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May ‘25 newsletter

Here’s what I’ve been working on since Jacksboro Highway was released in April.

1. Colin the superhero is coming along nicely. About 50,000 words or half a novel. No idea for a title, but I’ll have to devote some time to the question soon. I’m intending Colin to become a series, so maybe a recurring word or phrase in the title might be useful. ‘Reluctant superhero’ could lead on to ‘Overconfident superhero’. ‘Apprentice superhero’ leads on to ‘Journeyman superhero.’ Then there’s ‘Genesis of a superhero’ which has plenty of possibilities.

If you have ever dreamed or daydreamed how you would mend our country — if only you woke up one day with amazing superpowers — then Colin will be your cup of tea.

Remember, you can read Chapters 1 & 2 here. Feel free to reply with comments, suggestions, likes, dislikes. If becoming a beta reader appeals to you, or being the first to receive chapters in progress, I’d welcome that.

2. A collection of half a dozen unfinished stories have been demanding I finish them. They’ll appear in my next short story collection – possible titles ‘Brave New World’, ‘How to rebuild a country’, ‘New direction’, ‘Shall we try this again?’, ‘Stories from a better world’, ‘The first turn after the corner’.

I’ll tell you about two of them today.

In the series of emails I send out to every new subscriber, I mention the themes I explore intentionally and unintentionally in my stories, including true manhood and masculinity, true leadership, honour and integrity.

As I see our country draw ever closer to being flushed away down the toilet, I anticipate that — come the rebuild — these discarded values will become more and more essential.

A couple of days ago I spent the whole day on a long, short story I’ve been working on and off with for years. All those themes are high in the mix. It’s set in New Zealand after the collapse. Our protagonist, a Maori man-boy called Tane, spent years as a gang prospect, hoping one day he’d be patched. The end of the world happened and there was no rebuild. Instead, survivors returned to farming and simple manufacturing. Ferals scrape a living by raiding these farms and communities. Except the one which Tane ends up living on, by a stroke of luck, as a prospect. Tai Tapu is a well organised, successful farm, tightly regulated and protected by a rigidly hierarchical military leadership. Warriors are in charge and they don’t dish out membership like confetti. Rather like a biker gang. And at the same time, nothing like one.

After failing more trials than he passes, Tane is assigned as a shepherd on a high hill pasture. All alone for months. Nothing to do but watch the sheep — and think.

Have you ever watched the underrated gem ‘The Wrestler’ by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Whale) starring a spellbinding Mickey Rourke? It gives generously every time I re-watch it. What gripped me last time was the utterly bare, mercilessly transactional world that Ram (Rourke) and Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) live in. They have two identities, a performer and a real-life, day to day person (who is almost invisible by contrast). Their performer identities are valued and sought after, the real person they are is not. At all. Hence, the ‘fake’ persona keeps pulling them back, but time is a one way street and one day soon they will have to reconcile with the real world. Or will they? 

Anyway, Cassidy’s character and dilemma, but even more so the transactional world she lives in, is what inspired my short story ‘Anjelica’. She self-identifies as a high-class call girl, clicks that those days are (almost) over and plans to get out by landing a wealthy husband. She expects the husband will be a dupe, a true believer in love, trust, genuine complementary relationships and so on but after a lifetime of charging for love, she finds she cannot recalibrate. Can anyone?

The transactional world, which we see idolised and promoted everywhere ... by rappers, Kardashians, crime and gangster dramas and films is a good example of all that glitters. It offers golden riches, satisfaction of your every desire, fame, status, exclusive gated mansions proles can only dream of but it’s really a cheap and shiny counterfeit world when compared to – well, family, love, sacrifice, selflessness, brotherhood, truth and beauty – to name but a few.

Happy reading

Martin

November 2024 newsletter and updates

What I’ve been reading

I won’t bore you with a list, only highlights that one day I may write reviews for and put up on the website. John D McDonald (famous for Cape Fear and Travis McGee) about whom someone said without whom there would have been no Elmore Leonard and therefore no Quentin Tarantino, wrote a detective series with a richly written protagonist, a ‘knight in tarnished armour’, Travis McGee.

I’m working through the series again, thirty years on. Highly recommended. George Pelecanos pays tribute to McDonald and McGee in ‘The man who came uptown’ by featuring the first book, ‘The Long Blue Goodbye’ in a prison reading class and having the prisoners give their takes on it. Two of the three protagonists are in the room.

Two Steven King’s. ‘The Institute’ and ‘The Outsider’. How does he do it so effortlessly? I have a few ideas for plots and themes that come close to his in their scale and some great characters but how on earth can I approach what he does with his?

Still working through Chekhov’s long collection of short stories. So many of these will be read over again and again to squeeze out more juice. George Saunders (English Lit Prof, novelist and one of the best contemporary short story writers) features three of Chekhov’s stories in his analysis of seven 19th C Russian short stories ‘A swim in a pond in the rain’. Other authors include Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev. I may have made it sound dull and dry but it’s the opposite.

What I’ve been writing

In September’s newsletter I introduced you to my latest hero. Tagline - ‘Colin Cowsbotham: Tech Nerd. Virgin. Superhero.’

