A rare sincere post. When you're playing 5-a-side football under floodlights on a rain-slicked 3G pitch and, during a break in play, you look up and see the steam lashing off of everyone's heads... not much beats that.

First day at my new job running Hitler's PR. Time to take a big sip of my coffee and check the internet

Teaching Pride and Prejudice and it's so much fun as an introduction to free indirect speech. Austen was such a genius she could put you inside two different characters' heads in the course of a sentence, with an 'etc' or an exclamation mark. Doesn't get the credit. The best to ever do it.

"I refuse to do the emotional labour of explaining this to you" is one phrase I wish I could port from social media to parenting.

Local dog groomers have frosted their windows. A real life example of a paywall

Third consecutive day of the two-year-old requesting porridge without oats for breakfast. Love to wake up into a high stakes paradox

I'll tell you one thing about passing forty, the phrase "long in the tooth" gets non-figurative pretty fucking fast

Not saying there's a clear tonal shift in season 5, when David Chase replaces Josh Brand as showrunner, but in the episode of Northern Exposure I just watched a guest star tried to murder Maurice with a car bomb

We are just a little over a month away from #TheDefinitions by @arealmattgreene.bsky.social hitting shelves! 📖 Don't miss what reviewers are saying of the intimately told story that examines how the human spirit can flourish even under the most oppressive conditions. 💭

The Definitions has been out in the world now for three weeks. I've done most of my plugging on Instagram, so you people've got off lightly. Reviewers have said lovely things ('a masterclass' - Marie Claire) and readers either love or hate it or think that it's okay deadinkbooks.com/product/the-...

Really fucked up. Bought a lottery ticket with the eight-year-old because it was today's least unreasonable request and we got three of the first four numbers. He's buzzing. Planning on reinvesting and applying what he's learned. For a £6 win I've made a lifelong gambler

In a week when I had an event cancelled because the bookshop had sold "around [a non-round number] of tickets" this is quite satisfying.

Yes, parenting is hard, confronting, physically tiring and psychologically gruelling but it is also quite a lot putting something on your head and pretending to sneeze.

I realise we've turned him into a kind of punchline but one thing David Foster Wallace identified that we'd all do well to reflect on is that the moment we fucked ourselves was the moment we invented the remote control, thus allowing ourselves to change channels from a sitting position.

This is tomorrow: www.wearebardbooks.co.uk/event-detail... When I was *actually* a debut author there was realistic hope that Sufjan Stevens might complete his 50 albums for 50 states project, but still, it's nice to be asked.

If the trailer made it seem like a caper, please be reassured (or, I suppose, warned) that The Mastermind is a Kelly Reichardt film, with all that entails. Sad and beautiful. Sensational film-making.

Had fun shoehorning The Unconsoled into this for @bigissue.com. Whaddajamean it's not a dystopia? It *checks notes* literalises the dystopia as anxiety dream www.bigissue.com/culture/book...

Glasgow loves please join me & @benpester.bsky.social at Mount Florida Books on the 6th of November to talk about the marvel that is The Expansion Project. Everyone* is saying it’s going to be the real fireworks night *No one is saying that. But it will be good mountfloridabooks.com/products/the...

This is next Saturday: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening... I don't know anyone in Lincoln and don't think I have enough internet clout for one of those 'no-one came to my book event and I've parlayed that into a thousand sales' posts on IG. So I'd really appreciate it if you wanted to share this...

"Have you eaten here before?" - waiter seconds before explaining an ordering process functionally identical to ordering processes applied the world over

This is tomorrow @deadinkbookshop.bsky.social. I'm really looking forward to it. Do come along if you want to see how much an author can age between the release of their first and second novels. deadinkbookshop.com/products/the...

Selfie of the Content Creator with a Convex Filter

A Content Creator of The Floating World

Oh man. La dee da

I feel like I should explain this joke for anyone who hasn't seen The Turin Horse: they eat some potatoes

In honour of his Nobel win, join me in watching The Turin Horse and eating a potato every time they eat a potato

Look, my natural instinct is always to self-deprecate to the point of sabotage ("By popular demand: for one night only") but I'm really excited to hear @benpester.bsky.social talking about The Expansion Project, deservedly shortlisted for the Goldsmiths prize, and think this might genuinely be fun.

