I got in an art gallery + new book cover + convention appearance.
In the interests of not bombarding you with three separate emails this month, I have combined three announcements into this single post.
As a writer, I am driven by novelty. So when I finish a book, I sometimes forget to talk about it because I am already writing the next one. That drive for novelty also creates a gap where other creators find content: I don’t find myself interesting, so whilst other poets and performers are good at telling people about their new shows (and never actually getting round to reading their poem in the alloted four minutes, but that’s a rant for another time), I get bored of hearing about myself by the time I am done writing something.
This is why interviews help me so much as an author and comedian. I don’t know that much about myself until someone asks me a weird question.
This is the main issue I have with advertising, so I have been trying to reprogram myself. Therefore, what follows is a short email about some stuff I have done recently.
For example. I got into Mega Geek Fayre. I wrote a draft post about it here, and that draft post turned into a comedy essay about existential filters for intelligent life. I will post that eventually, but you see my point.
Big thing one - Geek Fayre
The Geek Fayre (at Sacha’s Hotel, Manchester UK) has very quickly became my favourite way to sell physical books. It’s cheaper than the massive conventions, and easier to talk to new readers about how my books work, and why people describe them as “ADHD-Friendly Science Fiction”. I don’t have to compete with big, noisy shows happening in adjacent halls, and if the music does get a bit loud, the organisers are easy to talk to.
I don’t go to every Geek Fayre. Partly because I don’t want to be a permanent fixture when other, newer vendors might better benefit from that space, and partly because I think coming and going from venue to venue, gig to gig, just suits me as an artist - and by proxy suits Halfplanet Press.
I will be selling signed copies of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? as well as (hopefully) the short paperback form of THE COSMONAUT WHO DIED TWICE. I will also be revealing my new comedy shirt shop, which isn’t part of the announcements here today, but will come later.
I will also be doing art commissions on my table on the day, and if things slow down, I might write a book or two while I am there.
Entry is £2 per person on the day - and I believe it opens at 11am.
Big thing two: TCWDT, cover reveal
You’ve already seen the old front cover for the eBooks, but you won’t have seen this full wraparound cover, because I made it a few nights ago.
For those unaware, THE COSMONAUT WHO DIED TWICE is a short novella set in the main WhoBuiltTheUniverse series of books. Those books are Novelthologies, collections of stories which are as long as novels, and can sometimes be read as such. It’s a new, ‘ADHD-friendly’ genre of literature I invented around 2019.
In TCWDT, cosmonaut Galina Agafonov is tasked with taking samples from an alien starship in orbit around Jupiter. The long-dead machine is supposedly older than the human species. TCWDT is ultimately a story about time. Galina encounters this unfathomably ancient starship, and in response it sets in motion a chain of events that lead the narrative downstream into the distant future. Readers familiar with my wider universe will find some sneaky secrets hidden within this standalone novella.
Trivia
The Cosmonaut Who Died Twice was initially written to be part of Who Killed The Humans? but it was cut in development because the format of the whole collection was putting too much pressure on TCWDT, which needed to be longer to properly tell its story. WKTH is going to be shorter than WBTH, because readers at every event I’ve been to have told me that the sheer size of WBTH is intimidating. And, since I want my literature to be accessible to people with ADHD (or who simply have busy lives) I have listened to this feedback, and WKTH will be around the 80,000 word mark.
(WBTH was 125,225 words…)
About that. WBTH was only so long because it had two big novellas included, BEYOND UNCERTAIN STARS and the primordial opening to THE EARTHLOOP TRILOGY both appeared in WBTH. The EARTHLOOP part was 48,000 words. I don’t regret including it at all, but it might have worked better on its own, and as I found out years later, some readers are scared of bigger books.
The Cosmonaut Who Died Twice slots neatly into the ever-expanding bookshelf I am creating here, and hopefully you will see it in stock in physical stores soon.
You can order the eBook (and soon, paperback) using the below button.
Big thing three, art gallery!
I have a weird feeling about leaving my art behind in public places, but it is a risk you must take to show up in galleries. I find myself almost psychically attached to anything I create, so I feel as though one of my hands is in someone else’s bar. I wake up sometimes worried it has been stolen, not least because my mum wants it and I would feel tremendous guilt if it vanished.
It’s weird.
Anyway. This is Spigeon. He’s a space pigeon. He abducts seeds using tractor beams emanating from his feet.
The theme for the gallery was love. This is the love I care about. A pigeon’s love for being fed the right food. All too often I see people feeding the poor bastards cheap sausage rolls, so the point of my artwork here is that our misguided love for pigeons needs to be rewritten, backed up by science and reality. Because it’s fine to love things, but we have to do it right.
I will leave you with this image from my most recent comedy gig.
That’s about it. See you in the next one.
