Rob Boffard's Blog

I’ve been quiet for the past month or so. It’s because I have developed a very rare and potentially fatal infection of my spleen, which I contracted while visiting the Amazon jungle. They tried to cure it on-site, but it involved attaching leeches to my genitals, which hurt a lot, so we –

No, that’s not true. What I have been doing is moving house. And not the hey-we-changed-apartments-bring-friends-help-move-boxes-pizza-party type of move. I’m talking the full, hey-we-got-a-mortgage-and-new-furniture-and-have-a-garden-oh-god-oh-god move.

As expected, this took a metric fuckton of time and effort. It largely kept me offline, and meant I wasn’t able to dick around here as much as I usually do. But it’s amazing and worth it – we have a huge garden and I have an actual office, instead of just a nook off my kitchen. Although I wrote three books in that nook, so…

Anyway. We have moved, unpacked, painted, switched the plugs to stop the house from burning down, gotten keys cut, installed new lights, and discovered that whoever built the house apparently doesn’t believe in right angles. It’s still a mess, but it’s our mess. I feel the same way about it as I do a finished first draft of a book, actually.

I’ll be doing more regular updates on book stuff soon. Adrift continues to kick serious ass – thank you for all the reviews and messages, you guys are the best. I’ll soon be announcing a SUPER RAD AMAZING DOPE COMPETITION where you – yes you – can get yourself into one of my books…

Here are some photos of the new spot to keep you going until then.

ADRIFT
Out Now!

‘AN EDGE-OF-THE-SEAT EPIC OF SURVIVAL AND ADVENTURE IN DEEP SPACE’ Gareth L. Powell, the BSFA award-winning author of Embers of War

‘A UNIQUE MIX OF THRILLER, SPACE ADVENTURE AND CONSPIRACY NOVEL – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED’ Jamie Sawyer, author of the Lazarus War novels

‘ADRIFT IS RICH IN DEEP CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA, BUILT ON A HIGHLY SUSPENSEFUL PREMISE‘ D. Nolan Clark, author of Forsaken Skies

GET IT: 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository
IndieBound
Google Play
iBooks
Kobo
Waterstones 
Indigo Chapters

(Don’t see your favourite store here? Let me know, and I’ll add it!)

(Image: Hannaford, used under Creative Commons)

Here’s how it breaks down.I don’t do writing advice; never have, never will. Mostly because all of it – with perhaps the exception of read lots, write lots, and finish what you start – is absolute bunk. Every piece of advice you get can be directly contradicted. Told not to use adverbs? The word forever is an adverb. Don’t start a story with your character waking up, or looking at themselves in the mirror? Who says? Why the hell not? If the story demands it, then it must be done. So the one thing you will never see on this blog are little lists of writing advice. Kill that noise.

But simply because I’m unwilling to give out advice, and unwilling to listen to any given to me, doesn’t mean that you can’t have rules. Rules are different. Rules are a rock you can stand on. Rules, by and large, don’t get contradicted – not in writing, anyway. These are, I should point out, rules that aren’t universal, although god knows they should be. Every writer will set their own, and it can often take quite a while to figure yours out. Here are mine. Some writers may be comfortable bending their own rules, but I never do. Here’s what works for me.

Rule #1: No comebacks

 

By which I mean: if I kill a character, they stay dead. Nothing annoys me more than a character, who we last saw with an axe through his face and a flagpole jammed up his rectum, make a shocking return at the end of the book, or in the next one. This is part of the reason why I really struggle to read comics these days. Why should I give the tiniest toss if Wolverine has died, when I know he’ll be back a few issues later? His clone was killed, or they brought his past self forward (see next rule), or Thanos altered reality and oh wait I stopped caring ten pages ago. His death means absolutely nothing now. Hand on heart, I promise that if I kill a character in one of my books, they will absolutely not be coming back. That includes the prominent character I heartlessly murdered at the end of Impact. They’re done. Finito. Goodbye.

Well… OK. There are corollaries to this rule. Characters will only stay dead if we see them die, or if there is no way in hell they could have survived. I’m OK with leaving a little bit of ambiguity, as long as it’s believable. It’s also totally fine if coming back to life happens to be a key plot mechanic – I haven’t used that yet, but I fully reserve the right to. Until then? Dead is dead is dead.

Rule #2: No time travel

 

Not ever. Not in a million years. That’s forward and backward. I swear by every deity in American Gods to never use time travel in a book. It constantly amazes me that writers keep trying. It is the Great No, the Universal Undoing, the Thing That Will Drive You Mad.

There are two reasons why I would never fuck with time travel in a story. One: it’s almost impossible to keep the story straight. You can’t take two steps back into the past without creating a thousand paradoxes and destroying the universe, and simply looking the other way and pretending such things don’t exist won’t help you. One of my favourite Stephen King books, 11/22/63, involves time travel, and dear old Steve dealt with the whole killing-grandfather problem by simply stating that his main characters would never do that. A Netflix show I enjoyed, Timeless, dealt with the problem characters of meeting their past selves by saying that they could not travel back to the past in which they already existed. Why? Who knows! It’s a mystery! It’s just how this time travel doohickey works!

Two: it’s boring. There is nothing that makes me groan more loudly than a writer introducing time travel. It has all been done. Virtually none of it has worked. Even the best time travel movie ever made, Looper, didn’t really work. Nuts to any of that. There are no corollaries to this rule. I do not have the energy or the brainpower to try and keep my story straight when the characters are wibbly-wobbling through time. I can barely keep them straight when things happen in a linear order. And I refuse to subject a reader to it simply because I couldn’t think of anything better.

Rule #3: No vampires

 

There’s nothing wrong with vampires, per se. I just don’t like them. They are almost as boring as time travel. I was really into Justin Cronin’s The Passage, and then it turned out that it was all about vampires, and I actually threw the book across the room. There is no type of supernatural being that has been wrung drier by current authors, and I want no part of it. I solemnly swear that there will be no bloodsuckers in any of my books.

Aliens, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, mermaids, demons…sure. But not vampires. They can fuck right off.

Rule #4: The reader doesn’t give a shit about my research

 

I love research. Looooove it. And not just as a technique to avoid actually writing. I’m a former journalist, and I get a real kick out of finding strange and wondrous facts, and wrapping my head around a tricky topic. I adore hunting out experts and firing impertinent questions at them. I do it to give my stories a little bit of veracity, to flesh out world I’m working in, and to make things believable.

