Octobering

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. Welcome to amateur goth season.

Everything goes gold. The linen clothes have been put away, and the workwear and suit jackets are back out: the sailcloth chore jacket from Yarmouth Oilskins and the Icelandic wool hoodie, the Merrell boots and the merino scarves. And the Pendleton AB-202 Hat that they don’t make any more, the bastards (I bought mine in Oregon a dozen years ago).

The mancub, by the way, is back to his old self, despite having dodged almost every antibiotic dose I tried to get into him. As I write this, he is grimly sitting outdoors under the patio roof and blaming me for the wind and the rain.

In this letter:

• Patience

• Know your tools

• some Danielle Dax

• social media winter everywhere except…

• Thought For The Day

• Books and music

• LTD

THE WORLD SERVICE

PATIENCE

By the time you read this, if everything’s gone to plan - and there’s no reason to expect it will - the entirety of graphic novella PROJECT LOST SIERRA should have been delivered to the upload site by the artist, if she hasn’t experienced yet another bizarre Fortean accident that has led us both to believe this book is cursed.

PROJECT BORLEY’s artist is in the last half of issue 3 - 4 is on his desk, which mean I need to get a wiggle on and produce two more scripts to stay well ahead of him. PROJECT EXPLOITS RIVER is into its final pages now, I believe, PROJECT KNIFE HILL and PROJECT ROANOKE are still waiting for their artists to get free, I’m already into the projected 7500 words of contracted ebook PROJECT SODA SPRINGS (I suspect it’ll end up around 10k, like DEAD PIG COLLECTOR, and I don’t even bother mentioning all the film and tv activity - options, attachments and the like - because none of that stuff matters until it physically happens on a set or in a studio.

Patience. I was having a conversation about that with someone earlier. Things will happen, or not happen, in their own time, and there is rarely anything you can do about that. If you want to make things for a living and not go batshit - and I have to remind you that all creative industries are filled with people who went batshit - step one is to learn how to wait and let things go.

It’s among the hardest lessons to learn, but it’s the one that will save your life. Take it from someone who’s lived through a lot and nearly died a few times.

OPERATIONS

KNOW YOUR TOOLS

Actors talking about acting can be painful to listen to. But actors who have really thought in practical terms about what they do and how they do it - that’s fascinating.

Michael Caine would talk about acting on film as “surgery with a laser” as opposed to theatre acting being “surgery with a scalpel.” Film doesn’t let you be broad or take your time and you can see every little detail in that frame. Hence his famous “eye trick” - he won’t blink during a shot unless he’s trying to show nerves.

Anthony Hopkins doesn’t blink when he plays Hannibal Lector, either - but he does hold his mouth slightly open in every shot, the way a snake does.

I once saw a short documentary about the film THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, and in an interview Angela Lansbury said something brilliant. Her character, the slightly creepy grandmother, wore little spectacles. And, every now and then, Lansbury would hold her head a certain way, because she knew the lighting would catch the glass of her spectacles and hide her eyes. And when you can’t see someone’s eyes, you unconsciously stop trusting them. Therefore, Lansbury would make it so you were never quite sure about Granny, without her doing anything except tilting her head a bit.

Because she was in command of the tools. She knew what everything on a set did, she knew what a camera did, and she knew that the tiniest of movements would change everything.

And here’s musician and actor Danielle Dax, of the Thames Delta, as the werewolf girl in COMPANY OF WOLVES:

DANIELLE DAX ENTR’ACTE

And since I ended up talking about the sainted Danielle Dax, here’s a short musical interval:

ORBITAL

SOCIAL MEDIA WINTER CONTINUES, ALMOST EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

I’ve seen this quoted in a few places - it’s a piece on the FT that I don’t have access to because I’m too cheap to spring for the FT, but this is the bit, this time on Marginal Revolution:

There is, of course, one notable exception to this global trend. America.

Recently: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM., THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition, the LIGHTS OUT Anthology.

One More Won’t Hurt

These are the collaborations between myself and painter AJ. Sometimes she sends me an image and I respond to it in text, sometimes I send her a piece of text and she responds with an image. Find her work at brady-pictures.com.

OPS

BOOKS AND MUSIC

Finished HERESY this week, which I talked about last week.

I have a couple of part-read books I want to get back to, I have a vague itch to re-read some McLuhan, but I also have this in the queue taunting me:

I picked it up in a sale and am curious.

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DU FU, Michael Wood (UK) (US)

Madeleine Cocolas wrote and performed a new score for the famous film HAXAN:

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

I keep a digital writer’s notebook and you’re invited to read over my shoulder.

Morning Computer: a few useful things first thing in my day

Nine Bells: evening notes

Notes on CHOKEPOINTS by Edward Fishman

Notes on IAIN SINCLAIR IS 80 by various

I’ve taken to doing a link dump, telemetry, most days

This letter has been zapped to you via Beehiiv. This newsletter costs me a couple of grand a year to run, so if you have a spare coin to add to the coffee fund, it would be a great help.

And that’s me for this week. And since I sent the family on holiday this week. I do mean it’s just me and the cats. So, from me, Bowie, Minnie and Aya (and no, I didn’t get to name any of them), please do have a great week.

W