Thanks to @writingeastmidlands.com for an amazing afternoon of networking with authors and agents! Nothing like talking to other writers to light a fire under you!

Thought I'd lost my first (and favourite) fountain pen six months ago. Turns out it was hidden down the back of the sofa at my parents' house!

Officially, Boris Johnson was brought down by Chris Pincher. In reality, it was PartyGate and utter moral failure of his project. Officially Keir Starmer will be brought down by Mandelson. But he'd survive this easily if his project hadn't been so piss-weak, disappointing, and morally spineless.

New fuck/marry/kill list just dropped

Raw milk is kind of like crypto: The people who create and shill it are utter bastard scammers who should rot in hell, but I can't shed to many tears for the kind of people who willingly choose to engage in it, either. We fucking know how it works. With milk, we've known for over a fucking century.

NEW SHORT STORY! I wrote this for a flash fiction competition with the theme "Cult of Productivity." It didn't win, but I was very pleased with how it turned out! #writing #shortstory

Guys guys I’ve figured out where The Epstein Files are being hidden: In theatres showing Melania Absolutely nobody is going there

Dun dun daaah

This arrived in the post today: a #PomeraDM250 I picked up on eBay because I decided that I needed a dedicated, distractionf-free writing device. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of going onto Bluesky to post about my distraction-free writing device.)

Learning that an artist whose work you admire has turned to AI slop is a bit like hearing them admit to not washing their hands after using the toilet. Once again, the only acceptable amount of GenAI to use in a piece of art is none at all.

OF COURSE you want to spend 12 hours a day in front of the computer, run fast, and eat steak and eggs. You're 12!

When I was 23 I was working in Paris, having two-hour lunches every Friday and spending my weekends drinking wine in a series of flats with a series of terribly interesting people. Youth is truly wasted on the young.

Turns out I may have softlocked myself playing #Pathologic3 because of a mechanic that the game didn't explain properly. Part of me loves playing a game that deliberately gives the player so much friction... And another part of me is tempted to abandon it in favour of replaying Uncharted 4 again.

There's a new Boots Riley movie out this year, so 2026 isn't going to be *completely* awful. (Seriously I am so damn excited, Sorry To Bother You is one of my favourite movies of the last 10 years so I'm here for whatever Boots Riley does next.)

Decided to start playing #Pathologic3 and this is a pretty good summary of my feelings so far...

The reality is that even if JKR wasn't such a cunt, Harry Potter was popular with people who care now staring down the barrell of 40. Kids have anime at their fingertips now, they don't need that twee bullshit.

Fair play. Of all the reasons kids might no longer like Harry Potter, theorising it's because they don't like liberalism is the absolute funniest interpretation.

I've been doing #morningpages for nearly a year now, and I'm always amazed at the insights they pull out of me.

Had my first real conversation about death with my four-year-old today. She handled it pretty well, I think, but now I need a strong cup of tea and a hug.

I miss the days when weird Al just played the accordion and wrote funny parody songs.

I made the mother of all impulse buys this afternoon. My hope is that it will go some way to helping my writing in 2026 and not just sit on my desk like the creative equivalent of an unloved treadmill...

Spent a couple of hours this evening trying to turn an old Chromebook into a dedicated word processor by installing a new operating system, and the whole thing is making me realise how woeful my knowledge of computers really is. Might as well be pixies inside it making the pixels change colours...

You should all give @harleyeryley.bsky.social a follow, and a read! She's a wonderful writer and a lovely human being!

Andor was cooking so unbelievably hard good grief

Finally watched #Hamnet last night. It didn't reduce me to a puddle of tears despite the strategic use of Max Richter, but I enjoyed it a lot. That said, for the life of me I still can't tell you if Paul Mescal is a good actor, or just very good at playing Sad Men Who Need A Cuddle.

It's always nice when you find a book that feels like it was written for you, and #ThereIsNoAntimemeticsDivision is so far up my street that @qntm.org and I are basically neighbours. I started reading it on the train to work this morning and I'm already halfway through.

