Can't believe ChatGPT is ruining the reputation of em dashes. Starting to look like astroturfing by big grammar and big Latin to get me to use semicolons — you'll take my run-on sentences from my cold, dead hands! 👊———👊

Why are there so many sad songs about Ohio? What happens there?

"Pigeons. They're intelligent but they've nah got the concept of teams." www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnbV...

"Love is a bullet into the mind of loneliness/ Spraying lonely blood all over the wall of regret." Somebody needs to give Conor O'Malley a Pulitzer already. Greatest mind of the 20th century. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYrN...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiCg... Whatever happened to DVD?

Stoked to see The Borrowed Hills made it onto the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award shortlist. Some incredibly impressive books to be alongside here! 🧡🐑

Had a lot of fun doing this interview for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year shortlist talking about Westerns, Cumbria and getting published 🐑 www.youngwriteraward.com/readers-on-w...

So thrilled to see The Borrowed Hills among this great longlist of first novels! 🐑🐑🐑

The shortlist for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award was announced today @thetimes.com Congratulations to Harriet Baker, Moses McKenzie, @scottprestonauthor.bsky.social and Ralf Webb www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Saving for future reference 🪶

For whatever reason, my long playlists of field recordings are about the most popular thing I’ve done. So here’s one for new releases in 2024 to listen to while you taxidermy roadkill or study the anatomy of flightless birds. open.spotify.com/playlist/7qI...

I don’t get coming-of-age films these days. They feel so alien. The teenagers talk like Marvel characters, have $1,000 outfits and are so, so cool. They’re Instagram stories come to life. What happened to losers trying to fit in? Y’know, that strange thing we used to call adolescence.

Writing a book about lonely men doing lonely work has led to odd conversations about how men express themselves. Or don’t. My feeling is they do, but we don’t really want to listen, and to prove it, here’s 100 rough-tough cowboys singing 100 songs about loneliness. open.spotify.com/playlist/6ZV...

Here’s my final list of the 100 Best Songs from Northern England in 2024. May as well have to something to show for all the time I spend making lists of UK music releases by region. open.spotify.com/playlist/0XY...

I can’t stop looking at this album cover.

Here’s my list of the 100 best songs of 2024. open.spotify.com/playlist/28W... First year that I’ve felt like a cloud-yelling millennial. Lots of the hipster trash from my youth making an appearance. Lots of confusion about what’s cool.

Great to see The Borrowed Hills on here! “A pitch-black western set amid the sheep farms of Cumbria, striking and powerful.”

Fiction runner-up: The Borrowed Hills, Scott Preston (Scribner) Nonfiction runner-up: Every Valley, Charles King (Doubleday)

This should have been on many more award lists this year.

Not much to say about the films of 2024. Felt like a quiet year. My favourite was Anora but that doesn’t make me feel special enough. So, I’m going to put my 10 best films of 2025 instead: 🧵  1.⁠ ⁠The Battle of Batkan Cross – Another masterwork from Paul Thomas Anderson. ...

I made a Letterboxd account a while ago, but I don’t really like writing reviews. Never agree with myself once I’m done. Anyroad, I do like making lists. So, I made one for the 100 films that influenced The Borrowed Hills: letterboxd.com/scottpreston...

Hot take #1. Tablecloths are coming back in a big way. Bistro-core will take over Pinterest. Crisp, white tablecloths: thick five-hundred thread count ones. They’re very fancy and very calming and I’m not feeling exposed wood for 2025. Count on this.

My wife said I need more hot takes on the internet. Get into online scrapes. Put some dirt in my eye. But it’s difficult because I mostly watch telly and eat biscuits and none of my opinions live very long. I’ll see what I can do.

The Borrowed Hills by Scott Preston is one of my two favorite novels of the year. Every sentence a work of art. So what a joy and honor to be able to speak with him about it and my debut novel What We Tried to Bury Grows Here for Write or Die Magazine. writeordiemag.com/author-inter...