CERN ZOO

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PAUL MELOY

Running Away To Join The Town (Nemo 5)

Nemo 5 was a beautiful thing. It resonates in the hand. The whole Nemonymous concept and subsequent execution has been a delight to watch unfold, but to end up with a story in that marvellous vermilion baby was something I had coveted for a long time. When Des took Running Away, I felt I had achieved something unique and strange and rather mystical.

Since Nemo 5 I have carried on writing at my steady rate of about one story a year but have gained enough confidence to expand into a couple of novella length pieces. I would like to continue developing the world of Quay-Endula, and maybe wrap it all up in a novel one day (I have a chapter written!). It's been incredible being immersed in a fantasy that switches from reality to the Unconscious so rapidly, and watching characters resonate and influence each other in different stories. Maybe even Marcel will crop up again somewhere, chagrined and smothered in mucus.


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A.D. HARVEY

Gamlingay Churchyard (Nemo 1)

Having a story in the first issue of 'Nemonymous' in 2001 was a kind of high spot in my career. Haven't done much since then: a poem in "London Magazine" in 2002, the German translation of my book on the Battle of Arnhem published, together with Lieutenant General Dr. Franz Uhle-Wettler's account of the Battle of Crete, as Kreta und Arnheim in 2004, double-page spreads in both "Times Literary Supplement" and "Independent" in 2005, an article in "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute" in 2006: and a photograph I took used as the cover illustration for the Spring 2006 issue of "Critical Quarterly" ----- only the second time anyone has actually paid to publish one of my photographs. Still living in Stoke Newington ------ perhaps that's the problem.


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DAVID J BROWN

Gerald and the Soul Doctor (Nemo 3)

How I am getting on:
Moving permanently to the States, and taking my existing day job with me, and getting used to the 140-mile round-trip daily commute after a five-minute walk in London, and getting married again, and - and - and... have all meant that creative writing, never for long on a front burner, has gone right to the back again, I'm sorry to say. That's unless you regard preparing a new edition of a book about bridges (http://tinyurl.com/k226w) as being creative, which I sort-of-do-in-a-way-but-not-really. To be honest, I am currently more moved to write poetry that no-one ever sees than fiction, while if I have a personal project that excites me it's the possibilty that has just popped up of hosting a classical music programme on a local radio station.

What difference did getting published in Nemo make?
Validation validation validation. Having never had any fiction published before, it made a huge difference to know that someone at least thought something I had written was worth putting in print. But one swallow does not a summer make. The goblin that's always sat on my shoulder is the one that whispers "plenty of people have said the same thing, and better, so why bother?" Dunno how to kick him off. On the other hand, as Brahms said when someone pointed out that the big tune in the finale of his First Symphony was not unlike Beethoven's in the finale of his Ninth, "any ass can see that", but I'm not Brahms.

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JOE MURPHY

The two stories, "Insanity Over Creamer's Field" in Nemo 3, and "Nocturne for Doghands" in Nemo 4, allowed for brief glimpses into places that are preferable to the mundane world I'm forced to inhabit. I've published a few things since then but the Nemo stories were the most fun. Fun is important. Life just doesn't have enough fun in it -- at least not mine.
*
DES ADDS:
Those two stories by Joe Murphy -- in the same way as 'The Vanishing Life and Films Of Emmanuel Escobada' or 'George The Baker' (neither of which Joe wrote) -- struck me with an enormous side-swipe when reading them as submissions. I like to think that only 'Nemonymous' could have published such artful quirkinesses - and I mean that very positively on behalf of the stories because it was Nemo's privilege to do so. And I don't comment thus individually on certain stories to withdraw any support from the stories about which I make no special comment. *All* stories that Nemo published are, of course, very special to me and, hopefully, to others. And remember, any writer's life is either pre-Nemo or post-Nemo. :-)

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