gloucester on Wednesday but then we found out how much that would cost so instead I decided to load them all into my small not particularly healthy car (good job I’m not Herman Melville or I doubt I’d have squeezed them in) and make the six hour round trip to deliver them myself. They’re all there now and will be heading to their new homes soon. Meanwhile, with the help of Gill at my local village post office - who received some presents for her hard work over the last fortnight - this morning I posted all the remaining orders made via the Breakthrough website. If you were one of those who managed to get the limited stock with the free bookmark and haven’t received it yet, I apologise for the delay. Due to a glitch on the Breakthrough site we promised more bookmarks than intended and my mum, Jo, had to work extra hard linocutting them (sorry mum!). But they are all on their way now…
As you might have gathered, I’ve worked extraordinarily hard to get this book out there, at the severe expense of my writing time, sleep and, arguably on occasion, sanity. Its entire existence feels like a protest against the dim view the UK publishing industry takes of short stories and their claims that they “don’t sell”. Additionally the many hundreds of copies already ordered of it on import by readers on the other side of the Atlantic, in addition to the 2000+ copies they have ordered of the hardback and paperback of Everything Will Swallow You, feels like a clear refutation of what I am continually told by gatekeepers in UK publishing about my books being “too British” to connect with an American and Canadian audience (the responses to the below Bluesky post confirm how ridiculous this is).
Who knows? Maybe if the books continue to do well it will finally convince someone to publish my books over there. Whatever sales happen right now through Blackwell’s will help that cause. On which topic, I wanted to let you know that I’m doing a limited offer for the next 24 hours, where I will send a postcard from my dad’s brilliant Bridget The Time Travelling Cat series of paintings, free, to anyone who purchases Everything Will Swallow You from Blackwell’s. All you have to do, once you’ve bought the book, is email me at hello@tom-cox.com with your receipt and address and I'll get a card straight out to you. I’m opening this up worldwide. (If you are overseas and can cover the postage on the card, that would be great, but no problem if not; I’ll still send one.)
P.S. Did you know there is also an audiobook of Everything Will Swallow You, read by the ultratalented Justin Avoth? It’s only got nine ratings on Audible so far, so isn’t exactly surfing the algorithm, which is a shame. I’ve already heard from several people who’ve listened to it multiple times, and I can see why, because Justin’s performance on it surpassed all expectations (which were already extremely high). Justin emailed me on Tuesday to say it was one of his favourite audiobook reads and I think his enjoyment absolutely explodes through in his performance. I’m keeping my fingers crossed hard that he’ll be able to narrate some of my other fiction in the near future.