But what I’ve learned, and what I will always and forever try to stick to, is that readers actually don’t care. They are not nearly as interested as I am in the height/velocity curve for a Bell 206 helicopter, or whether it could make an emergency landing at an altitude of 100 feet and a speed of 70 knots (spoiler: it can). They care not one whit about the exact dynamics of air and friction on an asteroid during re-entry, or whether a ship being towed behind the asteroid could survive this procedure. They just want to get on with the story. So my rule is: when doing research, only communicate exactly what is necessary. The rest can just bubble underneath it, like a beautiful, delicious stew under the crusty story cassoulet. Related note: never write a blog before lunch.

Rule #5: Never talk about it until it’s done

 

This started off as a suspicion, and very quickly became an unbreakable rule. When I first wrote Tracer, I told virtually no one about it. My wife knew, and so did the scientists that I contacted for research purposes, but that was it. I shared it with nobody. Didn’t tell a soul that I was working on it. It was only when I had a first draft that I actually asked some close friends to take a look at. One of them turned to me and said, “You kept that very close to your chest.” I took that as a serious compliment.

If I can get curmudgeonly here for a second: this is why I have zero patience for people who post lines from their current work in progress on Twitter, usually with the vacuous hashtag #amwriting. Stop that shit. I don’t care. And by doing it, you are all but ensuring that your story will take an age to actually get done, because you’ll be too busy watching social media feedback for that one clever line you’ve got. The only time a story is worth caring about is when it is actually complete. Yes, it may be a steaming pile of garbage, but it will be finished steaming pile of garbage, and who wants an unfinished steaming pile of garbage lying around?

To this day, very few people know what I’m working on until the draft is actually ready to go. That’s the way it’s going to stay.

 

Hey! You! Do you live in San Diego?

 

If so, come and see me get naked, dance on tables, yell a lot and start fires at…

Wait…

(Ahem)

I mean: come see me read from and sign copies of Adrift, at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, this Saturday 7/9/18, at 2pm. 

Can I be real with you for a second? I want to get something off my chest.

You see authors on social media, and you think that everything is rosy. The carefully curated timelines are an endless parade of successes. And in reality, that’s just not the case. I know this from personal experience.

By now, I’ve had three books published – four, if you include Adrift. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the launch of each one, it’s that the actual launch day itself is an anti-climax. There’s a little bit of support. A few reviews. A couple of congratulatory tweets. Unless you’re a big-name author, this is the experience you’ll have. And then the book drops into a deep, dark hole.

It’s definitely the experience I’ve had the most. Don’t get me wrong: the Outer Earth series sold OK – more than enough to get me a second deal with Orbit Books. But people didn’t love it. They enjoyed it. They had fun with it. But it didn’t blow their heads off, much as I would have loved it to. I still adore it, but it didn’t blow up like I expected.

So in the lead up to Adrift, I was girding my loins for more of the same. I was expecting a little bit of praise, and then a big, dark, empty, soulless vacuum. It’s cynical and bitter, but I was ready for it.

What I was not ready for was the complete opposite of everything I’d experienced previously.

I was NOT READY FOR IT.

Every day last week brought a new storm of reviews raving about the book. People are loving this shit. Overwhelmingly positive reviews, from just about everywhere. Big names, small indie blogs, you name it. This book is getting huge praise. People are seriously and truly into this shit.

None of this is expected. I didn’t know what was going to happen with this book. I am half relieved, and half ecstatic. And believe me when I say, really and truly, that nobody is more surprised than me.

Just check out some of these review quotes!!!

‘WILL HAVE THE READER REALIZING THEY’VE BEEN HOLDING THEIR BREATH FOR PAGES ON END” Space.com

“ALTHOUGH HIS PASSENGERS ARE AMATEURS UP AGAINST A SUPERIOR ADVERSARY, HE GIVES THEM AN APPEALING SCRAPPINESS THAT MAKES THEIR SURVIVAL SEEM LESS UNLIKELY THAN IT SHOULD. THIS ACTION-PACKED ADVENTURE IS MADE FOR SUMMER VACATION READING.” Publishers Weekly

“INTRIGUE, ACTION, AND A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL: READERS WILL GET ALL OF THAT IN BOFFARD’S LATEST.” Booklist

“TO [SAY] THAT THE RESULT IS EXCITING, PROPULSIVE, AND DRIVEN BY NESTED CLIFFHANGERS AS WELL AS MOMENTS OF SURPRISING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, IS TO UNDERSTATE JUST HOW FUN, JUST HOW EXCITING, ROB BOFFARD HAS MADE THIS THING. IT’S A GRAND SPACE OPERA, A TERRIFICALLY CINEMATIC ROLLER-COASTER, A BOOK MANY OF YOU WILL BE READING WELL PAST YOUR SENSIBLE BEDTIME.” SciFi Magazine

“THIS IS A STORY ABOUT PEOPLE, ABOUT HOW THEY INTERACT – HOW THEY BOUNCE OFF EACH OTHER, HOW OTHER PEOPLE’S ACTIONS SHAPE US, AND HOW OUR ACTIONS SHAPE THE WORLD. IT’S ABOUT SURVIVING IN HIGH PRESSURE SITUATIONS, HOW THAT CHANGES YOU, AND HOW YOU REMAIN THE SAME. IT’S A STORY ABOUT PEOPLE, AND THOSE PEOPLE ARE LIVING, BREATHING, LOVINGLY CRAFTED AND AWFULLY FLAWED – WHICH MAKES THEM A PLEASURE TO READ ABOUT.”  Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews

“THE PLOT IS CLEVER – FIRST ONE THING, THEN ANOTHER, WITH RUGS BEING PULLED OUT LEFT RIGHT AND CENTRE BEFORE THE DRAMATIC AND ENTIRELY SATISFYING FINALE.”  Espresso Coco

“STORYTELLING OF THE BEST KIND. FAST AND FURIOUS WITH A LITERARY TWIST AND MORE EXCITEMENT THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT.” Liz Loves Books

“ADRIFT IS A CLAUSTROPHOBIC, ATMOSPHERIC AND FULL OF TENSION. IT IS READING TIME WELL SPENT AND I FUCKING LOVED IT.” The Tattooed Book Geek

“LOVED IT! THE SUSPENSE WAS GREAT AND THERE WAS NON-STOP ACTION THE ENTIRE RIDE! I LITERALLY HELD MY BREATH THROUGH QUITE A BIT OF THE BOOK.”  Hooked on Books

“ADRIFT PROVIDES A DISTURBINGLY CLAUSTROPHOBIC ENVIRONMENT WHILE SOMEHOW MANAGING TO EMPHASIZE THE VASTNESS OF SPACE AT THE SAME TIME.” RT Book Reviews

“THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OVER THE COURSE OF THIS NOVEL AND THE FEELINGS THIS CAUSES THE READER TO DEVELOP IS—EXCUSE THE PUN—OUT OF THIS WORLD!” – The Nerd Daily

“ROB BOFFARD IS KNOWN FOR HIS OUTER EARTH TRILOGY BUT I HAVE TO SAY THAT IN MY OPINION ADRIFT IS MUCH BETTER, WITH THE RIGHT MIX OF DRAMA, CHARACTERISATION AND ACTION. I DIDN’T WANT TO PUT IT DOWN AT ALL. THIS IS THE KIND OF BOOK THAT MAKES YOU MISS BUS STOPS! I CAN SPEAK NO HIGHER PRAISE THAN THAT.” – For Winter Nights

“THIS IS SUCH A WELL BALANCED BOOK, THE WRITING WAS INTERESTING AND ENGAGING, CHAPTERS WERE PERFECT SNAPPY BEATS WITH A FEW LONGER ONES SLOTTED IN WHEN NECESSARY AND THE LANGUAGE NOT ONLY HELPED MOVE EVENTS ALONG, CREATE TENSION AND EVOKE EMOTION WHEN NEEDED BUT ALSO HELPED WORLD BUILDING ELEMENTS TO FEEL NATURAL AND ORGANIC.” –  Fantastic Books and Where To Find Them

“THOROUGHLY DESERVING OF A BIG-SCREEN ADAPTATION, ADRIFT IS ONE OF THE MOST INTENSE AND EXCITING SCI-FI NOVELS IN RECENT YEARS. GET AHEAD OF THE CURVE, READ IT NOW BEFORE EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT!” – Pop Culture Bandit

A big, huge, planet-sized thank you to these fine folks. I really, really appreciate it.

Get the book and read an extract here!

 

So here’s something I’m really excited about: I’m hitting the road this summer to promote Adrift. That means I’m going to be in your town, signing books, getting into arguments, throwing things, dancing naked on tables, being arrested, and generally having a good time. You should come. We’ll have a laugh.

Here’s where I’ll be:

Seattle, Washington / University Bookstore / Sat 9 June, 4pm / Reading and Signing

Denver, Colorado / Denver ComicCon / Colorado Convention Center / Fri 15 – Sun 17 June / Panels and Signings

Really excited for this convention, which I’ve never been to before. Here are the places you can catch me there:

Friday, June 15

3:30 PM to 4:20 PM Orbit Books Author Panel (Location TBC)

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Book signing (Author Signing Booth 2)

Saturday, June 16

11:30 AM – 12:20 PM: Cyberdyne Is Here! Genetic Engineering & Cybertech in Fiction (Room 402/403)

12:30 PM – 1:20 PM: I Need My Space! (Room 402/403)

2:30 PM – 3:20 PM: Real Science in Science Fiction (Room 402/403)

5:30 PM – 6:25 PM: Book signing (Author Signing Booth 3)

San Diego, California / Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore / Sat 7 June, 2pm / Reading and Signing

San Jose, California / WorldCon / Thur 16 – Sun 19 July / Panels and Signings

Full WorldCon schedule TBC!

Chester, UK / FantasyCon / Fri 19 – Sun 21 October / Panels and Signings

Full FantasyCon schedule TBC!

Big thank you to all these fine folks for hosting me. Come down. Say hi. And by the way, this track is the Official Tour Anthem (by which I mean, the song I will be pumping on my headphones, because the airlines wouldn’t let me commandeer their PA systems):

I have a book out next month. It’s called Adrift. It’s about a trip on the worst tour bus ever, and it’s in space, and everything is on fire. I think it’s the best damn thing I’ve ever written, and I can’t wait for you to read it. But since we’ve still for a few weeks before it drops (although you can read the first chapter here) I want to tell you the story about how it came to be. Put simply, it would never have been written had I not almost been deported from Canada. If a single moment in a lawyer’s office in Vancouver had gone the other way, Adrift wouldn’t exist.

Since early 2014, I’ve lived in Canada. The land of moose and cheese curds and people who are very good at apologising. Compared to the situation in our bonkers neighbour to the south, the immigration system here is positively delightful. But that’s a relative term. Becoming a legal resident here is still a total shit-show of notarised documents, byzantine requirements, legal interventions and bribes to malleable border officials (note to any Canadian intelligence officers who are reading this: I did not actually bribe border officials).

I won’t bore you with the details of our application – even thinking about it, years later, is enough to cure any insomnia I may be having – but I will say that it was a time of suspense and horror and disbelief, and not the good kind. And we were doing it above-board, with a reasonable expectation that our application would be accepted. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for those claiming refugee status, or those without the wherewithal to afford lawyers. It must be like getting a testicle removed with needle-nose pliers.

Let’s zero in on a specific incident. It’s October 2015. My wife and I have just been on a trip to the UK, and we are making our way through immigration at YVR Airport in Vancouver – yes, that’s its actual name, because the Canadians are practical sorts. We are tired and jetlagged and quite keen to get back to our little apartment downtown. And that’s the point, you see: by this time, we’d been in Vancouver for nearly two years, quite legally. We’d paid taxes, rented a home, chosen a local bar, eaten poutine, learned to say eh and aboot correctly, essentially moved our life to the frozen North. We did not expect to be held up by a snotty immigration official telling us that we were in serious trouble.

There was an issue with our visas. Again, I won’t go into the details, because it is far too technical to lay it all out. But the upshot was, while we could stay as visitors, we could not work. And if we left the country again, it was a bit of a tossup as to whether we would be allowed back in, or be deported on the spot. This was more serious problem than you’d think: a week hence, we were due to go to Chicago, to visit my parents while they passed through the city. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and was very keen not to let the opportunity slip.

Which is how we found ourselves in the downtown offices of a dour immigration lawyer. He was South African, ferociously competent, possessed of the kind of grim countenance that suggested he was going to slam a giant book on the desk at any moment, look us in the eyes, and whisper “Doom.” We wanted to find out exactly what legal standing was, and whether we could actually risk leaving the country at this point. Put simply, it’s a lot easier to fight your immigration case if you’re actually in the country already. Do it from outside, and you can literally add years of decision time to an application. As much as I love the UK, and our friends there, I didn’t feel like cooling my heels for a decade or so while Justin Trudeau worked through his inbox.

