November 2024 newsletter and updates
What I’ve been reading
I won’t bore you with a list, only highlights that one day I may write reviews for and put up on the website. John D McDonald (famous for Cape Fear and Travis McGee) about whom someone said without whom there would have been no Elmore Leonard and therefore no Quentin Tarantino, wrote a detective series with a richly written protagonist, a ‘knight in tarnished armour’, Travis McGee.
I’m working through the series again, thirty years on. Highly recommended. George Pelecanos pays tribute to McDonald and McGee in ‘The man who came uptown’ by featuring the first book, ‘The Long Blue Goodbye’ in a prison reading class and having the prisoners give their takes on it. Two of the three protagonists are in the room.
Two Steven King’s. ‘The Institute’ and ‘The Outsider’. How does he do it so effortlessly? I have a few ideas for plots and themes that come close to his in their scale and some great characters but how on earth can I approach what he does with his?
Still working through Chekhov’s long collection of short stories. So many of these will be read over again and again to squeeze out more juice. George Saunders (English Lit Prof, novelist and one of the best contemporary short story writers) features three of Chekhov’s stories in his analysis of seven 19th C Russian short stories ‘A swim in a pond in the rain’. Other authors include Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev. I may have made it sound dull and dry but it’s the opposite.
What I’ve been writing
In September’s newsletter I introduced you to my latest hero. Tagline - ‘Colin Cowsbotham: Tech Nerd. Virgin. Superhero.’
Colin is about 32K words right now. I anticipate he’ll end up a full length novel. I thought I could attach the first chapter but it’s not quite polished enough. Should be alright for the next newsletter.
More completed short stories and more in work. I know, I only just published ‘As the clever hopes expire’. Most of these are medium-long stories, some at editing stage, some merely skeletons. Not many are post-collapse this time and some straddle the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Working titles – ‘Sigurd and the real girl,’ ‘Hawksbill Five - O - Eight’, ‘Princesses in the new world’. I probably won’t complete a book’s worth before Colin but I won’t be far behind.
What’s coming next?
Jacksboro Highway is still at the editors. But I’m off to New Zealand for a month – to watch two out of three Test matches – so I won’t be able to make any changes, format and publish until after New Year. I intend to send you another newsletter in between, including Colin’s first chapter.
Happy reading, Martin
My latest projects May 2024
1. Novel No 4, a fantasy story, ‘Iraa and the five stories’ and my first collection of short stories ‘And its fall was great’ are both published. Available through Amazon and Kobo.
2. 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.
But in that pre-collapse England it was open season on sheepdogs. Armed police, British troops serving overseas, prison officers – all cancelled, prosecuted, imprisoned until they became an endangered species.
The wolves, however, ate it up. Thrived and prospered. But that‘s another story.
3. Two other projects – Novel ‘The sleep of ages break’ and screenplay ‘Borderline Brat camp’ remain on the backburner.
Happy reading
Martin
My latest projects Aug 2022
1. My first book of short stories with the working title 'And its fall was great.' Or it could be another quote like 'The lights must never go out' or 'As the clever hopes expire'. The theme I'm aiming for is difficult to summarise in one sentence but includes the complacent, lazy, almost entitled view, (except entitlement takes more mental effort to achieve than this idle, unexamined zephyr of an idea) that everything Britons have that's great, dropped effortlessly out of the sky into our laps and no matter how careless and slack handed we are with them, they could never, ever be lost or broken beyond repair.
I've used the post-collapse landscape in about half of them, it’s such a generous canvas with huge potential for exploring alternative ways of living, how the collapse unfolded (consider The Scarlet Plague to The Stand to Z for Zachariah), how people addicted to their index linked lives might cope (or not) when everything flies away. I've set one in present day mental health services where staff are handcuffed by some politicians' latest genius wheeze. Another's set in a football stadium with an AI ref a few years from now. Yet another is at an Inquiry into a Tube station fire where some political players are desperate that the truth doesn't come out. Quite a few are set in and around mental hospitals or community teams. One is titled 'Borderline building,' another 'Munchausen's mother.' I have enough ideas for a gross of short stories, many are 'in work' and enough are within sight of the finish line for me to whet your appetite that it will indeed be released soon, before projects two and three.
