Alex Bell - fantasy author

This dead Bigfoot foetus was given to me by the Queen of the Faeries in return for my saving her life this one time.

There isn’t much more to say about it really, other than that it sits on my writing desk with my Feejee Mermaid and helps me come up with cool ideas for books.

I really love weird, shrivelled up dead stuff. It’s the reason I got chucked out of law school. But that, my friends, is another story entirely . . .

Yes, indeed, it seems that there are some amazing books out there that were not written by me (I know it’s hard to believe). I don’t intend to point these books out too often here because this is my blog and, really, it should be perpetuating the myth that I am the centre of the universe.

But this book is so fantastic that I am making a special exception for it.

The book in question is: Silent In The Grave, by Deanna Raybourn:

I picked this up in an airport Waterstones on my way to Washington even though I already had with me a suitcase stuffed full of books. First, I was attracted by the unusual front cover - it is very turquoise. But what really clinched it for me was the way the book begins. It’s the best opening I have ever read and it goes like this:

“To say I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.”

Seriously - how can you not want to read on from that?

The book is a historical murder mystery type story but what really made it for me was the generous dash of quirkiness. That and the fact that I want to marry Nicholas Brisbane. And bear his beautiful, brooding, mysterious children. Seriously, though, it seems to be a rare thing nowadays to get a genuinely charismatic, intelligent, sexy, mysterious male lead. They all seem to be one-dimensional cheap Darcy imitations rippling with muscles and oil in a way that makes me feel slightly sick. A leading man should have intelligence and, preferably, a neck that isn’t thicker than his head. This is definitely the case with Nicholas Brisbane.

All in all, the murder mystery works, the romantic tension between Brisbane and Julia Grey works, the humour works and the setting works. Murder, poison, intrigue, a genuinely charasmatic male lead and gypsy curses . . . what’s not to like? It ticked all the right boxes. I also really enjoyed the sequel - Silent In The Sanctuary, and have pre-ordered the third book - Silent On The Moor. I hardly ever do this. The only other books I’ve ever preordered have been Harry Potters but I’m looking forward to it so much that I stuck it in my basket on Amazon even though it’s not even out yet. If the publication date is correct, it should be delivered just before I go on holiday to Las Vegas. Which means that I might have to snap quite viciously at anyone who interrupts me during that flight.

I love weird stuff. I think I get it from my Dad, who has always had a fondness for the ghastly and the ghoulish. He tried to instil this love in us kids from a young age. I took to it like a duck to water. My brother, alas, is a little more normal, but that’s his loss.

During my twenty-two years I have collected an impressive collection of weird and wonderful things. I do, in fact, have a wunderkammer. Oh, yes, I do.

A wunderkammer, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is more commonly referred to as a Cabinet of Curiosities. Also known as a Cabinet of Wonder or a wonder-room.

I have now generously decided to share some of these wonders here on my blog. I know, I know - I’m just too good to you, my two or three multitude of readers. Gather round, people, gather round and witness the astonishing, unparalleled spectacle of the bizarre and the fantastic, here (and only here) at www.alex-bell.co.uk:

Okay - moving straight on to my first curiosity, which I found quite by accident when I was six. As a little kid running around in my ribbons and bows I loved Disney’s The Little Mermaid. For years Ariel epitomised the way I imagined mermaids to look. But then I learnt about the Feejee Mermaids. Now that I’m all grown up, I get much more excited about them than I ever did about Ariel. Over the years, my tastes have veered away from the sweet and the sugary towards the macabre, the grotesque and the horrible (my Dad is so proud). And Feejee Mermaids, in case you don’t already know, are shrivelled, semi-mummified, ugly-looking things.

In 1842, a man called Dr J. Griffin arrived in New York with a real mermaid he was said to have caught near the Feejee Islands in the South Pacific. Circus luminary P. T. Barnum persuaded him to showcase her in his travelling circus, where she was viewed by hundreds of people all over America.

Later it was said that the whole thing was a hoax and that Griffin and Barnum had known each other all along and come up with the scam together. Apparently they learnt that the mermaid was a fake soon after they acquired it from a seaman because it wasn’t a mermaid at all but rather a fish tail sewn onto an ape’s upper body.

Eh? Now, all right, Feejee Mermaids are fiendishly ugly things, but I find it hard to believe anyone would be fooled by a fish tail sewn onto an ape. Still, the fact remains that the term Feejee Mermaid is now pretty much synonymous with fake mermaid. The original Feejee Mermaid was said to be lost in the fire that destroyed Barnum’s museum so it will never be known for sure whether she was genuine or not.