Colin is about 32K words right now. I anticipate he’ll end up a full length novel. I thought I could attach the first chapter but it’s not quite polished enough. Should be alright for the next newsletter.

More completed short stories and more in work. I know, I only just published ‘As the clever hopes expire’. Most of these are medium-long stories, some at editing stage, some merely skeletons. Not many are post-collapse this time and some straddle the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Working titles – ‘Sigurd and the real girl,’ ‘Hawksbill Five - O - Eight’, ‘Princesses in the new world’. I probably won’t complete a book’s worth before Colin but I won’t be far behind.

What’s coming next?

Jacksboro Highway is still at the editors. But I’m off to New Zealand for a month – to watch two out of three Test matches – so I won’t be able to make any changes, format and publish until after New Year. I intend to send you another newsletter in between, including Colin’s first chapter.

Happy reading, Martin

My latest projects May 2024

1. Novel No 4, a fantasy story, ‘Iraa and the five stories’ and my first collection of short stories ‘And its fall was great’ are both published. Available through Amazon and Kobo.

2. Next novel, working title ‘Jacksboro Highway’, after the John Mayall song, explores the theme of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Imagine Wolf Larsen, one of the most dangerous villains in literature, survives the collapse. What would he do then? Change his ways and his nature? Work peacefully and co-operatively as part of a survivor community? Of course not. Larsen would carry on exactly as before, the apex predator feared by his powerless prey. A wolf in the sheepfold. Can anyone oppose and defeat him before every sheep is killed and eaten? That’s the role of the sheepdog, essential for any successful civilisation to survive and prosper. Rough men, prepared to do violence on behalf of the peaceful citizens, who can’t do it for themselves.

But in that pre-collapse England it was open season on sheepdogs. Armed police, British troops serving overseas, prison officers – all cancelled, prosecuted, imprisoned until they became an endangered species.

The wolves, however, ate it up. Thrived and prospered. But that‘s another story.

3. Two other projects – Novel ‘The sleep of ages break’ and screenplay ‘Borderline Brat camp’ remain on the backburner.

Happy reading

Martin

My latest projects Aug 2022

1. My first book of short stories with the working title 'And its fall was great.' Or it could be another quote like 'The lights must never go out' or 'As the clever hopes expire'. The theme I'm aiming for is difficult to summarise in one sentence but includes the complacent, lazy, almost entitled view, (except entitlement takes more mental effort to achieve than this idle, unexamined zephyr of an idea) that everything Britons have that's great, dropped effortlessly out of the sky into our laps and no matter how careless and slack handed we are with them, they could never, ever be lost or broken beyond repair. 

I've used the post-collapse landscape in about half of them, it’s such a generous canvas with huge potential for exploring alternative ways of living, how the collapse unfolded (consider The Scarlet Plague to The Stand to Z for Zachariah), how people addicted to their index linked lives might cope (or not) when everything flies away. I've set one in present day mental health services where staff are handcuffed by some politicians' latest genius wheeze. Another's set in a football stadium with an AI ref a few years from now. Yet another is at an Inquiry into a Tube station fire where some political players are desperate that the truth doesn't come out. Quite a few are set in and around mental hospitals or community teams. One is titled 'Borderline building,' another 'Munchausen's mother.'  I have enough ideas for a gross of short stories, many are 'in work' and enough are within sight of the finish line for me to whet your appetite that it will indeed be released soon, before projects two and three.

2. Second project is the fourth novel, set just a few years in the future, right at the point when the last and irreversible financial collapse occurs, offering, possibly, a choice for some - some villages and towns, some groups, even some countries - to reset their economies, their values, their whole societies to a place where all the people, not just the 000.1% and their political and legal fixers, are looked after, thrive and prosper That is unless the super-rich, aided by their corporations, governments, shysters, licenced gangsters and triggermen grab it all back again first. This story will be on a huge canvas, double the length of a novel, set in a dozen and more countries. The scope of Stephen King's 'Under the Dome' and 'The Stand' with their multiple locations and large cast inspired me to expand my own horizon.

Wealth inequality has stabilised to a point where there are a hundred multinational 'Blue Whales', individuals as rich and richer than countries while the rest of the world have job security, basic public services but nothing else and no hope of ever gaining more. Most don’t even recognise they are no more than the Blue Whales’ slaves.

3. The third project has rather stalled, I don't know where to take it, since UK agents have inexplicably shown such indifference to my first three novels. It's a screenplay for a TV series, set in a Northern NHS psychiatric service, a few years from now, after, yes, the final and irreversible financial collapse, when all the fake money dries up along with the layers of management, auditors, bean counters, E&D officers and anyone who doesn't provide direct care, i.e. back to the seventies.

Borderlines, now there's no money to pay their rescuers, ambulance chasers, professional absolvers, DBT therapists and on and on ad nauseam find themselves not only at the bottom of the pile again but with a maxed out and cancelled ‘get out of jail free’ card. Our hero is an older psych nurse who, in the spirit of 'the school of hard knocks' leads them into the hills on 'Borderline Boot Camp'. The first episode is complete and the second half-way. 

When I get organised, I'll probably send it off to TV agents. Or turn it into a novel. 

À bientôt everybody,

Martin