A little belated, perhaps, but OH WELL.
Wot I Wrote
I hinted last time that there might be something coming down the road to do with giant snails, and that’s continued to be the main thing I’ve been working on. There’s, like, a 40,000+ word wiki with all the worldbuilding in it, which is by far the biggest example of anything like this I’ve ever done and very exciting.
I don’t yet know exactly what you’re gonna get or when, but by way of a teaser that in no way commits me to actually delivering on anything, the current plan is looking like it may well include an RPG setting and campaign, some music, and a serialised novel. And probably other stuff too, for fun!
I’m also starting some work doing a little bit of not-quite-ghostwriting for a friend on a topic I know a fair bit about from personal and career experience, and I definitely can’t say too much about that yet, but when it materialises I shall be thoroughly excited about it.
Wot I Enjoyed
Don Quixote is a long book and I shall still be reading it in future months, I’m sure. I love it, though. The more I read of it, the more brilliant I think it is. There’s so much in there that feels incredibly modern – Part 2 starts with Don Quixote hearing about the fact that Part 1 has been written and published, and going off to try to find the person who wrote such a marvellous adventure about him.
Just to get a bit of reading done beyond that one very long book, I returned to one of my absolute favourites: Labyrinths, a collection of Jorge Luis Borges’s short fictions. (Funnily enough, one of them is about Don Quixote, which is probably what made me think of it.) If you haven’t read Borges, you gotta read Borges. It’s so good.
And I’m gonna drop a music recommendation here, too: a new Chopin waltz was discovered, and it was probably not really a finished piece or anything but Kassia’s version (which slightly extends it with some repetition so it’s not just a snippet) is really astonishingly good. New Chopin in 2024!
Other Bits Wot I Done
Well, the Chronicles of the Crossing crowdfunding campaign has come and gone, which means you’ll soon be able to read Mortal Coils and a bunch of other fantastic books in the world of The Black Ballad. So that’s exciting!
2025 should be interesting: I’m reasonably sure you’ll see both Mortal Coils and Entanglement release in that year, both novels I’ve written to tie into existing settings. One’s about a necromancer trying to escape the afterlife, the other’s about the rise of Cthulhu, so… should be fun, eh?
I also started wearing a smart watch in October, because my wife had an old one, and I’m sort of irritated to admit that it actually has made me take more steps and stuff. Curse you, simple psychology! (But also, thank you, maybe.)
And that’s it for now!
Oh, one more thing: if you sign up for my mailing list, I’ll send you five completely free short stories you can’t read anywhere else. So do!
Chris Durston 