Cookies, Sinners, Otherworld and telepathy

Another round of small notes about big things

I’m eating a gluten-free, sugar-free cookie as I write this and I realise that it doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but it is and those who are gluten free and sugar free need to know about it. So before I continue I would like to take this non-sponsored moment and introduce to you gullón’s sin gluten, sin azúcares cookies.

Now with that out the way.

The second installment of Otherworld, the gathering for writers and readers of speculative fiction, is happening on Saturday 19 July at Exclusive Books Waterfront.

Look at this epic poster I made.

I mean I think it’s epic. The image is from Unsplash.com and the creator of the image is Nelli Chaitanya.

It’s tricky to get the balance right? Because it’s got to cover everything from fantasy to sci-fi, horror to magic realism.

Anyway. I’m super stoked. We have a great line-up of local authors.

I’m particularly thrilled that we get to host Kerstin Hall again, whose book Asunder was nominated for both the Locus and Nebula Awards this year.

I started reading it about a month ago and had to stop immediately because it was too good and I had my own writing to do. I have however read her Star Eater which was a great read with really strong concepts.

What I love most about getting this Otherworld started is not just that it’s a cool thing to do with cool people, but that it’s a reminder that SFF in South Africa doesn’t begin and end with Lauren Beukes. All kudos to her etcetera, but the country’s collective consciousness can always do with an update with regards to this. It also helps that publishing houses like Sentinel Creatives (Insta: @sentinelcreativespublishing) and Mirari (Insta: @miraripress) are now around to cement spec fic into our home base for local authors and readers alike.

And then this:

If you haven’t already heard about it (you probably have, I am super late to just about everything popular and rarely listen to podcasts), it’s a show about non-speaking autistic kids who have the skill of ‘telepathy’. I put that in quotes because telepathy has a bad rap as pseudo psy-nonsense and anyone even vaguely triggered by anything non-material is going to poo-poo it without second thought.

But it’s worth a listen even for these types because it does surface some interesting ideas like ‘why is this such a problem to digest or consider these forms of non-material skillsets when we’re fully cool with soundwaves and Wi-Fi and other species using the finest of sensory skills to communicate over long distances’ (my quotes there).

Is it possible that we simply haven’t created the instruments that could measure the currently immeasurable? I mean, have you ever even spoken to a theoretical physicist, bro?

Anyway. If you’ve read my work, if you read the next few books starting with the one I’m busy with, you’ll know that I’m a big believer and feeler into the unseen, the world behind the veil, the energies that shape and move us, of which our physical bodies give us miraculous access to if we simply allow it. So I’m a fan. Bring it on.

And then I’ve been playing this song on repeat.

If you haven’t watched Ryan Coogler’s Sinners yet what the hell is wrong with you. Sorry to judge, but let’s get real. It’s gold. Don’t you want gold? You have to watch it on the big screen for that sound, that sound, that orgiastic, bombastic, majestic, otherworldly, bluesy, mad sound.

Honestly one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, Sinners is so layered, so clever, so compassionate, so full of politics and reality and unreality and heart and pain and love and sex, it just fucking vibrates with life.

And the soundtrack rocks of course.

Séance by James Blake and Ludwig Göransson is just my particular jam right now and I’ve been listening to it over and over and over as I work through this one scene. It’s got nothing to do with what I’m writing about and I can never write to music with lyrics but for some reason there’s something about the melody that just creeps into the space I’m in and makes it dense and intimate and dark.

Also it’s nice to have Michael B Jordan with me as I write again (although, again, he or even his character in Sinners has nothing to do with my current story). I’ve never divulged who I pictured as who when I wrote The Fulcrum, but since we’re here, in my mind’s eye, his much younger self was TJ. So it’s nice to have a familiar face in the room.

Anway. That’s what I got. Still no big thoughts. All my big thinking is going to my book. I am so close to the end now I can almost taste the crying I’m going to be putting my characters through.

*cracks knuckles*

Keep it cheesy,
t