I have some news!
In a week or two, I’ll be releasing a zine. It’s a pretty snappy affair titled What Living and Dying Is Like and it will contain two of my short stories, one old one and one new one.
This is my first piece of self-publishing since 2017. Five years. I’m going to be doing a few of these, all under my imprint/label L A M B H O U S E. I have lots of unreleased stuff that I’m looking to get out into the world. I’ll be in touch in a couple of weeks once it’s ready.
In other news, I am also nearing the completion of a new edition of my debut Four Days. That will be available in the coming months. The new edition will be revised — I made a few small changes — and will come packaged with another 15,000 words of shorts, one of which is absolutely brand new. Here’s a sneak peek.
Finally, this flurry of activity doesn’t mark my departure from the traditional book world. It’s too early to say anything definitive, but I might have some news on that side of things next month, all going well.
City On Fire by Don Winslow
Within crime fiction circles, there’s not much left to be said about Don Winslow. His career appears obvious, a no-brainer. How could he not succeed? He has the back story (an ex-private investigator), the style (rugged) and the chops (a book a year during the 1990s). But in the doing, Winslow’s career was anything but easy. There are 14 years from his debut to his breakout, and in that time he radically interrogated his style, taking the scenic route to his recent work.
City On Fire is the first book in Winslow’s gangster trilogy. Is it original? No. But as a neighbour recently put it, ‘It’s pure Winslow. Only he can write that book.’ Apparently, it’s all based on the Iliad — I wouldn’t know — and I didn’t care. A swift 384 pages (half the length of The Border), this is the work of someone writing from the peak, and someone smart enough — and dedicated enough — to stay there for a while yet. If you like crime novels and you haven’t read him yet, it’s definitely time to start, and you can start here.
Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers Into Fanatics by Jackie Huba
I don’t write about everything I read. Normally, I’d skip something like Monster Loyalty — a middling marketing textbook from 2013. Fawning, cursory, and just plain annoying in places, Huba’s book found its way to me via my day job, and because it was cited in Ryan Holiday’s Perennial Bestseller, which IS recommended. Why I include Monster Loyalty is that it hits in a strange way in 2022.
Effectively, we’re living in a world created by this idea. Our online communities are all downriver from ‘community marketing’ at the moment. So while I may have disliked Huba’s book, it is — if nothing else — a clear rendition of the internet that we have subsequently built around us. Creating a commercialised sense of ‘community’ is foundational now, and what Monster Marketing reveals is that Gaga’s strategy was early, yet repeatable. Beyond that, there are no real lessons. In 2022, you could focus on your core fans, lead with values, and generate something worth talking about (all discrete chapters in the book), but in doing so, what would separate you from the average corporation or political operative? In short, I’ve got no good takeaways to report. It’s not as interesting as the lessons learned from Taylor Swift I mention here.
That’s all.
— IAIN
PS: Read my thoughts here and see how I live my life here.
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