Greetings from the furnace,
The hottest place in the solar system is not, as you might have understandably believed, Venus, which, although further from the Sun than Mercury, is so unspeakably hot that you can melt lead on its surface.
No, the hottest place in the known solar system is in fact a broom cupboard in Corringham. With temperatures spiking at just over 40°C this week, it has been like working on realms of fantasy and whimsy while Smaug the Magnificent himself par-boils me.
Send ice-cold Cherry Coke for the love of God! I’m literally melting. Not to labour the point, but you know it’s hot, really hot, when you go for a wee and steam comes out.
I’m deep into A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, and unless he really whiffs the ending, I’m going to say it’s probably the best thing I have read all year. It’s got intrigue; it’s got decent characters, none of whom read like stereotypes; it’s got horror in spades, and it’s that unsettling brand of horror that I love so much, where it sits in the back of your mind until you try and drift off, then, in a sweet and smoky voice, says “well, it could happen”
It’s already under my skin; I’m going to reread and rewatch The Exorcist over the next couple of weeks and knock together a side-by-side comparison, as I did with The Silence of the Lambs. Speaking of, I should have the ‘Final Girl’ article finished by Monday (29-06-26), as long as I haven’t evaporated into a puff of smoke by then.
Also currently reading False Gods by Graham McNeill. It’s good, and I will say this again and again until someone listens. I love everything about Games Workshop apart from Games Workshop itself. The lore, the miniatures, the art, the novels: top-notch. The company, though? A cathedral of plastic crack built on premium pricing, artificial scarcity, rules churn, and the grim certainty that somewhere, in a boardroom, a man in a branded polo shirt is trying to work out how to charge £38 for a single goblin.
I’ve been writing like crazy, and I almost have a nice creepy Call of Cthulhu investigation ready to post. I’m waiting to hear back from another publisher about The Bone Garden, but no news is good news in the life of a writer; at least we can keep the fiction of our success alive. Working on my novella, not as much as I could, sure, but I’m trying. It is moving, though. Slowly, stubbornly, one paragraph at a time. Some days that counts as victory.
Well, that’s about it for now.
See you in the margins,
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