Okay, here we go...

I’ve been sitting on this Substack account since March 2023. Of the two posts I have managed to squeeze out in that time, the first vaguely set out what I was going to do with this place and was confidently titled ‘Coming soon’. The second, posted two years later and consisting of a list of book tour dates, did not fulfil the promise of the first. It also only came ‘soon’ if you prefer to view time in geological terms.

Part of this was down to me being busy and struggling to find the time to fully commit to one more thing. Like a lot of authors, I’m spinning a writing career alongside a fulltime day job. When I set up this Substack, I was fulfilling the promotional obligations for my first book, Cold Fish Soup. Since then, I have written another book, Broken Biscuits and Other Male Failures, which I am in the process of promoting and this, hopefully, is how things will continue to go for me. A continuing parade of books and the promotion of those books until, a long time from now, I will collapse, my head finally empty of stories, into the grave. Despite the effort I put into that part of my life I am quite lazy, so can’t deny that this also plays a part in my lack of activity here. Laziness has stopped me from a lot of things. Getting promotions. Signing up for circuit training. Learning the saxophone. And clearly, setting up a lovingly curated regular newsletter.

So, not being able to trust myself to be consistent, what do I do with my Substack? Delete it? No, I’m not doing that. I don’t throw anything away if I can help it. On the desk in front of me as I type there is a broken childhood toy and a torn scrap of paper that I drew a doodle on back when I worked in a photo lab in 2002. Likewise, floating in the cloud location where I keep my manuscripts, I maintain a folder titled ‘Strays’, in which I store all the ideas that don’t have a place in my books but I feel certain will be useful one day. Plainly put, I don’t like giving up on things. I also don’t like waste, and that applies to time as well. Time is valuable, yours and mine, geological or otherwise, so if I was going to do something with this Substack it had to be worth it for all of us.

What finally pushed me into action was social media, which appears to be in the process of slowly boiling to death in its own juices. I used to dedicate a lot of effort to my socials but that effort has been increasingly wasted. Twitter in particular is now as effective a form of communication as a message in a bottle. In the case of that platform, it’s the kind of message someone might discover then write “FUCK YOU” underneath before hurling it back into the sea. My problem though, as anyone who has waited in my signing queues while I chatted to the person in front of them will know, is that I have a lot of things to say. Substack, I’ve now realised, is probably the best place for me to say them.

So, with a need to communicate but a good dose of self knowledge in mind, what I’ve decided is to not commit to a single thing. Instead, I’m committing to many things, making this newsletter a regular surprise. Subscribing will be akin to opening a Kinder egg. One month (let’s not overcommit at this stage) you might get a post about the things I’ve learned about publishing and writing. The next you might get a rant about generative AI or my thoughts about a stirring piece of TV. Maybe you’ll receive an old piece of writing that I’m somehow not ashamed of (see: ‘I don’t throw anything away if I can help it’) or details about a new writing project I might have in the works. Crucially, it’ll be something, which I’m convinced is better than nothing. And I promise to make that something worth your time. If I fail to deliver on these pledges, you have my blessing to drop boiling hot swear words into the comments section. I’ll deserve it.

In honour of that little ideas-filled folder in the cloud, I’ve decided to call this newsletter ‘Strays’, the first of which will be coming, I promise, soon.

Any other business:

• What I’m Reading: Queen B by Juno Dawson, whom I met at the HarperCollins summer party last week (which I’ll talk about in a future post) and is as charming as her books are captivating.

• What I’ve been listening to: The Night by Morphine. A posthumous album first released 25 years ago following the on-stage death of the band’s singer, Mark Sandman. Morphine sound like a wise but drunken steam train. The one Thomas and Friends admire but are fearful of. What I mean by this is that they are perfect.

• What I’ve been doing: I had a great time on the Proper Mental Podcast discussing masculinity, mental health, being okay with failure and the inspirational behaviour of Pedro Pescal. I also had a very flattering interview/review featured on the northern culture site, Northern Soul.

• What I’ll be doing: On July 23rd, I’ll be at B For Butterfly Books, Sale in conversation with the crime novelists Chris McDonald and Rob Parker and discussing their new books, A Wash of Black and The Troubled Deep (tickets here). On July 31st, Broken Biscuits and Other Male Failures will be published in Australia and New Zealand.