Will seeing the cover of your book for the first time ever get any less thrilling? I very much doubt it. I’m so excited to be able to reveal the cover of my new book, 1983. Like its predecessor, Villager, and my 2018 collection of short stories Help The Witch, it's been designed by Joe McLaren, together with Mark Ecob of my publishers Unbound. It's a slight change in approach from my other recent covers but I love the dry stone wall layout, and I think it really sums up the book's themes of childhood, outer-space, the old future that we used to look forward to back in the 20th Century, and the landscape of the industrial north Midlands. You’ll probably know a bit about the book and the research I’ve been doing towards it, if you’ve been following my Substack posts this year, but can read a little more about it here.
1983 is written and edited now, and will be out in the world next summer. It’s the sixth book in as many years that I’ve crowdfunded with Unbound: a kind of publishing that permits me to do the writing that’s most true to me, without worrying about publishing trends or marketing campaigns or fitting in with anything that’s seen as cool or bankable. If you’d like to read it, and fancy putting in an early order, the best way to support me - and independent publishing - is by doing so via The Unbound website. There are signed first editions of the hardback available, and a few pledge rewards still remaining (we might also add a few more at the beginning of next year).
I’ve included a very short excerpt below, narrated by one of the main characters - a robot maker called Colin who (to say the least) is not quite fitting in with the locals, having moved to a north Nottinghamshire pit village - which will hopefully give you a small flavour of it…
COLIN
I opted not to call the police. I’d seen Barrowcliffe in the pub, drinking with at least one of the local bobbies. And what kind of spavined leg would I have to stand on, when they accused me of starting it by burgling his shed? Instead, I went to ground, further to it even than before. I wrote. I changed my walking routes, heading away from the village, over a BMX track, past an old gatehouse and more profoundly into the woods. I took my sketchpad and sketched a ruined priory I’d found a couple of miles away. I planned – but did not rush – my escape. I swallowed my original intentions and bought a car, from a man at a chicken farm: just a Vauxhall Viva, three previous owners, 63,000 on the clock. I drove it into the city, tried to ignore a smell on the upholstery which put me in mind of straw and amniotic sac. I ate packed lunches in libraries, bit wincingly into thick-skinned apples and watched the goosebumps spread along my arms, bought carbide lamps and Victorian chisels from dingy antique shops on reticent streets. I overheard disparate conversations which soldered together in my mind: ‘I’ve done sixteen fish today… I’d shoot the whole ruddy lot of ’em all if it were up to me.’ I saw the clefts in the earth on the mound the city’s oppressed had once climbed to set the old castle alight. I was serenaded by pigeons in a giant equine underpass carved through the sandstone and I wondered why people had not told me about it, wondered why they did not walk around raving about it every day. I witnessed disagreements – disagreements pulsating with little histories, disagreements that sounded to an outsider like uncrackable codes – between trios of men with not a full mouth of teeth between them, then realised that some of them were not men. At the end of the day, when the shops closed, the city felt like the bottom of a glass that too many people had been drinking from.
I can’t wait for this. I know it’s going to be one of those books I devour and then feel sad that I’ve finished it.
Congrats. I must admit, I'm not familiar with your work and only heard of you through Substack. But I'm happy for your success all the same, and your excitement is infectious. Also, that excerpt you shared is beautiful. It's artistic, inspirational and intimidating all at once! I will be sure to check out your other work and grab a copy of 1983!