Hi. This is going to be fast and messy but here’s a rundown of news about my projects and some cool stuff I’ve been thinking about / listening to.

The Scottish Boy: New English editions will be coming out in September from Eye Books (print) and Saga Edgmont (eBook). More formal announcements and confirmation of release dates soon. I’ll get you all ISBNs soon and I’m also going to organize some signed editions at a couple queer / indie bookstores in US and UK.

Dan Dare graphic novel: 24 hours left in the Kickstarter!!! It is wildly overfunded, the Kickstarter books now have exclusive hardback covers by JH Williams III and paperback covers by Chris Weston (the retail cover will be by a different artist), the art looks AMAZING and I am over the moon about Marc’s design for the spaceship Anastasia:

Lastly, if you looked at the Kickstarter when it launched and went “oh that shipping’s a bit high” or “hmm the thing I want isn’t available outside the UK” our fulfilment guy joined a couple days in and sorted that all out so everything’s available everywhere and shipping is WAY more reasonable.

Other stuff: About to pitch a middle grade animal family graphic novel with Carla Speed McNeil that’s full of big feelings and bigger adventures, and if you are an editor or know an editor who might be interested, holla. A peek:

What else is on? I think about this article on cloned polo ponies at least once per day — the ultimate catch-22, if you sell your clone, you lose the monopoly on the DNA… so there are very few situations where you can actually make money making clones.

The rewilding opportunity afforded by, uh, radioactive disasters. (Or, hear me out: what if we just made more parks / wildlife refuges?)

I also have two new favourite things to listen to while writing / working. The first is Train Jazz, which is truly lovely programmatic jazz music based on the realtime position of NYC subway trains. Listening to it is like being in a café with the perfect amount of background noise. (Hover/click on each subway line’s symbol at top left to learn more about its instrument and why it was chosen—the F train is dead on).

The second is a 1976 concept album about the city of Düsseldorf by the band La Düsseldorf. (Fellow author Tom Cox was joking around about cats’ taste in music vs dogs’, and this is definitely an album an aloof cat would recommend.) Trust the cat, play this:

It is perfect, I love it, no notes. (Ironically kiddo is currently obsessed with IFA Wartburg, a satirical Swedish band who wrote songs about East Germany and produced a single album in 1998 so we’re both really into German concept albums right now?)

Currently reading: Eurotrash by Christian Kracht.

Recently finished: May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry (AMAZING, read it) and The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung (interlinked supernatural stories that are easy to read and not too scary but still really good).

That’s all for now. Be well.