Neil Willcox (Author of The Convoluted Adventure Of The Vengeful Yankee Financier)

Neil Willcox is now friends with Albert Marsden
Sep 22, 2025 01:09AM · like
Neil Willcox and 5 other people liked Luana's review of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Issue #0: "Whaddya know, I ended up reading two free manifestos for Christmas? Oliver Brackenbury's mission statement for a proposed third wave of sword and sorcery bursts onto the scene with an energy befitting its iron-thewed protagonists, with old hands like" Read more of this review »
Dec 18, 2024 11:23PM · see review
Neil Willcox rated a book it was amazing Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Sunbathers The end of the world came, with sun flares. Everyone had to take shelter from them. Everyone? Some stayed out, deliberately. Most died but some survived, changed, transformed. Burned clean. Stronger and more powerful than before, though vul ...more
Aug 15, 2024 12:18AM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Neil Willcox rated a book really liked it The Flesh of the Sea by Lor Gislason (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
His work on snails not considered original enough Wilford Bowen leaves England on a naval ship, signing on as doctor. He is swiftly captured by pirates on the ship Sea Goddess, who need him to deal with parasitic wasps that are infesting them. This b ...more
Aug 02, 2024 11:02PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Neil Willcox has read Backmask by O.F. Cieri (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jun 23, 2024 12:20AM · like
Neil Willcox rated a book it was amazing Getting by in Tligolian by Roppotucha Greenberg (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, working in the hotel. People think she’s there as a student. She’s trying to learn Tligolian. It’s hard, the verbs have tenses that most languages don’t have. Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, and the city has a time warp in ...more
Nov 27, 2023 02:37AM · 1 like · like · see review
Neil Willcox rated a book it was amazing Daddy by Kristin Garth (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Some of these stories are about girlhood, in that they are about (narrated by) girls. They have the vital importance of these events for children. If I were to over-generalise these are about the breaking of an innocence. In Stall, the girl goes to t ...more
Oct 22, 2023 12:16AM · like · see review

Neil Willcox is now friends with Albert Marsden

Neil Willcox and 5 other people liked Luana's review of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Issue #0:

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine by Oliver Brackenbury

"Whaddya know, I ended up reading two free manifestos for Christmas? Oliver Brackenbury's mission statement for a proposed third wave of sword and sorcery bursts onto the scene with an energy befitting its iron-thewed protagonists, with old hands like" Read more of this review »

Neil Willcox rated a book it was amazing

Sunbathers
by Lindz McLeod (Goodreads Author)

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Sunbathers

The end of the world came, with sun flares. Everyone had to take shelter from them. Everyone? Some stayed out, deliberately. Most died but some survived, changed, transformed. Burned clean. Stronger and more powerful than before, though vul ...more

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The Flesh of the Sea
by Lor Gislason (Goodreads Author)

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His work on snails not considered original enough Wilford Bowen leaves England on a naval ship, signing on as doctor. He is swiftly captured by pirates on the ship Sea Goddess, who need him to deal with parasitic wasps that are infesting them. This b His work on snails not considered original enough Wilford Bowen leaves England on a naval ship, signing on as doctor. He is swiftly captured by pirates on the ship Sea Goddess, who need him to deal with parasitic wasps that are infesting them. This begins a series of adventures detailed in his letters to his friend Jean Baptiste De Beaupré. These are interspersed with Jean’s notes in his journal about his reactions to Wilford’s escapades which slowly move into action.

These are adventures that mostly revolve around strange monsters. There include glowing whales, flying jellyfish, lobsters that are colonised by slime molds, sirens and the Flock a gestalt being made up of birds. Other mysteries emerge, including the Sea Goddess herself, a creature that sexually controls the pirate ship’s crew. Not Wilford though, who is gay and in love with Jean, though was unable to realise this back in England. Only by escaping to the sea can he understand.

Jean, receiving these letters, attempts to have Wilford rescued, but is turned down by both the Navy and the Royal Society, who think Wilford’s descriptions of these creatures are ridiculous. He comes to the conclusion that so great is his love, he will have to find him himself. As such he joins the ship Watchman’s Favour, which has it’s own strange controlling creature in the crows nest.

If I note that the story does not rigorously reflect the actual dealings of the Royal Society, pirates, the law on piracy, or travel in the 18th century, it seems superfluous when there are carnivorous plants that lay out lures of treasure to trap sailors. Nevertheless I have to say I had to get up and walk around for a few minutes when an entry dated August 23rd 1760 has a reference to travelling by train from London to Bristol, a line that was not opened until 1841.

It treats injury, death, possession and sex with monsters lightly, moving swiftly from one weird event to the next. Slightly less lightly the slow burn realisation of the two protagonists that they should be together. Fun, breezy, gleefully ahistorical, occasionally gruesome.

