It’s taken me a while to realise my three favourite novels are all the same thing through different lenses: young people in endearingly dysfunctional families living in old castles and trying to do nothing more complicated than make it through the day with, for, and sometimes despite their loved ones. Those books are Shirley Jackson’s ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’, Dodie Smith’s ‘I Capture the Castle, and Mervyn Peake’s… ‘Titus Groan’.

Yes, I really wish he’d called it ‘Let’s Go to the Castle’ instead, but Peake gets a pass for breaking my pattern because it’s like Charles Dickens writing the Addams Family and Gormenghast is by far the very best castle of all time.

Anyway, I only realised this after finally finishing a novel I intended to be just a queer take on the action stories I loved as a kid, and realising that the whole thing is yet again a book about a handful of dysfunctional people in a weird old house who love each other in different ways, trying to get as far as they can through life without losing grip of each other’s hands.

But this one’s in the FUTURE!

I’ve sent out the first submission for that novel now, INTERWEAVER, and I am very proud of myself, and thoroughly thankful to my partner for helping me check over the submission package five or six times while sat on the sofa in our pyjamas. It’s also why this one’s a short newsletter that is more letter than news, because editing that one has been every free moment for about a month.

Hopefully, I’ll have more news on that novel next time, or the time after, but meanwhile Hallowe’en is hurtling towards us, I have a short story coming out with the National Library of Scotland (largely typed up between making people library cards and admiring their notebooks) and for the Edinburgh folk among you, I’d love to see you on 28^th October at Blackwell’s to talk about How to Scare Children.

Have a listen to ‘Admiral and Commander’ by Bear McCreary; it’s from Battlestar Galactica (we’re watching a LOT of that) and it’s the theme for the father and son. I couldn’t possibly be expected to explain why that makes me a bit emotional.

Have a watch of the first season of Reacher. He solves his problems by being wider than them, but putting aside slapping villains across rooms, honestly I’m starting to figure out he’s just an American version of Paddington Bear, wandering into towns alone with nothing but a toothbrush and a general desire to help out, finding a bit of family along the way, causing chaos he didn’t intend. Sometimes going to prison.

Have a go at a toasted bagel with a big glass of fizzy water.

All the best,

Sam