Look! Look! Proofs of Randall:

It's real. It's real! It's a book we've brought into the world. Almost. People are going to be reading it soon. They're going to feel the same delight we've felt. This is exciting. It's enough, to make you want to do this:

Don't you love that smile? That picture is actually Jonathan Gibbs himself. He won a Literary Death Match not long ago. You can read all about it on his blog. Joyful. Even if my heart did do a horrible leap when I read the bit about his editing of the pages…

Meanwhile, here's something that should have appeared on the front page last week really. It's our latest Singles Club release and it's going down a storm. To explain why, let me paste the blurb.

Here's the start of the covering letter Dan Clements first sent to Galley Beggar Press: "My name is Dan Clements. I am a former Royal Marines Commando and intelligence specialist; I am now a geopolitical analyst by day, a writer by night, and a carer of two hyperactive kittens with every spare minute left to me. I am writing to introduce my short story collection, entitled Time is On My Side, in which I have sought to capture something of my experiences of the frontline in Afghanistan."

Time Is On My Side turned out to be one of the best things we've been sent. It's raw, it's fascinating, it's angry, and it's also beautifully written. The Lion Of Babaji is the first (and hopefully far from the last) piece we've extracted from the collection. It's an account of dealing with an Afghan warlord. Do you even need to know more? Okay. It's frank, it's unsettling, it's brutal and yet compassionate. The first line is: "Haji Musa Khan was a crook and a murderer and a mean-looking old bastard and I couldn't help but like him" - and you have to read it."

We're hoping to do much more with Dan, in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, you can buy the ebook here. Or, take the plunge and get 12 brilliant short stories over the course of the next year by subscribing to our Singles Club. If you get in before the end of March, your first story will be Lion. But that's enough from me. I have to go and start distributing proofs now.