BONNIE IN THE MACHINE: THE OFFICIAL AUDIO SERIES
Bonnie in the Machine is a free episodic audio adaptation of the novella, written and narrated by the author. Told entirely from Bonnie’s perspective, the series follows a rat surviving beneath a modern city as the spaces she depends on are destroyed and reshaped. Available to stream on Spotify and other major platforms.
On Stage: Freedom Festival for Falasteen
On Saturday 2nd August 2025 at 16:30, Madam Lether appeared on stage at the Freedom Festival for Falasteen, a community fundraising event organised by Reading Queers 4 Palestine. Held at Facebar Reading. The event brought together queer voices, artists, and activists in solidarity with Palestine, raising funds while creating space for conversation, performance, and collective witness.
Madam Lether took part in a live on-stage interview and Q&A, led by Lentil Pulse, discussing writing, queerness, political responsibility, and the role of storytelling during moments of ongoing crisis. The conversation explored how fiction, horror, and speculative narratives can respond to real-world injustice not by offering easy answers, but by bearing witness, preserving memory, and giving shape to experiences that are often flattened or erased.
As part of the event, Madam Lether also delivered live readings from The Black Road and The Martian Olive Tree, sharing excerpts with a live audience. These readings marked a significant moment in their public work, taking place on the day of or immediately following the release of their first publicly available writing, and representing one of their earliest appearances reading fiction aloud on stage.
The session combined interview, reading, and audience engagement, reflecting the wider purpose of the festival: to use art, voice, and visibility in support of Palestine while foregrounding queer solidarity and community-led action. The filmed conversation captures not only a discussion of creative practice, but a snapshot of an author at the very beginning of their public journey speaking, reading, and standing in a shared space shaped by urgency, care, and collective resistance.
Website Exclusive · Free Story
This story is presented as a website-exclusive preview of the kind of work shared through Madam Lether’s Patreon. While most new fiction is now published first for patrons including drafts, standalone pieces, and works that may never enter print Man Shank is made available here in full as an open introduction to that ongoing body of work.
The Patreon functions as the primary home for new writing: a space where stories are released early, shared exclusively, or allowed to exist without the constraints of collections or publishing schedules. This free story offers a clear entry point into that ecosystem a single, complete piece that reflects the tone, themes, and intensity of the fiction supporters encounter there.
Story Summary
Man Shank unfolds inside a modern slaughterhouse before dawn, as a herd of cattle is driven through steel corridors toward an industrial killing line. Told largely from a collective animal perspective, the story immerses the reader in the machinery of routine violence, fluorescent lighting, disinfectant, hooks, rails, and the human systems designed to make death efficient and invisible.
As the killing begins, fear and suffering accumulate not as isolated moments, but as a shared historical weight. From this accumulation, something ancient and furious awakens: the Cow King, a towering, spectral figure forged from centuries of slaughter, blood, and rage. It is neither allegory nor symbol, but a presence shaped by repetition, by systems that normalise harm until it becomes background noise.
When the Cow King manifests, the slaughterhouse’s order collapses. Gates fail, machines stutter, and the rigid hierarchy between butcher and animal inverts. The herd, guided by this newly born force, turns on the mechanisms and people that have fed on them. What follows is not a clean revenge narrative, but a chaotic reckoning in which violence answers violence and no structure emerges untouched.
Man Shank examines industrial cruelty, dehumanisation, and the mythic consequences of mechanised harm. It asks what kind of god is created when suffering is scaled, scheduled, and justified and what happens when those trapped inside the machine are no longer silent.