Notes from the peninsula
Thoughts on writing, literature, film
and living a creative life
The Broken
A mirror falls off a wall during a party, releasing cold-hearted döppelgangers from a mirror world who begin to replace their counterparts.
The Complex
Michael Walters
My debut novel, The Complex, available direct from Salt Publishing, from Amazon in the UK, and of course BOOKSHOPS.
The Cursed
Kelly Reilly plays another mother, this time on a remote estate in nineteenth-century rural England, and is visited by a ‘pathologist’ instead of Poirot. A curse is made, werewolves ensue.
A Haunting in Venice
I started this year’s #31DaysofHorror with a classic whodunnit mashed with a ghost story. Kenneth Branagh plays around with spooky children, Viennese masks and fish eye lenses to fun effect.
Envy
Picked up Brother of the More Famous Jack. Barbara Trapido is an incredible writer. Nagging envy made me put it down after the first five pages.
Worth and work
I’ve been reading more this month. I decided to read a novel for thirty minutes uninterrupted at least once every day. I had to dig around to find the motivation to do that because I’d fallen out of love with reading (again).
Duality
I’m deep into my summer break, which has not gone to plan. We’ve cancelled our holiday to care for a sick parent. Ironically, I’m feeling better than I have in a while. Life can be both.
Eastmouth and other stories
Intricate studies in helplessness and despair, by Alison Moore. The characters, shackled by the environment and language, are slowly crushed by a variety of things.
Pick something
In the bookshop I let my eyes drift over bright modern covers and serious-looking classics. I didn't buy a book. I have books. My problem is I can't choose one to read.
Meg 2: The Trench
Teeth and tentacles chomp, devour, squeeze and rip through submarines, boats, research stations, and eventually a holiday resort. People die. Lots of people having fun die.
Open roads and blue skies
I’ve arrived at an approach to posting online that I’ve been resisting for years, but has become inevitable with the slow death of Twitter: one place for my stuff, that I control.
Go gently
I hit an emotional wall a couple of weeks ago. Looking back, it’s been coming for months, but when you’re in a storm for long enough it begins to feel normal.
Angles, curves and spin
I’ve always loved the curve of a golf ball through a landscape. Tennis gave me a similar thrill. Angles, curves, spin, and the laws of physics.
Everyman
Heat. During the final chase, I could feel the rumble of planes in my stomach, and my wife now has the hots for nineties Pacino. He’s a very sloppy kisser on a big screen.
Bluesky
A fellow writer on Twitter sent me an invite — it’s still in a pretty combustible beta — and I immediately felt much more at home there than on Mastodon.
Author speculation
I’m reading Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarentino’s non-fiction celebration of key American films of the seventies—Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Escape From Alcatraz, The Funhouse...
Inspiration
With everything going on in my life, the only way I’m going to write is if I have a clear purpose and a plan. This is always true I suppose.
Walking with ghosts
An elegantly dressed woman is with me and a man on a balcony in a nightclub. The man is very drunk. She whispers to him that they should go on somewhere else.
Puzzles
At the start of the day a deployment of code went awry and at the end I was a go-between over my still-hospitalised father’s boxer shorts. Life can be ridiculous.
Matrix
If I’m stuck in a matrix, what sort is it? Writing? Capitalism? Our budget spreadsheet is a matrix. Reality? (There’s that word again.)
Hospitals
My father is in hospital again. Both his legs are swollen, symptoms of heart failure, but one of his arms has also swelled up, and he’s out of breath doing the slightest things.
Content apocalypse
This is the tipping point. I’m fifty in two weeks. I’ve watched fifty percent of the 800 films I own, and even less of the books. I'm not solving the time-activity equation.
Emotional weather
I’m staying with Dad for the weekend, and because he’s having some new health problems, it’s quite hard work. My mother was always the anxious one. Now it's me.
Writing jiggle
I’m pleased with how consistently I’ve posted to Patreon, but I feel guilty that I’m not giving enough value to people, so I’ve jiggled things around.
Elisa Gabbert on why writers write
Twitter shines at surfacing what I need, when I need it, in this case Elisa Gabbert’s 2022 book list, within which a link to an essay she wrote, Why Write?
Bedrock
Going into the new year I’m going to do some gentle excavation into my beliefs about writing, because I’m realising I’ve lost touch with what fiction means to me. If there’s no meaning, there’s no purpose.
Adieu, 2022
In time-honoured fashion, here are my favourite discoveries of 2022, in chronological order of publication or release.
Love and breakages
I’ve just broken a wine glass. I’m at my father's house, and it feels auspicious, although I don’t know why. He has cheap glasses because we are his only wine-drinking visitors.
A dream with Bob Dylan
I don’t remember my dreams that often anymore. When I’m particularly anxious, or there’s a lot going on, they tend to stick.