| | | | Oof, it's been quite a month. 🇺🇸
I spent a lot of it absorbed in political news--I don't know if you heard, but there's been a changing of the guard up north. Donald Trump is back in power, deporting this and executive ordering that. People keep saying his behaviour is unprecedented in a US president, but I'm not sure that's true. He seems to have Bill Clinton's forebearance, Richard Nixon's integrity, and the quiet dignity of Lyndon B Johnson. | | | |
Then again, I suppose it is unprecedented to have all those qualities at once. I'm reminded of Tyrion Lannister's line in Game of Thrones: "We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings, but I don't believe we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king." There's always a crisis somewhere in the world, of course, but I feel personally responsible for this one. Back in 2015, I defended Trump online. I said he wasn't that racist or homophobic (because I'd been reading Slate Star Codex, a since-deleted blog). I also said it didn't much matter who the US president was, because they didn't have anywhere near as much power and influence as people thought (I'd heard that on the Freakonomics podcast).
I was quickly proven wrong on all this, and more besides. But even as Trump shrank in my esteem, I developed a newfound respect for Americans, who resisted fearlessly en masse. To pick just one example, in June of 2018, hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against the treatment of refugees at the Mexican border, and Trump was forced to back down. (For context, the Australian government was illegally detaining refugees on Christmas Island at the time, and the regional processing centre on Manus Island had recently closed, leaving 600 refugees stranded. I recall a lot of hand-wringing, but not much marching.)
To assist a demagogue once may be regarded as a misfortune; twice looks like carelessness. And yet, I indirectly helped Trump win a second time. I paid thousands of dollars to Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, X and News Corp, who all supported his campaign. I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to buy my soul back--I've cancelled all my paid advertising and unsubscribed from two streaming services in protest, but I'm not naive enough to think that will accomplish anything. (I also went out and bought a Mitsubishi instead of a Tesla, which I'd love to pretend was also a protest, but in reality, I probably couldn't afford a Tesla either way.)
Still. Credulous as I am, long-term readers will know that my books have a strange habit of predicting the future. There was a COVID epidemic and a war near the Russia/Ukraine border in The Cut Out (2015), there were "digi-phones" and lab-grown meat in The Lab (2006), and so on. Parts of 200 Minutes of Danger (2020) are set in the year 2062, when Canada is the 51st US state... but Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is the president.
So there's hope, I guess?
Anyway, this is a long, roundabout way of saying that I spent much of January doomscrolling instead of writing. I've since cut myself off from all sources of news, which feels irresponsible, but not as irresponsible as neglecting my deadlines. People braver than me are standing up to tyranny--the least I can do is make sure they have something fun to read on their breaks.
Speaking of which... | | | | Cover reveal!
Frankenstein and the Patchwork Man finally has cover art that I can share! What do you think? I love it. It's so refreshing to see Rose and the Ninth Doctor after all this time.
Usually I have nothing to do with the covers, but in this case, I did make one suggestion, and I'm pleased to say that the publisher complied! Check out the figure in the background.
The ebook comes out on April 24, and the print edition on July 15. Pre-order it now from your local bookshop! Tell 'em I sent ya. | | | | | | Two weeks until The Spider Army!
It’s almost midnight in the middle of summer. A man calls triple 0. He says he’s been bitten by a bluebacked spider. No-one knows of any such creature. The operator asks for clarification, but now the man is screaming. ‘They’re coming out of the walls!’ he shrieks. ‘Help me! Somebody help!’
Axe Falls is a town of mysterious disappearances, terrifying visions and unusual events. Everyone there has heard the urban legend of the deadly blue-back spider. But when Yvette sees a real one at school, she starts to wonder if the whispers might actually be true. Were the victim’s agonised screams, grotesque disfiguration and disappearance more than just a campfire story? What’s really lurking in the shadows?
Preorder it from your local bookshop now!
| | | | | | I'd love to tell you more about what I've been reading and what else I've been working on, but as usual, I've run out of time. (Why did I spend so long checking all the facts on my little political rant above? Lord knows Trump wouldn't have bothered.)
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| | | | This newsletter is free, and I won't sell your information under any circumstances, ever. I'll just send you nonsense like this every month or so. There is no archive of these posts, so subscribing is the only way to collect them.
Why is there no archive? Because I hate reading old posts full of broken links, and so do you. Also, I want my lasting body of work to be my novels, which are ruthlessly edited, and not my newsletters, which aren't even spell-checked.
See you next month-ish, Jack 🖋️ | | Written on unceded Ngunnawal/Ngambri land. I acknowledge elders past, present and emerging. Always was, always will be.
Some social buttons are missing below. That's a protest, not a mistake. | | | | | | | | | |
