Michael Walters

Welcome!

This is my little word garden on the internet—Michael Walters, author (it’s true!). I have a speculative fiction novel, THE COMPLEX, out with Salt Publishing, and I’m deep in the writing of a follow-up. I would love it if you gave it a try.

I use Bluesky to connect with people, Letterboxd to track films, and StoryGraph to track books. Follow me and say hello in all those places.

And if you want more of my thoughts on writing in particular, you can subscribe to my posts on PATREON. There’s a Weird and Wonderful tier if you want to support me with a donation, and that now includes notes on the novels I’m reading, but I post regularly to all patrons.

Life feels tough this month. There’s a lot going on at work, I’m doing physio rehab, there are tradesmen in the house making a mess, the world seems to be in an awful place and getting worse, and I’m too tired in the evenings to read or write. I am grateful for all I have, but my body and brain is at full capacity.

I’ve been back two weeks from a five-day Arvon-run writing retreat. Eleven writers, two tutors, one massive house in rural Shropshire. It was creatively invigorating. I wrote a synopsis of my next novel, edited what I already had, and started some new chapters. The theme of the week was using other arts as part of writing practice, like music, dance, and drama. We did workshops in the morning and had afternoons free for writing, reading, walking, and tutorials.

By the last day I was wrung out and ready to come home. It was wonderful but intense. On the last evening, we all read aloud something we’d written during the week.

Returning home was a relief, but the unique atmosphere of being away with other writers in a literature-centric space is impossible to replicate at home when you have a day job and a family. It did show how hard it is, legitimately hard, to maintain focus on writing projects in ordinary life. It isn’t that I’m lazy or distracted, it‘s that I’m using most of my energy getting through the days. I’ve chosen an intense profession for my nine-to-five.

That’s helpful to recognise. It gives me something to work with. If I want to be more engaged with my literary ambitions I need to change something.

31DaysofBlackXmas2024 DarioArgento SeenRead 31DaysofHorror2023 DavidLynch 31DaysofHorror2021

At the end of August I posted about my gluteal tendinopathy. I remember writing it in a penthouse flat overlooking St Ives, an amazing spot, where I was stuck for the day because I’d messed my tendons up on the hills and flights of stairs. I was miserable. Five months on, I thought I’d give an update.

Once home from St Ives, I followed the rules in that post, knowing I had the big holiday in Sydney in October. Walking less eased the pain, but I didn’t make any progress. Gradually increasing distance and going to the gym didn’t help. In Australia, I managed the pain by pacing myself when I could and gritting my teeth to push through when I had to. It was never as bad as St Ives, but back in the UK I felt stuck and depressed.

Enter stage left another physio and shock wave therapy. I was dubious, but I was eligible because of how long I’d been suffering with tendinitis, and the therapy was recommended by NICE, so I went for it. The shock waves are acoustic and fired from a massage gun directly into the tendon through the skin. It was 2-3 minutes, once a week, for three weeks, then a break and another three weeks if required.

I don’t know if this was new or always in the mix, but I was also diagnosed with piriformis syndrome, so after the shock waves I had ‘dry needling’ in the muscle to increase blood flow. I don’t know how much good that did. Between sessions, I used a band for exercises to help with range of motion, and I did single leg squats for glute strength. My knees kept caving inwards, so this was a mental exercise as much as physical to train my legs to stay straight so my arse did the work it was supposed to.

After the Christmas break, in session four, it was clear the tendons were no longer the problem. The pain was still all around my right hip, groin and buttock, but this was the piriformis mixed with a collapse in what little flexibility I previously had. We switched to deep tissue massage and stretching. My brain was being overly protective and causing pain to stop me potentially injuring myself. It needed to learn that it didn’t have to do that anymore.

There’s a natural recovery cycle to injuries, but if we go through emotional trauma and stress, it can throw the body off and the injury becomes fixed, and the mind starts to adjust to it, stiffening the area for protection. (Which is sweet, really. Thanks, buddy.) Dad died twelve months ago. I’ll never know if that’s why this injury has hung around, but the narrative makes sense to me.

The osteoarthritis in my hip is always going to be there, but I got back from the gym a couple of hours ago, and I stretched thoroughly this morning, and I’m walking 8,500 steps on average each day, and yesterday I did 14,500 as a one-off, and yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable, but I’m fine. It looks like I’ll be able to do much more than I thought (just not running, and not tennis) if I keep working on my flexibility and my strength. Getting stronger is the key. I’m going to be fine.