Our lawyer hemmed and hawed, and eventually said that we could probably risk the Chicago trip. Yes, there was a chance that we’d run into a particularly sticky immigration official, as we had before, but there was also an equally good chance we would be let back in the country on the same understanding. This left us in a bit of a quandary: did we suck it up and stay in Canada, and miss not only a great trip but a chance to see my parents – a chance that might not come along again for a while? Or did we risk it? If you’re of a practical bent, then obviously the answer is the latter, but I’m not an especially practical bent, especially where family are concerned. When you have parents who live quite literally on the other side of the world from you, and who are not getting any younger, you take every chance to see them that you can get. My wife and I thought about it, then looked at each other, and more or less said in the same sentence: “We’re going.”

Not that it was as cut and dried as that. We knew it could go either way, and that our lives in Canada might come crashing down around our ears. When we arrived in Chicago – and you’ll note that Canada had no problem whatsoever with turning us loose on their closest neighbour – I was struck by a feeling of nameless dread. There were a few moments where I genuinely thought we’d made a very silly, very shortsighted error. That feeling persisted throughout the trip. It was, for the record, very pleasant, and it was a total blast to be able hang out in one of my favourite cities with two of my favourite parents. We even went to the United Center to take in the greatest basketball team ever to walk the planet – by which I mean, a total joke of a squad that couldn’t find a basketball net with GPS. But all the same, I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that this was all going to come crashing down.

Towards the end of the trip, we hopped on a tourist boat for a jaunt around Lake Michigan. It was a crappy ship. A clunky rustbucket with slimy plastic seats and a PA system from the 1920s. Our guide seemed hopelessly, almost comically out of her depth, fumbling with her notes and talking in the most annoying singsong voice imaginable as we putted out into the harbour. And as we toured the lake, taking in the admittedly quite beautiful sight of Chicago in the late afternoon sunshine, an idle idea snuck into my brain.

That’s often how really fun books happen. A single germ of an idea takes root: a simple What If question, one that refuses to dislodge itself. The idea that came to me, as we made our way across the lake, was this: what if Chicago was hit by a nuclear attack, right now? What would happen to us? We’d see it all, and we were far enough from shore to survive it… But what then?

Well, said the logical part of my brain, you simply turn around and head for the opposite shore as quickly as your shitty little outboard engine could take you. Ah, replied the fun part of my brain. What if you couldn’t? What if you were…in space?

It sounds a little silly, writing it down like that. But I really can’t describe how much of a lightning bolt moment that was. By the time we got back to shore, I had the entire book written in my head: all of it, every character, every story beat. I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, and who would be doing it. I knew that there was no way, whichever part of the world we ended up in, that the story would not be written. It was too good. Too much fun to not explore.

Although I will confess that I wasn’t thinking of it much as we touched down in Vancouver. I was deeply worried. I really didn’t want to upend my entire life eighteen months after I’d just done it. It’s exhausting. The line was long, and filled with grumpy visitors – some of whom, presumably, were going through the same emotional rollercoaster we were. Eventually, we were called forward – and the official doing it looked like the most unhappy, unfulfilled bastard on the face of the planet. I almost felt like giving him a hug to cheer him up. If it wouldn’t have gotten me thrown in jail more or less immediately, I would have.

He looked at our passports. Looked at us. Look at our passports. Looked at us. Typed something in his computer. “I’ll let you in on visitor visas,” he said. “You can apply for leave to remain from inside the country.” I may not have the exact wording down, but that was the general idea. We nodded and said thank you and bid him good night, making our way to the baggage claim on shaky legs. Our secret high-five on the way was especially sweet – and the whiskey when we got home tasted glorious.

We’re still in Canada. And the idea I had on Lake Michigan is now a book. You gotta read this one, man. It cooks.

It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I’m not very good at social media. This feels a little weird. We live in an age where Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and WeChat are the absolute backbone of daily life for millions – even billions – of people. Admitting that you’re not good at them and don’t understand them is a bit like admitting that this whole oxygen lark is a bit complicated, and perhaps it would have been best if we never climbed out of the sea in the first place.

Actually, I have a better analogy – a more personal one. I feel like an old basketball player, finally admitting that I am never going to play in the NBA. I am never going to be the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls. I am never going to be the starting anything for the Chicago Bulls. The closest I’m going to get is courtside seats – which, by the way, is something that I actually am going to make happen, because I’m damn good at writing books and fully expect to sell quite a lot of them in my career.

But social media? Actually thriving in a world where attention spans are significantly less than they used to be? That I struggle with. One of the things I discovered about myself over the past few years is that I simply don’t have the energy to produce a constant stream of social media content. I don’t have the brain for it. Plenty of authors – John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, Seanan McGuire – do, and things like Twitter and Facebook have become crucial parts of their careers (here’s Scalzi’s Twitter. It’s one of the best accounts on the planet). They are all really good at it. This isn’t jealousy – well, it’s not only jealousy – it’s a simple statement of fact. These authors have not only the ability to write some killer books, but also the ability to translate their everyday thoughts and experiences into bite-sized bits of engaging wisdom. Good on them. I wish them well. May Internet trolls never eat their soft parts.

(What would you do? No, tweeting the cops won’t work…not out near the Horsehead Nebula. Sorry.)

Curated Content

 

That’s not an ability I have – social media, not eating the soft parts of famous authors. I’ve tried very hard to cultivate it. I’ve tried to be witty and entertaining online. I’ve tried to engage, and debate people, and get involved in conversations. I’ve had a little bit of success. But translating my everyday experiences, and putting out a constant stream of curated content, is something that defeats me. Here’s what it comes down to: I’m just not that interesting. No, seriously. I’m not. In the morning, I get up, I have some coffee, fight with the smoothie maker, then sit down and write for three hours. Then I do a little admin, then have lunch, and then I handle the day job, which is all about managing the sprawling, wonderful noise that is The Master Switch. Most of my day-to-day life is spent dealing with tricky plot problems that I wouldn’t be discussing with the wider world anyway (I have this thing about not talking about the project until it’s ready) or pondering the difference between tube and solid state headphone amps. With the best will in the world, unless you’re me, it’s just not that interesting.

I don’t mean to suggest that I’m boring person – although, of course, I’m not exactly the best person to judge that. It’s just that I really struggle to communicate my opinions and thoughts on a moment-by-moment basis. Of course I have opinions on the book I’m reading…but I like to actually sit and read it, as opposed to tweeting about it in real time (it’s a reread of Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight, by the way, because I hadn’t had my monthly dose of smut and horrific murder). Ditto for movies and games. Seriously: I can’t even begin to fathom the process of live-tweeting a movie. It’s honestly a weird kind of superpower. If I look down at my phone for more than ten seconds, I’ve lost the plot.

