Hiya.
I’m haunted at the moment by having taken time off from the blog. There’s a constant fear that if I don’t keep up my (admittedly ridiculous) momentum of posting every couple of days, I will lose the ability to write and everything will grind to a halt and my brain will stop working. Use it or lose it!
…Well, it’s been over a week since my last post and I thought it might help to keep the blog demons away if I posted a quick update on what I’m up to right now and what you can expect from the blog in the coming weeks and months…
I’ve just gotten back from another week in Cornwall, watching seals and reading Daphne Du Maurier, visiting Aphex Twin landmarks and also succumbing to my first cold of the winter season. I’m still not quite over it — another reason why I’ve slowed down. It’s been going around in London for about a month already and what everyone has been saying about it is correct: it’s a vicious slow burner.
I’ve got a blog planned on the Cornish Gothic that is gonna be a bit of a photo diary peppered with stray thoughts — nothing too intensive because I want to save a long-form essay on the maligned Gothic corners of the UK for another project — but a week is a very long time to gather thoughts so there’s a lot I want to say and think about that has come directly from these recently experiences.
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve also been continuing to stream all my Bloodborne runs on Twitch. I’m recording and saving all the footage and it’s going into a long video I’m making about the game and its resonance with Nietzsche’s thought — although I want to go much, much deeper than most of the really bad Reddit fodder that is around online. This is taking a long time too so watch out for that in a few weeks and come sit in on the streams in the meantime.
The final video will be up on the currently neglected YouTube channel — don’t forget to like and subscribe…!
I’ve got a Halloween metal mix percolating for Xenogothic Radio but it’s unlikely I’ll finish this before October 31st… We’ll see how I get on with it later tonight.
I haven’t forgotten about my Egress book. That’s still with an editor friend who has offered to give it a look-over. However, they warned me, without mincing words, that I should avoid self-publishing prematurely. When it comes to putting out a book, the frivolity which drives this blog is probably worth putting on the back burner so that it’s as good as it can be. I’m very good at letting texts go — too good maybe — and it’s been suggested that this is something I should take more time with.
Remember: I didn’t announce its prospective existence myself — but I’m nonetheless very grateful to Justin Murphy for signal-boosting it. The “Books” page of this blog has just been sitting there as a placeholder of sorts. I didn’t announce it properly because the last thing I want to do is rush it out under the pressure of everyone’s lovely enthusiasm. But I do still think it’s very close to being ready. I have been sitting on it for over a year already at this point.
Aside from all that, a further delay on the book might be the result of some backtracking on some of what I’ve said about my intentions for the book. I didn’t really want to push it all that hard or pitch it to any publishers or anything because it didn’t feel like that sort of project — it’s very personal and quite diaristic in places, very much like the blog in that the most rigorous philosophical and political discussions are nonetheless introduced and grounded in real-life experiences — but in trying to figure out how I’ll pay for it, I’m coming up stumped. Other than asking people for preorders way in advance of the release, I don’t know how I’ll be able to save up the money to put it out completely independently right now. So I might see if anyone is interested in putting it out which means I don’t have to take quite the financial hit on it, because I’m actually really broke at the moment and what matters most to me is that it sees the light of day…
With that in mind, I’ve set up a Ko-fi profile. I quietly set up a Patreon a few months but that felt a little bit gross and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, as I struggle financially and continue to put an awful lot of time and energy into this blog, I am left feeling like a little donations pot isn’t such a sacrilegious proposition.
This blog is not something that I care about having an income for, and it’s not something I need an income for, but the bigger and more ambitious I get with it, the more overheads I end up having — so, if you’d like to help out in anyway and “buy me a coffee”, it would really help in getting some of these projects (and other secret ones in the back of my mind) off the ground much quicker.
More short posts soon…