Glom of Nit #26: A novel affair and a big show
Articles, recommendations, shamless plugs and whatnot
Right. Before I start, I have to get this commercial message in first. Next week, on Thursday 12th of October, I am doing my show The Magic of Terry Pratchett at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London. It will be the biggest solo performance I have ever done. Please come. Here are the details:
Hello there.
It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? The last Glom of Nit I wrote was July 31, sat on the train to Edinburgh to perform The Magic of Terry Pratchett at the Fringe. Full of a nerves and excitement. My intention was always to write the next blog a month later on the train home, but honestly? By the time I got on that train I was bone-wearingly, marrow-drainingly exhausted, so completely mentally spent I couldn’t spare the brain space to string a sentence together.
If I ever, ever, ever, ever suggest I spend a month performing three hours of stand up every day please tell me that it’s an absurd idea and that I’m not as young as I used to be. Because that’s how time works. And if someone pops up and says “but time isn’t linear” then tell them to do one. This is not the time to apply a paraphilosophicial approach to physics.
Anyway. How did it go? It went well. It went very well. We sold nearly 3,000 tickets, sold out multiple shows and received tons of reviews including this ★★★★★ cracker from Starburst (and this ★★★★★ crackers from ThreeWeeks and this ★★★★★ cracker from Edinburgh Reviews. You get the picture.) Technically it could have gone better but selling out a 120 seats every day for a month is a hell of an ask. So given that’s just a technicality – it could not have gone better.
The show also improved massively across the run. Of course it did! I nipped and tucked and found new rhythms as I went. What surprised me is how many people came along that were never Pratchett fans, dragged along by partners or friends or just taking a chance, which of course is the beauty of the Fringe. I had more than a few conversations with people who stopped me after seeing the show and said that they were now reading their first Pratchett book. That’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?
But now we move on. Next week, of course, is the big show at the Bloomsbury. I’m also doing the show all over the place in the coming months. The dates are a bit further along in the newsletter.
Since getting back from the Fringe I have been trying to regain my depleted energy, so a few weeks ago myself and my wonderful girlfriend Melanie (who constantly moans I never mention her in these blogs. So here you go.) went on a restorative holiday to visit my dad in the mountains near El Pinos (which I believe means “the willy” in Catalan) in Spain, and while attempting to relax wrote the first 10,000 words of a novel I’ve had in my head for a while now (the genesis of which was sparked by an idea of the aforementioned Melanie’s. I have to point that out or I’ll get letters.) It’s now 20,000 words and has the working title "Touch Sensitive”. It’s the most fun I have ever had writing, and if I had my way and didn’t have a zillion other things to do for which I’m actually paid the money I need to exist, I’d be writing it all day. There’s a sample (the prologue as a matter of fact) at the end of the newsletter.
One thing I do need to put my hands up to, is that my book on Nirvana which I hoped would be out next month, is nowhere close to finished. Writing the stand up show, and then performing it sucked up so much of my energy that it got put aside, and I’ve struggled to get back into the rhythm of the research and writing. It’ll come though. I promise.
Laughably, it’s been exactly a year since I left my job at Twitter to go freelance and assumed I’d have more time to write books. Astonishing naivety from the boy Burrows there. All of my time has gone into writing things for immediate financial needs. Bloody capitalism.
Anyway. Thank you to everyone I met over the last few months and everyone who saw or supported by shows in Edinburgh. Lots of chances coming up to see more! I’ll see you there.
Upcoming live shows and tour dates
OCTOBER
12th LONDON - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Bloomsbury Theatre, London TICKETS & INFO
23rd-24th - Irish Discworld Convention, CORK, IRELAND TICKETS & INFO
NOVEMBER
3rd-5th - ArmadaCon - Plymouth TICKETS & INFO
2024 (A LOT more tour dates to be announced)
FEBRUARY
1st - TOTTON - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Hanger Farm Arts Centre TICKETS & INFO
8th - BANBURY - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Mill Hill Arts Centre TICKETS & INFO
15th - SWINDON - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Arts Centre TICKETS & INFO
17th - NORTHAMPTON - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Royal & Derngate Studio TICKETS & INFO (Matinee)
17th - NORTHAMPTON Magic of Terry Pratchett - Royal & Derngate Studio TICKETS & INFO
18th - BIRMINGHAM The Magic of Terry Pratchett - The Glee, Studio TICKETS & INFO
20th - COLCHESTER - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Arts Centre TICKETS & INFO
29th - BRIGHTON - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Komedia TICKETS & INFO
MARCH
22nd - TUNBRIDGE WELLS - The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Trinity Theatre TICKETS & INFO
AUGUST
2-5 International Discworld Convention, Birmingham INFO & TICKETS
Stuff I’ve written this month
REVIEW - The Exorcist: Believer (HeyUGuys)
REVIEW - Angelheaded Hipster - Marc Nolan & T.Rex (HeyUGuys)
First a paywall, next ‘PayPal X’? I know what Elon Musk is up to… (Independent)
All 41 Discworld Novels Ranked Best to Worst (Shots Mag)
Avenged Sevenfold interview sample (Marvin)
Why TERRY PRATCHETT will always be Brilliant and Relevant (International Excellence)
First Person: Getting to know Terry Pratchett (Arts Desk)
I also wrote a nice feature on the state of modern science fiction for this issue of the Radio Times. It was print-only, and the issue was several weeks ago now, so I guess I can share the draft I sent them via google doc.