(This is a bit of a boring post, but if it reaches one person who is suffering as I did, physically and mentally, and needs a bit of hope—well, keep going, my friend, it’s amazing what a good physio, stretching and strength training can achieve. If that’s you, I’m sending love.)

I’ve always switched between interests. When I beat myself up over it, it never ends well. Different parts of my life need attention at different times—health, family, creative writing, cinema and film, food and cooking, playing a musical instrument, learning another language, software development—when I neglect one, it invariably comes up as a desire in some shape or form sooner or later, and ignoring that intuitive reminder is when the trouble starts.

I can be too rigid around these identities. If I’m not writing, I’m not a writer. Not helpful. Life is much more interesting and complicated than that. I write in my notebook every day. I cook meals for myself and my family every day. I manage a software team in a full-time job. It’s not like in those Richard Scarry books about what adults do all day. We are not the jobs we do, and I can’t believe I need to remind myself of the trap, but it’s been in the back of my mind most of my life.

We can be everything we want to be, perhaps swimming more in the shallows than getting out into the deep water for most things, and for me, that is a healthy space to be creatively.

I know why I beat myself up over the writing for so long. It took the reality of being published (Nobody cares! There’s no money for writers! It’s a racket for the publishing industry!) and then my father slowly dying to break the narrative in my head.

We can only do one thing at a time and there’s a cost to switching. That’s true. We are also complex beings that thrive on making connections between things. A meal I make might find its way into a story I’m writing. While practicing guitar, a solution to a coding problem might pop into my head.

Intuition doesn’t care what you’re doing. It connects. When I put down fixed ideas of success and pay attention in all areas of my life, everything becomes easier. The internal drama dissolves. I feel calmer, the whole is clearer, and everything is more meaningful and fun.

• FILMS IN ALL CAPS (C if in cinema)
• Books, by author, on end date (with start date)
• Short stories in italics

In the spirit of Steven Soderbergh’s media list:

