The Nameless Horror

Warm night breeze coming in through the broken window. The smell of those thick, gnarled succulents Jackson had seen on the drive, splashed around the desert and all the way to the horizon, dark leaves and rust-colored flowers tracking the sun as they’d sped west, him and Cherry.

He’d found her - or she’d found him; if he was honest, he didn’t know who’d been in good enough shape to claim primacy - in the burned-out wreckage ringing Little Rock. He’d had a car, the ten year-old station wagon that was now tucked in tight against the motel wall downstairs. She’d had a gun, and most importantly of all, a plan. There was a place near Needles where, she said, there were others like them, and they could claim shelter. A battered Moleskine clutched in one dirty hand like she was going to preach from it. Jackson, who’d just been kind of drifting, figured he might as well. He’d never been out that far, so why not? Wasn’t like there was anything better to do.

"Just for the journey," she’d said to him, facing him across the roof of Jackson’s car. Hand up to stop the wind smearing straggles of blonde hair across her eyes. "You can come with me all the way, or you change your mind, I’ll split, go it alone. Whatever."

It wasn’t like gas or food was getting any easier to find, but he still hadn’t changed his mind and she still hadn’t split, and Jackson was finding the thought of this girl with the tired eyes and the bright scar on her cheek leaving tougher all the time.

"I could be gone before morning," she told him each night.

"If you need to," he said back. Thinking, don’t.

A dusty, wind-tossed motel room. Some of her things in the sink where she’d done her best to wash them. His in a pile on the floor beside the bed. A long, hard road through the desert ahead of them, and her always promising to leave if she had to, but for now he had Cherry curled up, warm and soft between his arms, the curve of her back pressed against him, and that was enough.

By me. “Wakes” is (intended to be) an occasional-regular writing exercise, fragments out of nothing, inspired in part by whatever cycles through iTunes as I sit down to work.

Wake 2: ‘Hotel Song’ - Jon Crosby, off 'Generica vol 1'. That version’s acoustic, but not on YouTube. His later VAST version isn’t, but is.

Wedding yesterday, where I was The Official Photographer in return for lunch, wine, and the hideous stress of not fucking up a friend’s main record of their big event. Initial checks on the 700-ish shots I came back with suggests all is well and I can relax. While the actual wedding pics aren’t mine to share (it being someone else’s occasion, and all that), here’s one of Aidan and his stepdad that Young Stompy wanted me to take:

Over the coming days comes the sorting and the processing and the bleary-eyed staring at the screen until all the suits and dresses and flowers start to blur into one psychotic mass.

A little over a month ago I released a little something called ALL YOU LEAVE BEHIND into the wild (not long after some lengthy wafflings on the realities of the ebook market). The aim with AYLB is to shift ~1,000 copies over an equally squiggly 3 years, and then I’ll be at minimum living wage standard on six novellas a year. Not impossible.

So, how did the first month go?

• Sold via Amazon (UK and US): 10 copies.

• Sold direct: 3 copies.

The extra % on direct sales makes our total around 14.5 sales on the Amazon scale.

As deeply unimpressive as this is, it’s about half what the ideal rate would be, so all things are relative (and one would expect something of a bounce in a month’s time when TRG comes out in paperback).

Of interest is that in the week or so after release I had a couple of interview/guest blog things elsewhere online (with Al and Elizabeth ‘APMonkey’ White and maybe another one or two), so even though I’ve not exactly been spamming Twitter, I wasn’t exactly hidden away.

Very interesting.

FWIW, expected next-novel work (ahead of the equally expected baby) means I’ve had to hold fire on the next novella for a tick, but it’ll still go on as planned as the decks clear a little.

'The Razor Gate' is an outstanding novel. With characters that you instantly feel empathy for, a setting which is perfect and an uncompromising style which sets the pace early and never lets up, until the last words.