Breaking Reality in Gloucester by Nimue Brown

Mark Hayes

Oct 18

Introduction by Mark

Nimue Brown is one of my favourite authors and one of my favourite people. Despite this I invariably mispronounce her name, I'm a bit useless like that, I read a word and how it sounds in my head is how it is pronounced, and once a pronunciation takes root in my head its hard to shift. As penance for this terrible crime, a year ago I offered to typeset a novel for her*.

*most of this is true, apart from the penance bit, I enjoy typesetting...

The Novel in question was Spells for the Second Sister, which was a particular delight to work on. It's a wonderfully weird, yet insightful, and entirely strange novel about the life of the Kathleen. We start with her as a fourteen year old angry teenager and then each progressive chapter is set set at intervals of seven years, so twenty-one, twenty-eight, Thirty-five etc. As you can see from the contents page graphic below I put together for the paperback edition...

Isn't that lovely, the weird titles of each chapter are Nimue's obviously but the lay out an snazzy graphics and layout are mine. As is the glaring error.

Now, if you're observant you might spot the grievous error I made with the contents page. The contents page that is in the final book and is part of every paperback copy of the novel, that I didn't; spot until I had a copy of the paperback in my hand. The novel I typeset for a friend... The novel where, and this is important, every chapter is set seven years after the previous one... So fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, Thirty-five and so on...

If you spot the glaring error on my part, don't tell Nimue... I'm hoping she doesn't notice I'm a blithering idiot. Luckily she is very unlikely to read the introduction to a guest blog by whoever is the guest blogger today...

Breaking Reality in Gloucester By Nimue Brown

Spells for the Second Sister is a madcap alternate realities kind of
story set around Gloucester. This is the Gloucester that lives in my
head, although to more steampunk shenanigans we get into the mix, the
more real my version becomes. Frankly, the Drag King in Yellow would
not have felt out of place in this story.

Here's a little bit of it.

So I went to the sinister mouse circus. For the escapism. "Existential
crisis guaranteed," said the Dormouse. Door Mouse. Whatever. "Personal
unease, mild disaffection, the kind of apathy you can have before
lunch without ruining your appetite entirely."

Inside the circus, it was dark. There were noises; some giggling, and
shuffling sounds. I detected a lingering smell of sawdust and wee. Or
popcorn. Hard to be sure. Uncomfortable wooden seats. Every now and
then, someone played a single note on what sounded like a badly tuned
triangle. I got up to leave, but there were no exit signs. I blundered
about in the dark, banging into things. None of them felt like people
but some of them complained anyway. I slipped in something and bashed
my knee on something else and the stitches went in my stomach and I
could feel the blood and entrails coming out.

The lights came up then, revealing a lone mouse in a pink tutu,
wobbling on a unicycle, and me, doing a one woman impression of a
zombie apocalypse. The actual people in the audience started screaming
and running away – I guess they got their money's worth. The circus
mice offered me thread, and a contract to work full time with them.

Mugged by Neo-Neolithics. It has been a day. I'd assumed they were
from one of the other Gloucesters, having seen a few of them from afar
before now. Close up is a whole other experience. They smelled rank
enough to seem authentic, but some of them were distinctly wearing fur
fabric and those who had skins clearly didn't know much about skin
preparation and even less about how to use flint tools.

They mugged me for my shopping. I tried telling them bread was exactly
the thing people on paleo diets don't eat and that my processed cheese
was certainly not going to do them any good. This is when I learned
that they call themselves Neo-Neolithics.

"It's not the fucking paleo diet, right? It's not a dairy free, gluten
free lifestyle."

"So, what is it then?" I asked, still clinging to my proto-lunch.

"Hunter gatherer, living off the land, off our wits. Fuck industry.
Fuck work. Fuck capitalism. Fuck contemporary western civilization."

I admit to having had a hard time taking them seriously. "So you're
what, foraging me?

"No, we're mugging you," one of them helpfully explained, and then
they grabbed my bag and ran off with it, leaving a trail of moulting
animal fur behind them.

Here's me reading a bit (not this bit)

If you're interested in reading the whole thing, you can grab the *free ebook version over here - *(throw money at me if you feel so moved, but it's totally ok to have a free one. It's a bit like a gateway drug, in theory).

There's also a print version over here -

Complicated barter arrangements are also an option, but you'll have to talk to me about that. *

Final note by Mark,

*Nimue is on Bluesky , Twitter , has two blogs here and here and can be found on other bits of the internet is you look hard enough, or just make a small amount of effort to be honest because she is everywhere and marvellous... But if you do reach out, don't tell her about the twenty-eight error. I think I have got away with it...

One final, final note. I am going to fix the error, so the current paperbacks out there in the world will be the valuable rare first editions with the glaring typesetting error that turn up at auctions in twenty years time. Clearly you should buy a copy while you can still get the rare first edition versions, and this was clearly my plan all along...*

*Also, its brilliant and you should read it, did i mention that?