New Stories, an Update, and Some Recommendations

 Hello squirrels. How's it all going?   

 It's been an interesting month. I have a bit of exciting news that might not excite you much. Then I have some movie and book and game recommendations that might actually be exciting.   

 A few weeks ago I woke up with what I thought might be death. It was just flu, fortunately. Not so fortunately this meant days of lying on the sofa being pathetic. As I'm sure you know, what happens after a week or two at home is that you start to lose your mind, just a little at first, then suddenly you're not sure what day it is or why anything exists. I got quite close to knitting my hair into a jumper when the flu finally eased up.   

 And what came out of that was two things. Firstly, I remembered that the world is actually pretty cool, and just walking about on the street or going to restaurants is a blessing.   

 Secondly I had the biggest burst of ideas for stories since I was a teenager and have managed to get down at least half of what will be the New Book. I'm not sure what it's called yet, and I'm not sure where it's going, but I will tell you that it's a load of science-heavy tales and I'm even confident that you might enjoy some of them a bit. At this rate the bulk of the thing will be done in about two weeks, and then it'll just take some editing and proofreading. I'll aim for the end of next month, but I'm not promising. In any case, very shortly indeed and I'll be sending the book out for free to the lot of you of course. I am extremely excited. 

 To those of you waiting for Logic Beach Part II, it is coming—but not as easily as I'd like. I'd prefer not to fuck it up. I'm just taking a bit of a break to think about other stuff and I promise I'll get back to work on it. In the meantime I hope another book of short stories will do.   

 In other good news I found a wonderful page designer and a wonderful cover artist for The Prince of Milk, the physical version, and it really isn't too far away at all. I'm having actual physical copies sent to me in about a week, and if they're decent, I'll make it available for purchase. It only took me a mere year to get it out there. That's one rotation around the sun, I guess. Sorry again.   

 We're going to talk about the Falcon Heavy at some point whether you like it or not, so it may as well be now. I'm sure you watched the launch footage. Not much more needs to be said other than: Holy shit what an incredible time to be alive. Most of you are probably not too far away from my age, behind or ahead—and that means whether it's Musk who gets us there or NASA, we'll be sure to see humans putting bootprints on Mars in our lifetimes. I think we can be quite certain of that. I'm not sure I can think of a cooler reason than that to keep living. Our species on a new planet. Millennia from now our descendants will look back on that moment, on our first little journey out into the Universe Proper, and long to have been around to see it. Well I hope you and I do. I'm quite sure we will. And it's going to be just fantastic.   

 I'm beavering away at two new video ideas, both of which I hope to get out this March. One is straight comedy. One is a bit more out there. Turns out I just can't keep an academic life going alongside this thing. I gave it a go and it's just not the right time. So more videos and books it is.  

 
 There was a certain relief to the flu in that you're too sick to do anything work-related whatsoever. This gives you a rare opportunity to finally just chill the fuck out without the ever-present guilt that you should be doing something productive. And boy did I come across some cool stuff I think you'll like.   

 The Leftovers:   

 This is a sort of semi-religious TV drama that I hadn't even heard of until I came on it by accident. And it's some of the best writing I've ever, ever seen. It's deep without being pretentious, the characters are interesting without being ridiculous, and the mystery at the centre of the whole thing is never really properly explained. Normally that would send audiences mental, but it's done so elegantly that the whole thing works. Just check it out, the first few episodes at least. I really don't think you'll be disappointed.   

 East of Eden by John Steinbeck:   

 I'd heard of it but never bothered for some reason. I should've. It's fucking great, easily one of the best books I've read in years. It's the kind of thing that feels like it applies to everyone. It's human and honest and heartbreaking. Get hold of it if you're in the mood for a good read, I reckon you'll really dig it.   

 Into the Breach:   

 Hey, did you play FTL? I did. Far too much and I loved it. The devs behind FTL put out a new game called Into the Breach yesterday. You can get it on Steam for not much and it's super original. I've only played an hour or so but I can see it's going to gobble a fair amount of my time. I won't spoil it for you, but it uses some mechanics you probably won't have seen in a game before. It also has fuck off mechs that can punch things. Big yes. Much recommend.   
 
 The Good Place:   

 I rarely ever watch TV, but god damn I found this just as the flu kicked off and I was super grateful. It's a very light comedy about a woman accidentally ending up in heaven when she probably shouldn't be there. I won't say much more than that except that it had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe and it goes into loads of philosophy without patronising the audience. There's also a twist at the end of the first season that was one of the smartest sidesteps of a plot I've ever seen. I can't imagine you won't enjoy it.   

