It is Thursday, so that means another release in the Wizard’s Tower Lockdown Reading series. This one is by Roz Clarke, whom most of you will know as one of the editors of the Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion series, but she’s a great writer as well Answering Back is quite short, but I found it very amusing. Here’s what I wrote about it for the bookstore:

A short story by Roz Clarke in which the greatest mind of his generation (possibly of all time) discovers that in the real world people don’t always follow the scripts you have written for them. Feminist and funny (unless you are the sort of person who thinks that Victor von Doom is a great role model).

It also has what has become one of my favourite lines in fiction, but I can’t tell you what it is as there’s enough spoilery stuff for a very short story already.

You can download a free copy of the story via the Wizard’s Tower bookstore. And please consider buying a copy of Colinthology, which Roz helped edit and has a story in, because all proceeds from the sale of that one go to support hospitals in Bristol.

You can find the full list of Lockdown Reading titles here.