Jack In The Box

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Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. I’ve been outside for most of the week and offline most of the week, because you can’t handle a phone while wearing heavy gloves and using tools.

Show notes for episode two of THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, “Jack In The Box,” are towards the bottom of this letter, so don’t stray down there until you’ve listened to the episode. Unless you want to!

OPERATIONS

GOD, I DON’T KNOW

I never know what to write in this space on weeks like these, where I’ve basically been laying fallow.

I have not done a lot of writing. Or, frankly, a lot of thinking. At some point I came up with a solution for a story idea that’s been bugging me for several years. And by “solution” I mean “the absolute least commercial version of the idea.” So it may also solve my long-standing itch to serialise fiction experiments on the website.

I’ve also learned how to make the best dairy-free ice cream ever, so I suppose there’s that too. On the probable downside, I’m reading five books at once. And put them all down when the following arrived:

ORBITAL

HYPERSTITIONS

I got a digital care package from Hyperdub in the week. (Thanks, Marcus!)

Very much in my recent zone, as you can probably tell. From the introduction (which I captured by pointing a Rabbit r1 at the screen and telling it to transcribe what it saw):

The audio essay! A fascinating form. Still alive on national broadcasting here, and in podcasting (the Heyoon episode of 99% Invisible stays with me all these years later), and, apparently, in gallery installations? What else could the form do? Anyway. I could go on about this forever. Good book.

It’s out in a month or two, and you can order direct from Urbanomic or pre-order from Amazon (UK) (US) for November.

They also sent BY THE NORTH SEA by Robin Mackay, which is remarkable.

A “sonic exploration of the perplexities of time, disappearance, and loss, channelled through the fictions of H.P. Lovecraft, the speculative mythos of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, and the ghost of Dunwich—a once prosperous English trading city now lost almost wholly to the sea. In a series of resonating narratives across different moments in time (1949, 1968, 2001, 2017), characters including anthropologist Echidna Stillwell, time-travelling professor Randolph Templeton, Lovecraft, and .. Mackay emerge and are submerged in turn, swirling continually around the conceptual figure of Dunwich…”

It’s “field recordings, recovered video footage, voice performance, and original music” - it’s everything, a huge capture of sound sifted and woven, fact and fiction, enthralling. A statement of what a long-form audio essay could be. The first piece is available to stream free at that link - give it a go. I thought it was incredibly well done.

Who’s doing interesting stuff with sound? Tell people about it. Word of mouth is all there is now. Again.

Announced some months back, DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHAZARD EDITION is now being solicited for orders, so if you want one, tell your local comics store or bookshop this week. It is an absolutely beautiful edition: a remaster, with visual retouches and amendments all the way through and containing a wonderful additional gallery section.

ISBN: 9781534350755, Lunar Code: 0924IM307

Now: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast. Forthcoming 2024: DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, FELL: FERAL CITY new printing. 2025: THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition

Ivana Basic.

Ashley Suszczynski, photographer of surviving European masking rituals.

Design and lettering of the Vienna Seccession.

THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT

EPISODE TWO: “JACK IN THE BOX”

First off, please enjoy Gildart Jackson’s upper-class 1950’s English pronunciation of the word “plastic.” That came from him, and cracked me up in the recording session.

At 2.48, where the cold open closes and we get the instrumental drop that leads into the main theme? That drop is actually in the middle of the theme that Trey Toy created for us. On the fifth listen to the theme, I realised what a gift Trey had given to us there. That unsettling drop works much like the sting at the top of the DOCTOR WHO theme that lands between the last line of dialogue and the start of the music.

As a test, I got the team to chop it. So the drop starts right after the last line of dialogue, spiraling down until we hit that voice at the bottom, and then wheels into what is actually the re-statement of the main theme. And that was it. It landed just as I had hoped. I’m pretty happy with the way that works. And I am very grateful for Trey Toy, who had it all there.

Doing a tour of gothic horror subgenres means that eventually you have to solve a “possession” story. And I’d made it harder for myself by basing almost all the stories around this bizarre found theory about dark matter being information. However, I knew that if I was going to do a possession story, I was going to ask for Gildart Jackson. As with James, I suspect I would have been in trouble if we didn’t get him, because I wrote it with him in mind. I met Gildart on CASTLEVANIA and the vocal transformations and embodiments he can perform astound me. He works miracles, is generous to a fault, and I’m so glad he came to help me.

So it’s an old-style science-as-supernatural story.

James gets to do the full occult-detective bit here, in one of my favourite forms: the interrogation. I love the way James prowls around his investigation, poking and prodding and hunting the truth. It’s a duel: but John Carnack doesn’t know who his opponent actually is.

There’s a few things in this episode that get built on in later episodes, including setting up a joke in episode six that I just could not resist.

THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT has been a top 10 fiction podcast on Apple and Spotify in UK, US and Canadian charts, which is nice, but do keep spreading the word. If you liked it, tell a friend. We could use all the help we can get.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

• notes on a weird little cosmic-horror book called THE TWENTY DAYS OF TURIN

• rules for making rhubarb gin

• Matt Webb’s horror stories from shipping the comic SVK that I made with Matt Brooker and design company BERG

• Notes on Anais Nin’s revelatory THE NOVEL OF THE FUTURE

• Notes on the superb collection CAIRN by Kathleen Jamie

This letter has been zapped to you via Beehiiv and a newsletter I read every day:

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I’m heading back outside with my feline supervisor to get the last of the summer and the top of the autumn, because it makes me feel good, and that’s allowed. Do something that makes you feel good this week. You’re allowed. See you next week.

W