Written Sy Wyatt at the now infamous MWM Live! in Bristol, May 2009.
Pressure. Emmett had dealt with pressure his whole life. Pressure to deliver. Pressure to perform. Today, however, he was concerned entirely with the pressure on the outside of his deep sea exploration suit. The soft pinging in his ear told him he was safe, and still attached to the survey ship, thousands of feet above, by the umbilical.
“Can you see it, Emmett?”
“I’m pretty much on top of it. Another hundred or so feet and I’ll have contact.”
Emmett imagined …

This one was for Richard Griffiths, of Crafty Butchers fame, who just wanted “spidermonkeys”.
We live to serve …
Cliff reloaded his rifle as quickly as he could, letting the spent cartridges join those already scattered about his feet. The barrel of the gun was hot enough to scorch the wooden parapet of the outpost as he propped it there, glad for a moment not to have the weight against his shoulder.
“How many of them are there?” asked Delilah.
“Depends,” replied Cliff. “If they breed like monkeys, we’ve got to be getting to …

Inspired by Ryan Reed, who asked for a story featuring ““A man who has been bitten by a radioactive man, a VW Camper Van, and a pie”
Rain rattled against the side of the camper van. Reed tried to ignore it, and concentrated on cooking. Cooking was a lot more complicated for Reed these days than it used to be as, since the bite, he had to work just as hard to keep things out of his meals as put things in.
Thunder crashed overhead and the VW camper rocked from side …

The last, I think, of our podcast appearances from the Bristol Con 2009 is featured in Comic Book Outsiders Episode 46.
Chaired by Scott, from Comic Book Outsiders, the Orang Utan panel metamorphosed in a round table discussion on indie comics that also features Stu and I, and the guys from Geek Syndicate.
It’s somewhere in the region of 45 minutes of unplanned, unscripted, but hopefully insightful and amusing banter between the two studios as we share war stories from the world of small press comics.
Particularly worth listening out for are the …

Barry and Dave, the Geek Syndicate, very kindly made mention of Monkeys with Machinegun’s MWM Live! mini-event at the Bristol Small Press Expo in Geek Syndicate – Episode 119.
I must admit, I was a bit concerned about words in these guy’s mouths when I wrote “Scott vs. Geek Syndicate” for Scott from Comic Book Outsiders, but it seems to have gone down well. Writing dialogue for fictional people is much easier, as they rarely come back to you and want to talk about it …

More MWM Live practice. This one took a little longer, had trouble getting rid of the word “crawl” from the list of random words.

Travis woke up, still tied to the bed. He couldn’t see Laura, but could hear movement downstairs. Cups clicked together, water pouring. He guessed that she was making tea, and was surprised that he didn’t immediately want some. Looking up, he could see why.
Banging on the surface of the mirror that hung above Laura’s bed, desperately trying to break through from the other side, from whatever …

More practice for Monkeys with Machineguns Live!
Found a fantastic site for generating random ideas, http://shortstoryideas.herb.me.uk/index.html, which I will blog about later. In the meantime, here’s the end of the line.

Vera had heard about the telephone box. It was the last one left in the county, apparently, sitting quietly on the corner of the village green. It was never vandalised, unlike the play area just a few yards away, never put into service as a make shift toilet or short term accommodation for teenagers overcome by hormones and cheap cider.
No, …

More MWM Live practice. This time I try to fit Hitler, a museum, and a monkey covered in jam onto one side of A5.
It is a little known fact that Hitler maintained a secret museum, three storeys below his bunker in the heart of Berlin. At first, it was home to the ransacked treasures of the nations crushed under the Nazi jackboot but, as the war came towards its end and Hitler’s mania for the esoteric and the occult reached its height, the museum became home to artifacts and relics …

PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release
MONKEYS WITH MACHINEGUNS OFFER A VISION OF THE FUTURE AT BRISTOL COMIC CON

Monkeys with Machineguns are producing an extremely limited number of promotional comic books to accompany the Monkeys with Machineguns Live event at the Small Press Expo in Bristol on May 9th.
While stocks last anyone buying a unique, one off illustrated short story from Chris and Stu will receive it mounted inside a copy of the limited edition twenty page book. Featuring not only an eight page preview of their upcoming book “The Magpye”, being …