Oh god yeah.

In full, in print, with all the swear words and the exhaustive list of weaponry and medical equipment and supplies, as part of my short story and essay collection: tachyonpublications.com/product/slip...

It feels relevant with current events, which might also make it unbearable to engage with, so all the content warnings.

I also cut out the swears! It's inspired by the chapter on the atrocities in Abu Ghraib prison detailed in Philip Zimbardo*'s The Lucifer Effect, on good intentions, and the dangers of anonymity. It's pretty brutal and includes torture and war horror. (*yeah the Stanford Prison experiment guy)

And people have to pay a ridiculous sum to access your work.

Oh definitely, small print publishers may pay £500-1000 or royalties only.

👋 Tom!!!!

But look at that angelic face! I'm glad you got your shot though!

I once did a talk at an ad agency on creativity and one of the guys there proclaimed himself my biggest fan. While holding a R40 cup of coffee, he proudly told me he'd pirated my last two books. I told him the ebook versions would have cost him the princely sum of 4 of those coffees he had 3x daily.

The LLMS (ChatGPT, Claude etc) trained on giant pirated databases of authors' work, illegally, without recompense, and then tried to cover it up, charge £20 a month for Plus, £200 a month for pro. Kobo unlimited is £8.99. The local library is free and will usually order books on request.

In South Africa, it's much, much lower. More like R10 000 - R20 000. Book sales affect authors ability to get another deal. Book stores won't order new titles/ only very low numbers from an author who hasn't sold well, publishers won't pay as high an advance to give authors the time to write.

Thank you! Pretty hopeful! Glad Grabbity had a great response.

He had to wait in back for four hours for the next available time slot and in that period, went straight back to sweetest boy alive, charming the socks off everyone who went anywhere near the cage. The assistant said "maybe we can do him now, he's so sweet." She was incorrect.

Had to take my usually very chill and charming boy to the vet today for selenia (sp?) injections for his arthritis. But today, he went full super jerk, put the fear of Bastet into the vet and had to be gabopentinned to the gills, which is fair enough because his leg is sore... but...