🌘 SOME PERSONAL NEWS: 🌒 Sadly, I have been laid off from my job as a senior reporter at The Independent. I had great fun. Did some amazing work with amazing people. No regrets. But now I am urgently looking for new work. Journalism, copywriting, staff or contract; you name it, I'm interested.

(The painter JC Hook, not the crocophobic sea captain)

‘Backrooms’ takes an internet meme about unsettling, utterly mundane spaces and gives it a gothic twist. It is, writes @willwiles.bsky.social, a haunted house movie for the modern age.

Agreed but I would be very grateful if we could do this in a way that does not apply to we unfortunates who need chunky-framed glasses to avoid looking like a haunted moon

Me on "Backrooms" and "Exit 8" (and, tangentially, on "The Way Inn"): apollo-magazine.com/backrooms-fi...

We are profoundly saddened to share that our Honorary President, Maureen Duffy, has passed away. Maureen was extraordinary: a novelist, poet, playwright and critic of incredible range, and one of the founding figures of ALCS. Learn more about her legacy and impact: https://ow.ly/yHWs50Z52Ye

Duffy was a wonderful, genre-defying writer, and a true original. I was thinking about her novel "Capital" only last week. RIP

Tony Blair tells Radio 4 that the £257 million his institute has received from a billionaire AI investor has absolutely nothing to with his lobbying for the AI industry

Massively, massively pleased. (and, if I'm honest, grateful still to be in the game...)! “Genre-defying, boundary-pushing, ideas-filled and hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck-raisingly-exciting, Thrones and Powers is, in my opinion, the novel of a writer at the peak of his powers.'

You want the tooth? You can't handle the tooth!

Thank you @mollytanzer.bsky.social for the very kind mention of "The Dead Man's Empire" in this interview! thenerddaily.com/molly-tanzer...

Treat me gently… @saltpublishing.com

A brisk, right up to date, very accessible account of the rise of the far right in the UK, some ways of understanding why, and (most welcome) some positive strategies for resisting and reversing. From @trillingual.bsky.social via @picadorbooks.bsky.social

Do people understand yet that this was never about reasonable concerns. That no compromise would ever be enough for them. They want to be able to actively discriminate against us. They want us not to exist.

I associate them very strongly with visits to my grandparents and Special Occasions. £25 sounds about right. Discovering how much they really cost was one of the great surprises of adulthood.

"Though pushed by a minuscule number of people, the assault has been full-spectrum—government, courts, press, the health system, radicalised internet groups, and violent vigilantes." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

The Dead Man's Empire by @willwiles.bsky.social? Don't listen to us, listen to @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social. The Last Blade Priest and The Dead Man's Empire - properly epic fantasy.

“Why I’m Calling You” from Wonder by Chris Emery

Finally! I have been after a complete set of these, because of Pauline Baynes' superb artwork on the covers, for ages.

Very brief thoughts on "Nonesuch" by Francis Spufford over at Instagram: www.instagram.com/p/DYovpNxM-_...

would you accept this if the words were about excluding a black or brown person? If not then you should be writing to your MP and the EHRC today.

Dream review here from a Guardian bookshop reader. With this book, more than any I've written before, I was trying to think: "what would readers actually find useful right now?" guardianbookshop.com/if-we-tolera...

I've been reading through a near-complete version our next #TTRPG book, GOLD TEETH, and while I am not exactly a neutral commentator I can say that @marshdavies.bsky.social is now operating on another level. Do not miss. You can still secure a late pledge copy: www.kickstarter.com/projects/149...

We are playing through this now, helmed by wise old wizard @rossignol.bsky.social! It draws together a fantastically consequential and rich tapestry of people, cultures and relationships. Can't get enough of it.

HEAD OF TEETH

This scared the shit out of me until it was explained that it only crawls out late at night.

Good thread

Today is the day my art heist novella, AND SIDE BY SIDE THEY WANDER, is out in the world! To celebrate, I’ll mail a signed copy of my book to one lucky person who reposts this post (or tags me in their own) with the cover + what work of art they’d steal if they were going to rob a museum…

My Nour chairs for Beit Collective, handmade in Beirut beit-collective.com/product/nour...

For @apollo-magazine.com, I wrote about the American cartoonist Alan Dunn, in light of a new book that appraises him as a critic of architecture: apollo-magazine.com/alan-dunn-ne...

the only video worth rescuing from my deleted twtter

What will inevitably happen with this is that the entire conversation will centre on whether or not people can tell if something is written by AI, thereby conveniently obscuring the much more important question: what were the criteria by which this writing was judged as exceptional?

Patron saint of writers, salespeople, and the blind. Make of that what you will.

This week's theme is 'People of London' - a celebration of ALL the people who make and have made London the beautiful city it is. ------ 'The London Underground' (from 'This Is London', 1959) by Miroslav Šašek

The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed

Tried to open that Guardian list, something strange happened to my computer

Fantastic review for The Dead Man's Empire (and The Last Blade Priest) by W.P. Wiles.

"This is one of the most satisfying, well crafted secondary world fantasy series out there, perfect for fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Tyrant Philosophers or Alex Pheby's Cities of the Weft" - thank you @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social for such a kind review of "The Dead Man's Empire" in April's Locus!

Writing tip: Before submitting your manuscript, read it aloud to yourself from beginning to end. Then go to the refrigerator and open its door. If the manuscript is good, all the potatoes will have turned into birds who fly out singing your name.

Wes Anderson's Stalker

The odious Streeting reminds me of the disturbing way Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell used to draw Cecil Parkinson

Reminded, for no particular reason, of the 1996 Australian documentary "Rats in the Ranks", which is very entertaining and worth a watch. aso.gov.au/titles/docum...

Vote Monster Raven Sanctuary Party

One recurring and confusing feature of politics and geopolitics in the 2020s is people making plans on the apparent assumption that everyone else, even opponents, will just passively let them get on with those plans. It's very odd, almost childlike.

It's the third-largest business in the world, it makes all crime possible, and it might have a huge but unacknowledged influence over our society and politics: money laundering. Interesting piece by John Lanchester on a couple of important books. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The Last Blade Priest and The Dead Man's Empire? Don't listen to us, listen to Ian Green.

Thank you Ian for this lovely review!

With the notorious difficulty of hosting conventions in London, I have a feeling this is the first one in a while. Though we simply envision it as a chance to talk books, and there's a chaaarming little pub next door...

THE LAST BLADE PRIEST is one of my favourite fantasy novels of the last decade- utterly unique worldbuilding, beautiful characterisation, and truly fantastical. Book 2 THE DEAD MAN'S EMPIRE absolutely delivers on the promise of the first- immersive and brutal, in turns beautiful and harrowing 🐥

Thank you Ian for this lovely review!