This is my brick
I finally got around to uploading an avatar for this newsletter. It's a photo of the brick I keep on my desk at work:
It is perhaps worth noting that the brick was not a decision I, personally, made. A colleague bought it for me (and commissioned an Etsy artist to engrave the words "TEXT LOCK" on the side) and, later, another colleague stuck some googly eyes on it.
However, I cannot recommend enough the practice of keeping a brick with googly eyes on your desk. It's a very effective communication tool. What it communicates, specifically, is that you have a brick.
New on Ko-fi: "The Scientific Method"
I wrote a semi-smutty coda to "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," where Jay and Sebastian try out some stuff post-top surgery. You can read it for free here.
Preorder: "Move Fast and Break Things"
Preorders are still open for the ebook of my short story "Move Fast and Break Things." It originally appeared in the Grendel Press anthology The Devil Who Loves Me, and will be available as a standalone work on September 3. You can preorder the ebook here.
If you're subscribed to my Ko-fi at the Early Access tier ($5 CAD/month), you can download the book for free, right now. If you'd like to read the story early but don't have a spare $5 kicking around, you can also get a free advance review copy over on Booksprout.
This Week's Links
The OceanGate and OceanGate Expeditions websites now redirect to a page that says the company "has suspended all exploration and commercial operations."
Discover a variety of dark pattern examples, sorted by category, to better understand deceptive design practices.
... in the years since Banks’ alleged death, mounting evidence and accounts from those close to her work suggest that she was not the person she claimed to be. In fact, some are convinced that Banks may never have existed at all.
Oddly enough, the name of this newsletter is not derived from the brick on my desk. It's a paraphrase of Harlan Ellison paraphrasing a Kafka quote, the general gist of which is "art should be a brick through a window." Meaning that art shouldn't be nice, or polite, or soothing; it should break something inside of you.
But from an artistic standpoint, having a literal brick on hand is also pretty useful.
-K
