Chart / October

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

My Favorite Bit with Mary Robinette Kowal + Pacific State reviews

Pacific State, my second novel in the Sundown Cycle, is up and running, and it seems to be quite the hit among reviewers both of the print persuasian and the garden variety. Foreword Magazine was effusive in its praise and rating (5/5), stating:

the book excels at worldbuilding, dropping evocative hints at the full scope of its dystopia. It’s peppered with slang references to foodstuffs, new technology, and organized crime that pique interest in its wider world. It mixes oracular pronouncements with striking descriptions in prose that is stylish and sometimes beautiful, as when a building is described as having a “dreadnought silhouette” that creates “a negative space in an overcast sky,” or with notes about “sodium-lit streets” and a “spit-shined moon hung up on display.”

Then we have reviewers such as The Dragon’s Cache (nice), who picked up on all kinds of throwaway world-building elements, which I find wonderful, ultimately declaring that “Price…decries our casual disregard for climate change, reminds us of the dangers of unrestrained commerce, and argues that risking our lives to stamp out cruelty can be a noble cause.”

Another fun one is Pagefarer, who sums up what we’re all thinking by writing, “It’s a great book. It’s tightly written, full of believable and three-dimensional characters, and the worldbuilding is excellent.”

Also, a special shoutout to….this cool guy for describing the novel as follows: “it's like Gibson and Stephenson had a brainchild and it's all chromed up in neon and existential dread.” Very nice indeed.

ELSEWHERE…

I wrote a short article for the website of Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal about my favourite aspect of Pacific State. This is my second appearance on the site, with my first entry waxing lyrical on the use of flashbacks in everyone’s plucky post-apoc champ, By the Feet of Men. This time around, I’m in a more linguistic mood as I discuss a shorthand, corporate-only language I conceived for the novel called Whicolla. As always, I tie it into the climate crisis, because we’re still sleepwalking to our collective doom.

Read the full article right here.

Starred review from Kirkus for Reality Testing

Once in a while, in this endless sucking quagmire we call existence, something out of the ordinary occurs that lifts the spirits to heights that tend to be experienced exclusively by fortunate children at Christmas time.

Today I am a fortunate child.

Kirkus, in its strange, infinite reviewing wisdom, has seen fit to award my plucky upstart sci fi novel Reality Testing a starred review. They call it….

A bracing blast of neo-cyberpunk with some smart tweaks to the operating system

Other recent books that have received starred reviews include:

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

If It Bleeds by Stephen King

Good company to be in. They’re lucky to have me.

Here is the review.

NEONIFY MY LIFE

Chart / August

So it’s out, then. The book. My ruminations on what the future may hold. My raison d’être for the past three years. That’s the end of that. File it under funky.

Except it isn’t, of course. Sales are doing well, but I’ll still be trying to push out articles about the apocalypse and the anthropocene and Armageddon. This is uncharted territory for me once again. How long do I keep up the promotional efforts? How much do I try to have the book submitted for awards? How often will I be checking Goodreads in the hope of beautiful new reviews? All questions I guess I’ll be answering over the next few months.

Roundup: Ginger Nuts of Horror gave me a sparkling review (“This book is one of those rare examples where you enjoy it and at the same time feel excited about the notion of reading it again”) and did a five-minute interview with me, during which I use the term ‘economical staccato’ to describe my writing style. My God. Over at Lauren’s Bookshelf, I generously offer a few tips on channelling your inner Hemingway and rewriting the end of a novel. I also wrote a piece for The Bibliophagist titled Opportunity in Crisis that disappeared from view almost as soon as it arrived. The things I do for book.

Paperbacks and Pinot was especially effusive with the praise, stating that By the Feet of Men is “immersive, thoughtful, gritty and as realistic an interpretation as you’re likely to get of a dystopian future”. Over at Mad Hatter Reviews in the UK (scroll down), I received an in-depth critique of the novel, with the conclusion that I’ve created “an intelligent action thriller”. What else? Sincerely Karenjo called the book thrilling, gritty and haunting, Lizbie’s Nerdy World enjoyed the economical staccato writing style, and Between the Shelves appreciated it for scratching a dystopian itch. Finally, the good Bill Halpin, author of The Cult of Eden (out in October), was kind enough to say the novel was “phenomenally written”.

Not bad.

Music this month….was scarce. I was kind of busy. So we’ll go for a victory dance:

1. Alice in Chains - I Stay Away

2. Radio Birdman - T.V. Eye

3. Minutemen - Corona

4. Boards of Canada - 1969

5. Floating Points - King Bromeliad

6. Radiohead - Optimistic

7. Slowdive - Souvlaki Space Station

peel here to rejuvenate.