I’m not especially interested in sharing photos of my surroundings on Instagram, or taking selfies, or snapping endless pictures of my bookshelf. I’m more interested in experiencing them. This isn’t to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with people doing this – if that’s how you make sense of your surroundings, and you want to share them with people, more power to you. But it’s not for me. I’ve taken plenty of photos of random things that I think are cool, but I don’t have a parade of these every day. Look mate, I work from home, and the most interesting things that I usually see are all happening in my head. Look how amazing my imagination is today #imagination #insidemyhead #creativity. I’m not trying to mock social media – well, maybe a little. But it’s a real skill. It’s just not one that I was built for, and at this stage, I’m not ever sure I’ll get the hang of it.

Dinosaur in the Social Media Age

 

And by the way: I hate how I sound writing this. I sound like a dinosaur. I sound like a sixty-something grumbling about what the kids are into these days, an old man yelling at the cloud, Principal Skinner absolutely convinced that it’s the children the wrong, not him. That’s bizarre – I’m 33, not 93. It is very frustrating to feel that way, because I know that the world is rapidly moving on, and I’m struggling to keep up. This is a problem with me, not a problem with society. I may have misgivings about what social media is doing to our brains (and it appears I’m not exactly wrong here) but I fully and freely admit that it is both fun and useful.

It’s not only a great way to pass the time and make friends, but it’s also exceptionally handy in disaster situations, and when politicians need a good punch of the bracket, and a thousand other things. I very badly wish I was good at social media. I very badly wish I was not a dinosaur. But there you are. I still collect CDs and I still prefer paper books – although for the record, Kindles are amazing for travelling, and I love mine to pieces. I still refuse to check email after 6pm. I still have a physical notebook. I still use pens, despite my god-awful handwriting. I have a smartphone, but it hasn’t been replaced in years.

So then there’s the question: how important is this? How good do I need to be at social media for my career? Will I sell any books at all if I’m absolutely rubbish at Twitter? Chuck Wendig – and my dictation software tried to write his name as Truck Winding, which is the kind of thing he’d appreciate – wrote about this on his blog a while back. He says that while it is entirely possible to sell books based on your social media presence, it is almost impossible to become a bestseller based purely on social media.

Much of what causes authors to be bestsellers happens outside of their control. It depends on luck, your publisher, the mood of bookstore employees, Amazon algorithms. At most, you can help things along by writing something knockout-awesome, something which will get spread around by word-of-mouth. His conclusion – and really, the post is worth a read even if you aren’t a professional author, because his posts usually are – is that the best way to succeed at social media is to be a cool human, and talk to other cool humans.

That’s some of the most sound advice I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t change the fact that, for me, anyway, being a cool human online takes a good deal of energy, and being a cool human off-line takes slightly less. I should be clear: I’m not planning on giving up Twitter or Facebook or Instagram just yet. I have no plans on causing heart attacks in my publisher’s marketing and PR departments. I will persist. It’s just that, at this point, I don’t truly expect to ever have a social media strategy, or an online brand, or anything, really, that takes away the energy I need to actually write books.

Anyway. I guess I’d better give out my social media thingies now. Yay?

Twitter

Facebook

Insta

Snapchat

Seriously. Stop doing it.

Ernest Cline, an author with two books under his belt and at least one mega-smash in his 2011 novel Ready Player One, is now the subject of renewed ire from people who should know better. This is because that book has now been turned into a movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, which means it’s back in the spotlight and everybody who enjoys being outraged can start greasing their hot take cannon.

Ready Player One is a novel, set in the near future, where gamers escape into a virtual world – the Oasis – that is dominated by 80s pop culture references. It sold in huge numbers. I thought it was great fun: a little ridiculous, a very tiny bit up its own ass, but still an enjoyable read. I wasn’t even remotely surprised that it exploded the way it did. And my thinking, both now and at the time, was that if someone was able to bring such a singular vision into being, and do it in such a way that he enchanted and delighted millions, then he deserved his success.

(I was less keen about Armada, Kline’s second novel, but that’s because it was a bit boring. You can hear what I thought about it at 1:12 in the video below, which is a rap video, because that’s the kind of thing I like doing – link if it doesn’t play).

Over the years, I’ve had various conversations with friends who sneer at Cline for his style, for the work that he’s done, and for how he’s successful when he’s not that good a writer. And today, I read what must be the most pointless piece of criticism on a book ever written, over at Vox. It’s written by Constance Grady, and it is so muddled and mangled and poorly thought-out that I’m amazed it was composed of complete sentences.

Grady’s argument is this: Ready Player One was harmless fun when it was released, But since then, we’ve lived through the horrors and hellholes of the Gamergate situation, and so we have to see the book in a new light. That light, she argues, is the fact that Cline’s book and his slavish devotion to nerd culture are somehow emblematic of the attitudes that gave rise to Gamergate in the first place. “In a pre-Gamergate world,” she writes, “the sheer glee and fun…were enough to make the dark underbelly of the fantasy disappear and carry Ready Player One to the heights of cultural phenomena. But post-Gamergate, the dark underbelly has become all too apparent. The fun isn’t quite enough to carry the book anymore — so now the onus is on Spielberg’s forthcoming movie to overcome its Gamergate baggage.”

What a load of utter nonsense.

To be clear: Gamergate was one of the most awful things to happen in popular culture in the entire history of our planet: a group of motivated, militarised fuckknuckles ganging up on people in the nastiest way possible, using atrocious slurs on gender and race and sexual identity, based on imagined slights against them. It was disgusting, and anybody involved should hang their heads in shame. But the key point here is that those fanning the flames of Gamergate were still a relatively small group. They may have had technical skills on their side, and they may have been angry enough to cause a ton of trouble, but they were still only a small group – a few thousand, at best. We are not talking armed legions here.

(And before you smash the comments section: yes, I know about how they link to the alt-right and Trump voters and neo-Nazis and other assorted forms of pond life, but I’m not sure it applies here. The folks directly responsible for GamerGate weren’t that big a group, relatively speaking).

These people were and are human shitbags, and the consequences of their actions should never be downplayed, but they certainly didn’t represent the vast majority of people who take an interest in nerd culture. And yet, Grady would have us believe that a book that was written for this vast majority is suddenly unpalatable because a few of those people decided to act like scumbuckets.

While she does make an argument that Cline’s female characters are a little flat – and she will get no disagreement from me here – it’s a very, very long way from writing unsuccessful female characters to ripping a scab off the festering, pus-filled wound that was Gamergate. What, exactly, is Mr Cline guilty of here? Writing a book that talked about the pop culture he so very clearly loves? Opening the door for Gamergate to happen? I don’t know where this next phrase came from, originally, but I’m gonna use it anyway: that argument is so full of shit it squeaks.

