On the occasion of the announcement of the forthcoming publication of Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father

Kafka as a boyI have a book coming out.

That’s a sentence I’ve wanted to be able to write for, I don’t know, over a decade now, but, before March this year, wasn’t something I thought I’d be able to say seriously any time soon – if ever. But Transmission Press have spent the period since then patiently working with me to make this thing to be titled Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father. It brings together the fiction I’ve written over the last three years or so, and the surprising and gratifying thing about it all – at least for me, their humble author – is to see the resonances and recurrences of themes and motifs across narrative styles and POVs and formal play.

It’s surprising because I wrote these stories to tell stories, yes, but also to challenge and entertain myself. To create, to evoke, to help me deal with life on this weird ball – and not with a serious view of binding them together and putting it up for sale.

I’ll write more about it all soon, but for now I’m grateful to Transmission Press for giving my fragmented, melancholy fiction a chance, and giving me so much creative control while also ensuring we’re creating the best collection possible.

Anyway, don’t worry too much about that right now. Instead, pick up a few books from a bookshop or subscribe to a literary journal or join a library, one with beanbags and aircon.