Hey, that's me! I'm very grateful to @writingeastmidlands.com for inviting me to be part of their mentoring scheme for 2026. Looking forward to meeting the other mentees and learning more about what they're working on!

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Nantes Workshop last year, and it was one of the best writing experiences I've ever had. No exaggeration, I wouldn't have finished my novel without it. Plus you get to spend a week in an absolutely gorgeous French town eating your weight in pastry!

Introducing our next 2026 mentee: Rose Shenton! 👋🎉 Rose is a 29-year-old transwoman and King's College graduate with a BA in English Literature. Her spy thriller, 'The Performance', was shortlisted for the best unpublished thriller at the 2024 Nashville Claymore Awards.

Our Mentoring Scheme mentees have been confirmed. Here's who we're going to be working with in 2026. 👀⬇️ First up: it's Aoife O'Connor! ✨ Aoife is a poet, producer, the founder of She Speaks, co-director of Derby Poetry Festival and vice-chair of Forward Arts Foundation board of trustees.

I still find it hard to believe that Sam Lake and co. got away with putting the "We Sing" chapter into Alan Wake II. It feels like something that any other studio would've focus-tested into oblivion, but Remedy somehow managed to turn it up to eleven.

Nobody has to enjoy anything but the way that people who didn't like the #StrangerThings finale have tried to fashion a conspiracy about a "true ending" that was "kept" from them is deeply pathetic. The Duffer Brothers made a creative choice that people didn't like. That's fine. Good, even!

Indie for AAA fans: Disco Elysium — one of the most remarkable pieces of interactive storytelling I've ever played. AAA for indie fans: Alan Wake II — proof that having a huge budget and cutting-edge graphics doesn't prevent you from making some real gonzo shit.

Indie for AAA-ers: Outer Wilds. Beautiful environment and direct control, which I think might be an easier transition than something more click-y or abstract. AAA for Indie-ers: Alan Wake II. Blockbuster made by proud weirdos. (I'm not getting into any "AA vs. AAA debates here)

The Spanish version is “the left liberates, the right oppresses” and once I learned that, both screws and politics made more sense

"The past is a foreign country; and right now with Jet2holidays you can save £50 per person — that's £200 off for a family of four! (ATOL protected)."

People literally will not be ABLE to appreciate the authentic if we don't demonise the AI slopping up every corner of the internet and drowning out the human art, how is that hard to understand

"I actually have one more E" I smirk, and, as Minister for Gadgets, jam my thumb into the Ejector Seat button I have had installed under the desk.

Been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed Mirage recently, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I'm enjoying it considering I haven't played an AC game since Syndicate. I bounced off Origins hard, and had no interest in either Odyssey or Valhalla. It's just nice to see Mirage go back to basics!

I'm not "proud" of never having used LLMs or AI-generated images in the same way I'm not "proud" of never having masturbated in the middle of the street. Doing it would be gross and shameful, *not* doing it is just the fucking baseline.

can you run doom on it tho

My Neighbor Totoro never fails to warm my heart. I know that a big part of what makes the worlds in Studio Ghibli films resonate is the oddness and the danger in them, but I want to live in a world where the logical response to meeting a strange creature is climbing onto its tummy and having a nap.

Clearly those sheep have never heard of the Baa-bra Streisand Effect.

Aye, very much so. "You can't want Scottish independence based on the useless leaders that England keeps electing. Besides, they weren't all a total disaster." "Which one wasn't a total disaster?" "The Scottish one."

If you haven't watched this film, then watch this film! 📽️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS6k...

Counterargument: no we shouldn't. If anything, we should double down. Exclusively refer to the people who use this shit as "slop goblins."

Instead of making New Year's Resolutions, I've decided to pick a word to embody over the course of 2026. (Spoiler alert, I chose #persist. It seemed pretty fitting, given the state of everything this morning.)

The other day I had the lovely realisation that I was blissfully unaware of a lot of current events over the festive period. Boy, that was nice while it lasted.

2020: Soul 2021: Another Round 2022: Nope 2023: Past Lives 2024: The Substance 2025: One Battle After Another Man, there have been some really great movies in the last few years...