Brad Fear
WATCH OUT… THIS AIN’T GONNA BE PRETTY…
Meet Moth: he’s half his namesake and half social misfit. Moth’s been pretty ticked off. A year ago sciencey people locked him in a lab, stuck needles in him and shone lights in his eyes. He wasn’t very happy about this, so now him and his mate ‘Ozzy’ (a quite unpleasant chap of green skin, yellow eyes and lots of teeth) are out for good ol’ fashioned retribution.
Meet Nina. She’s a barmaid and wants to work with animals. Nina’s been roped into helping some friends with their amateur ‘Moth-man’ documentary. Of course, she doesn’t believe in such silly myths, but she needs something to take her mind off her ex-boyfriend. Unluckily for Nina, her world is about to be blown apart by the ugly-as-sin truth…
Looks like Moth and Nina have got enough on their plates… and that’s not including the gas-mask wearing cult, the ticking, blade-fingered robot or the old man with the crows flying around him…
'A MACABRE MYTH OF A MOTH-MAN' is the debut novel of author Brad Fear: a union of urban fantasy and noir, chronicling the tale of a seemingly clueless insect detective.
BRAD FEAR was born on March 26th 1986 and raised in Somerset, England (home of Great Britain's largest concentration of the greeting 'Alright my luvvver...'). He spent a year and a half studying Scriptwriting for Film and TV at Bournemouth University, but didn't finish the course. This was partly because he preferred writing outlandish tales of moth-men to one-off television dramas and mostly because he had all the social skills of a grapefruit (and not the talkative kind of grapefruit).
He currently resides in the town of Bridgwater and lives with his pet tarantulas -Cassandra and Shelob- and a Chinese Water Dragon called Colin (no, really! It's a kind of lizard! Quick, type it into Google, I can wait...). His hobbies include writing, sketching, walking on the hills when the mood takes him, buying animals that no-one else has, reading excessive numbers of graphic novels and philosophical pondering.
He enjoys curry and drinking Irn Bru. Buy him these and he will instantly like you.
" It’s… a machine…
A bloody machine…
My eyes aren’t lying… it’s actually a bloody robot… a ticking robot…
About seven feet tall, its upper torso is a solid orb of grey and black metal, attached to its tiny round abdomen by a polished silver ‘spine’. Its arms end in machete-like digits that scrape against each other like scissors, providing it with a set of claws that bury my own in shame. He’s literally ripping through metal and plastic like a katana through butter.
It’s either not seen me or is ignoring me.
I keep my right arm, with its stiffened hairs and uncontrollable shakiness, concealed behind me. I’m English, so I’d best do this politely and at least introduce myself first.
It doesn’t acknowledge, finishing off the filing cabinet it’s working on.
‘Ahem… excuse me,’ I say louder.
The ticking ‘heart’ noise slows and the machine stops what it’s doing, turning around to face me with a whir of mechanisms.
Its head is about four-fifths of the way up its body and is shaped somewhere between a skull and a breathing mask, with wide, vacant yellow lenses for eyes and pipes coming from the grilled ‘teeth’ around to the base of the ‘neck’.
Why did I come down here again…?
‘Evening,’ I manage to squeak after a three-second pause, ‘Sorry to intrude like this, you’re obviously working on something. See, I’m just from the room upstairs… and, urm, I was just wondering if you might, you know, keep it down… I’ve got quite a lot to get through…’
The machine just stares back vacantly. Who am I trying to impress? It isn’t going to laugh.
‘You… well, seem angry about something. Can you talk?’ I ask, ‘Do you want to explain what happened?’
I look at the ‘torso’ just below the head and the engraved letters across it.
C.R.A.B- I? What the hell is a C.R.A.B- I?
Tick-tick… Tick-tick… Tick-tick… Tick-tick…
The machine turns its back on me; obviously deciding I’m of little priority to it as it pulls apart another computer with one hand.
‘Listen… um… ‘CRAB’…’ I say to it, ‘I’m not up for this bollocks right now. I’ve got a lot of work to do and you’re making it a bagful more… confusing. Now, either you can tell me… or, you know, use sign language or something… what the hell you’re all about or I can de-commission you and find out myself,’
