Chart / July

Time for a chart. Here in Athens, the city has been gripped by a heatwave for the better part of two weeks, which means that even thinking about writing causes me to break out in a Rocky-II-final-fight sweat. As a result, I haven’t done much. Ideas aplenty, but the ability to rise above this heat-induced malaise and tap away at the keyboard has thus far eluded me. I didn’t read anything about this in The War of Art. Perhaps it’s time for Steven Pressfield to add a new chapter: Conquering Your Resistance in the Climate Crisis (answer: put the air conditioning on full blast and accelerate change even further).

Publication news: The trad-publisher Quillkeepers Press has seen fit to include one of my essays, titled ‘Shrouds’, in its forthcoming anthology on grief. It’s a highly personal essay penned during a period of heightened emotion, and I’m over the moon that someone wants to put it in print. I’m unsure when the publication date will be, but suffice to say I’ll make a big song and dance about it.

Book of the month: I will pick Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman, simply because the first few chapters are a whirlwind of climate adaptation and mitigation measures observed through the lens of parody. While the story is little more than a series of side quests and the payoff falls flat for me, the idea of companies being able to buy excinction credits so they can safely eliminate animal species in pursuit of capitalist expansion is both a bold and terrifying idea (and one I wish I’d come up with).

Film of the month: Under Therapy, a Spanish comedy-drama from the heady days of 2024. It moseys along for a while, doing that European film thing where a handful of character actors are confined to a single location and act their hearts out in the form of quickfire dialogue and meaty swipes against the conventions of modern society when WAPAW it shifts into high gear and the comedy drains away and you’re left feeling both hollow (because of the climax) and satisfied (that you didn’t just spend 90 minutes watching a guy take great pleasure in blowing a bugle in other people’s faces).

Album of the month: I guess it’s Fantasy Noises & Perfect Delusions by Deathbrain (yep) simply because everything else I’ve listened to this month has been hot trash. The album is outsider house, so it reminds me a little of AL90 or Kedr Livansky, albeit nowhere near as good because it all just kind of melts together. Good for when you’re melting, though.

40-degree playlist:

1 Deep Purple - Burn

2 Van Halen- On Fire

3 Disclosure - When A Fire Starts To Burn

4 C&C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat

5 King Krule - A Lizard State

6 Talking Heads - Burning Down the House

on a steel horse i ride

By the Feet of Men is out today

Three years, three months and eleven days: this is how long it has taken for By the Feet of Men to go from the initial planning stage (a 10,000-word document detailing every chapter in the book) to its official release today in bookstores around the world.

Here is the synopsis in all its 70s B-movie glory:

WANTED: Men and women willing to drive through the valley of the shadow of death.

The world’s population has been decimated by the Change, a chain reaction of events triggered by global warming. In Europe, governments have fallen, cities have crumbled and the wheels of production have ground to a halt. The Alps region, containing most of the continent’s remaining fresh water, has become a closed state with heavily fortified borders. Survivors cling on by trading through the Runners, truck drivers who deliver cargo and take a percentage.

Amid the ruins of central Germany, two Runners, Cassady and Ghazi, are called on to deliver medical supplies to a research base deep in the Italian desert, where scientists claim to be building a machine that could reverse the effects of the Change. Joining the pair is a ragtag collection of drivers, all of whom have something to prove. Standing in their way are starving nomads, crumbling cities, hostile weather and a rogue state hell-bent on the convoy's destruction. And there's another problem:

A whole lot of reviews for the novel are available here.

If you would like to buy the book (I do hope so), it is available from most bookstores, many of which can be found via this link. It is also available from Waterstones, WH Smith, Barnes & Noble, Target and elsewhere.

It has been a long process full of beatific moments and frustration, and I am glad to have experienced every minute of it. I know how lucky I am. I have counted on the support of so many people, and I would not have been able to reach this day without them. Thank you all.

Now on to the next novel.

FIRE.