Still some tickets available for this. Ben is brilliant and I'm excited to hear him talk about his excellent book. Do come along if you like that sort of thing www.waterstones.com/events/ben-p...

Life really is mostly just waiting for the next opportunity to explain why you put salt in the pan before boiling water.

Live in Lincoln? Like books? Have plans on Saturday October 25th? If you answered "Yes", "Some" and "Not yet" then do come along to this at @waterstones.bsky.social Lincoln. I'll be giddy from a three-hour solo train trip and positively bursting with insights, gossip and maledictions for my enemies

PSA: Close, Tar and Evil Does Not Exist are all available to watch now on iPlayer. All would make my top 20-odd of the past few years.

When I make my children a special pancake breakfast I don't do it for the gratitude, but neither, in fairness, do I do it for the recriminations.

I didn't know until we buried my mother, so probably most people here don't know: Jewish cemeteries strongly recommend that you get insurance for the headstone. Because the cemeteries are so often desecrated, the gravestones smashed.

A shortlist to get excited about - isn't that what we want from a prize? Huge congratulations @benpester.bsky.social @cdrose.bsky.social Sarah Hall Colwill Brown (who's had a very good week!) Yrsa Daley-Ward & Charlie Porter www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

My pal @arealmattgreene.bsky.social's The Definitions is on sale today in the UK (with US publication to follow). And not only am I in awe of Matt's taut, shiversome elegance, but the book is good too!

Fucking hell. I'll have more thoughts about this that I may or may not share but for now and in perpetuity: fucking hell www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live...

Dreamed that I posted 'i don't like tennis' and Pete Sampras replied to call me a loser.

An event for your diaries, lids. My chum and England Writers FC teammate @arealmattgreene.bsky.social at @deadinkbooks.bsky.social @deadinkbookshop.bsky.social Smithdown Road on 15th Feb. As skilled on the page as he is in the EWFC midfield. deadinkbookshop.com/products/the...

Looking forward to this. Tickets sales, I'm promised, are 'generally slow across the board - it's no reflection on you personally', so come on down for your chance at a private audience with not one but three (of your favourite [delete if not applicable]) authors www.waterstones.com/events/ben-p...

Very strange that le petit mort means orgasm and not the feeling for when you think of a pun based on very specific circumstances that will never reoccur and have no-one to share it with

The book It destroyed its cage Yes YES The book is out

I don't want to hear about your work-in-progress, I want to hear about your work-in-stasis

Pixar film about a family kiddish: Acerbic challah crust (Gilbert Gottfried) passed over for a new slice: "what am I, chopped liver?" Touchy bowl of chopped liver (Richard Kind): "hey"

A must-read 👇 The way the publishing industry prioritizes short term profits over long term sustainability is a train wreck in slow motion. It's baffling to me that industry execs don't get that investing in writers, being pro-labor, and nurturing a healthy literary ecosystem is good for business.

Parenting is very difficult and financially ruinous and exhausting and often maddening but sometimes you get to read The House at Pooh Corner out loud to your eight-year-old and hear them laugh in all the right places (everywhere) and there really isn't a better way to spend a Friday night.

If I'd read this piece 10 years ago I'd have understood my career very differently. If I'd read it 12 years ago I might not have agreed for my first book to be published in the way it was. We still don't talk about this stuff because it can feel embarrassing, but the author always picks up the bill

Farted in a playgroup then sniffed my kid's bum so tbh don't think I need the reminder on airplanes about securing your own oxygen mask first

THE DEFINITIONS is out in the UK in 8 days, meaning there's just a week left to do the ultimate mensch thing and preorder it from your local indie. I'm not super comfortable with sincerity but I'm proud of it and think it's very timely, and I'd love you to read it uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-....

Captcha before you can post an online book review: identity all instances of stream of consciousness but 8/9 are just first person narration