Grady even appears to acknowledge this: “To be fair to Cline, at no point does his work endorse harassing women or minorities or suggest that Gamergate was a super-good idea that’s just been tragically misunderstood. So to some readers, the persistent association of his work with Gamergate seems to be both a stretch and fundamentally unjust. Why can’t they just read a fun dumb fantasy about gamers saving the world without feeling like they’re somehow endorsing rape threats?”

Yup. Pretty spot on there, Constance old sport.

I am heartily sick of this – this idea that authors must get everything right, in all circumstances, both when they release their work and in some imagined future. God knows, Ready Player One isn’t perfect, but it is a very long way from the things Constance Grady is accusing it of. The piece is weird, clumsy jumble of arguments that shouldn’t have made it past its editors.

The article, by the way, is headlined ‘The Ready Player One backlash, explained’, and yet it never bothers to explain just who, exactly, is offended enough to cause a backlash, or what this backlash might actually entail. The sources quoted are three or four journalists, writing in a similar space to Grady, saying similar things to what she is saying (here’s an example).

That’s not a backlash. That’s a few critics trying to generate clickbait. A backlash is what turfs politicians out of office. It’s what starts wars, and revolutions, and coup d’états. A single handful of critics getting grumpy about the success of a book or a film that they deem unworthy is not a backlash. It’s just annoying.

And if I could extend my rant to the countless others who have opined to me that they hated Ready Player One, that they can’t understand why it was successful, that it was nothing more than a collection of pop culture references: so what? Who gives a shit? Let the man live. Accept the fact that people got enjoyment out of the book, and be on your merry way. Being grumpy about its success doesn’t help you or anybody else, in any way, shape, or form.

I get just as annoyed with people who still give 50 Shades of Grey shit. Now, that book is genuinely terrible. But what am I going to do, get mad about it? Be infuriated because E.L James made bank off a wildly successful bit of fan fiction? Neither she nor Cline are burning down innocent villages here. They aren’t cackling as they roast the hearts of their enemies to feed to weeping children. They aren’t even endorsing things like Gamergate. They’re just doing their best to make sense of the stories in their heads, and they were fortunate enough to present them such a way that a very large number of people made sense of them too.

And by the way, if you’re a writer and you have ever shit all over Ernest Cline or E.L. James – and I’ve heard a few of you do it, yes, you, hiding behind the soda machine, come out this instant – you should stop that right now. You would give your left kidney for either of their careers, and don’t try and tell me different. Whatever you think about their work, they made something out of nothing.

To say we can no longer enjoy a book like Ready Player One because part of its worldview happens to inform those held by a few noisy scumbags is the absolute height of false, pointless, manufactured outrage. It isn’t perfect, but judging a book written in 2011 by the situations of 2018 is the height of pomposity. Let it go.

ADRIFT
Dropping 5 June 2018 – Orbit Books

‘AN EDGE-OF-THE-SEAT EPIC OF SURVIVAL AND ADVENTURE IN DEEP SPACE’ Gareth L. Powell, the BSFA award-winning author of Embers of War

‘A UNIQUE MIX OF THRILLER, SPACE ADVENTURE AND CONSPIRACY NOVEL – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED’ Jamie Sawyer, author of the Lazarus War novels

‘ADRIFT IS RICH IN DEEP CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA, BUILT ON A HIGHLY SUSPENSEFUL PREMISE‘ D. Nolan Clark, author of Forsaken Skies

PREORDER NOW: 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository
IndieBound
Google Play
iBooks
Kobo
Waterstones 
Indigo Chapters

(Don’t see your favourite store here? Let me know, and I’ll add it!)

In 2012, I was in a weird place.

My wife and I, plus two friends, had just finished a massive 11,000-mile, two-month trip around the States. Now we were back in the UK, and there was a very real sense that the adventure was over, without any real plan of what to do next.

Nicole and I had a vague idea that we wanted to live and work in New York, and at the end of the trip, we spent ten days there trying to rustle up a little enthusiasm for the idea among potential employers. To say it was a failure would be an understatement. It was right in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and most employers in New York were too concerned with flooded basements and transit issues to worry about two South Africans with forced smiles on their faces. We spent most of the time in a basement apartment in Flatbush, the world’s grimmest AirBnB: a series of rooms that resembled prison cells with nothing but a single tiny window to the outside world, located high up on one bedroom wall. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Back in the UK, we were staying in my parents’ house in London – something we were very grateful for, but which was a significant step backwards from the independent life we’d been living. We were still working – both of us freelance – so money wasn’t a problem, but there was a real sense that we were stuck in a kind of horrible limbo.

At that point, I’d written a novel – this one. I had no idea if it was any good, but I did know that I enjoyed writing it. Problem was, I had no idea what to do next. Really, none at all.

London winters are brutal. Not in the life-threatening sense, unless you feel actively threatened by horizontal drizzle, but in the sense of being trapped in a grey wasteland. As I sat in the top room in my parents house, trying to muster up enough willpower to complete the audiobook I was editing for a client, I got an image in my head: a man on a train, carrying an eyeball in a coffee cup. Believe me, I was as surprised as you are.

The image stuck with me. And so, in between cutting out pregnant pauses and writing down the myriad ways in which the audiobook narrator mispronounced “mispronounced”, I started to scribble down a story. The man turned out to be an assassin, the eyeball turned out to be proof of his latest kill, and as it quickly became clear, there was a tea lady on the train who was destined to become the most difficult adversary he’d ever faced. I liked the story. I had fun writing it. And it occurred to me, after it was done, that other people might like it too.

The problem was, I knew absolutely nothing about how to get a short story published, or who would even take such a bizarre little tale. So I went online, and the very first site I came across seemed to fit the bill. It was called Fiction On The Web, and if that sounds like a slightly archaic name, it’s because the website itself was (and is) slightly archaic: it was, the blurb proudly stated, the longest-running fiction site on the Internet, having been founded in 1996. Not quite sure what to do with that information, I decided I have a crack at submitting the story. I fully expected to never hear anything back.

So imagine my surprise when the editor, one Charlie Fish, got in touch to say that he’d like to publish The Hitman and the Tea Lady.

Ask any author where they are first published, and you’ll get one of two reactions: misty eyed nostalgia, or a furious attempt to change the subject. (Pro tip: you should always get those in the latter camp to tell you, because you either end up with good blackmail material, or one hell of a good story). I’m in the former. Fiction On The Web may not be the most well-known story site on the planet, but they are the first people to publish my work in a professional space. Nothing, but nothing, made me prouder than being able to go to my parents and my friends and say, “Here. Someone who is not one of you likes my work.”

