Greetings from Melbourne.
Ain’t this fun?
*takes long pull from bottle of bourbon*
*looks out into the darkness*
Well, looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while. May as well catch up, maybe talk about some lockdown reads.
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Speaking of lockdown reads, sales of The Obituarist 3 are… like, okay? Good? Bad? I don’t know, I just work here.
Let me add up the data – looks like 21 copies sold (on Amazon and Smashwords) since launch in early May, which means about… 40 Aussie bucks in revenue? As opposed to the $450 I spent on editing and cover design?
Yeah, well, so it goes. It’s a good book, but its market is limited. (Possibly just to people who know me.) I could probably generate more sales if I did more promotion, but we’re in the middle of a pandemic and a global struggle to confront systemic institutional racism. No-one needs me distracting people from what really matters by tweeting about a book.
It’s written, it’s out there, people will find it. Maybe tell your friends about the series if they want lockdown reads. That’s enough marketing from me.
(I really should update the site page, though. Maybe next week.)
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And speaking of lockdown reads, let’s talk about games. Games that involve reading and writing (so educational)!
Thousand Year Old Vampire is a solo journaling RPG by Tim Hutchings, and if you’re like me-from-last-month then that concept might need a little unpacking.

The game presents a conceptual framework – you’re a vampire that lives so long that they can’t retain their memories – and then provides you with a large series of writing prompts (most of which have mechanical impacts as well). Rolling dice to navigate through the prompts, you write journal entries to record events while also translating that into your vampire’s unstable set of memories. Eventually you reach an ending, and have an epistolary narrative that you can read, share or just think about when you want to be sad.
While accurate, that description glosses over two key points:
- This game is brilliant, with a fantastic mix of simple mechanisms and evocative prompts that constantly push you to generate dark, emotionally engaging stories.
- This game makes writing fun, something I generally find inconceivable. My playthrough, telling the story of the fallen Ukrainian nun Penelopa, was some of the most playful joy I’ve gained from my own writing in maybe a decade.
Whether you’re a writer or a gamer (or both), there’s so much here to direct your creativity into fascinating stories while also enjoying solo lockdown fun. The PDF is cheap; the print book is apparently gorgeous but will cost you a mortgage payment in shipping right now. You do you – just make sure to pick it up.
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And speaking of lockdown reads, let’s talk about a TV show, yes I know that’s a terrible segue.

I finally started watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix, and it’s as good as people have been saying for the last couple of years – a smart, savvy, energetic science-fantasy cartoon that never takes itself too lightly or too seriously, and is just crammed full of awesome teenage girl characters demonstrating agency.
(The plotting and worldbuilding is maybe a little uneven at times, but that is not why you watch a show like this.)
From a YA writer’s point-of-view, the most compelling part of the show is the way it establishes and develops character. The foundation of She-Ra‘s characterisation is love and friendship – presented not just as a positive force, but also as something that can go bad, fall short or distract from what matters. Everything in the show has its foundation in that core, and it’s an amazing demonstration of how you can use the common emotional understandings of your (largely teenage) audience as a way to express complexities and tensions that that audience will connect with.
Also, it’s pretty queer. And we need more queer TV.
Go binge this over a couple of weekends while you’re bouncing around lockdown – there’s a lot to learn from it and a lot of feelings to be felt. And goddamnit, I would die for Scorpia. She just wants to be loved.
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And speaking of lockdown reads (shut up okay), how about you don’t read that self-serving bullshit screed that JK Rowling and a gaggle of alt-right fuck-knuckles published last week, whinging about cancel culture?
Here’s this blog’s position on all that:

‘Cancel culture’ is just what privileged people call ‘facing the consequences of my actions’ or possibly ‘being criticised because I used my power and influence to yell my fuckin’ garbage opinions all over the internet’.
Boo fuckin’ hoo, JK; go spew your transphobic white noise into the bowlful of £100 bills you have for breakfast every morning.
One of the few positives to this unending trash fire we now live in is that as the boundaries of polite society fall into the abyss, more and more people are looking around and saying, ‘wait, no, FUCK THIS SHIT, I won’t have it any more’, and calling people out on how they contribute to the problem. Whether it’s Rowling being hateful trash, Warren Ellis being a serial predator upon and betrayer of women (something I’m pretty fuckin’ upset about) or, I dunno, the entire corrupt system of police power and control in the world’s most powerful nation, we’ve had enough. Get in the fuckin’ bin with you.
Here’s a mission statement: if I ever get into a position where I a) have power and b) abuse it, y’all have my permission to cancel me harder and faster than Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos.
…not that that seems likely if I don’t write more books.
*takes long drag on cigarette*
*coughs up a lung, throws half-finished cancer stick in the bin*
I should probably do that, then.
Stay safe, friends.