• 01.01 SILENT NIGHT
• 02.01 Assembly, Natasha Brown (01.01)
• 06.01 Infidelities, Kirsty Gunn (31.12)
• 07.01 PRISCILLA (C)
• 10.01 OLD HENRY
• 13.01 SISU
• 14.01 THE ACCOUNTANT
• 21.01 THE HOLDOVERS (C)
• 23.01 SHOWING UP
• 27.01 ALL OF US STRANGERS (C)
• 30.01 SLY
• 07.02 ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
• 11.02 ARGYLLE (C)
• 13.02 August Blue, Deborah Levy (07.01)
• 15.02 THE ZONE OF INTEREST (C)
• 17.02 AMERICAN FICTION (C)
• 24.02 APOCALYPSE NOW
• 04.03 THE KILLING
• 06.03 CASABLANCA
• 08.03 THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
• 10.03 DUNE: PART TWO (C)
• 11.03 HOLLYWOOD DREAMS & NIGHTMARES: THE ROBERT ENGLUND STORY
• 13.03 THE TASTE OF THINGS (C)
• 16.03 NO HARD FEELINGS
• 19.03 BREATHLESS
• 20.03 PERFECT DAYS (C)
• 21.03 BLUE JAY
• 23.03 GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE
• 24.03 GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (C)
• 27.03 IMMACULATE (C); The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks (18.03)
• 29.03 CELL
• 30.03 THE BEEKEEPER
• 31.03 GODZILLA × KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (C); Luster, Raven Leilani (29.03)
• 05.04 KUNG FU PANDA 4 (C)
• 07.04 GOLDENEYE (C)
• 10.04 THE TOMB OF LIGEIA
• 14.04 CIVIL WAR (C)
• 15.04 THE PIGEON TUNNEL
• 16.04 The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories, Edgar Allan Poe (14.03)
• 20.04 ABIGAIL (C)
• 22.04 TAKEN
• 24.04 DEATH RACE 2000 (1975)
• 25.04 ZOMBIES CREEPING FLESH
• 26.04 MONOLITH; A Man Named Doll, Jonathan Ames (17.04)
• 27.04 HOUSE OF USHER (1960)
• 28.04 MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (C)
• 04.05 X; PEARL
• 06.05 THE FALL GUY (C)
• 11.05 Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, ed. Joan Passey (08.04)
• 13.05 ROLLING THUNDER
• 15.05 You Were Never Really Here, Jonathan Ames (15.05)
• 17.05 STEVE! (MARTIN) A DOCUMENTARY IN 2 PIECES
• 19.05 BLUE BLOOD
• 19.05 KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (C)
• 20.05 The Sea Inside Me, Sarah Dobbs (16.05)
• 23.05 FALLEN LEAVES
• 25.05 RESULTS
• 26.05 FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (C)
• 31.05 All Fours, Miranda July (26.05)
• 03.06 LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL
• 04.06 CASINO ROYALE (C)
• 06.06 DARIO ARGENTO: PANICO
• 08.06 THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE
• 12.06 A Far Cry From Kensington, Muriel Spark (03.06)
• 13.06 THE CAT O’NINE TAILS
• 15.06 GODZILLA MINUS ONE
• 16.06 INSIDE OUT 2
• 17.06 FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET
• 18.06 THE GODFATHER (C)
• 19.06 Parade, Rachel Cusk (12.06)
• 21.06 DEEP RED
• 06.07 SUSPIRIA (1977); MAXXXINE (C)
• 07.07 A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (C)
• 08.07 INFERNO (1980)
• 09.07 TENEBRE
• 12.07 UNDER PARIS
• 13.07 DESPICABLE ME 4 (C)
• 17.07 TWISTERS (C)
• 21.07 FLY ME TO THE MOON (C)
• 22.07 In Ascension, Martin MacInnes (09.07)
• 23.07 LONGLEGS (C)
• 27.07 PHENOMENA; Double Fault, Lionel Shriver (27.07)
• 28.07 DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (C)
• 31.07 OPERA
• 07.08 TWO EVIL EYES
• 10.08 BORDERLANDS (C)
• 11.08 TRAP (C)
• 12.08 TRAUMA
• 14.08 SHARK SKIN MAN AND PEACH HIP GIRL
• 15.08 Seraglio, Graham Swift
• 16.08 The Tunnel, Graham Swift
• 17.08 TWISTER; The Lonely Songs of Lauren Dorr, George R.R. Martin
• 18.08 ALIEN: ROMULUS (C); Sun and Moon, Katherine Mansfield
• 20.08 THE STENDHAL SYNDROME
• 22.08 CHILDREN OF MEN
• 28.08 Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, Terrance Dicks (27.08)
• 01.09 JAWS (C)
• 09.09 UNRELATED
• 14.09 BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (C)
• 15.09 LEE (C)
• 21.09 HIT MAN
• 27.09 A HISTORY OF HORROR
• 28.09 WHITE HOUSE DOWN
• 29.09 WOLFS
• 01.10 Alison, Lizzy Stewart (20.09)
• 06.10 JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX (C)
• 13.10 GLADIATOR (C)
• 18.10 BLOOD AND BLACK LACE
• 31.10 The Last Supper, Rachel Cusk
• 03.11 PIG
• 04.11 BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
• 10.11 PADDINGTON IN PERU (C)
• 12.11 ANORA (C)
• 13.11 THE CAR
• 15.11 AMERICAN MOVIE
• 16.11 ENYS MEN
• 17.11 THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER
• 19.11 DRACULA
• 21.11 THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
• 22.11 GOTHIC
• 24.11 GLADIATOR 2
• 25.11 SLEEPLESS
• 28.11 THE CARD PLAYER
• 29.11 RED ROOMS
• 30.11 CONCLAVE (C); The Labyrinth, Amanda Lohrey (23.11)
• 02.12 I SAW THE TV GLOW
• 03.12 THE APPOINTMENT; Next to Nature, Art, Penelope Lively (01.12)
• 04.12 THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS
• 05.12 THE DAY OF THE BEAST
• 07.12 BLITZ
• 08.12 SAINT MAUD
• 09.12 CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS; VIOLENT NIGHT
• 10.12 Orbital, Samantha Harvey (03.12)
• 11.12 SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT
• 14.12 IN A VIOLENT NATURE; ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE; The First Bad Man, Miranda July (09.12)
• 15.12 NIGHTMARE CITY
• 16.12 Hide and Seek, Dennis Potter (15.12); MANIAC COP
• 21.12 MOTHER OF TEARS
• 22.12 GIALLO
• 22.12 WHAM!
• 23.12 THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
• 23.12 Binary, Michael Crichton (17.12); MADS
• 24.12 TWISTERS
• 25.12 REBEL RIDGE
• 26.12 ARGENTO’S DRACULA
• 27.12 DARIO ARGENTO: PANICO
• 28.12 DARK GLASSES
• 29.12 CUCKOO
• 30.12 THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS
• 31.12 The Music of Chance, Paul Auster (23.12); BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)

Director: Bob Clark

Release year: 1974

In the days before the Christmas break, a killer breaks into a sorority house and begins to pick off the girls one by one. The girls are also being plagued by obscene phone calls from someone who calls himself Billy. When a concerned parent involves the police, can they find the killer before he kills again?

