Welcome 2025
Starting as we mean to go on
WRITING:
I had a topic all lined up for this first newsletter of the year but then I decided to hold it back for next time. After all, if you can’t save yourself a week’s content by posting a “what’s coming up” post in the first newsletter of the year, when can you?
First off, as I may have mentioned, I have two books coming out this year. Parallels surprised me by popping up on Amaz*n over Christmas as available for pre-order. Naturally, buying from trillionaires isn’t the ideal, not when there are independent book shops or direct-from-the-publisher options available, but heck, it’s better than not buying it all. So if you are a Bezos fan, you can pre-order it now here.
"THE MATRIX" MEETS THE FOREVER WAR IN JAMES KINSLEY'S BREATHTAKING SCI-FI ACTION ADVENTURE
Two worlds. One mind. Endless uncertainty.
Jeff is stuck in the mundane now, drifting through aimless days and gnawing doubts. Until the moment he sees the Pale Woman―and reality shifts. Suddenly, he’s Jezz, a mercenary trapped in a savage conflict, battling swarms of alien insects on a war-torn front line.
Is he a restless young man just scraping by, or a desperate soldier risking everything for humanity’s survival? As identities collide, one question rips through his fractured psyche:
What is reality?
Ray Adams VI is still untitled, but I’m imagining a July / August release. Time for me to edit, get it proofed and finally decide what to call it. If past experience has taught me anything, it’s that I can expect a hefty and difficult mood-crash post-Parallels-publication, so having something to focus on in the lull after Parallels comes out is no bad thing. Feedback’s starting to come in from my beta readers, and the thumbs are up - though I am also getting some really useful pointers on things I could polish, so thanks to those guys.
My next James Kinsley project will be a coming-of-age story I’ve had on the backburner for a while. Provisionally titled Everybody’s a Weird Guy, it’s about a young man coming to terms with… well, coming of age and all that entails. Girls, mainly. I want to get back to something contemporary, before I just become a genre guy. I love my science fiction and fantasy, but it’s not the only thing I want to do as a writer.
In that contemporary vein, I’ll also be looking to find a home for my novella Last Call for Sin. This one’s a very personal story, one for the Playtime crowd.
May 17th I shall be participating in the Norwich Independent Book & Zine Fair at the Forum in Norwich, selling Ray Adams titles. It’ll be the first time I’ve done that kind of event, so I’m a bit apprehensive, but it could be fun. Will mean having to get me one of those doodads for taking card payments on the fly. Suggestions/recommendations welcome.
Editing. Here’s an interesting one. Off the back of a review I wrote for Ioannis Mavrommatakis’ The Camping, I ended up offering to go over his manuscript and give him some specific pointers around the criticisms I offered. It was fun, and he was pleased enough with what I’d done to make a donation to my writing funds1. Facing redundancy as I am from the UEA, and having developed hugely as a writer over the past five years, I’m planning for 2025 to look into offering editing services. Henry was very complimentary about the state of my first draft of Playtime’s Over2 and while I obviously benefit enormously from other people’s input3, I genuinely feel as if I might have something to offer. And if I do end up getting the chop, it could be a sign that it’s time to push the writing career to the next level and get serious about exploring freelance options.
Am also hoping, of course, to grow my audience here. Though beyond plugging away and trying to Field of Dreams it, I’ve not got much in the way of ideas about how to go about that. And speaking of socials, thanks to Zuckerberg’s recent decision to get rid of Meta’s fact-checkers and encourage more talk about immigration and gender4, I’ve stepped away from Threads and am trying out Blue Sky. As I am everywhere, just look for unclekins.
So there we have it, a varied platter for 2025. I don’t do resolutions, but it’s good to have things on the horizon and some aims for the year.
I have enjoyed:
National Brick Events - The first weekend in January saw us up the UEA Sportspark for a Lego spectacular. A very good balance, we felt, between models to admire and traders5, with some activities thrown in as well. We’d gone on the off-chance because a friend had suggested it, and I was surprised how much time we spent mooching around.
It was not a trap. We also found out that there’s a more model-focused event in May at the Open Academy in Norwich…
Nosferatu - Richard Eggers’ remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Dracula knock-off6 isn’t for everyone7 but I thought it was excellent. Bit of an Eggers fan-boy and while this didn’t hit the dizzying heights of The Lighthouse or The Witch, it was undeniably atmospheric, beautiful to look at and perfectly cast. Also had one genius bit of understatement when Ellen asks Anna “Do you ever feel at times as if you're not a person? What I wish to say is that you're not truly present, nor alive, as if you're at the whim of another, like a dog. Someone or something had the power to breath life into you, to move you.” Anna’s response? “Well, we all get a little out of sorts.”
Anna’s idea of “a bit under the weather”. Across the Bridge - A 1957 noir by Ken Annakin, with Rod Steiger playing the crooked financier on the run who flees to Mexico under an assumed name, unaware that the man whose identity he’s stolen is wanted for murder. He becomes trapped in a border town, despised by the locals and unable to return to the USA for fear of arrest. The American and British authorities after him can’t pick him up in Mexico, they can only undermine his situation in an attempt to lure him back onto American soil. Criminally underrated, this is a genuine masterpiece, with Steiger on mesmerising form and an ending that will break your heart.
“I can almost the rampant capitalism and racism from here…” & Other Stories - In an interesting comparison, Yuri Herrera’s latest novel Season of the Swamp focuses on a Mexican exile struggling to survive on the USA side of the border. I often rave about the output of & Other Stories, but they really are an incredibly reliable publisher. You can read more of what I thought of Season of the Swamp and Manya Wilkinson’s Lublin on my website.
Greyskin (Deixis Press) and Playtime’s Over (Propolis) are both available direct from their respective publishers, as well as from all the usual places, online and off. You can also support my work by buying Ray Adams’ self-published books, or by simply buying me a coffee.
You can also pay for this free newsletter, if paying for free stuff is your jam.
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 monopolies, and supports independent bookshops. Affiliates also get a % of books sold through them, so go have a look.
Ioannis has essentially bought my table at the Book & Zine Fair, so huzzah for him.
Not that he didn’t eviscerate it to help me turn it into the finished book it was.
Parallels wouldn’t be the book it is without Angel’s guidance and input, nor would Greyskin have been.
Seems bizarre that having seen Threads only finally take off as Twitter sank further into the gutter, Zuckerberg’s response is to make Threads more like Twitter.
Don’t ask.
Not slating it, factually was a knock-off. Changed a few names and incidents to avoid copyright infringement, got sued anyway by Stoker’s estate, court mandated all copies be destroyed and only survives today as a masterpiece of the horror genre because a handful of copies escaped destruction.
It wasn’t even for everyone that we went with - sorry, B.