Charlie Fish and I ended up having quite a fruitful relationship. I published a second story with him, a much more twisty tale entitled One on One, and I kept an eye on the site over the years, eventually becoming one of its Patreons. That being said, as my books have started to come out to larger audiences and pop up on store shelves, the website has to take up less and less space in my brain. That’s a reflection on me, rather than on it; when you’ve got novels bouncing around your skull, short stories tend to take a backseat, even if you enjoy reading and writing them.

So what a pleasant surprise to find out that not only was the website turning 21, but that they were putting out a full printed anthology of the best stories – and that One on One was being included. It’s available to buy now, and if you need any further convincing, here are three very salient facts:

1. It’s been blurbed by Richard E. Grant – the evil doctor from Logan, which is only one of a zillion amazing roles he’s played in his life – who says, “54 irresistible short stories. Buy ’em without a blink.” Thank you Sir!

2. All the proceeds are being donated to the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. This isn’t just a footnote: Charlie’s daughter was once desperately ill with cancer, and this Trust helped her get better. As a way of saying thank you, that takes quite some doing.

3. It has some amazing authors who are not me inside it. These include Rotimi Babatunde, Anne Goodwin, Hanja Kochansky, and tons more.

If you can, pick up the book. It’s got some fun shit in it. To Charlie and FOTW: here’s to another 21, dude.

I’m actually too busy to blog right now. This is not a boast – this is ridiculous. I’m too busy to write something promoting my books…in a launch week for one of my books.

The blog on the site has been severely underused resource in the past couple of years, and I’ve been trying to remedy that a little this year by posting something worth reading at least once a week. So far, it’s worked out pretty well – in particular, this post about leaving home got some wonderful, heartfelt reactions – but this week, there’s just too much going on to give it my full attention, so this post is a little shorter than usual.

Normal service will resume next week. Until then, here are some bits of news that may or may not change your life and/or make your wife/husband pregnant.

1. Outer Earth is here! If you don’t know what that is, it’s a trilogy of scifi books that Orbit published in 2015 and 2016, collected in a single volume. It released today (February 6) worldwide, and right now, it’s getting a lot of love online, which is great to see. I’ll be honest: if you’ve already read the trilogy, you won’t find any new material – there just wasn’t enough space to include it, which I went into in a little bit more detail here. But if you haven’t yet experienced the story, and want to find out what all the fuss is about, this beast of a book is the absolute perfect way to do so. It’s the complete trilogy, in one handy package, and you are guaranteed not to have the author die before the series is finished. I make no promises about whether or not you will die before the series is finished. Maybe it’s best to stay away from busy roads for now. Just in case.

2. I’m featured in a big piece in the latest SFX Magazine, talking about how authors can use social media. It’s a fun panel discussion, along with my good buddies Maria Lewis and Lucy Hounsom, as well as Dhonielle Clayton, who I haven’t met yet. Sadly, the piece isn’t yet available online – they do a print edition first, an online later – you can see a preview below, and read the piece here.

3. I’m going to be a whole host of columns and events this year, across the US and UK. I’m locking down plans for those now, but first up is Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle this March. I’ll be on a panel about how to promote yourself without selling your soul, which is something I like to think I’m pretty good at. Mildly good at. Sort of OK at doing. And then for the rest of the convention I will be lining up to get an autograph with David Tennant, something else you can do if you want to come and have no desire to see me speak (which I totally understand).

4. If you’re in Vancouver, I’ll be appearing on stage at February’s Vancouver Story Slam, telling a completely original story. This event is consistently sold out – I couldn’t even get into the last one, because I arrived late – so if you’re around, and you want to hear some killer stories, make sure you arrive early. Also, there is a very good chance I may just flame out spectacularly on stage. If that happens, I promise to fully commit, and complete my humiliation by tearing off my clothes and running screaming down the street. At the very least, nobody will be able to say I didn’t make the effort.

That’s it for now. I promise to write something a little bit more substantial next week. Oh look! Next week is even more mental. I’ll get back to you.

OUTER EARTH: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY
Dropping 6 Feb 2018 – Orbit Books

This new edition of the OUTER EARTH series contains three adrenaline-fuelled novels: Tracer, Zero-G and Impact.

Outer Earth is a huge space station orbiting the ruins of our planet.

Dirty, overcrowded and inescapable, it’s humanity’s last refuge . . . and possibly its final resting place. There are dark forces at work on the station who are seeking to unleash chaos. And if they succeed, there will be nowhere left to run.

‘FAST, EXHILARATING, AND UNFORGETTABLE. ONCE YOU START, YOU CAN’T STOP.’  Sarah Lotz, author of The Three

‘SETS A NEW STANDARD FOR ALL-ACTION SF’ Ken MacLeod

‘RELENTLESSLY FAST PACE…VIVID ACTION SCENES’ SFX

‘EXHILARATING. GUARANTEED TO KEEP YOU HOOKED TO THE VERY LAST PAGE’ Glamour

‘IF YOU’RE AFTER A FAST-PACED, ACTION-PACKED, CINEMATIC SPACE ADVENTURE THEN [THIS] IS ABSOLUTELY FOR YOU’ Civilian Reader

PREORDER NOW: 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble 
Book Depository
IndieBound
Google Play
iBooks
Kobo
Waterstones 
Indigo Chapters

(Don’t see your favourite store here? Let me know, and I’ll add it!)

 

LISTEN TO THE NOVELS ON AUDIOBOOK:
Tracer
Zero-G
Impact

(NB: Sometimes Audible diverts to the US store, and says the titles aren’t available in your country. They totally are – you may just need to navigate to your local store page to do it!)

20 January 2018 was a scary day for me. It was the eleventh anniversary of me leaving South Africa.

It wasn’t scary because I’d been out of the country for eleven years. It was scary because the ten year anniversary had come and gone without either me or my wife realising it.

That happened last year, obviously, and we marked the occasion by…I have no idea. There’s actually nothing on my calendar for that day. I could have been working, snowboarding, sleeping, hungover, putting the finishing touches on a book, swearing at a book, stomping around the neighbourhood trying to work out plot problems in a book. I just don’t know. What is certain is that the tenth anniversary of me leaving the country of my birth passed without any comment from me.

I find that vaguely horrifying. And not just because it indicates early signs of age-based memory loss. When my wife and I finished our university course in 2006 (side note: Jesus Christ in a hammock, I’m old), we decided to take a year out and go to the UK, with the goal of getting whatever jobs we could and travelling as much as time and our bank balance would allow. We had every intention of returning to South Africa, a country we both loved and still love, and where all our friends were. We knew we wanted to experience a bit of the world first, and we breezily thought that a year would be enough to get a sense of what lay north of our little country.