This film didn’t do well when it was released and was disparaged by critics, but has gone through a reappraisal in recent years as one of the first slashers, after the Italian giallo films of the early seventies but before Halloween. It is well acted with plenty of heart in how the girls are presented, and funny, knowing the younger audience it’s aiming at. The killer, Billy, is disturbing, the effect made almost entirely by voice as he talks to himself in the attic and to the girls on the house phone. His garbled obscenities got under my skin.

Jess, the girl who lasts to the final scenes, is pregnant by a manipulative boyfriend, Peter. She is clear she wants an abortion, and he won’t listen, the outcome of which leads to the semi-ambiguous ending. Billy speaks to Jess the most on the phone, talking about something terrible he once did to a baby, and one reading of the film is that Jess is being tormented by a patriarchal society for her decision to terminate the pregnancy.

It’s a richly layered film with plenty of political meat on its bones for what could have been a cheap thriller for teens.

All films in 2024’s #31DaysofBlackXmas…

More lists! Nine films came out in the UK in 2024 that I gave 5 stars and a heart to on Letterboxd. (A heart means it’s to my particular taste). That rule of nine continued with nine film discoveries, nine books that got my brain engaged, and the nine albums I listened to the most on Apple Music.

My favourite films of 2024 (in order of preference)

1. Civil War
2. Hit Man
3. Red Rooms
4. The Taste of Things
5. Perfect Days
6. Conclave
7. Anora
8. The Zone of Interest
9. In a Violent Nature

My favourite film discoveries (in order of preference)

1. Showing Up (2023)
2. Monolith (2023)
3. Gothic (1986)
4. Results (2015)
5. The House with Laughing Windows (1976)
6. Enys Men (2022)
7. Death Race 2000 (1975)
8. Old Henry (2021)
9. Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Books that pulled me in (in order of reading)

• Assembly, Natasha Brown (2021)
• All Fours, Miranda July (2024)
• A Far Cry from Kensington, Muriel Spark (1988)
• Rare Singles, Benjamin Myers (2024)
• The Labyrinth, Amanda Lohrey (2020)
• Next to Nature, Art, Penelope Lively (1982)
• Orbital, Samantha Harvey (2024)
• Hide and Seek, Dennis Potter (1973)
• The Music of Chance, Paul Auster (1990)

Albums I listened to most on Apple Music (in order of listens)

1. Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa
2. The Past is Still Alive, Hurray for the Riff Raff
3. Tension I/II, Kylie Minogue
4. The Ballad of Darren, Blur
5. Harry’s House, Harry Styles
6. Dear Happy, Gabrielle Aplin
7. Snow, Angus & Julia Stone
8. The Visitors, ABBA
9. Toxicity, System of a Down

I do love an earnest end-of-year blog post, and I appreciate a quality summary of anything. I don’t have much time this year, and I’m low on energy, so instead here’s an earnest end-of-year list.

I did a light version in 2023, but one of my fleeting YouTube crushes this year extolled the benefits of keeping closer track of projects (so you know what you’ve actually done), and he was right. When I see how much shit I got done while thinking I was procrastinating, I feel a lot better.

Achievements and life events that I put my energy into (in chronological order):

• Started a new job
• Dad’s death and funeral
• Son went to Australia with a working visa
• Dealt with Dad’s estate and finances
• Cleared and sold Dad’s house
• Restarted my Patreon
• Migrated my website from Jekyll to Hugo
• Went to GP/physio for hip problems
• Joined the gym (and still going)
• Started meditating most mornings (and still going)
• Grew as a software engineering Team Leader
• Went on holiday to St Ives
• Wrote a short story and submitted it to Nightjar
• Travelled to Australia and saw my son
• Started practicing guitar with Museo app (and still going)
• Glute work: shock waves on tendons, dry needling into piriformis, rehab/prehab exercises
• Mother-in-law’s unexpected and ongoing illness
• Re-read and sorted through a partial draft of my next novel
• Watched and reviewed all the films of Dario Argento
• 31 horror films in December a.k.a. #31DaysofBlackXmas
• Logged 22 books in StoryGraph
• Logged 137 films in Letterboxd

