Obstinate columns
Hello loves!
I'm just back from a little therapist-mandated holiday in Turkey, feeling far more like myself again after hiking some of the Lycian Way, eating my way around Fethiye, exploring ancient ruins and a ghost village, and spending many hours lying on beach loungers working my way through several excellent novels (OF COURSE I'm going to tell you about my faves). Like the 2,500 year-old tomb of Amyntas pictured above, the columns of my self feel like they've had a damn battering, yet those stubborn bastards still stand. I'm thrilled to be back in a decidedly summery-feeling London, thrilled to be through the book launch chaos, and thrilled to be diving back into my next novel Mama (née Cuckoobird).
On that note, I need to pick your brains! Mama's a novel exploring the alternative lives of having/not-having children. So if you feel like sharing something with me, I'd love to hear from you about how you've thought/felt about this choice in your own life. Have other people made you feel judged about your decision (either way)? If you don't want kids, what are your biggest fears and hopes for this choice? If you've had kids, what are the most unexpected ways its impacted your identity and your life? If you aren't sure, what do you feel would tip your decision? If you wanted to but haven't been able to, or if you felt one way and then changed your mind, I want to hear about that too. Oh, and I'm also after anecdotes of fiveish year olds being WEIRD LITTLE GUYS, if you don't mind me cribbing anecdotes about your kids for a horror novel... Just hit reply! I'd love to hear from you.
Thank yoooou! <3
Springtime reading glut
2026 has been a BUMPER year for excellent novels. Some recent faves:
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, about a tradwife Instagram influencer who finds herself transported to the actual 1850s. Yes it's worth all the hype. Beyond the very topical "wtf is up with America??" of it all, it had profound things to say about the performances we make of ourselves online, and what it is to feel like you can no longer tell the difference between the mask you wear and the person wearing it. It's a stunning character study, well-plotted, pacey, delicious.
- Famesick by Lena Dunham. Also worth the hype. Girls came out when I was about the same age as its heroines and I always felt incredibly seen by that show, and baffled by the ceaseless vitriol directed at Dunham, which felt like it was aimed at all mouthy women who got a bit too big for our britches. It's been cathartic to see Dunham reclaiming the narrative. I felt so angry on her behalf reading about what she went through. And it's a great reminder of the fact that she's always just been such a damn brilliant essayist, because she's willing to be so honest about the ugliest parts of herself.
- Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam. To crib Hannah Horvath, I truly think Salam is the voice of his generation; or at least a voice, of a generation. It's a novel about three boys careening through a single night out on Manchester's Curry Mile, written in language that feels utterly fresh, true, new. An astonishing debut.
- Keeping the House by Tice Cin, a breathtaking literary adventure about three women caught up in the North London heroin trade. Cin's a multidisciplinary artist and released a mixtape along with the novel, and is pretty much the coolest person I've ever met (at Sufiyaan's launch party, where else).
- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, which just very deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize (here's Rebecca Makkai spilling the delicious beans about the judging process), about a World War I soldier who finds a fallen angel on the battlefield. The whole novel's written in one breathless sentence, utterly stunning and original (but, warning, you need a strong stomach for the gore).
- The White North Has They Bones by Dorian Ravenscroft. Look, you know I'm a sucker for polar horror, ESPECIALLY if it's gay as hell, so this book was basically written for me. It's got 1850s mediums! It's got ghosts-or-maybe-just-your-own-guilty-conscience! It's got queer yearning! It's got cannibalism in the arctic circle! Fellow fans of Ally Wilkes and Dan Simmons, order this immediately.
- Askari by Jacob Dlamini. This book is a decade old but I'd never read it, and it's brilliant. It's the true story of 'Comrade September', an ANC freedom-fighter turned Apartheid collaborator in the late 1980s. It's a complicated, complicating portrait of a complicated man trying to survive an ugly time in South Africa's history, and it posed questions I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
- One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford. A hilarious but surprisingly heartfelt story about a woman whose husband was the last person bitten in a zombie outbreak that's now over. He's tied to the bed in her spare room while she tries to keep his existence a secret and find a cure, even though all the world wants to do is move on. It felt like a pretty profound pandemic novel in code (and, did I mention, it's really funny).
And yes I'm still obsessed with Dungeon Crawler Carl but I'm trying to ration myself before I lose all my friends by not being able to talk about anything else.
I've no more fucks to give
Look I just think some of you need this song today.
Book Off!
I had absolutely THE MOST FUN on the Book Off! podcast with Joe Haddow and fellow novelist Fran Fabriczki, pitting my favourite book in a BATTLE TO THE DEATH against Fran's. Fran's debut novel Porcupines is fab, it's a hilarious story about mothers and daughters and Cold War secrets in a LA motel, think Little Miss Sunshine meets The Americans. Fran makes a strong case for her favourite book The Book Of George by Kate Greathead (it's at the top of my towering reading-pile) but I mounted a passionate defence for my all-time fave (listen to find out what it is).
The Big Idea
I wrote a short piece for John Scalzi's blog discussing where the idea for Femme Feral came from:
I had a blast taking a wild premise and then trying to work through the consequences very seriously. If you could rip someone’s head off, whose head would tempt you first? What would an NHS GP say if you told him that once a month you find yourself naked and covered in blood on the other side of town with no memory of how you got there? And the question that probably vexed me more than any other (and John Landis never had to deal with): how the heck is this beast roaming all around modern London without being spotted by CCTV?
Athena Scalzi
Surf Sangoma
If you have a Disney+ subscription, PLEASE watch Kizazi Moto's "Surf Sangoma" short film as part of the Generation Fire anthology, a wildly inventive cyberpunk surfing story set in a future Durban. I so badly want it to be picked up and turned into a video game.
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Having just survived a period of publicity, feeling hyper-exposed and having to spend far more time than I'd like on Instagram (i.e. any at all), I've been loving this little Emily Dickinson poem:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
I'm very happy to be diving back into the cool of the bogwater, this week, with the silent minnows and mudfish, to busy myself with building fantasy worlds in the muck. Please send me emails about your feelings about not-having/having kids! You can address them c/o Brown Catfish, Underneath Plant-Clump, Bog.
Wishing resilience to your columns and good mud for your bog-burrows!
Love
Sam
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