Yeah, Right.

What we hadn’t counted on was that it would take close to four months just to set ourselves up in London – flat, bank accounts, jobs etc – and that we wouldn’t take our first real European trip until April of 2007. I don’t actually know the point at which we both decided that we weren’t going to return to South Africa on a permanent basis, but at some point, we both just knew. We weren’t done yet. There was too much to do: too many festivals to go to, too many countries in close proximity, too many weird and wonderful restaurants to try out.

You in the back, sneering about first world problems: you can shove off. Right now. Go on. These weren’t problems. These were magnificent opportunities, and we discovered that we didn’t want to belay them by returning to a country that we loved, but that simply didn’t give us the chance to take them.

A year turned into two. Then four. Then six. A large group of us, all South Africans in London, solidified. We watched our country when the 2007 Rugby World Cup in Clapham. We had braais (barbecues) in the rain. We rocked Springbok jerseys and did everything we could to keep our accents and firmly maintained that we still had the strongest of strong connections to the country of our birth. We’d go back in two years time, we all told ourselves. Four at the outside. For now, there was Oktoberfest to go to and the snowboarding lessons to save for and that new spot that just opened up in Camden and maybe this tiny-ass apartment in Clapham Junction could be improved on and oh hey we just got new jobs and

And then eleven years passed, and we still hadn’t gone home. In my case, I’d gone even further, moving to the great white frozen North, the move to Canada spurred on by a love of snowboarding. And somewhere along the way, the South African part of me just…slowed down. It’s still there. Still very much alive. But it’s quieter now.

This is particularly galling, even a little embarrassing. I occasionally rap, and I once took it seriously enough to actually release a full album – a project which took up a good chunk of my time in 2011, and which is still available online – you can actually download it for free now, because we are way, way past the point of me earning money on it. The album is called African, and it represents an absolutely staggering amount of hubris.

At the time, I wanted to make an album that told African stories that hadn’t been told before, which is why so much of the album relies on storytelling about sci-fi and superheroes (spoiler: that shit hasn’t gone anywhere as I’ve gotten older). But it was also made by a white kid living outside of the continent, something which troubles me greatly now, mostly because it didn’t trouble me greatly then. What a naïve, stupid kid I was.

I’m still proud of the album, and had a tremendous amount of fun putting it together – go listen to a track like Flames, and tell me my shit isn’t dope –  but I had to do it again, I would change that title. I still consider myself an African, having been born there, holding a passport for one of its countries, and still possessing a deep love for it, but I’m no longer just an African. It’s gone from being the primary way I identify myself to just one aspect of my personality.

And I find that…a little sad.

I realise this may be hard to believe. After all, what I’ve gotten in return is riches beyond belief, and I’m not talking about money. Living outside of my country of birth has been an unbelievable opportunity, one I never take for granted, which I gratefully seized and which has given me irreplaceable experiences. When you eat weird food, talk to people who have no idea what the Johannesburg skyline looks like, mangle a different language as you try to order a beer, develop an addiction to getting on planes, you can’t help but feel fulfilled. But all the same, I grieve for what I’ve lost: the ability to look back over my shoulder, eye a particular spot on the map, and say, “That’s my home. Those are my roots.”

Theresa May – the asinine, vomit-inducing pseudo-Prime Minister of the country I used to live in – once proclaimed, “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” She meant it as a rallying cry for British nationalism, a call to close the borders and hang the St George’s Cross in your window and turn the country into a tax haven for millionaires. She’s wrong, of course. Being a citizen of the world means being a citizen of everywhere. It means being able to cross borders without a second thought, knowing how to order a beer in a dozen languages, being able to walk down the street in Kathmandu or Kampala or Karachi and meet the gaze of anyone you pass.

It is something people like me can never, ever, ever take for granted, because it puts us in the 1% of the 1%, the lucky few who can travel the world unmolested, and you have the funds to do so. So yes: I know how lucky I am. But when May spouted her piece-of-shit proclamation, she hit upon a tiny nugget of truth. I am no longer a citizen of South Africa – not really. I have a passport there, friends, family. But I lost the right to hold an opinion on the affairs of the country long ago. Now, eleven years after I first got on a plane, it feels like losing a little part of myself.

Will I ever go back? I have no idea. Oh, I tell myself that there are many factors at play: Brexit, the instability in South Africa, the fact that so many of my friends are leaving, the fact that my family still lives there (my parents among them), whether or not my wife and I should try for Canadian citizenship. But really, it comes down to one thing: am I done?

Being in South Africa doesn’t preclude me from adventures, obviously, but it makes it a lot harder, a lot more expensive, and requires a lot more time. No more nipping off to the US for a weekend. No more trips to Europe – or at least, far fewer. It puts Asia further out of reach, and I haven’t even begun to really explore that part of the world yet, aside from a few scattered trips.

Going home would admit that the adventure is over, that I’m too old for this shit, that it’s finally time to settle down. No matter how positive the experience would be – and make no mistake, getting to hangout with my parents and my friends again, visit my favourite spots, would be fucking magic – there would always be that particular element. What did I leave on the table? What else is out there? What am I missing?

I don’t know. I don’t have a neat ending to this. I don’t have an answer. It’s just cold, and I didn’t sleep particularly well last night, and I want my mom and dad, and I’m missing home.

Or what used to be home.

OUTER EARTH: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY
Dropping 6 Feb 2018 – Orbit Books

This new edition of the OUTER EARTH series contains three adrenaline-fuelled novels: Tracer, Zero-G and Impact.

Outer Earth is a huge space station orbiting the ruins of our planet.

Dirty, overcrowded and inescapable, it’s humanity’s last refuge . . . and possibly its final resting place. There are dark forces at work on the station who are seeking to unleash chaos. And if they succeed, there will be nowhere left to run.

‘FAST, EXHILARATING, AND UNFORGETTABLE. ONCE YOU START, YOU CAN’T STOP.’  Sarah Lotz, author of The Three

‘RELENTLESSLY FAST PACE…VIVID ACTION SCENES’ SFX

‘EXHILARATING. GUARANTEED TO KEEP YOU HOOKED TO THE VERY LAST PAGE’ Glamour

PREORDER NOW: 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble 
Book Depository
IndieBound
Google Play
iBooks
Kobo
Waterstones 
Indigo Chapters

(Don’t see your favourite store here? Let me know, and I’ll add it!)