Welcome to my newsletter for keeping in touch with readers. Here's where I’ll keep readers up to date with - where I am with my latest projects, when a new book (or something else) is coming out, when I'm accepting the Best Screenplay Oscar or whoops, I must learn to separate fiction from that other stuff, I think they may call it real life.
My latest projects August 2024
Within sight of the finish line are ‘Jacksboro Highway’ and ‘As the clever hopes expire.’
‘As the clever hopes expire’
My next short story collection has been 7/8 finished for ages. I put it aside because I was enjoying writing ‘Iraa and the five stories’ so much. By the time I launched Iraa I’d become excited about Jacksboro Highway and got stuck in to it. The only holdups for ‘clever hopes’ is editing the last two stories and deciding on cover art. And the blurb.
The title is a line from W.H. Auden’s poem ‘September 1st 1939’
The artwork for my first collection was a lot easier. ‘And its fall was great’ is the final sentence from Jesus’ parable about the man who built his house on sand. So the tide coming in to wash away the sandcastle illustrated it perfectly.
As I’ve suggested in previous newsletters, my main theme concerns what happens when spoiled, unthinking agitators and influencers, (SJWs, social media and MSM commentators) tinker with the foundations of our civilisation, armed with power they didn’t gain on merit, without the foggiest idea of the consequences, positive reinforcement provided by the addictive warm glow of showing how much more righteous they are than those (select enemy’s category here – choose from swivel-eyed, tin foil hat, closet racists and fruitcakes, antivaxxers, little Englanders, outdated reactionary conspiracy theory peddlers, Nazi fascists ad infinitum) and protected from the need to check, test or go slowly because their echo chamber tells them they couldn’t possibly have got anything wrong. What others might call arrogance, stupidity and extreme myopia.
You can see why I’m stuck on the artwork.
Jacksboro Highway
Next novel, working title ‘Jacksboro Highway’, after the John Mayall song, explores the theme of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Imagine Wolf Larsen, one of the most dangerous villains in literature, survives the collapse. What would he do then? Change his ways and his nature? Work peacefully and co-operatively as part of a survivor community? Of course not. Larsen would carry on exactly as before, the apex predator feared by his powerless prey. A wolf in the sheepfold. Can anyone oppose and defeat him before every sheep is killed and eaten? That’s the role of the sheepdog, essential for any successful civilisation to survive and prosper. Rough men, prepared to do violence on behalf of the peaceful citizens, who can’t do it for themselves.
Except in pre-collapse England those sheepdogs had their claws and teeth pulled, were tamed, gentrified and civilised. Or punished until they gave up being sheepdogs. The wolves, however, thrived and prospered.
I’m at the editing stage. Jacksboro Highway is going to finish as a long novella. I have some mental images for the cover. And a map which I’ll make downloadable from the website - when I work out how to.
Two other projects – Epic length novel ‘The sleep of ages break’ and screenplay ‘Borderline Brat camp’ remain on the backburner.
In the meantime, I hope you'll try something you haven't read yet.
Happy reading
Martin