Three weeks to go until Parallels
Time to be putting myself about
NEWS:
As mentioned last time, this week saw my ‘Fiver Books About Ordinary Guys Doing Ordinary Things’ piece for Shepherd.com go live - click here for the piece.
I was taken unawares yesterday when I got my monthly email from SciFiNow’s mailing list to see, between links to pieces on Thunderbolts* and Star Wars, an ad for Parallels that my publisher secured. Nice! And a tasty little bump in my website traffic.
I also may have a piece running in a national newspaper this weekend. I’ll believe it when I see it, and I’m guessing it’ll be just online, so I won’t say anymore right now. Watch the skies.
And it’s still not too late to get your pre-orders in…
ON WRITING:
Given the bump in traffic from the SciFiNow ad and therefore the potential bump from the potential thinkpiece, I figured I could stretch, for the next few weeks, to going back to a weekly newsletter schedule. It’s not my intention to go back permanently to weekly - as I said when I originally cut back to fortnightly, it’s too easy to get into stuff like this and forget to do any actual book-writing.
But it is, perhaps, advisable to ramp up a bit in the immediate run-up to a new book coming out. More people may well be stumbling across me, and let’s make sure that those of you who don’t read every issue1 get a chance to get swept up in the atmosphere too.
In all seriousness, if the job of a modern author involves marketing & publicity as well as, you know, writing books, then this will naturally be a busy period2. If you’re an indie author, especially, your book could live or die by how much attention you’re able to draw to yourself.
Those of you who know me will know that I’m, by nature, a very shy and retiring figure, not given in any way to showing off3. So this is definitely where the whole ‘treating it like a job, my publisher as my employer and my publicist as my line manager’ comes in. Game face on, say yes to anything and basically Be About. Even if you have nothing to say, make sure you’re saying it loudly and often, to anyone who’ll listen. Or who won’t listen.
Is there a line to walk? Probably not. I genuinely worry about people getting sick of my wanging on. I worry that I talk too much about my books IRL, that my friends all roll their eyes when I start chatting about it. I share very little about it on my personal Facebook, because I don’t want to irritate people. None of which, when you think about it, is probably very healthy. People who love football or their cats post about football or their cats all the time. Why shouldn’t I big up my writing any chance I get?
It’s not me, though. I am always going to worry about whether I’m boring people, it’s one of the reasons I’m so self-conscious about small talk4. That’s just who I am. All of which is to say, don’t worry, this tsunamic influx of weekly newsletters is just for the next few weeks. We’ll be back to business as usual in June.
I have enjoyed:
Spaceman - Is there anything more confusing in cinema than the Adam Sandler Paradox? One of those actors who is his own genre, Adam Sandler Films are hugely divisive. I have friends who swear by them, and others, like me, who just swear at them5. The paradox is that Adam Sandler is truly excellent in films that aren’t Adam Sandler Films. Funny People, Punch-Drunk Love, The Meyerowitz Stories and this 2024 Netflix Original where Sandler plays a Czech cosmonaut on a lone mission to Jupiter who misses the wife who always came second to his career back on earth, and who befriends a massive space-spider. Seriously, it’s amazing. And Raj from The Big Bang Theory is in it with a dope moustache.
“Just once I’d like to play a cool guy who doesn’t have anything to do with space.” The Northman - Big fan of The Witch, big fan of The Lighthouse, I went into The Northman with expectations so high I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Finally got around to giving it a second viewing last night and yep, it was the expectations because now I can appreciate it for how awesome it actually is. Also, I often watch foreign films if my wife is working in the evenings, so she won’t be distracted by dialogue from what I’m watching in the next room and this also works for that because it’s mainly grunting.
I could look like this if I wanted. I just don’t want to. Conflict of Wings - Billed as a comedy drama, this 1954 film is so gentle it’s barely either of those things, yet it is endearingly charming. The tale of Norfolk villagers protesting an RAF testing range being built on a local bird reserve, and actually shot in Norfolk, it’s a bit of a delight if you don’t mind films that are largely uneventful and then have a hugely dramatic climax out of nowhere where almost the entire village nearly gets killed because of a faulty telephone wire.
Even making it into a postcard doesn’t make it much less exciting. Going to the tip - Had a look around our local recycling centre’s shop6 this morning. S wouldn’t let me buy this amazing painting of some boats I loved that we have no room for, but I did buy this delightful lacquerware box for a pound.
Isn’t it darling?
Purchase Greyskin (Deixis Press) and Playtime’s Over (Propolis) direct from their respective publishers, as well as from all the usual places, online and off.
Pre-order either of my upcoming titles from Deixis Press.
Ray Adams’ self-published books are available online.
This newsletter is currently free but obviously takes time to produce. If you’d like to support an indie author still finding his way, I have a Buy Me a Coffee account. Your call.
I also review books on my website, most of which are available through my affiliate book shop on uk.bookshop.org - it’s a great alternative to certain online leviathans owned by Trump-supporting billionaires, and supports independent bookshops. Affiliates also get a % of books sold through them, so go have a look.
What the actual heck?
We hope. Oh boy, do we hope.
Shut up.
For more on this theme, pre-order my novella It’s Hard to Tell You This, out in September!
Except that subgenre Adam Sandler Films With Drew Barrymore In Them, which are great.
Caravan of crap they saved from the bins because some idiot might pay a few quid for it.