Weber the Winner!

Chômu Press, who published my new collection Link Arms With Toads!, held a prize draw recently. The winner would receive a free signed copy of my book. To make it even more personal, I decided to write a poem about the winner on the inside of the back cover. To do this I needed personal information. I'm delighted to report that the eventual winner, Marc Lyth, was good enough to provide this information. Marc often uses the pseudonym "weber" while online; this was my starting point and I extrapolated from that, incorporating some of the other details about his life he was willing to share with me. Here's a picture of the completed poem in the book itself:

As well as a copy of Link Arms With Toads! it seemed only proper to include some other gifts. After all, it could be the case that he won't enjoy my writing style. So I threw in another book, an anthology of Lovecraft tribute stories called Cthulhu Unbound. I do have one story in that anthology ('Abomination With Rice') but there are plenty of other stories by other writers too. I also threw in two minor chapbooks and included manuscript versions of two very short stories I wrote last year ('Down in the Park' and 'An Inconvenient Fruit'). If I ever become as famous as I believe I deserve to be, these manuscripts will be worth a lot of money in years to come. If I only become as famous as certain other people believe I deserve to be (naming no names) they will be worth absolutely nothing! Here's a picture of the array of gifts:

As the poem is indecipherable in the earlier photo, I have taken the liberty of including it on this blog post too. It's called simply 'Poem for Marc Lyth' and it goes something like this:

Caught in a weber spun by himself
Marc waits patiently for the secret
spider of his mind to come
and suck out his juice
with all the stealth of an eight-legged elf.

"Fangs for that!" he'll say. "Most kind of
you, dear spider. Have a nice day!"
or words to that effect.

He lives alone with his books and his cat
and a balding head
which he has never yet read
because he prefers hair-raising tales.
He dismantled radiators in his youth
and we find that's proof (if any were needed)
that he deserves to be eaten
by the secret spider of his mind.

The cat's name is Balrog:
that's another reason.

A jujitsu black belt, Marc should be able
to handle himself in any situation
but the secret spider of his mind is an expert too
and knows all his moves.
Before closing its jaws on his quivering flesh
it will dance for him
an eightfold Can Can,
the sort of thing we can all do without.
But that's Lyth, I guess.