Not Actually Here

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta, where the week has been an absolute car crash, which means I've got no time to write a proper newsletter. So, this week, it’s a “here’s a bunch of stuff laying around the house” letter. Next week will be better! Honestly!

BOOKS

GLORIOUS CLUTTER

I’m in the slow process of (failing to) reorganise my office, and I keep coming across books I forgot I owned. Part of being a writer is collecting information from every nook and cranny from the world, so when we went to the experimental archaeological village at West Stow twenty years ago, of course we hit their bookshop:

The publisher, sadly, has long gone out of business, but you can still find this floating around on Amazon. Also this one:

The book from this clutch of purchases I wanted to find, because it has a bit of mythology I wanted to refer to, has of course disappeared. But I did turn this up instead.

And also this, a book from The Institute of The Future that I did not remember buying, and which had me very confused until I found and flipped through the index and discovered I was in it (a short story called LICH-HOUSE, which I reprinted here in 2023).

Minimalism is lovely and all, but for me a life not surrounded by books is no life at all.

RIGHT WRIST

PLACE

I’ve been wearing a Fitbit Charge 5 on my right wrist for a couple of years now. It’s started having trouble with syncing and charging, and the strap has begun to irritate my skin a little. So I’m taking it off for a couple of weeks, to let it discharge completely and to do a deep clean on it. I may not even put it back on. This leaves me with unbalanced wrists, because I’ve been using Fitbits for more than a dozen years, on and off, and I’m too used to having something on the right wrist. I have a leather and metal bracelet with a fiddly clasp that’s maybe a centimetre too small to be fully comfortable. And then I saw this.

Listen, I’ve lived by the sea most of my life - the Thames Delta opens on to the North Sea, which I can see when I look east from the shore - and my dad sailed the world in his years in the Merchant Navy. (He always said he saw a poster which read “see the world and get paid for it” and signed up immediately as that sounded like a great deal.)

The metal piece is a sailing rope thimble. It’s the simplest little thing, but for me it has a sense of place to it.

ANTI-CANCER TRAIT

MATTER BIO

I had a zoom call with Matter Bio this week, who are people doing the actual hard work of longevity research.

Their website is brief and presents their case very simply. They’re as interested inhealthspan as lifespan. Living to 200 would be pretty crap if 140 of those years were spent completely crocked.

Be aware of them now, because I suspect they may be a subject of conversation by the end of the year.

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

DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHAZARD EDITION sold well! But there are still copies left, because thankfully we did a healthy print run intended to last a while, which, given all the tariff issues around the US, was a bit of luck. Once this run’s gone, it might be a little bit before you see it again, so ask your local comics store or bookshop for it or grab one off Amazon (UK) (US). It is an absolutely beautiful object: JH Williams and Image did a fantastic job putting it together.

It was Jim’s decision to reflow the script into double-page spreads, and I’ve never been able to argue with it. Look at that.

OTHER

ANYTHING ELSE

A few shots of the Rothko Seagram murals now installed at the Tate, by Daily Rothko.

I also had a phone chat with the nice people at Neotext this week, and discovered that Jerome Charyn, author of two of the best graphic novels I’ve ever read, also wrote a novella for them:

Illustrated by US comic elder statesman Joe Staton. Here’s the link for you to have a look for yourself.

Charyn wrote the fine BILLY BUDD KGB and the completely magnificent THE MAGICIAN’S WIFE, as well as having a storied career in prose.

To find a new novella from him on Neotext is quite something.

Evidently it’s the year of the Fantastic Four, as this just got reprinted. I wrote around 240 pages of this book, as Mark Millar and Brian Bendis asked me to fill in for six months because they’d gotten busy. That turned into a year. Mark came back on his own to rescue the book from me. Stuart Immonen and Adam Kubert kept my run alive with magnificent art. I hope there’s still space in the world for mad scientists and reckless explorers.

This book will have no bearing on the film, not least because I gave my Doctor Doom satanic goat legs, which everyone hated.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

This letter has been zapped to you via Beehiiv.

That’s it for this week. The big whiteboard is almost full, the garden is coming into flower, and I hope you can gather to yourself the things that make you happy too. Whatever the rest of the world says, you’re allowed to be content. See you next week.

W