The Great Nazi Wisteria War Of 2022

THAT'S RIGHT, I WARNED YOU

Actually, I'm kidding, but I thought that after last week's post that would be funny.  Hello from out here on the Thames Delta.  I'm Warren Ellis, I'm a writer from England, and this is my letter to you.

It's looking like a quietly occupied autumn.

One of the big moments of the week was that my second audio-drama podcast serial was approved.  So the back end of the week was about setting the scripting schedule.  Which, for me, means:

Please excuse the sticking plaster and various other visible wounds.  I've picked up a lot of injuries working outside over the last few weeks!  But the watch is the thing.  

I've been using smartwatches since the Pebble, way back when.  These days, it's an Apple Watch Series 2.  But now it is writing time, and I don't want any buzzing sounds while I'm thinking.  So the smartwatch is off, my remaining phone notifications are pared back to the minimum necessary, and I'm wearing an analogue watch.  In this case, the Trifoglio Italia Veloce, inspired by Italian car speedometers of the 1950s and 1960s.  I tripped over it on crowdfunding some years ago, where it had a super early bird price substantially cheaper than its current retail price.  Turns out it had only gone on offer that day, so I became one of the first people to own one, at a price that was pretty much like stealing it.

Putting it on is a signal to myself that I'm checking out of the world and going into the story.

The Apple Watch goes back on at night, when my crews in the US are working, and I go back to things like audio drama pre-production, taking calls, talking to my team and all the rest of it.  I've always found smartwatches a useful tool, and they reduce battery drain on the phone (I'm currently on an iPhone 8 whose battery is down to 80% of max charge).

One of the other big things this week for me was closing the terms and receiving the contract for a two-book graphic novel deal in a format I've dreamed of working in since I was 14.  This is designated PROJECT MONTMARTRE, and, since I have to produce the first volume by mid-February 2023, I expect to be sharing more about it fairly soon.

But, for right now, it's a quiet weekend out here.  Marking up the boards and figuring out schedules.  This week, we visited our daughter for her 27th birthday.  Someone said to me earlier in the week, "how strange is it to have an adult daughter?"  Very.  Because I remember everything from her birth and holding her up to the delivery room window to introduce her to the world, to her holding my hand at lunch just a couple of days ago, like all those things happened just this week.  And yet, it's twenty-seven years worth of memories, and my amazing little girl is now an amazing woman.

(And I'm having to finish this newsletter on Sunday because I spent an hour on the phone with her last night!)

BOOKS

CURRENTLY READING

I am currently reading THE INFLUENCING MACHINE by Mike Jay, which has been in my queue for ages.  And by "ages" I mean 2013, not long after Strange Attractor republished it. I did mention that I have a long queue.

I love that quote so much.  This is what the book is about:

THE INFLUENCING MACHINE, Mike Jay (UK) (US) is wonderfully well written.

For research, I am also picking my way through a peculiar book called SKINWALKERS AT THE PENTAGON, which was free to read on Kindle (UK) when I picked it up, and, who knows, maybe you can borrow it for free (US) too.  It's about the whole Skinwalker Ranch thing, which in its details has some real wyrd folk-horror overtones to it, and the relationship between Bigelow Airspace and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and has some fascinating little details to it so far.  Through it, for instance, I learned that there used to be a thing called the Defense Warning Office, which is a term I adore.

CURRENTLY LISTENING

SPEKTRMODULE

I have something like 200 emails from Bandcamp to go through.  But my podcast list is even more backed up.  Saturday was Hypnagogue Podcast then Monument Podcast with an episode of Newscast inbetween.

GOT MORE TIME?

KEEP READING

Lights In Space

Ultimately Listening To His Future

STATUS 22oct22

Every time I say I should stop talking about the garden, I get mail asking me not to.  I am feeling the need to name the garden, for these letters.  Which seems absurd, since I've had it for nearly thirty years.  But for much of that time, the garden was where we raised our kid, where she played, where I taught her to grow plants, where she laid in the grass and looked at the sky.  And then she left home, and we let the garden go to rack and ruin.  On some level, it was really just for her, and when she moved out, there seemed little point in maintaining it too much.  Until I walked out there in June and thought to myself, this is a triffid nightmare and I need to fix it.  I sent a photo of what was once a sun-trap patio to my partner, who observed that it looked like "a mysterious glade."  So maybe I should call this patch of dead soil The Glade.

Now it's the place where I work on myself and for myself.  A slow process of reclaiming it and gently steering it to a more useful, productive and pleasant place.  

But now it is time to wipe down the boards again, plot my schedule and generally sort my life out after weeks of writing outlines from morning til midnight.  Take care of yourself, stay warm, do something nice for yourself, lock out the bad people and live in the good times, because you're allowed to.  See you next week.

W