FIAC team bios - Criminy Fok

About Criminy – FIAC short story author

Criminy straddles the line between the insignificant and the insane. "Vocabulary is like a dromedary," he exclaims. "And I’ve been to Tipperary. I’m oh so scary."

Indeed. Criminy began at FIAC writing about an evil cow that lived in the Cupcake Man's basement:

I was in my basement, playing The Game Of Life, when a fearsome black cow appeared before me, hissing and spitting, her four stomachs churning with bovine malevolence. She was more like a cobra of the barnyard; she was no benign Bessie. Her udder dripped a hot, corrosive muck that reeked of sulphuric acid. It was as though this creature was poisoning its milk on me by way a deadly taunt. No, I would taste naught of the she-bull’s udder: Considering how utterly taken aback I was by the beast’s iron-hoofed ingress, I would do precious well to exit this encounter with my life. I groped for my pitchfork, hoping perhaps to impale the beast, lest she impale me upon her blunted snout. My effort was in vain: the cow, though bovine in stature, was feline in agility. The beast was upon me, gnashing its outward-jutting teeth and mooing like the Dark Shade Calf of Hades herself. Eyes wide with mortal terror, I expected no less than complete bodily evisceration…

Except to write his memoirs, Criminy has never looked back, penning over 50 short stories for FIAC in under three years. His memoir, published in an outhouse in 2005 was an homage to his characters: 1001 Ludicrous Assholes – or Reading This Book is Better than Tuberculosis, and was banned in 113 sanitoriums across North America.

Criminy's technique is unique to FIAC in the blogosphere. Eschewing ‘plot’ and ‘character’ his stories are driven by impossibly original names - like Moses Drecksnider the King of Cutlery and Znoosle the Curmudgeonly Coelecanth -and random phrases such as 'a woman can talk about shoelaces as long as the lace is long'. He says his writing "wriggles upon the disfigured cliche" and "cliffhangers in every sentence." Sure, Criminy. Whatever!

"There are better stories out there," he says, "stuff with an actual plot, or real emotions. There are more poignant insights." But as far as daredevilry goes, Criminy walks the talk like the bees knees. "I mix metaphors like a curious cat on a hot tin roof." Or like an old dog playing pick up sticks. "Suspended disbelief is a game of chicken," he shouts into his webcam. "Take that to the bank and smoke it!"

His stories have been described as "blinding, in the bad way" or "akin to a heavy thud" or "not unlike a voluminous sneeze" or "like being suffocated under a moose."

"My goal?" he says. "To make my readers drunk."

"And one day, they will go blind."

Indeed.

"This is literary moonshine.”