Chart / May

No chart in April?! Can it be? Well yes, it can, because I was finishing off another draft of a novel and looking after an intransigent husky. But now I’m back with a bang. Not that I have any real news to share. I mean, Reality Testing is bombing along nicely. A bunch of reviews, a fistful of sales, a general clamour for book two in the famed Sundown series (not really; actually, a few days ago I was in Spain, shuffling along, when I realised I’d forgotten the name ‘Sundown’ and had to spend a good few seconds digging around for it in the grey matter). I should probably go back to the sequel soon, but it’s been a while since I wrote anything new and I’m itching to do so, so we shall see.

Book of the Month: GBH by Ted Lewis. One of the wonderful things about living in the Age of Internet is that for 99 cents I can buy an electronic copy of a novel that - until it was recently picked up by an indie press - had been out of print for 35 years and attained a semi-mythical status among readers of crime stories. This novel must have been one of the touchstones for Guy Ritchie when he was writing Lock, Stock and Snatch. Amoral porn kings, tight-lipped henchmen, blokes saying “ere, I’ll have a spot o’ that, guv’nor” while sipping champagne in a sunken lounge, squirrely stool pigeons, shotguns galore. It’s all very The Long Good Friday, only much better.

Album of the Month: The Arcade Fi- no, I’m joking. That was so by the numbers it could be mistaken for a sudoku. The real answer is Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C. It’s a genius album, and will almost certainly be my number one of the year. Something about that Irish brogue crooning over sparse drums, driving bass and innovative guitar really lights a fire in my emotion house.

Movie of the Month: Jitterbugs starring Messrs Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It made me laugh multiple times, and I like it that Laurel sounds like he’s stifling a hiccup whenever he speaks.

Up from suede shoes to my baby blues:

  1. salvia palth - i was all over her

  2. NewDad - Blue

  3. Arovane - Eleventh!

  4. Ex:Re - Too Sad

  5. Pretty Sick - Undress

  6. PVA - Exhaust/Surroundings

  7. bdrmm - Port

Chart / March

What a month. War. Migration. Nuclear threats. Global food crisis. The Conger ice shelf collapse. I dunno, it kind of reminds me of this novel I once read. All those people who said I take this stuff too seriously and shouldn’t be overly worried because technology will find a cure? Not hearing so much from them these days. The Change is here and it’s happening, yet just because we can still buy cinnamon buns from hipster bakeries and go to a Shein pop-up store to stock up on €3 T-shirts (seriously, fuck all of you people so hard), we think things are going to be okay. They’re not.

Reality Testing is currently at #2 for cyberpunk on Amazon in the UK. Not that I like having anything to do with Amazon, but that’s the game.

In news: I had a short story called “Gold Plates” published on the flash fiction blog On the Run. Reality Testing received a couple of lovely reviews from The Plain-Spoken Pen and the writer W. A. Stanley. Thank you to all.

Book of the month: No Country For Old Men. Yeah, what can I say? I like all the Cormac McCarthy I can get and even though this one fell short of All the Pretty Horses (and even felt a little juvenile at times), the dialogue wormed its way into my brain and made me speak in a southern US accent for a week.

Album of the month: Maybe Classic Objects by Jenny Hval? Or Crystal Nuns Cathedral by GBV. Neither are exactly lingering in the memory, to be honest.

Movie of the month: For this I will go for the 1955 musical satire It’s Always Fair Weather with Gene Kelly, if only for this scene, which is weird and wonderful and lightning fast. It makes La La Land look like Coma Town.

Chart / February

Two months since I’ve done one of my iconic Chart entries. What has happened in that time? A few things. Reality Testing was released in paperback by the kind fellows at Black Rose Writing, and to date I must have sold at least 7 copies or so. Continuing to cement my name in the sci fi pantheon. In short story news, I’ve finally started submitting again after a couple of years, and my minimal effort was rewarded almost instantly with publication in issue one of a new magazine, Grim & Gilded. The story, called Pawn’s Promotion, takes place in the Sundown universe (that’s the same one as Reality Testing), and it’s 4,500 words of Lem-esque science fiction.

Elsewhere in bottom-of-the-barrel news: I reluctantly wrote a guest post for the blog Books + Coffee = Happiness about how to how to avoid the rejection blues. An excerpt of my wisdom:

“That short story you spent six months honing until it’s as sharp as a razor blade might be fantastic, but if an editor didn’t have their coffee that morning, there’s a chance they’ll punch the form rejection button just to get back at the world. Not your fault. Not the editor’s. Literature is like astrology: the stars and planets have to align. Moon conjunct Pluto, that kind of thing.”

Elsewhere, in The Avid Reader (whose ‘buy now’ button hilariously happens to be a screenshot rather than, you know, an actual button), I offer perfunctory answers to a perfunctory interview. I’m not entirely sure why I do these things. Maybe I’m a sucker for punishment.

Book of the month: Don Quixote. Yeah, that’s right, I’m reading it. And it’s just as funny as people say it is. Not in a ‘oh I just laugh and laugh at Bob Dylan songs’-pretention kind of way. More in a “this part of the story is about a man charging at a windmill with his lance” vein. I bet it’ll still take me forever to read, though.

Album (or actually a mixtape) of the month: Caprisongs by FKA twigs. I lost interest in twigs for a while after she brought out Magdalena, because I couldn’t get into it like the rest of the world effortlessly did. But this mixtape banished those January blues quicksmart. Good job, girl in the video.

Movie of the month: Rope. I haven’t seen many Hitchcock movies, and this is one that he dismissed as a failed experiment. James Stewart didn’t think much of his own performance in it, either. But I loved it. From the homoerotic subtext to the choice of cuts to the city changing in sort-of-real-time through the apartment window, I would say it is anything but a failure.

And now for tunes.

1 Nilüfer Yanya - midnight sun

2 Boys Noize, ABRA - Affection

3 Tirzah - Inside Out

4 SAULT - Red Lights

5 Kelly Lee Owens - More Than A Woman

6 Kosha - No Kink in the Wire

Reality Testing Paperback Out Now

Ecopunk manifesto and all-round action-packed thrill ride, Reality Testing, is out and about and available in paperback now. Published by Black Rose (Texas), Reality Testing is book #1 in the Sundown series, where cyberpunk antiheroes navigate the mean streets of near-future, climate-obsessed Berlin in search of purpose and cool implants.

Here’s what acclaimed sci fi writer Neil Sharpson, author of When the Sparrow Falls, has to say about it:

“A tough-as-nails shot of adrenaline-laced, Gibson-esque cyberpunk, set in a decaying future where the corporatocracy has sacrificed humanity to reverse the ecological hell they themselves created. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.”

Available via Amazon, Waterstones, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and a bunch of other places I’m probably not aware of. The place where I get the most money (ha) is from the publisher’s website.

meet mara. or mia warsaw. or maybe it’s jema. you choose.