Molly's Game:

It just came out at the movies and from what I can tell most of it was based on a true story. It's a fun few hours and makes you want to get good at poker. Also Jessica Chastain is kickass. Try it out. 

 Anyway, yes.   

 Someone asked in a comment on the new video why my stuff seems obsessed with humans being remembered. I thought I'd try to get this one down because I guess it does seem a bit weird from the outside. It feels weird enough from the inside too.   

 Years ago at university I came down with some awful back problem for a while. It fucked me up proper. A friend regularly took these bizarre painkillers for something or other and she gave me a few to try. (Please don't be a big silly and take someone else's medication. It's never a good idea. I was an idiot back then.) She told me to be careful and of course I wasn't and took too many. What occurred next was, um, not exactly a psychedelic experience but it wasn't too far off. Things just 'seemed' very, very unusual and the world took on a dreamy quality.   

 I was sat talking to a load of friends in the living room and just for a moment, probably not more than a few seconds, this feeling came on me. It was the sense that everything that was going on was history. We weren't just going about our lives and trying to get through uni and blah blah, we were all part of this massive human experiment called 'The World'. I know that sounds pretentious as shit, but I can't get it down in a way that doesn't. It just made everything feel extremely removed for a moment, as though it was being looked back on by historians.    

 It's a bit like when someone tells you about your great grandparents or your relatives or whatever. It doesn't sound real, it's more like a sort of distant story. And it's very strange to think that their lives were at one point just as real to them as yours is to you. 

 Well, that was that feeling. It felt like living through history. The thing died down after a few seconds but it never properly left. So that's what that's all about.   

 Just before I shut up about this, the reason why I bang on about technology and what a cool time we're living in is A: because it holds back the existential dread, but mainly because B: we are living in a cool time. The world is changing at a staggering, staggering pace. We're not just going through one paradigm shift per generation any more. They're coming at us fast, over and over. It doesn't seem like it's slowing down either. We're living at the birth of whatever the internet will become one day: some kind of global communications network, possibly a sentient one. We're sending our species to other planets. We're decoding the language of physical reality with our sciences. And you can buy very cheap brew-your-own beer kits. The future is fucking cool and I hope you're enjoying living in it as much as I am.   

 So. Thanks for letting me significantly waste your time with that pointless rant. 

 But more importantly, thanks for keeping me doing this. I haven't stopped work on the audiobook—I should say. And I haven't stopped work on the second part of Logic Beach. But give me just a bit more time and I'll have some new stories for you. In a few days I'll put up an audio version of one of the new stories as an unlisted link and send it out to you lot. I hope you like it.   

 Turns out the making-physical-books process isn't actually that hard once you know what you're doing, and I'm sure I can do it faster with the next ones. I can already feel these new short stories are my favourites and I'd like to give them the physical-book treatment next. So when it's all out, that's coming. In any case, as always, I wouldn't be doing any of this without you. When the flu hit it wasn't pleasant, but at no point did I have to add worrying about losing my job to the pile. Most people don't have that luxury. As I've said before, I have no idea why you're being so kind, and I'm not sure I'd understand if you told me. I'm just exceptionally grateful that you are, and send out enormous thanks from snowy, snowy Bulgaria. 

  
 I'm not fucking kidding about the last bit either by the way. It's like living on Everest at the moment, just with more Bulgarians.   

 I will say one more thing that might resonate with you, I don't know. I grew up believing that feeling like shit was a problem with your mental patterns—that you can change it with mantras or motivational lectures or whatever. While I'm sure that's true for some people, I've come around to the idea that it isn't that simple. To put the flu thing to bed finally, after two weeks of no exercise I was losing my tiny mind. Then, when it finally cleared, I went for a run through one of the nicest parks in Sofia. It's called Borisova Gradina and it has statues and a forest and everything. And it was practically a religious moment. Partly it was just leaving the house, but I'm absolutely convinced it was the physical aspect, actually pushing your body. Things seemed like they had a point again. The world was a nice place. Running almost always produces this feeling in a way that not much else does.   

 If you're in a hole right now, if everything seems pointless, if it's just a shit time—seriously, just go do some physically taxing exercise. It could be social, could be a lone thing, whatever. But try it out. Physiology is just as important as mental attitude. Just moving about won't solve problems, but it'll certainly reveal them as solvable. And really, that's three-quarters of the battle. 

 So that's the story for this month. If you enjoyed the suggestions above, drop me a line. If you didn't, well, drop me a line I suppose. If you're after copies of the last few books, PDF, Mobi, Epub, or whatever, ping me an email at exurb1achannel@gmail.com and I'll get them right across as attachments.   

 Again, the support is enormously appreciated, and I can't wait to show you the new stories.   

 All the very best with everything on your end,   

 Ex.