Well, the verdict is in: Reality Testing is the greatest cyberpunk novel since Neuromancer. Not my words, but the words of a friend who was being nice to me. There’s no refuting that. It’s official.
In all po-faced seriousness, though, the novel is #2 for hard science fiction, #7 for cyberpunk and #9 for genetic engineering sci fi (no idea where that came from) on Amazon, so people are, if not reading it, then at least consistently downloading it. Still lacking reviews, obviously, but chasing them is more dispiriting than listening to the government’s latest announcement on how soon things won’t be opening again, so I’m counting on readers to submit them of their own accord. I have faith in them. Ha.
Apparently now I’m supposed to quickly follow up on this with part two of Reality Testing and turn the gentle wind at my back into a cyperpunk ebook hurricane, but I’m working on something else and I barely have a sketch of what the sequel will be, so don’t expect that until 2022 (a year that somehow sounds so much farther away than it actually is).
In non-dystopian news, I had a short story called “The Artisan’s Chandelier” accepted for publication by The Sea Letter, a magazine based in Texas. It was pretty much the only short story I submitted last year, so that’s rewarding. It’ll be out sometime in February or March, I’m told.
Freak music for the bleak midwinter:
2 Sleaford Mods - Shortcummings
3 Prong - Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck
5 Squid - Sludge (the answer to the question: What if James Murphy fronted a Talking Heads cover band?)
just need a samurai sword from the mall and we’ve got our starter pack.