Recommendations
My brilliant friend Catherine, AKA The Anchoress has a new album out - Versions. You can get in vinyl and CD here and it’s ace.
The new Terry Pratchett book A Stroke of the Pen is out on Thursday and it’s WONDERFUL. An absolute joy.
Finally, an awful transphobe recently said in a newspaper interview that the trans movement “created no great art”. Which is preposterous. He is a recent song by the wonder Anhoni and the Johnsons:
And that’s it from me!
Marc
PS if you spot any typos in this letter (and you will), please do me a huge favour and don’t actually mention them.
PPS. I LOVE it when I get replies!
WORK IN PROGRESS SNIPPET - A TOUCH SENSITIVE
As I said in the intro, I’ve started working on a novel. Which seems inevitable really. It’s one of those times when I can’t stop the story twitching under my skin and the characters talking to me. Below is the prologue. This is a first draft, work in progress, it may never be completed, it may be totally rewritten, it may be awful. I don’t know. Oh, also I’ve had to asterisk out the swearing to stop this going straight to spam folders! Anyway. Here’s goes …
Prologue – Jim*
The tiny stage was a dungeon and a furnace and a warzone and the floor of the coliseum all at once. The cables were vipers, the beads of sweat forming on the low ceiling were the threat of acid rain. The crowd brayed and jeered like peasants at an execution and the cheap, sh*tty beer pooled under the red lights and shone like blood. Here and there it actually was blood.
The idea had been growing in Jim’s head for a while. He vaguely suspected it sometimes, denied it at others and damn well had come close to saying it in interviews once or twice, but finally, right here, right now, he was sure of it. Looking into the pudgey, swollen, pockmarked face with its twisted, sour smirk, its eyeliner sweating off, its eyes unfocussed, its horrible teeth, he knew it with more complete surety than he’d ever known anything. He f*cking hated Johnny James. Hated him. He was a c*nt.
Someone in the crowd threw a plastic glass, which rebounded off a cymbal and showered the cramped stage with more of the cheap, sh*tty beer. No-one cared. Everything was f*cked anyway. The two borrowed amps were f*cked. The venue’s DI boxes were f*cked. The pedals were f*cked. The microphones were certainly f*cked; their mishapen, rusted and stinking bulbs ripped away. Sweat stung Jim’s eyes and his soaking hair flew out as he swung the bass, the cheap, borrowed bass belonging to the support band, by the strap like a medieval knight would swing a mace, knocking the mic stand flying. The rubber ring from a Grolsch bottle in service as a strap lock finally gave way and the instrument scythed into the drum kit, long since abandoned by Bozzer, who two songs earlier had kicked half of it down, charged from behind it and shoved Johnny James, who was still smirking, hard in the chest, sending him reeling into the rusted and pointless crowd barrier. Bozzer had jumped into the crowd, sharp elbows flying, and hadn’t been seen since. That just left Jim, Johnny James and Kaz on stage. Kaz just looked terrified. A little girl seeing her alcoholic dad laying the neighbour out for letting the cat sh*t on the lawn once too often.
Johnny James looked at him and laughed. Later people would say the crowd was openly hostile, but Jim didn’t remember it that way. They were cheering them on. “F*CK HIM UP JIMMY”. “YOU F*CKING RULE”, and the constant “JOHN-NY-JAMES! JOHN-NY-JAMES!” Gulping the sour, super heated air with tears and stinging sweat in his eyes, shaking with rage and nausea, Jim looked across the tiny, broken space at the man he’d stood on stages with, across the world, since he was at school.
Johnny James raised one of the busted microphones and breathed into the tattered foam that was all that was left of its head. Remarkably, it still worked. “What do you reckon he’s gonna do now?” He asked the crowd. “F*ckin c*nt face idiot ‘ere?”
“JOHN-NY-JAMES! JOHN-NY-JAMES!”
“‘Az ee got the f*ckin bottle?”
“JOHN-NY-JAMES! JOHN-NY-JAMES!”
“Izzy gonna bite the hand that’s fed ‘im for f*ckin years?”
“JOHN-NY-JAMES! JOHN-NY-JAMES!”
Jim, doubled over with his hands on his knees, shaking, more angry than he had ever been at anyone, ever, looked up through sweat soaked hair. Johnny James shoved the ruin of the microphone at him. Jim breathed. “Oh, fuck off, you f*cking prick”. There might have been an “ooh” from the crowd, like when a wrestler smack talks his opponent, but Jim wasn’t really listening. The buzz of tinnitus in his ears, ever present for years now, seemed to rise until it filled the world. A shrill whine that eclipsed everything. Sobbing now, he pushed into the seventy-five or eighty bodies in the tiny, sh*tbox club that held two-hundred. Like Bozzer a million years ago he elbowed out into the night, steam rising from his body as he hit the air outside. Back at the hotel was his bag containing two t-shirts, a CD player, a baggy of genuinely bad coke and his passport. He hailed a yellow cab. Back in the club he heard Johnny James drawl. “F*ck all of em, and fuck all of you. This one’s called ‘Johnny Bomb’. It’s dedicated to this b*tch that stayed”. The crowd yelled. Jim slammed the cab door. Two hours later he was at JFK. Ten hours later he was home. And he would never, ever speak to Johnny f*cking James ever again.
* Jim disappears from the story after this. This will be his only appearance as a POV character.