Rachel Watts's Blog, page 3

Survival and its inspiration: this is how the world ended

My upcoming release Survival (now in presale!) is set just after governments and cities started to fall apart, but before they were abandoned altogether. And so, it might not be surprising that I do a fair bit of thinking about the end of the world. But not the fast end. Not the explosion or the […]

Survival: a cover and a sneaky early chapter!

It’s really happening! I have sent files to the printer and Survival will be released in March! It’s a strange feeling of excitement and relief and nervousness. And somehow there’s also a deflated feeling. But instead of dwelling too much on the feeling of sending something of my own out into the world, how about we […]

Want a paperback copy of Survival?

Great news! Today I emailed the edited manuscript of my novella Survival to my designer for it to be made into something beautiful! It’s an exciting moment. The cover design is going to be finalised very soon – before Christmas! Make sure you sign up to my newsletter to get your hands on the cover...

Review: From The Wreck by Jane Rawson

“Small creatures,” I tell them, because aren’t we all? “Small creatures, calm yourselves.” We taste each other’s breath and they know there’s none of their kind been through my mouth and they still themselves. Small creatures. We talk, this and that. Minds only; no sounds. They are the feel of speed squeezed into muscle and...

Review: The Accusation by Bandi

“Citizens, your attention. The ceremony will proceed as planned. All participants must, without exception, present themselves at their designated assembly point.” This broadcast on radio channel 3 shrilled its message into the city’s collective eardrum. From the subways and apartment buildings, underground stations and bus stop shelters, beneath the awnings of public buildings or the...

Introducing Survival: a novella

I’m excited to be able to tell you that my speculative fiction novella Survival is set to be released in the first half of 2018! Survival Ignorance is cheap. Then it costs you everything. It is the near future and the world has suffered economic collapse and multiple environmental crises. Above a city straddling a river the...

Review: 4321 by Paul Auster

Time moved in two directions because every step into the future carried a memory of the past, and even though Ferguson had not yet turned fifteen, he had accumulated enough memories to know that the world around him was continually being shaped by the world within him, just as everyone else’s experience of the world...

Review: Nobody Is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey

Some people make us feel more human and some people make us feel less human and this is as much a fact as gravity is a fact… Elyria leaves home one day to go to New Zealand without telling anyone, without much of a plan as to what she’s looking for or why. She has...

On writing: a note to my past and future self

I’ve been reading a lot about freelancing lately. Or writing in general. How people earn money by doing it, how to do it better, how to reassure yourself that you’re doing the best you can, etc. These stories have been running alongside a wider conversation about the incomes of writers and how most writers supplement...

Review: Dying in the First Person by Nike Sulway

My brother was seven minutes older than me; seven minutes after he died, I passed into a future he had refused. Nobody in the world could speak with me now. Nobody knew those languages, those histories, like we did. I waited for someone to tell me what I should say, what I should do with...