And then a year went by just like that.
I could have sworn I wrote an entry here earlier this year, but apparently not. So many updates, so little time to do them all justice.
Let’s start at the end and work backwards and give every milestone its moment in the sun:
NOVEL NEWS: Rather surprisingly (to me, at least), everyone’s favourite post-apoc cli-fi road novel By the Feet of Men has roared back from out-of-print obscurity, popping up on a list of best dystopian novels of the past 10 years over at Horror DNA. Not something I ever expected to happen, but I’m grateful. With each passing year, the fiction I spun across 343 pages is sadly becoming reality: This year’s Super El Niño event is delivering flooding, drought, wildfires, rainfall and extreme unseasonable temperatures on a scale we humans simply aren’t equipped to combat. When I started writing By the Feet of Men back in 2017, I’d imagined the events taking place 50 years from now; today, I wouldn’t rule out experiencing them first hand by the end of the decade. Also, and I’m not really sure why, but my book’s listed on Simon & Schuster now, too. Does that mean I should go around saying they’re my distributor? I don’t see that I have any other choice.
NON-FICTION NEWS: I’ve been quietly updating the ‘NON-FICTION’ section of the site to include publications on which I have a writing, editing or translation credit. Entries for this year include:
The Global Hunger Index, published by Welthungerhilfe
Primavera, a forthcoming photobook by Tim Gassauer and Manu Gruber with a 10-page essay translated by me.
Art Basel, a special issue of NZZ Art, the arts and culture section of Switzerland's Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Centurion Magazine, a lifestyle quarterly featuring interviews with rich and famous celebs pretending to be interior designers.
Du Magazin, the venerated Swiss culture journal.
More to come, hopefully, including an all-new sustainable aviation magazine conceived by me that I’m desperately hoping will receive funding in the near future.
PROJECTS NEWS: I’m working on a collection of loosely connected short stories about a down-on-his-luck Englishman in Greece (write what you know, etc.) called Nisiá. I’m in talks with a small independent publisher in Athens to do a limited publishing run, but it’s far too soon to start celebrating. Elsewhere, the old autobiographical novel has had its third pass and is waiting patiently for me to actually do something with it. And I will…at some point. It just needs to be perfect. More likely, it’ll end up being what Don Quixote was to Terry Gilliam, chipping away at my sanity for the next 29 years until I finally turn to Adam Driver and release a barely coherent facsimile of what could have been. Then there’s the screenplay for Searchlight, which is in its own mini development hell, primarily because I’m finding it exceptionally difficult to write a farily tight, serviceable script. The first version was a dud, heavy with prose and light on character. The second version? We’ll see. Finally, my publisher Black Rose has asked for a third instalment in the Sundown series (following on from Reality Testing and Pacific State), and I will surely oblige.
MILESTONE NEWS: Speaking of Reality Testing, I celebrated a milestone of sorts back in July: it is my first novel to reach 100 reviews/ratings on both Amazon and Goodreads. All it took was 5 years, 6,000 sales, countless promotions and a smidgen of begging. Perhaps one of those readers will be brave enough to buy a copy of Pacific State and discover the superior yarn within. I’ll wait; I’m a patient guy.
That’s it for now. Play me off, Johnny.
1 Kelela - linknb
2 Rose Gray - Club To Your Arms
3 Trance Wax - Rhythm of the Night
4 Soul Wun - Blue Light
5 Imad - On Top
6 Feral - Court of Light
ch00n