That's January Done

Well that's January been and gone.

It's been a month dominated mainly for me by the fact that we've sold our place and are moving to the other side of Edinburgh. This meant evenings and weekends sorting through all our accumulated nonsense, packing stuff into boxes, and — perhaps most importantly — deciding which books need to go into storage and which ones I absolutely need with me.

As such, I've had little time to focus on much else, but things have been happening.

Ascension

The hype train keeps a'rolling and it's been nice to see the upcoming launch featured in a few more places this month. Notably, amongst others, Polygon's 'Big New Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books 2023' roundup, Fantasy Fellowship's 'Most Anticipated Reads 2023', as well as a couple nice new blurbs from great authors and reviews from a bunch of blogs and bookstagrammers.

SF Author Michael Mammay of the Planetside series said, 'ASCENSION is a thrill ride of a novel that kept me reading well past my bedtime.' which is always a nice thing to hear.

You might also remember that I celebrated Ascension having over 10,000 people add it as 'to-read' on Goodreads at the turn of the year. Well, that number hasn't stopped climbing and as it stands we're on about 22,000 at the end of Jan. It's just so wonderful to see so many people looking forward to the release.

Book Launch

I'm delighted to announce that Blackwell's will be hosting my launch here in Edinburgh. They've got a fantastic new events space that they've just refurbished and it'll be a great spot for the launch. As well as this, the delightful (and Sunday Times bestselling!) L.R. Lam will be hosting. They'll be running the Q&A and asking questions in the evening and there'll be a chance for audience questions too.

It'll be on the evening of the 27th, the day of the release, but more details will be coming out soon. I'd love to see you all there.

What have I been writing?

I just finished edits on what I'm currently referring to as 'cave book', and getting back to writing 'moon book' after that. As always happens to me partway through writing a book, I've just recently had an entire book jump into my head almost fully formed and I'll be lining that up afterwards. It's in my ideas folder at the moment as 'Minoan time-slip', but the key tasting notes are: murder mystery, ancient Minoan ruins, underwater temples, scuba diving, time-sensitive octopuses, and a really fun take on a labyrinth. One of my friends encouraged me to just call it 'ocean book'.

So, as it stands, after Ascension ('mountain book'), the likely plan is to follow with 'time book', 'cave book', 'moon book' and then 'ocean book'. What book will come after ocean book? Who knows! It'll probably come to me as I'm writing it.

Best Thing I've Read Recently

The most interesting novel I read this month was Malice by Japanese author Keigo Higashino. It's a wonderful puzzle-box of a murder mystery novel all based around a famous author being murdered by (possibly) his secret ghostwriter, but maybe not. One of my favourite things about reading fiction in translation is how different the authors approach storytelling. I really don't think Malice would have been published in its current form if it was originally in English — it's not the just that the structure is different (we find out who the murderer is very early, and they are caught, most of the book is just about the motivation), but the prose itself is so sparse. Higashino wastes no time showing us emotions and reactions — he simply tells his story and breaks down the ideas. This doesn't mean it lacks complexity. Absolutely not. In fact, stripping back the prose allows him to add arguably more complexity to the motive of the crime, but honestly, there were points where the prose was so sparse it might as well have been bullet points.

Another book deserves a mention, even though I'm only halfway through it. Ed Yong's new book — An Immense World — is just fantastic. I fell in love with Yong's particular brand of pop-science with his previous book 'I Contain Multitudes', all about the importance of biology, so I knew I needed to pick this new one up. It's even better — Yong is so good at elucidating complex scientific ideas without watering them down. His use of analogy and metaphor to help you understand concepts is excellent. And most of all, what he talks about is genuinely mind-altering. I've had my proverbial mind blown at least three or four times already and it will definitely change the way I look at animals and the world. The highest possible recommendation (and I'm not even done with it!).

Next Month

I plan on writing a longer post next month. As we approach the launch, I wanted to take some time to talk about Ascension and its influences. It's a book that relies heavily on the literature that has come before it, and I wanted to take the time to recognise some of those books and the impact they've had on me. Keep an eye out for that next time.

Until then, have a great Feb!