Chart / August

August 30, 2021

Well. Here we are. Train’s pulling in to the end of summer and we’re being kicked out onto the platform of sinking temperatures and insatiable rainclouds. That came quickly.

Still, you know what shit weather is good for? That’s right, skateboarding! I mean writing. I think I said last month that I was aiming to finish the sequel to Reality Testing by the end of August. Didn’t happen, but we are at 75,000 words and it will be done by the end of September. How’s about that. Book six in the bag.

Publications of the month! None, on account of not submitting to any.

Book of the month! Deliverance by James Dickey, the USA’s 18th poet laureate. Never have I read a more self-aware exploration of the boundary between male homosocial and homosexual relationships. The film is more immediate, but Dickey has a way with words that builds on the Hemingway archetype and makes it something even purer and more beautiful.

Film of the month! Promising Young Woman if we’re talking new movies; It Should Happen To You if we’re talking old ones. Judy Holliday was the best.

Swinging vines in the music jungle:

Reality Testing: The Cover: The Movie: The Videogame

August 17, 2021

I suppose there’s not all too much point in shouting this one from the rafters, what with it being on the landing page of this website, but here is the paperback cover of the cyberclimatepunkfi feast known as REALITY TESTING.

Nerds. Nerds everywhere.

It’s also available to PRE-ORDER RIGHT HERE from the reassuringly efficient people at Black Rose. And if you pre-order it before January 27, 2022 you can get 15% off the price using this wonderfully basic code: PREORDER2021. Probably a good idea seeing as the book is listed at the almost-a-joke price of $20.95, which I’m sure is going to prompt many people to jump at the chance to part with their cash.

Jump to it.

8 Indie Books To Read This Summer

July 26, 2021

The very wise people at Kirkus wrote an article last month titled ‘8 Indie Books To Read This Summer’. One of them was mine and I didn’t even notice.

Here’s what they said:

“Set in a future Germany, Reality Testing by Grant Price teems with cyborgs and machine-enhanced humans. Identity theft takes on new meaning when a woman awakens to find herself transplanted into another body. This inventive world, where sexism, climate devastation, and capitalism have run amok, is “a bracing blast of neo-cyberpunk.”

Cyborgs is a bit of a stretch, but whatever. I’m a Donna Haraway fan.

The whole “ramping Reality Testing up for its print release by Black Rose” will be starting soon. Stay tuned for that. It’s going to be a real treat.

Chart / July

July 22, 2021

NO TIME TO CHAT I’M WRITING.

I mean, kind of. So many ideas, so many projects, but also so much sunshine and so many other commitments. I am also slightly apprehensive about the scale of flooding and firestorms around the planet. It’s funny how reality is already much scarier than the scorched earth I imagined in By the Feet of Men. All downhill from here.

42,000 words completed on the sequel to Reality Testing. End of August grandstand finish? Sure, why not.

Book of the month: I’m reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but it is ironically heavy going, so I will say that Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami is effervescent and breezy in the way that Japanese literature has while addressing weighty issues about the human condition. The cover is cool, too.

Sparking up nostalgia with the smell from a grill:

1 PJ Harvey - Sheela-na-gig

2 Neutro 9000 - Lady Burning Sky

3 Yves Tumor - Crushed Velvet

4 Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon

5 Jungle By Night - Hot Mama Hot

6 Kay Len Fecce - Wey Len Nobel

7 Lone, Morgane Diet - Hidden By Horizons