An exclusive early excerpt from a work-in-progress
I’ve decided to open up my paywalled archives for the next week (i.e. until Friday May 10th) in case any new subscribers here would like to read any of my older Substack stuff - for example this piece on lanes or this piece on dilapidated buildings or this piece on 20th Century shopping centres or this piece on an extremely creepy walk to name just a few. For the foreseeable future I’ll be sending a signed hardback of my 2021 book Notebook to everyone who takes out a full annual subscription, wherever they are in the world, and for the next three full annual subscribers I have a full signed set of all my five books published to date by Unbound (see pic below).
The last ten and a bit months have been the most intense period of my entire writing life: a period I probably can’t repeat, due to the levels of exhaustion caused. In that time, I decided that I wanted to write two novels. I wasn’t sure if I could do it - and had even more doubts when I realised I would need to move house somewhere in the middle of the process - but I was determined to give it my best go. If you were to think of the novels as late 1960s LPs (which I naturally do, as someone who spends a lot of his time obsessively on the planet of late 1960s LPs), the first one is a simpler (but weirder than it might seem) psychedelic pop LP, full of songs that last no more than three minutes, while the second is something wilder and more sprawling, psychedelic in a more ambitious way. I’m close to finishing the second now, more or less to deadline, and it’s just about wrecked me, which I probably knew it would, but I know I’ll forget about the wrecking as soon as its over and I’m turning my attention to yet another project. I have just had a break from the final stages of that, however, to take my last proofread of the first one, before it goes to the printers in its complete form. It’s called 1983 and will be published in August. At times, over the last few months, I have almost forgotten I wrote it: a byproduct of the fact it’s not come out yet and that my head is now deep in a different fictional universe. What I’m trying to hold on to, right now, with the characters and narrative once again all fresh in my head, before I step away from them and extraneous factors strive to make me question it, is my solid knowledge that it’s precisely the book I intended it to be. It has only seemed “small” and insignificant to me at times because it’s not out in the world yet and what I’ve been attempting to do since is bigger.
So - back to the bigger thing: it’s only a few weeks away from being done now and will be published in March 2025. I suppose I should have known that I was tempting fate by calling a book Everything Will Swallow You, since that’s what it’s done, at times, although mostly in a fun way. If I was to be asked, as I near the end of the writing of it, what it’s like I would say it’s like the novel it is and nothing else, but, if pressed further, I would say one attempt to get somewhere close might involve imagining some unlikely combination of Beyond Black, The Odd Couple, Time Bandits, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Poor Things, Lovejoy, a provincial used record fair and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It’s a book about a man of my parents’ generation who lives with a quadruped not entirely of this realm. It’s a book about the secondhand trade and the landscape of the south west of the UK. But I have realised, as it has evolved and taken me where it wants to go, that it’s also a book about the differences between the 20th Century and the 21st, and against kowtowing to corporations and their henchdroids and for observing and savouring the magic that is still to be found out there. Thank you to everyone who has helped to fund it so far by pre-ordering the hardback. I’ve posted an audio clip of me reading an extract below for paid subscribers, as a taster. (Apologies about the bit where I stop because Jim is putting me off by scratching a rug.)
All the bees,
Tom