John Travis

Gaseous Clay and Other Ambivalent Tales John Travis

The ultimate digestion of insecurity in a very strange hotel

A hard-hitting fairground fever-dream

The new king of the maggots and bloody piano keys

A foul-mouthed talking mockingbird in American suburbia

A bizarre crime caper at what may just be the end of the world

And a chilling supernatural brush with a very badly made clay owl

John Travis's writing blurs between genres, rooted in many but coming with his own unique style. His stories are weird, subtle, grotesque, emotional, intelligent, human and surreal, existing in an area somewhere between horror and outsider art. Reading them, one gets the feeling that they are connected to both British horror writing and to more experimental and unusual threads as you explore the quiet backwarters of life in the UK and elsewhere, blended with wild psychological mayhem and terrifying supernatural happenings.

This volume collects 16 stories, several never before published. Each is distinctive and individual, and together they form a spectacular example of British Slipstream writing.