Personally, I believe that she was real, but that’s probably only because when I was six, playing on a beach in Singapore with my little brother whilst my parents sipped cold beers nearby, I found what appeared to be a fossilised/mummified mermaid washed up on the sand. Without my parents’ knowledge, I took her back to the hotel, packed her in my bag and brought her home with me. Now she lives in my bedroom and is a constant source of fascination for my cats.

And here she is, the first wonder in my wunderkammer - my very own, marvellously ugly Feejee Mermaid. Feast your eyes and be amazed:

Yesterday I went to London for the Forbidden Planet mass-signing. I more than half-expected the event to be a mildly embarrassing experience but it was, in fact, totally cool - as can be seen from the picture of us below all looking extremely intelligent and impressive:

Tom Lloyd, Jaine Fenn, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Joe Abercrombie, James Swallow, Suzanne McLeod, me, Mark Chadbourn, David Devereux (or, as I am now calling him, Multi-Talented Genius Party Man).

I signed a few books and met some lovely people. But I think everyone would agree that the highlight of it all was my Amazing Hat. And the Party Rings.

Just for clarification’s sake I want to make it absolutely clear that the reason I appear to be sticking my tongue out in the photo below isn’t because I’m having to concentrate really hard on the gargantuan task of signing my own name, but because it was very hot and dry in that book basement and I was sorely in need of my lipsil. Just so’s we all clear on that . . .

After that it was off to the Phoenix for the estimable David Devereux’s launch party in celebration of his new book Eagle Rising. Much rejoicing ensued . . . especially on my part when I was allowed to wear Dave’s flying jacket again. I think it is, quite possibly, the best jacket. In. The. World. So - many thanks to Dave, both for the invite to an awesome event, and for the loan of your ridiculously comfy jacket.

The only downside of the evening was that I was quite shocked, upset and distressed by a - quite frankly - absurd suggestion from Marcus Gipps that Dr Who is superior to Merlin. The whole table seemed to be with him on this (with the possible exception of Tequila Guy - about whom there was some confusion) but that doesn’t change the fact that he was sooooo wrong. But - this horrible mar on the evening aside - there was mostly just a lot of rejoicing.

Finally the staff tried to chuck us out of the Phoenix - but a sudden blizzard meant that we were all snowed in, trapped inside the pub for a total of five days, during which time we ran out of food and were forced to eat Joe Abercrombie. And there was much rejoicing.

Aha ha, I know what you’re thinking! But, no, I am not, in fact, announcing lesbianism in this, only the third post of my new blog. (That sort of thing is better left to at least the fourth post . . . Only kidding! Or am I . . . ?)

No, my dirty secret is this: for many years - ever since I started to take a perverse pride in being fiendishly unpopular at school - I only read magazines that were about classical music or politics or philosophy. If I saw one of those women’s fashion magazines, I sneered down my nose at it. I liked to think of myself as above that girly stuff (yes, I was quite pretentious, actually).

But not any more. Recently I have admitted - to myself and to my family - that although I love skeletons and spaceships and coffins and klingons as much as the next geek, I also - every once in a while -quite like flicking through a woman’s magazine. There, I said it. And furthermore, I like those little miniature bottles of perfume you get in airports. And I like Paul Frank monkeys and I like having lots of shoes and I like the scented beads they put in the shopping bags at La Senza. Yes, sir, I am a girly girl now - I even drape strings of flowers around my skeleton, Erin, sometimes if I’m feeling extra specially floaty and feminine.

But what has all this got to do with anything, you say? Well, I’m gonna tell you: this is a post about hatboxes.

I was watching Adam’s Rib yesterday - one of my all time favourite films - and there’s this scene where Spencer Tracy’s character brings home a present for his wife, played by the glorious and resplendent Katherine Hepburn. It was a hat. But it wasn’t the hat that caught my attention so much as the box it came in - an actual, honest-to-goodness, perfectly circular hatbox with ribbons and tissue paper and everything. Why don’t they do those anymore, I ask myself?

In Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the Pythons conclude that: “people aren’t wearing enough hats.” I am with them on that, and I submit that the underlying problem behind this problem is that you don’t get hatboxes anymore. Which just causes problems for everybody.

So there it is. The sole purpose of this post is, in fact, to express my sadness and regret at the fact that hats don’t come in hatboxes anymore. And because I’m no longer ashamed of the tiny little side of me that isn’t 100% geek, I ain’t even embarrassed to express that regret here on this blog for the whole world to see.

Please, world, bring back hatboxes.