November 2022

Wait... where did November go?

Honestly, it feels like days ago that I was posting the last newsletter. I have barely blinked and, well, here we are. Part of this has been down to the fact that November has been a particularly hectic and difficult month for me, which I'll not go into here. Part of it also is that on the book front, things have been relatively quiet.

What have I been up to?

Other than the normal trials and tribulations of life and teaching, I've been popping into bookshops. Edinburgh has such a wonderful tradition of independent bookshops across the entire city, ranging from the very small (like the gorgeous Golden Hare Books in Stockbridge or the delightful Edinburgh Bookshop in Bruntsfield) to the large and rabbit-warren-esque maze of books you can get lost in (I'm looking at you in particular, Toppings).

With Ascension coming out next year, I've been popping in and chatting to their teams, giving them early reader copies of the book and trying to get them to get excited about and buy into the release. It's been pretty successful, and I've got some great author signings lined up as well as some potential events. More on that as they get firmed up in the future.

Some links!

Ascension has been popping up around the social media globe -- you can check out some lovely early reviews on Goodreads and Waterstones, as well as a little feature showing up on fantasy author Shauna Lawless's blog. 

I've been getting some really positive comments from other big SFF bestsellers too, people like Sunyi Dean, Richard Swan and Tade Thompson, who have all read and it seems really loved the book!

If you were sent an ARC or have read the book and enjoyed it, I would urge you please to leave a review on both Goodreads and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if you're US-based). It makes such a difference. You can just copy-paste the same review from one platform onto another -- no need to duplicate the work of writing one!

If you read the book and didn't enjoy it, well... feel free to tell me privately, but otherwise probably keep it to yourself!

Inspirations

I've been discussing inspirations a lot with my publicity people recently, talking about the sorts of works that are behind Ascension. The truth is Ascension is a book that relies very heavily on its many inspirations — it's a conscious homage to specific literary traditions as well as a nod to some very specific books and authors.

Here's a few of the ones that really had a big role to play when I was writing:

Gothic

'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley'Dracula' by Bram Stoker'At The Mountains of Madness' by H.P. Lovecraft

Sci-Fi

'2001: A Space Odyssey' by Arthur C. Clarke'Jokester' by Isaac Asimov (a short story)'Annihilation' by Jeff VanderMeer'The Sparrow' by Mary Doria Russell

Non-Fiction

'Into Thin Air' by John Krakauer'The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' by Julian Jaynes'The Myth of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus

Films

Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar'John Carpenter's 'The Thing

This isn't an exhaustive list, but hopefully, if you haven't read it, it should give you the sense of book that Ascension is.

What am I writing?

Anyone who knows me knows I'm pretty prolific. Ascension is the next release, but since then I've written two more novels and a novella — all standalone, all very much in that grounded speculative thriller space — and I'm working on another novel on top of that right now. I genuinely don't want to give away too much, but it's a mixture of historical and speculative fiction, it's set mostly on the Moon, and it's starting to get really weird. I'm about 25k words in and having a lot of fun with it. Hopefully, I'll have it done before the summer.

Best Book I've Read Recently

I really enjoyed Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It's a sort of literary romance-but-not-really exploring the lives to two game devs growing up in the US. It's beautifully written and had a lot of interesting things to say about relationships and life in general, but mostly I was drawn in by the gaming nostalgia (which, I suspect, has been a big part of its success). Anyway, if you grew up playing video games and you like a good story, I'd definitely recommend this one.

Best Thing I've Watched Recently

The Bear. No question. If you can watch it, do. It's a short season of half an hour episodes about a top-class chef having to take over his brother's sandwich shop when he dies, and it's just utterly compelling. The penultimate episode, in particular, is just a masterclass of television. Everything — the humour, the drama, the pace, the characterisation — is just so well done throughout. I devoured it completely and loved every moment.

See you next month

That's it from me -- like I said, the month has zoomed by and has been relatively quiet and ruinously hectic at the same time, somehow. I'm looking forward to getting into December and getting into the Christmas spirit. I bake a mean mince pie and will be sampling many in the weeks to come.