2. Second project is the fourth novel, set just a few years in the future, right at the point when the last and irreversible financial collapse occurs, offering, possibly, a choice for some - some villages and towns, some groups, even some countries - to reset their economies, their values, their whole societies to a place where all the people, not just the 000.1% and their political and legal fixers, are looked after, thrive and prosper That is unless the super-rich, aided by their corporations, governments, shysters, licenced gangsters and triggermen grab it all back again first. This story will be on a huge canvas, double the length of a novel, set in a dozen and more countries. The scope of Stephen King's 'Under the Dome' and 'The Stand' with their multiple locations and large cast inspired me to expand my own horizon.
Wealth inequality has stabilised to a point where there are a hundred multinational 'Blue Whales', individuals as rich and richer than countries while the rest of the world have job security, basic public services but nothing else and no hope of ever gaining more. Most don’t even recognise they are no more than the Blue Whales’ slaves.
3. The third project has rather stalled, I don't know where to take it, since UK agents have inexplicably shown such indifference to my first three novels. It's a screenplay for a TV series, set in a Northern NHS psychiatric service, a few years from now, after, yes, the final and irreversible financial collapse, when all the fake money dries up along with the layers of management, auditors, bean counters, E&D officers and anyone who doesn't provide direct care, i.e. back to the seventies.
Borderlines, now there's no money to pay their rescuers, ambulance chasers, professional absolvers, DBT therapists and on and on ad nauseam find themselves not only at the bottom of the pile again but with a maxed out and cancelled ‘get out of jail free’ card. Our hero is an older psych nurse who, in the spirit of 'the school of hard knocks' leads them into the hills on 'Borderline Boot Camp'. The first episode is complete and the second half-way.
When I get organised, I'll probably send it off to TV agents. Or turn it into a novel.
À bientôt everybody,
Martin
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
My latest projects Jan 2024
In my last newsletter I was close to completing my first collection of short stories, working title ‘And its fall was great.’ I was also well on the way with what I thought would be novel No 4, working title ‘The sleep of ages break.’
1. ‘And its fall was great’ is now complete. 17 stories, that have inexplicably failed to set agents’ desktops alight. The longest 16,000, the shortest 200 words. Here’s the pitch which will have to convert to a blurb soon.
Here are a few teasers. In present day psychiatric services, staff are handcuffed by some politicians' latest genius wheeze. In a football stadium with an AI ref a few years from now. A ‘Lost World’ post collapse valley where a handful of men travel between farms operated by women. Quite a few are set in and around mental hospitals or community teams. One is titled 'Borderline building,' another ‘Munchausen’s mother.’ ‘An unexamined life’ forces a retired psychiatric nurse manager to re-examine her rose-coloured memories of her career. In New Zealand two tribes have found a way to co-exist peacefully until a former neoliberal businessman arrives. Initiation Day for teenage boys in a warrior led village is not what it looks like. A successful post-collapse farm is invaded by professional criminals straight from the pages of modern crime. In these stories, survivors and leaders are forced to ask; how do we deal with free riders, rebels, criminals and entitlement, how do we defend ourselves or unite groups of people so diverse they’d never ordinarily even meet, when the structures and services that once did it for us have vanished? I.e. how might real equality and diversity, real justice, real unity be achieved (or not) when the imposed, top down, written as policy and enforced as law versions, have gone?
Appearing soon on the website and Amazon.
2. ‘The sleep of ages break’ is on the backburner because of 3
3. The fourth novel, fantasy genre, working title ‘The power of a story’ took on a life of its own. It is complete but going through some re-editing after a professional editor cast her eye over it. Here’s the blurb.
When armies from the Five Kingdoms of Arcadia surrounding the small city state of Berith arrive on the crater rim above, only Iraa, the city’s elderly and disillusioned Wise Woman is aware. She quickly takes action to secure a five day pause.
That was the easy part.
The city has been deliberately and invisibly riven into irretrievably opposed factions who can barely hold back from violence, let alone cooperate.
Iraa entertains no hope that she’ll unite those who’ve remained uncorrupted. Yet that’s the only way to placate the angry, vengeful armies above. She knows she’ll fail, perhaps even before the truce runs out. No-one could do it. Bringing the Straight forces together? Revealing the villains? Satisfying the armies’ demands for justice? In five days? While remaining true to her Order’s code? Five hundred would be pushing it. But she’ll be damned if she doesn’t fail with her Order’s honour and integrity intact.
4. The third project, the screenplay ‘Borderline Brat camp’ remains stalled. The pilot episode is complete. The few agents who take screenplays have been underwhelmed. You can read the premise in Dispatches I which is on the website.
If it doesn’t get picked up as a screenplay I expect I’ll turn it into a novel.
À bientôt everybody,
Martin