This means SOMETHING to me

Despite my first book having taken me close to four years to complete, my second appears to have only taken me four months.

Well, not exactly.

Oh, Vienna! is my anthology of short stories; it is everything I've written that I feel is worthy of print.  Some of the stories predate The Life and Loves of Jet Tea, many were written during the year in which I considered the novel on hold, and two or three have been written since.  I can confirm that Jet Tea, Maurice and Hayden will return, albeit not necessarily in the same country. 

As a point of interest to anyone who would like to purchase it, I should make it clear that the vast majority of the stories contained have previously been published on this very blog.  So if you are a regular reader you'll have already read about 70% of Oh, Vienna! and I wouldn't want to mislead you into paying money for something that you've already read.  The book is primarily for me; I've always loved the idea of having a collection of short stories to my name and this is simply that wish fulfillment.  It's cheaper than Jet Tea so it won't set you back and, in what you may consider to be a rather fiendish move, there are three or four stories included that you won't find anywhere else (including the titular).  However, I do consider them to be very, very good.  Most of them are nearly half a decade old and I've been casually polishing them for almost that long, so I'm confident that they deserve to be made available in print.

Last point; these stories are from the furthest corners of my imagination.  Arrogant twenty-somethings getting drunk and being idiots is only the beginning.  Expect shape-changing wolves, exploding lovers, demonic pigeons vanquished by the power of nightmares, human roadkill, a 10,000 year old saint and the REAL death of Sherlock Holmes.  This volume is a snapshot of a mind wherein the boundaries of rationality and reality are rapidly eroding.  It may be the last coherent, conventional thing I write because my perception of the world around me is becoming less and less in tune with what is deemed commonplace every day.  What makes me most proud of Oh, Vienna! is that, one day, whatever state my imagination may be in then, I'll be able to look back at this as a time capsule containing the person I was back then.  Where Jet Tea is a love letter to my wayward, formative years; a tribute to a part of my life I'll never live again, Oh, Vienna! is just as special to me in that it perfectly conveys my mind as it is right now.

And I even drew the cover image.

Oh, Vienna! will be available to buy from Amazon in the next few days.