Hello dear friend – isn’t it a nice day? I went swimming in the sea at Eastbourne today. Which is to say, I tiptoed towards freezing, mazy tendrils of spume, terrified of receiving a toxic weever fish dorsal spine to the heel, dived into the waves, screamed, and ran back out again. But it was bracing!
I’m telling you all of that as a way of softening the blow that I am doing no gigs, anywhere, this week. Dawww! I’ll be taking a, if not well-earned, then certainly much-needed break, and cracking on with editing the novel I’ve been beavering away on for the past year and a half. It’s taking shape, you guys. The crazy psychic ejecta is cooling into a landscape. I’m bursting to tell you all about it, but I want to do it properly. Patience. (that’s me talking to me, by the way)
You have until the end of the month to sign up for my monthly newsletter, and be entered into a draw for one of 10 signed copies of my new album, Jesus Buys Me Cigarettes. As well as letting you know whether I’m doing a gig in your area, anyone who subscribes to my mailing list will get access to free mp3s of my stuff and exclusive poems, as a thank you for supporting me. You can sign up here.
If you can’t wait til then, you get buy physical copies of my album direct from my publisher, or you can download it from iTunes right this very second. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Songs and poems and rare material I hardly ever do live, straight in your ears!
Don’t forget I present a radio show with the writer John Osborne on Future Radio every Tuesday morning, from 9:30am-midday. You can listen live online by clicking here. Message us on the show and request some music!
This Week, I Have Mostly Been Reading
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
I’m just over a third of the way through this Hugo and Nebula winning novel that mixes time travel with Oxford inter-college politics. It’s good fun! History student Kivrin travels back to 1320 to research medieval England, something goes wrong, people on both sides of the time divide start getting poorly. I like and care about most of the characters. The chronophysics don’t really work, but then, every time travel narrative collapses if you analyse the science/logic too much. It’s a testament to how good Willis is at dialogue and characters that I don’t really care. I’m just enjoying the ride.