Recommendations, an Update, and Smol Cat News

Hello marmosets,

It's been quite some time, how's everything? I'll just straight up apologise without reservation for going quiet, that was quite rude and, well, quite rude really. If I'm honest, there wasn't a huge amount to tell you about besides yelling at Word documents and deleting Word documents and throwing laptops out the window. I hope I've done my bestest with replying to messages on here – if I'm still leaving you hanging, I'll be getting on that shortly and massive sorries.

All's relatively fine on this side anyway. The cat is growing out her winter coat and covering my winter coat in it. Bulgaria is finally back to a human temperature, or as my Bulgarian friends call it, “intolerable”, and I'm just happy we can all wear knitted jumpers again.

A spot of housekeeping as always then. After dangling the Geometry for Ocelots audiobook for at least a year now, the plan is to try and get it out by Christmas at the very latest. I'm sorry it took an age – listening to one's own voice gets extremely dull, and giving the thing a final thumbs up is something I've been dreading for months. More excitingly I hope, I got quite quite bored with trying to write fiction and started messing around with poetry instead. Quite to my surprise a book happened. I hope to release it by the time the next video drops, as an ebook and in print. As always, I'll be sending you the digital version via Patreon – in the unlikely event it's of interest, please don't buy it, you should be able to find it here when it's out.

Next bit of housekeeping: I mentioned mutiny on a starship a little while ago, the video project I've been trying to make real for ages. I found a rather fantastic illustrator to do the visuals—she paints my dreams and better. (I'll attach some stills of the project so far, I think you'll agree she's fantastic.) The plan is to try making the thing a bit more flashy, and to commission the artist I'm working with to add some more illustrations. If you'd like to help with that, and if it isn't a massive imposition, I'll be charging Patreon folks in 4 days if that works for everyone. If you want to opt out, completely understood – it's pretty rich of me to turn up after months of absence and suddenly spring this on you, but I hope that's enough warning in advance.

The last few months have been a bit of a strange exercise in throwing away projects that seemed exciting at the time, then trying to sift through the wreckage for anything that can be saved. I see the occasional comment asking why some of us upload with zero in the way of schedules, or take months in between putting anything out there. I can't speak for anyone else, but: because lots of stuff just doesn't work and you don't want to put out half-made things. Sometimes you'll spend a few weeks trying to get a script right and in the end it won't resolve – the ending makes no sense, or the jokes don't land, or you were trying to make something to keep up with a schedule when really you should've just sat tight and waited for something that was genuinely actually you. So, you can imagine how much it means on this side that you folks are still here and hopefully don't hate me for being allergic to anything resembling an upload schedule. If I stuck to one my stuff would be even worse than it is now, I promise. You're lovely and thank you.

Hm, in other news I went to live in the woods for a month back in March – I'll be putting up a video on the second channel about that shortly, I hope. I also discovered that adding hot sauce to everything for every meal is – I hope you're sitting down for this - actually quite damaging to one's stomach and had to give that up. And I've almost, for the first time in three decades, managed to stick to a sleep schedule. It's like normal sleeping, but you force yourself to go to bed before 3 in the morning. Radical I know, but these are strange times we're living in.

As is tradition, I'll also gladly throw some recommendations from the last months your way.

The first is a fantastic movie I don't recommend watching: Threads. I kept being told to avoid it and curiosity got the better of me. I really wish it hadn't. It's a hyper-realistic depiction of what would probably happen to a UK city population after a nuclear bomb goes off nearby. If like me you thought you'd seen proper horror and nothing could top it, wellllllllllll you might be unpleasantly surprised. It's brilliantly made and I haven't slept properly since.

They re-released Jaws at the cinema, here in Bulgaria anyway, so obviously that was a must. Good god damn, I thought it was just a monster movie, but the thing is remarkably well-written – I suddenly understand why it's a classic. I wasn't particularly fond of sharks before, but this further confirmed I won't be inviting any over for tea.

I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this, but I temporarily got addicted to The Crown. As someone who couldn't care less about the British royals, the thing is just so well written. I'm fairly convinced the hallmark of good writing is getting an otherwise apathetic audience to care about a subject matter they usually wouldn't. Mad Men did the same with advertising, I reckon. Anyway, the acting is fantastic, Claire Foy in particular, and somehow the writers have managed to humanise otherwise completely unrelatable public figures. It goes without saying that Olivia Colman is a national treasure and she plays the part brilliantly.

For the gamers among you, I wonder if you've gotten around to playing Return to Monkey Island. I was a huge fan of the original, first video-game I ever played, and followed the series ever since. Wasn't sure what to expect with this one, these things have a way of winding down over time, but I felt they pulled it off wonderfully. Lots of ridiculous pirating, lots of obligatory silliness, and just to spoil it for you, six games in now and no: the secret of monkey island is not revealed to say the least.

As a little boast for the techno fans, I went to see Carpenter Brut recently. It was extremely nasty and bassy and if they're touring near you at some point, I'd strongly recommend seeing them too – your ears will never be the same again and I think I mean that in a good way.

I was also completely blown away a few months ago by Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century. It's hard not spoil this one, but let's leave it at: poems about a spaceship. Most unique thing I've read in years, can't wait to see what she does next, and she's become my uncontested new favourite emerging writer. (The sequel to Children of Time and Children of Ruin will be out shortly too, rather looking forward to that. One of you was kind of enough to recommend the series a few years ago, thanks for that, most enjoyable sci-fi reading experience in a long time.)

Finally: Sea of Thieves, my most longest lasting game addiction so far. I made a little video love letter to it recently, I won't bore you banging on about it again, but if you're looking to kill time between depressive episodes, this is the game for you. No but seriously, it's fantastic. A friend and I meet online after work in the evenings and have learned to embrace the humiliation of being bested over and over again by players who are only too happy to hurl insults while doing so. It's rather fun to be a pirate in any case.

So, yes. More stuff on the way as always, but I'd quite like to get them right, or as close to not-terrible as is possible. If all goes well the new book should shortly be turning up in your inboxes (or however you read these, I'm still not sure) and a few new videos too. Again, if you want to opt out of this month's Patreon charging, it's totally understood. If not, just thank you ever ever so much for sticking around and bearing with my flakiness – I hope you enjoy the stuff that comes next anyway.

Massive love, and hoping all's well on your side,

Ex.

P.S – this wouldn't be a Patreon post without pictures of the Destroyer of Worlds herself. She has been passably well-behaved recently and sends her warmest regards.