What a magnificent cover! Merci, @lebelial.bsky.social!

giant space opera (tm) update: officially hit 170,000 words. a universe-spanning mystery is finally revealed etc etc something something dark matter something something.

Only a few pages in but really enjoying it - didn't realise it's actually and officially out now! So go buy it!

Heh! It IS available in ebook, for anyone who needs a festive read...

...pub?

Spambot Friday

You know, I'm just going to say it - I don't think season 3 of One-Punch Man is that bad.

hard sci fi

giant space opera (tm) update: we have just about reached 160,000 words, after a few wormhole jumps, the suborning of a robot civilisation and something something non-baryonic tachyons.

New #Shelfies alert! This week, it's Lindsay Straube on a most unusual shelving method - stacks! Respect. 😀

Got this in the post yesterday (thanks @headofzeus.bsky.social!) - honestly, I've been waiting years for this! It's widely considered to be THE Polish SF masterpiece. 1000+(!) pages, and finally in English. Can't wait!

vibe coding but only in turbo pascal

is there vibe writing like vibe coding

I played this again last night on my phone. Can't believe: a) I made this b) how long the damn thing took

A noir boardgame where it doesn't matter what you do, you die

Can't kickstart my brain at all today. Could someone lend me theirs.

I believe the technical term is "a lot of ones and zeroes"

argh, monday

it's important to be seen to be reading a booker nominee every now and then for the street cred

might follow this with one of the booker nominees just to seem intelligent and have something to talk about at parties i am never invited to

Onto the new Slow Horses book. I kind of forgot who's still alive or why, at this point, but a few of them seem to still be around to carry on, anyway.

New #Shelfies alert! This week, it's @willwiles.bsky.social on the agony of choosing a shelf!

Classic @datlow.bsky.social anthology here for a special price! openroadmedia.com/ebook/salon-... including my dare-I-say-classic story "My Travels with Al-Qaeda"

i feel like i should go outside, say hello to the deer and squirrels, like a disney princess of the old school

my top 10 horror tropes: 1. doing the dishes 2. tax forms

just don't ask me to do any of your weird nerd stuff yeah

2-3 years of genre stuff and then back to being a serious novelist

sadly i am going to dip back into genre next year with all you nerds

oh god i have to open a 2026 diary now, that's ridiculous, it's only november

what book should i write next

I would welcome an Only Murders in the Building spinoff that is just Richard Kind and Beanie Feldstein solving mysteries

As co-editor of Shelfies (shelfies.beehiiv.com), I still get really excited to get a new one in the inbox that won't be out for a while... The ones Jared gets I only see when they're published! (I also make him do all the actual work).

not to brag or anything yeah

Wahay! ADAMA makes the German Krimibestenliste for November at #1! (Herron at #7 and Pynchon at #9...)

for a lit major it's always a little annoying everyone quotes this is just to say and never heel & toe to the end

I have spatchcocked the chicken that was in the Tesco's And which they were selling for £3.95 forgive me it will be delicious with a little soy sauce

This ends TODAY! Last chance to get the giant trilogies bundle! storybundle.com/trilogies

Continuing my Mackay read with How a Gunman Says Goodbye

Statistics: only wrote 5 short stories this year but also finished a novella, adding up to a respectable 46,000 words. That's aside from the 160,000 on the novel so far.

Wrote what has to be genuinely one of my creepiest stories, just sent it off with a note saying "please don't ever make me read it again"

Nice interview with me in Austria, about ADAMA (which has just come out in German)

Giant space opera (tm) update: Part 5 is finished at last as we enter the final stretch of the book, but what lies beyond? will mysteries be solved? will anything make sense? I doubt it. 160,000 words so far.

Ok I found the perfect mass entertainment US/UK crossover tv show: DCI CSI

Third day of instant coffee. God help me.

There's a new Tim Wirkus novel out next year??

Finished The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (well, I was kinda rooting for poor Lewis Winter but I guess it was inevitable if it was in the title). It's great, but it just ends so abruptly you obviously have to get book 2 straight away! So I did. Not so much a trilogy though as a book in 3 parts..

I'm supposed to give a talk in a couple of weeks called "Fairies and Empire: Englishness, Nationalism and the Anti-Matter of Britain". God help me. I had to think of a title fast!

If I had to pick two random bits of writing I like, it's "The Narrator" chapter of The Hood and the last chapter of Golgotha

Feels like the end of the year is almost here, and I only published two books.

I hate trying to get back to writing a book after a week away.