Director: Pupi Avati

Release year: 1976

Stefano arrives in a half-empty Italian town at the behest of the mayor to restore a fresco inside a local church. The fresco shows the suffering of St. Sebastiano and was painted by a long-dead artist, Bueno Legnani. The locals seem to always be listening to Stefano’s conversations, and when he has to move from his hotel to a remote local house, he discovers in the attic a tape recording of a man’s voice who he begins to believe is Legnani, sending him down a rabbit hole he might not come out of alive.

Highly recommended on podcasts and online, I had no idea from the title what to expect, but this is impeccably crafted and scuzzy Italian folk horror. There is a yellow tint that makes the viewer feel dirty, and the barren landscape of river inlets, abandoned houses and deserted roads is endlessly unsettling. The fresco looks disturbingly modern in the old church, and the gradual uncovering of morbid details adds to the increasing sense of dread.

It’s described as a giallo, but it’s not. There are few deaths. Instead, there is a skillful ratcheting up of tension through artful use of the camera, the deserted locations, and the script taking its sweet time revealing key details through Stefano’s conversations with local townsfolk. The final fifteen minutes are wild and strange. The quality of the print on Amazon Prime wasn’t great—this deserves to be in HD.

All films in 2024’s #31DaysofBlackXmas…

Director: Dario Argento

Release year: 2024

This is the documentary that gave me the idea to watch all of Dario Argento’s films this year, and it was interesting to watch it again at the end of the project. It’s a good inclusion for #31DaysofBlackXmas as well. Knowing the list of Argento’s films in advance made it more of a chore, whereas with #31Days I could twist and pivot as my mood took me. I wish I wasn’t so susceptible to the power of a list. Perhaps keeping it organic and taking some pressure off is something to try in 2025.

The documentary’s conceit is that Argento is going to a hotel for a few weeks to finish writing a manuscript for his next film, which is something he’s done all his life, and a film crew will interview him while he’s there. We see the maestro arrive, and we see him leave, awkwardly and sweetly interacting with the staff all the while. The main section is a series of interviews with him about his life and career, backed up with the views and memories of family members and key collaborators.

What becomes clear is that Dario is a complicated man, and in the first half of his life he carried a lot of anger and competitiveness to be successful because, as he openly says in a seventies interview clip, he wanted to be loved. His mother was a famous film star photographer, and his father was a film producer, Salvatore Argento, who backed his son’s films right up to his death in the late eighties. He seems to have been brought up in great privilege, but also to have a lack that he was always trying to fill. He was a maverick, a risk-taker, a public personality, and he used film as a way to channel his darker instincts.

After his father died, his daughter Asia became a muse, and she starred in many of his later films. Asia’s thoughts on her father and family are the most poignant in the whole documentary. Some of the fire went out of his films in the nineties. Yes, television money became dominant and contracts required less violence, but he was still writing the scripts (with collaborators), and the later films lack the vitality and narrative quality of earlier ones.

There is almost always something to admire in even a disappointing Dario Argento film. Dracula and Giallo are the only true stinkers. He describes his need to continue to make films as an ongoing investigation of the depths inside himself. He seems to have lived the classic Jungian arc of creating a career and family with the first half of his life, then switched to a more inward journey in the second. It’s inspiring.

All films in 2024’s #31DaysofBlackXmas…

Part of my DARIO ARGENTO season.

Director: Tilman Singer

Release year: 2024

After her mother dies, Gretchen moves with her estranged father’s family to a resort in the German Alps. To stave off boredom, Gretchen takes a job at the resort reception, where she notices the odd behaviour of the residents and of her boss, Herr König.

I don’t want to say much more than that, because it’s a fun story with a few surprising twists. The tone switches skilfully from unsettling to amusing to frightening, but it’s held together by Gretchen’s grounded teenager vibe.

Hunter Schafer is sensational as Gretchen and commands every scene she is in. I loved her facial responses to the increasingly disturbing events, first surprised, then disbelieving, and she always makes sensible decisions. She also plays guitar, has a liaison with a flirty customer, and knows how to use a switchblade. Top drawer heroine.

All films in 2024’s #31DaysofBlackXmas…