I try to keep a monthly cadence to these newsletters, but this one is horrifically overdue, which I’m putting down to recovery from Art Wave in September. It went well, I think. I have no idea if there were a lot of visitors or not enough visitors, but I’m grateful to everyone who showed up. The response to the work was very positive, which is always nice.
There were a few loopbacks, where people came in and left again straight away, but I have no problem with that. Different people like different things and my stuff isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
I had a lot of ideas for very complex projects in the run up to Art Wave and none of them worked out. Since then, all I’ve really wanted is the simplicity of writing stories with a paper and pencil, so I’m making a point of doing that every day, for at least an hour. It’s going pretty well. My usual writing strategy is to type as quickly as possible and then try and make sense of the mess, but I’m making a conscious choice to be patient with myself and I think it’s paying off. So far there have been little stories here and there of varying quality and one longer piece which just keeps expanding and expanding. I suspect it’ll end up in that awkward 20,000 word, is-this-a-novella-or just-a-flabby-short-story? range.
(Both the Nebula and Hugo Award classifications would class it as a novella, according to this post, which I will quote here for reference:
Short Story: less than 7,500 words;
Novelette: at least 7,500 words but less than 17,500 words;
Novella: at least 17,500 words but less than 40,000 words
Novel: 40,000 words or more.)
But it’s feeling good, at least in the moment. Writing short stories can be wonderful, right up until the point where you start looking at somewhere to publish the damn things. It makes writing poetry seem like a smart career move in comparison.
I find myself reminiscing of the days when short stories were in magazines and I’m a little resentful of people like Stephen King and Harlan Ellison for being able to make a living selling stories to magazines with names like Hoss and Man’s Monthly. I mean, they were both moderately talented, so I guess fair’s fair, but it really was a different world back then.
I read Ellison’s Greatest Hits collection a few months ago, having heard the name (and seen it credited at the beginning of The Terminator, due to its similarities to a couple of his stories). I enjoyed most of the stories, but mention must be made of the titles:
”Repent, Harlequin,” Said The Ticktock Man
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World
Big stories, big themes, executed with horrible precision. I spent quite a lot of time thinking I could never write this, before realising that was fine, because someone already had.
Buy Harlan Ellison, Greatest Hits on bookshop.org
Brighton Art Book Fair, 7th-8th December 2024
I’ll have a table at the Brighton Art Book Fair this year. It’s the inaugural event, and I think it’s going to be good. Do come and say hi if you’re in the area.
7th-8th December
Open 12–5pm
11–14 Waterloo Place
Brighton & Hove, Brighton
East Sussex, BN2 9NB
Tickets £2 on the door
https://www.brightonartbookfair.org
‘Book Selling for Book Artists’ by Russell Maret
This is a nice little zine about the author’s experiences of selling artists books (albeit incredibly tall to include in an email newsletter). It was certainly an eye opener in terms of it’s recommendations for pricing, although I suspect that the market for artists books is more robust in the US. More than that, I think it’s the gap between fine art and… whatever space it is that I’m currently occupying. Is it better to sell a thousand pamphlets for a pound or one thousand pound edition? Lots to think about.
Buy ‘Book Selling for Book Artists’ by Russell Maret
Books back in stock on the website
Fresh stock of Forms, The Real Writer’s Handbook, Sometimes I Feel Sad and My Secret Dog are available from my website store.
There’s also a fresh batch of Ten Regrets, Oubliette and Swiss Army Book.
Royal Mail says the last posting date for Christmas delivery in the UK is 20th December. I don’t trust that at all, so I’d say get any Christmas orders in before the 10th of December.
https://www.tomalexander.org/store
Stuff, lately
Rizzio by Denise Mina
Denise Mina’s Rizzio is a compact piece of historical fiction about the attempted overthrow of Mary I by a gang of co-conspirators that included her husband. Octavia says I only ever pick up books with black, white and yellow covers and that may be true, but I enjoyed this quite a lot.
Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova
Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova starts with an act of madness caused by grief that somehow, over the course of the book, seems to make more and more sense. When her 11 year old son Santiago dies, Magos cuts out a piece of his lung. Feeding it broth causes it to grow into a small feral animal that both is and is not her dead son. How the rest of the family, including Santiago’s father, react to this new sort-of son is told from four different perspectives and the whole thing stayed with me after I’d finished. It’s not, as I first thought, a translation, but the author is originally from Mexico and is now working in the US (and in English). It also has a nice purple cover.
Buy Monstrilio at Bookshop.org
Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Honestly, I don’t play video games that much, but when I do find one I like, I’ll mention them. Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a weird amalgamation of Viz-like northern humour and Bananaman-style 80s animation. Gameplay is based around running surreal errands for various townfolk. The gameplay is pretty simple and oit’s best to think of it as an interactive cartoon pitched just about right and doesn’t outstay its welcome. And you can play it on a Mac. Oh, and when I completed it I sent off a self-addressed envelope and they sent me a present.
Buy ‘Thank Goodness You’re Here!’ on Steam
Party by Aldous Harding
In terms of music, Aldous Harding’s 2017 album Party is still on quite heavy rotation, which might account for feeling quite glum a lot of the time. Spare acoustic gloom with little puncture holes of light. Love it, particularly Imagining My Man and Horizon.
Aldous Harding - Party on Apple Music
The Phenol Tapes by Scanner
I also enjoyed Scanner’s The Phenol Tapes, but must admit that most of my enjoyment came from imagining how much my wife would hate it. It’s a load of bleeps and bloops made with an experimental synthesizer, but it is very bleepy and bloopy.
Scanner - The Phenol Tapes on Bandcamp
The Hypnosis
This trailer for The Hypnosis doesn’t give much away, but it does just enough to give you the flavour of the film. (That’s how trailers are supposed to be, right?) We watched the film last night and really enjoyed it, although there was definitely some squirming along the way.
‘The Hypnosis’ is available on Mubi. You can get a free seven day trial.
Odds and ends
I heard one of the hosts of The Vergecast say: “Let me just double-click on what you just said” and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.
I want Panasonic’s Silky Fine Mist, a display technology that shows images in mid-air. I don’t know quite what I’d do with it, but it’s got lots of possibilities. Unfortunately, it looks like it consumes 1.21 gigawatts of energy to run, so Elon Musk will probably use it to display his ‘best’ tweets or something.
Hope you’re keeping well. Don’t give in to the grey winter gloom. There is much in this world that is great and good.
ta