Stranger Things S5 has reached levels of poor quality I previously thought impossible.

Spent NYE sewing my first jacket in 10 years. Happy new year, everybody.

2025 - My Favourite Things #1: Homer's Iliad If anything defined the year for me, it was the Iliad. I first read Emily Wilson's brilliant translation throughout January and the poem became an anchor for me throughout the year as I studied the role of antiquity in Australian history and mythmaking.

From Mary Karr's preface to the Modern Library Classics edition of The Waste Land: "Read it first for joy. Shut up your head's claptrap and open yourself to fall in love with it. Treat it like a first date, which should begin with ignorance but also with hope."

But tonight Lv1 is alive and in the west highlands with his herd. It is a perfect winter evening: the moon rising over the ice fields, the snow in the wind. And as he stares into the skybox, there is 1/50th as much health as usual.

the good that you do persists in this world

My wife is raising funds for her friend Omar and his family in Palestine, please consider donating: gofund.me/73e75f786

A lot of journals that say they're open to weird fiction mean like this

Missing from the book piracy debate is any mention of predatory academic publishing conglomerates like Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, De Gruyter Brill et al: all of which are massively profitable and don't pay anyone (authors, peer-reviewers) who made the bulk of their money extorting libraries

oh now we are talking about writing salaries? My contribution: No one* has ever made money from it. Don't romanticize the past. There are zillions of examples of destitution in the archives of your faves! *except a couple, here and there, randomly

Ideas are not like property, Jefferson thought. They don’t work on a scarcity model—He who receives light from my candle does so without lessening my light. Jefferson opposed copyright laws.

"Tell me, is it true the a bad artist suffers as greatly as a good one? There were many performers at the Hotel Schuyler, but they gave no hint of suffering from the failure of their art. Perhaps the art had changed its name and came to their minds as something else—employment." Elizabeth Hardwick

Psyched to announce my new novel, Boyhood, coming April 2026 @whiterabbitbks.bsky.social geni.us/Boyhood

"But if a human soul can be defined as a structure of memories, if to 'read' an object is somehow to gain access to what it remembers, then how can we begrudge it a soul?" - Pynchon, Shadow Ticket

A defense of literary style, and why style is a lot more than just "pretty sentences" countercraft.substack.com/p/style-is-m...

THE LAW OF BONE AND SINEW IS HERE BE THERE OR BE CRUSHED BENEATH OUR BOOTHEELS darkwatcher.bandcamp.com/album/the-la...

Now this is a journalist who deserves respect.

My beautiful girl Chilli is very sick, so if there's any way you can tip in a small amount to put towards her huge vet bills, we'd be eternally grateful. If you can't afford to donate, totally get it, but please help share? gofund.me/0da4bca0

I wrote a book! The Missouri Dogman and Other Tales of Midwest Macabre, out June 6 both in print and ebook. Ghosts and ghouls and psychological rot from the heartland of America. a.co/d/0FtSSwZ

These two beauties are available for pre-order now in the US. The Women’s Courtyard cover is a beautiful painting by renowned Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander and the Tamas cover is an amazing woodblock print by Indian illustrator Anagh Bannerjee.

Today is the official (Australian) release of The Red Labyrinth. Be sure to tell your friends and enemies and strangers on the street about it.

From my novel TOWARD ETERNITY:

also on the metal front tonight I'm listening to "Cruel Magic" by Satan. the non-metal world basically knows nothing about this band, they were NWOBHM but had a slightly more "extreme" vibe back when...probably just because of the name really. be surprised if they got a single mainstream notice.

I love when something kind of niche goes viral and people that do nothing but post about everything feel obligated to weigh in. Tell me more about your strong opinions on the translations of Odyssey, guy I haven't seen post about literature a single time in years of following

Four cats, their names are William Gass, William Gaddis, William Faulkner, and William Vollmann. All of them are nicknamed Bill.