Read This: Weird monster adventures while an epistolary romance goes on
Don’t Read This: People get horribly killed and mutilated, also taken over by strange gods
I Received A Review Copy: From Hedone Books ...more

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Backmask
by O.F. Cieri (Goodreads Author)

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Neil Willcox rated a book it was amazing

Getting by in Tligolian
by Roppotucha Greenberg (Goodreads Author)

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Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, working in the hotel. People think she’s there as a student. She’s trying to learn Tligolian. It’s hard, the verbs have tenses that most languages don’t have.

Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, and the city has a time warp in Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, working in the hotel. People think she’s there as a student. She’s trying to learn Tligolian. It’s hard, the verbs have tenses that most languages don’t have.

Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, and the city has a time warp in it. It used to be that travelling between layers meant walking and you could walk forever and not find the layer you wanted. Now there are trains and it’s possible to ride one to go to another layer.

Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol, and the city state is a dictatorship run by the Great Leaders. So there are things people don’t talk about, the trains and how they’re used, and the Great Leaders and the executions every month in the square. And this includes the language itself, they tell her not to learn it, and indeed she forgets it faster than she learns.

Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol and she fell in love with Sam. It was at his execution, and usually that would put an end to the relationship. But here there is a time warp, people don’t have the same relationship with death, or with life or with love. This is Tligol and she can ride a train to a layer where he’s still alive. A layer where he’s part of the Simplifiers, the group who want to change things. The group who will make an attack, and the Great Leaders will persecute with secret police and executions, and because this is Tligol the cause and effect merge into each other.

Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol and this novella is titled and chaptered as though it’s a language guide. Like many language guides it’s more of a tour guide, and like the best tour guides it’s a story, or history. On a tour through a city you’ll see things from different times, and I don’t want to push the metaphor too far, because this is a novella about Jenny and about Tligol and how she gets by, and learns and loves.

Jenny Scheffner is in Tligol and there’s a giant that fishes in the sea and the river and maybe the canal too. I don’t have an explanation for this, and maybe explanations are not really the point.

Read This: A novella of time, language, love and getting by, of absence and distance
Don’t Read This: The past – the dead – should remain decently buried ...more

Neil Willcox rated a book it was amazing

Daddy
by Kristin Garth (Goodreads Author)

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Some of these stories are about girlhood, in that they are about (narrated by) girls. They have the vital importance of these events for children. If I were to over-generalise these are about the breaking of an innocence. In Stall, the girl goes to t

Some of these stories are about girlhood, in that they are about (narrated by) girls. They have the vital importance of these events for children. If I were to over-generalise these are about the breaking of an innocence. In Stall, the girl goes to the toilet in school, because she has thoughts she does understand and is not allowed privacy at home. Yet even here she is watched. In Quaintrelle the girl is barred from seeing another girl, as it has been reported their was a middle school orgy. In Spiderling the girl joins a club, the We Love Roman Everly Club. This leads her to disobey the rules and visit the house of a female murderer, the Black Widow.

Some of them are about girlhood less directly. The women in these stories are often looking for father figures. Sometimes they’ve found them and they hold them up to our gaze. They see the flaws in them, the terrible horrible people they are. They feel an attraction. In I Can Not Help It That I Have This Face he is beautiful, and she looks innocent. And so he feels the need to punish her, and she, she feels the need to submit, to be tied and beaten in a cable access studio in the mall.

The games of dominance and control are inevitably sexual, whether directly or peripherally.

In Florida Drakaina the woman lives alone in the woods. She has been abandoned by her Daddy, her lover, and the long, long drive is falling into disrepair. The neighbour, a retired builder, wants to buy it, to improve it. He needs something to do, but the woman needs her privacy. Needs her secrets.

Known for her sonnets, Kristin writes with deliberate rhythm. Her most distinctive lines tend towards the imperative/descriptive, telegraphic style that fits a meter. “Forgot your own name some months ago.” “No cellphones when you’re in middle school, so this story has no receipts.” “Rub against strangers in a thong for money – but not only money.”

A sonnet is the prologue to the novella at the end of the book, and another, unfinished sonnet plays a part in it. Another story is formatted as prose, though it maintains a Shakespearean sonnet form.

The final novella Plaything both stands alone and seems to sum up the book. At the Itty Bitty Kitty Coffee Shop Doria, the Stray, a waitress, has fucked a man in the alleyway. He’s a regular for a while. He picks up another woman, Melinda. He takes her away from all this, puts her in his mansion. There she becomes the Plaything and he becomes the Daddy. There she is safe, in her round of ballet lessons and true crime on parental controlled iPad and serving Daddy. She does not have to face the world. She does not have to make decisions.

The only one who knows she’s there is the Stray, the one who Daddy did not want. The one who hides her contact details with the Plaything. Why would the Plaything want to leave. There is nothing for her outside, only crime and stress. She is safe inside.

Until she learns what is within, the secrets her Daddy keeps from her.

Read This: A journey through a more-or-less dreamlike Florida in search of childhood and fathers
Don’t Read This: Too many explorations of intertwining girlhood and abuse, violence and control
Disclosure: I have been published by Kristin Garth’s website Pink Plastic House ...more

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	The Convoluted Adventure Of The Vengeful Yankee Financier (Von Schneemann Book 2) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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