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5 February 2026
ATOMIC TWITTEN, the shambolic folk-comedy duo with Taylor on vocals/guitar and myself on bass, have somehow once again been asked to play the south-coast English Mardi Gras that is Fat Tuesday. We're performing on Unplugged Saturday on Saturday 14 February (Valentine's Day! If music be the food of love...), a packed afternoon of free acoustic music sessions, with 60 emerging and established artists and bands (yeah, and us) across all genres playing 15-minute sets at lovely venues across Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.
We're in St Leonards this year, playing a stripped-down set at the following venues:
Hastings Fat Tuesday presents over 350 free gigs, gatherings, parties and parades alongside ticketed events. A full schedule of what's happening over the five-day celebration can be found at Hastings Fat Tuesday website. Programmes are also available from participating venues. See you there...?
Support live music! Steph.
15 November 2025
A CHRISTMAS SINGLE by DITCH THE DEMON is out now as a digital download! (Prozakville Records).
"Santa's Coming (Krampus Is Gonna Get Me)", written by yours truly and embellished by the band, is a satirical prog-adjacent Christmas song for those overwhelmed by the commercial side of festivities. Featuring Terry 'Krampus' Keen's debut performance on crumhorn! (and myself shaking sleigh bells).
This is a download-only single, available now as a pre-release exclusive from BandCamp (name your price!) ahead of its release on further streaming services from 1 December. We recorded this while in the studio in September/October laying down tracks for our second studio album Hail the Fallen (to be released next year); the Christmas single will not be on the album!
Ditch the Demon's next gig is at The Pipeline in Brighton on 22 November, supporting The Roz Bruce Infusion. Gig details and more can be found on our website at www.ditchthedemon.co.uk.
Happy listening! Steph.
8 August 2025
THE LUCK OF THE DEVIL is finally out in paperback! This has been on my 'wish list' for a long, long time (the ebook came out in 2018), but I was keen to finish writing my Hollow Moon series first, which I did last year. I never thought it would take so long!
This novel has a special place in my heart. It's almost autobiographical: the main character Susan is also a heavy-metal-loving civil servant who happens to be transgender; and at the time of writing I too was living in South London, nursing fading dreams of playing bass in a rock 'n' roll band. Oh, did I mention that I too drive an elderly Volkswagen camper van? Early drafts predate my time in the band Danse Macabre, way back before my first self-published novel Hollow Moon was even conceived. By the time the ebook of The Luck Of The Devil was ready to be released, I had moved to Hastings and was playing bass in an all-female covers band The Happy Maureens. Which was fun for a while, until that band too fell apart. But I struck lucky and was asked to join Ditch the Demon, the best bunch of musicians I could ever hope to be a part of! The luck of the devil, huh?
Anyway, enough of my musical dalliances. The Luck Of The Devil is a contemporary thriller of both comedy and tragedy, set in a world of superstition, psychiatry and the metaphysical. The book carries a different by-line to separate it from my space-opera stories for younger readers. Here's the obligatory blurb...
"Susan Jones, a transgender woman struggling to get by in the economic woes of 1990s Britain, is under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Mordussen. He in turn is obsessed by her disturbing nightmares. But are her demons real? An unexpected road trip to Ireland awakens traumas of the past. A seventeenth-century sorcerer, evil nurses, a castle reborn from the ashes and a bloodthirsty sheep do not making getting to the bottom of the mystery any easier. The old wise woman of the village knows more than she's telling. Susan must confront her demons in more ways than one. Can her love of heavy metal, her battered Volkswagen camper van and two best friends save the day?"
The Luck Of The Devil has had a full editorial refresh. Paperbacks are available to purchase from Amazon, price £15 / $20 (print-on-demand pricing can't compete with mass-market paperbacks, but they are higher-quality). I also hope to have a copy or two with me on the merch table at Ditch the Demon gigs (direct from me they're £10). The ebook has been reissued with the revised text and is available from all the usual stockists with a recommended retail price of £4 / $5. Happy reading! Steph.
3 August 2025
A NEW LIVE ALBUM by DITCH THE DEMON is out now as a digital download! (Prozakville Records).
Live in the Big Bad City is our first attempt at a live album. This came about after we discovered that Setmixer records all gigs in select venues; and that for a small charge bands can purchase the individual sound-desk tracks to mix a live recording. The New Cross Inn in London is one such venue and we happened to play a headline gig there in January this year.
There were sound issues on the day (the perils of live rock 'n' roll), but after selecting the best tracks and much tweaking, we've ended up with something that hopefully captures the raw essence of Ditch the Demon live. The album features one new song - "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (written by yours truly) - from our forthcoming second studio album, which we are recording late September / early October. Live in the Big Bad City is a BandCamp exclusive, download-only, offering ten tracks for just £5 (+VAT)!
Our next gig is at The Ship in Gillingham, Kent, on 17 August - a KimboFest fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Society, free entry. Gig details and more can be found on our website at www.ditchthedemon.co.uk.
Happy listening! Steph.
8 June 2025
JEMIA DE BLONDEVILLE, a Hastings-based poet and artist (and good friend of mine) recently reached out for help in putting together a book of her poetry. The result is WHERE FAIRIES ONCE DWELT, a slim volume of her whimsical writing, which she will be selling to raise funds for local wellbeing charity Arts on Prescription. Her poetry is very evocative of the 1970s hippy spirit, the thirty or so poems in this collection offering an ethereal take on nature and the supernatural. It's a cute little poetry book and should sell well locally.
Artist Arwen Rose of Willow & Wolfe created the front-cover image. My contribution was to design and collate the paperback book itself around Jemia's poems, create the book cover to her specifications (front and back) using Arwen's artwork, then prepare print-ready files for publication. Jemia chose UK firm Print2Demand for the actual printing. I must say I'm impressed by how well the book has come out!
Where Fairies Once Dwelt is available from Bookbuster in Hastings (price £2.99), and from Jemia herself if you manage to catch her at one of the town's many poetry events. I believe she also plans a book launch event at Arts on Prescription at their Art in the Park centre in Alexandra Park, so look out for that too!
Happy reading! Steph.
Older news items can be found on the WyrdStar News Archive page.