LET IT GROW

Welcome! It’s nice to see you.

I’ve wanted to try a newsletter for ages, so together, let’s figure out how.

My way into any creative process is to chuck a load of sketchy material out on the page with shameless abandon, talk myself towards finding the through-line while pacing on our creaky floors, recoil 3-4 times at what has come of the attempt, and so return to the page in an indignant attempt to better represent my great idea.

With time, and new drafts, this recoiling usually becomes a fond nostalgia for the seed that grew the plant: that rough, unsightly little thing that got so distractingly caught in your teeth, and claimed its sneaky victory by urging you to spit it out and let it grow. Let’s see how that works here.

If you’re seeing some headings, trust that I put them in once I was done writing all the text, to make this look deliberate.

NEWS

I’m excited to have three Edinburgh events in the pipeline through these darkening months to talk about my work, including one for Blackwell’s (29th Oct), another for the University of Edinburgh (TBC Hallowe’entime), and a third at my lovely part-time workplace, the National Library of Scotland (5th Dec with the marvellous Justin Davies). I’m also talking to Toppings & Co. about school events, because who doesn’t want to walk into a classroom and ask pupils if they want to hear about ghosts and monsters? Specific info will be announced on my website and Instagram!

I’ve also finally stapled the Image and Text bits of my brain together to create Mer-Kid, an ongoing watercolour web-comic about a little sea-creature who goes from a gothic mansion to a community swimming pool. As someone with eyes that can barely tell colours apart beyond Hot and Cold — and who has never done a comic before — this whole thing is a rather invigorating learning process. Very refreshing that there’s no blinking cursor on a sketchbook. The first one-page adventure is up now here and below; Issue #2 will follow next week. We’ll see how it evolves, but right now and just for you is the hasty little notebook sketch that made me blink and do more of it. He’s a little rough, but I like him.

STORY TIME

Writing-wise, the National Library will also be releasing my next short story, The Magician’s Memoir, which leads us to our fictional hero of this month: neither Odysseus nor Spider-Man, but Percival: young knight of Arthur’s round table, mostly hapless. Specifically, the version of Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval le Galois.

Writing T.M.M. meant asking the NLS’ Special Collections to bring up a lovely big vellum book from the 13th century, strewn with illustrations of endearingly varied quality, and trying to feel how an old wizard might feel to find in its pages the enduring traces of a long-lost friend.

Much and all as he got to join the Avengers of the Dark Ages, dear Percival isn’t the best knight. He idolised the idea of knighthood as a kid, fled home at his first glimpse of armour-clad horse-blokes, and fumbled his way through his inaugural knightly quests literally unable to recognise the Holy Grail when he saw it. It wasn’t even an Indiana Jones test of wits: the thing was right there, next to a lance spouting blood in the Fisher King’s significantly magic castle.

In most renditions, he has to come back with Gawain later to fetch it and quest properly — but in his defence, young Percy had also just fallen in love for the first time, and safe to say that would stop most people noticing any other magical happenings.

What’s the point of this Arthurian interlude? Percival embodies the process of starting out something new with the gleam of a dream right in your eyes, repeatedly tripping over rocks and falling in lakes, and keeping on going. He’s steadfastly committed to being a knight the only way he knows how: chucking himself at knightly challenges, and knowing that as long as he makes it out the other side, he’s succesfully cosplayed long enough as his own heroes to be seen as one of them.

I didn’t know how to write a newsletter before, and Merlin help me if I know now, but let’s round this out with some quick-fire recommendations.

LISTEN: It’s one of my favourite songs, it’s often what I’ve played for about a decade now whenever the ground has needed steadying, and it’s The Oh Hellos with Like the Dawn. Enjoy a listen, I’m playing it now.

WATCH: It’s over now so the whole thing’s available, and you’ve got to watch Hacks. My partner Clí got me on this one and you will tear up at this cross-generational clash of comedians trying their best to balance integrity and success without/while destroying each other. Please watch until someone yells Fuck you, Lemony Snicket!, and then just try to quit.

TRY: Getting in the water. Swimming has become a total mental health necessity, and as someone who still thinks the Creature from the Black Lagoon is going to get him even in an indoor pool, that was very brave of me. You probably understand Mer-Kid better now. Ocean, pool, bath: submerge thyself entirely! Cool new thoughts await under the surface.

THANK YOU

It really means a lot to have you sign up and listen along with me here all the way through the first letter. I think we’ve found something of a structure, and I’m excited to refine it more next time. Share this with your friends, flick it at your enemies, scribble the link on the Visitor Survey of your local heritage attraction. Also, thanks to author and friend Oliver Gerlach for pointing me to this way of publishing a newsletter; go subscribe to him too.

Now, we’ve been good and brave and dutiful knights, and we’ll remember that until next month.

Very best,

Sam