Smells a bit funny in here.

+ Free books + some discounted books

Nov 28, 2023

Hello all.

If you don’t have the time to read this little update, and just want to check out the free bookshelf, here’s last week’s.

Tales from the cave

And here’s a paid one. The Cosmic Comedy Collection is in here.

Sci-Fi Spectacular

It smells funny in here…

This is a short post. As you probably know from reading my stuff, I’m one of those science fiction authors who also quite likes comedy. To me they are parts of the same literary branch. They both explore unique new ways of seeing the world, they both twist language into new shapes, and they both concern themselves with making caricatures. The science fiction author has their aliens, the comedian has larger-than-life characters, or in my case, both sides of me have aliens.

It is no secret that I’m a comedy writer. My last job, albeit voluntary, was comedy radio hosting. My upcoming job is a content writer for my pal Zaak, who needs me to tell jokes about cars for his social media. I get to strap a go-pro to my head and climb around his workshop, finally fulfulling my evolutionary niche as a comedy goblin.

I’ve also done stand-up comedy about time travel, more than once. My first big gig was at Bright Club, and my second big one was at the Manchester Fringe, where some bachelorettes walked home with one of my inflatable aliens, and I handed out tin foil hats to any audience members who might want to heckle me (because I would respond with psychic warfare).

And I host events whilst telling jokes. Usually open mics.

And I had a freelance gig writing comedy wedding poems. I only sold one, but it’s hard to break into that market without an agency behind you, so I did well.

And now, I spend a lot of my free time watching comedy at the BBC, and hanging around comedians, whose company I prefer to other, more grumpy sorts of writers. In fact people often ask me if I’m a comedian, and my friends regularly remind me to write my outbursts down, as they make great stand-up, apparently.

Even my Lego instagram got popular because of jokes I made about my imaginary wife leaving me.

I tried to have a writing instagram and a writing twitter, both of which very rapidly evolved into meme pages and places to try out jokes.

So maybe I am a comedian. Not got the results back yet.

Dr Cox is one of my favourite comedy characters of all time.

What does it all mean?

Looking over my documents and posts, I seem to write more comedy than serious sci-fi these days, but if you’ve read WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? you’ll know I can do a decent job of both (I have been convinced of this by the kind reviews you’ve left, I didn’t stumble into this opinion myself). Really it’s a question of time over wordcount. The comedy takes longer but has less words in it, the dark existential Science Fiction is naturally wordier, but shows up in frantic bursts of energy. I’m always writing jokes, I’m always daydreaming about writing novels.

So comedy is everywhere in my writing, and it’s latched onto the sci-fi.

So I am going to start posting more of it here. I have written some comedy articles which I know not everyone will like, because comedy is heavily reliant on personal taste, and that’s okay. I have tried to add jokes in for every type of person, and I’m not the political type so I like to imagine it cuts across all of that mess.

In the future, the comedy might become an optional add-on to my newsletter, but now it’s built-in like that gland in your brain that can smell parallel universes.

At this point I feel obliged to make a Bowie lyric reference in every post…

Ooh, ahh, visionary.

Comedy posts will often be writing or arts related. For example, my next three comedy posts are probably going to be

Why Doctor Who changed Davros (now outdated, thanks BBC)
The trope of male authors ruining female characters
Why uncontacted tribes should be given iphones to browse memes

If that sounds like your kind of thing, great. They’re in a similar tone to my previous work, so a mix of my Hologram Kebab writing and the stuff I did at the fringe. You know my style by now. Weird, sometimes funny, always weird.

They’ll be satire articles, thing HardDrive, TheOnion, etc.

Merry Christmas.

I’m letting you know what’s ahead because I just gave a handful of you a 30 day free trial of the full comedy posts. Everyone will get to read them to something resembling a conclusion, but for people on the paid (or free trial) tier, you’ll see a lot more content, a lot more jokes. This paid tier covers my entire Substack, so bonus Earthloop content is on the way too. Stay tuned, it gets dark.

I’ve given this free trial out to whoever has engaged with lots of my posts in the last six months. That way I hope I am treating the people who most likely to want to read extra comedy and sci-fi, to that extra comedy and sci-fi.

I’m going to give a handful of people an extra long trial as well, as thanks for writing nice reviews and keeping me motivated.

At the end of the trial, Substack will tell you it’s ended, but I will too. It’s up to you if you want to remember it fondly like a good night out paid for by a friend, or if you want to join the paid tier and drag out its existence until the hologram kebab goes cold. I don’t expect many people will, but that’s not the point of this. I simply wanted to give the people sitting eagerly at the metaphorical front row of this sci-fi comedy show a bit more content that doesn’t show up on the wider internet. Substack is the best place for that.

Because some of my comedy gets a bit fruity, it’s nice to have a little barrier erected between it and the wider interwebz.

I am still posting my science fiction here, but as it is so intertwined with my comedy it seemed wrong to put the comedy on yet another substack. This isn’t really an announcement of a change at all. It’s just an explanation of what I’m doing. You’ve all got a sense of humour, and my more comedic sci-fi stories perform really well here.

I’ve already got freefictionfriday, which can move on its own as I find cool stuff for you. My comedy and sci-fi cross paths sometimes, especially in WBTH and WKTH.

Was that a spoiler in the form of an acronym?

Yes. Yes it was.

The first person to guess what the acronym means, gets a 6 month free trial.