Peter Darbyshire's Blog, page 3

The Write Life: Make your desk a happy space

Some time ago I was struggling to get any writing done and didn’t know how to get past it. My publishing career wasn’t going well, I had a number of personal issues that were disrupting my focus and writing felt like work rather than the thing that brought me joy. I was basically avoiding my desk because it wasn’t a happy space. The situation was unsustainable and I knew I had to rethink what I was doing. In short, I felt like almost every other writer.

I took a break to just read for a while, as one does in such moments, as reading may be the only acceptable form of procrastination. I happened to reread Atomic Habits by James Clear, and his thoughts on the importance of well-running systems suddenly resonated with me. Clear says goals are great for creating direction but ultimately unachievable if you don’t also have a good system for making progress. Every writer I know will see the wisdom in this.

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy,” Clear says. “You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision.”

I realized what I was lacking was a happiness system for my writing, which meant I wasn’t really able to achieve any of my goals because I couldn’t stick to the process properly. So I set about to change that, starting with my desk. The desk in my office was where I had been doing everything — my work for my day job, paying my bills, doomscrolling, checking my email and my writing. So it was a place of constantly conflicted feelings, with endless distractions to my focus. I decided to make it purely a creative space dedicated to my writing. Archaic perhaps, like buying a record player to listen to music, but sometimes there’s value in returning to the old ways. (Although I draw the line at chicken pox parties.)

First, I moved everything not related to my writing out of my office. I now do the work for my day job in a separate room, I keep up with the news on my phone rather than my writing computer, I don’t bother paying bills anymore, and so on.

Once I had cleared my desk of work, I redecorated it with things that made me happy to look at. I’ve long been a Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast (I’m a writer, remember?), so I framed some D&D postcards and put them on my desk. Just looking at them puts me in a good mood. I added a model of a Tintin rocket because Explorers on the Moon sparked my imagination as a child and I’ve never really grown up. My coffee mug coaster is a map from Lord of the Rings. My ReLit Award ring is always handy as a pick-me-up when I’m feeling down. I’m adding little things here and there that spark joy.

Now when I sit at my desk, I’m automatically put into a happy mood by the items on it. That makes me more willing to spend time at my desk, and the more time I spend there the more writing I get done. Sure, everyone else complains I’ve become a hermit — but I’m a happy, productive hermit!

So one of my most important pieces of advice to other writers is to create a happiness system — and start with a happy desk.

The Butcher of Tariffs – The April 2025 Bibliofiles

We just had a rather significant election in Canada, so I’ve been reading a bit more about tariffs and publishing woes. But I did also manage to find time to read Robert Jackson Bennett’s second book in the Din and Ana series, which takes things to a new level of creepy yet beautiful horror — which also applies to Premee Mohamed’s Butcher of the Forest. I also read KJ Aiello’s The Monster in the Mirror, which looks at the construction of mental illness in fantasy and science fiction — timely given our Instagram Live together!

I hope you check out some of these reads and enjoy them as much as I did.

Fiction

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

Veris is a survivor. She’s managed to keep herself alive under the rule of the merciless Tyrant, who has taken over her land and killed many of its residents. She’s also the only one to have entered the mysterious forest known as the Elmever and come back out alive. But when the Tyrant’s children go missing in the Elmever, he turns to Veris to rescue them. It’s certain death to go into those woods a second time. But it’s also certain death to fail the Tyrant. So Veris has no choice but to venture into the Elmever once more in search of the children.

The Butcher of the Forest is an eerie story that captures the spirit of fairy tales but leaves behind all the trappings meant for children. It’s as if the Brothers Grimm met up with Alice in Wonderland in a cosmic horror story. Haunting, weird and beautiful.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127281143-the-butcher-of-the-forest

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

The charming detective pair of Din and Ana are back to solve a new mystery in A Drop of Corruption, the second in one of the best fantasy series I’ve read in ages. Din is an engraver, a sort of enhanced human who has the ability to memorize pretty much anything. He’s the field agent for Ana, a Holmes-like detective who is as brilliant as she is eccentric. Together they are sent to Yarrowdale, a kingdom on the edge of the empire where fallen Titans are dismantled for the magical blood that helps to power the empire. An officer of the empire has disappeared into thin air and only Ana and Din can solve the mystery. But things quickly grow complicated when they realize the disappearance is related to a string of murders, and the killer is a mad genius who moves between the kingdom and the wild lands at its borders, spreading a strange sort of contagion that threatens everything.

A Drop of Corruption is a riveting followup to the first book in the series, A Tainted Cup. It’s the sleuthing mysteries of Sherlock Holmes meeting the biohorror and weirdness of Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, with the political intrigue that Bennett is known for. I can’t wait to read the next book!

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213618143-a-drop-of-corruption

Idle, Inc. by Benjamin Parzybok

A customer support representative at a tech startup that sells free time to people discovers exactly where that time comes from and at what cost. Another delightfully bizarre story from Bourbon Penn.

Link: https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/35/idle-inc-by-benjamin-parzybok

Labbatu Takes Command of the Flagship Heaven Dwells Within by Arkday Martine

Sci-fi space pirate smut!

Link: https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/labbatu-takes-command-of-the-flagship

Non-fiction

Values by Mark Carney

Wherever you stand on Canadian politics, it’s probably worth reading Value(s) by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, who was also a former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. It’s an informative history of how we have determined value and shaped financial systems over the ages, with a disquieting move from market economies to market societies. Carney suggests we need to realign our values so they’re not just about financial worth and profitability. It’s hard to argue against that in the age of Trump and tariffs.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54503528-value-s

The Monster and the Mirror by KJ Aiello

Part memoir, part analysis of mental illness in the fantasy genre, The Monster and the Mirror is a unique and powerful book that defies categorization. It’s also a necessary call for us to reimagine how we approach mental illness, from the health care system to the media in all its forms. A timely and important read.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211765623-the-monster-and-the-mirror

Bookish and World Woes by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia reflects on the Canada-U.S. tensions and how things will likely be dire this coming year and beyond for writers, publishers and bookstores. This really is a time for everyone to support their communities.

Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bookish-and-woes-124982811

The Science of Romance: Young, in Love, and Enthralled by Biochem by Kristi Charish

Kristi Charish writes about living beside wetlands, which means every spring she witnesses a practical orgy among wildlife and teenagers. It’s sexy material for another column about the science of writing and how to use real-world science to flesh out your tales.

Link: https://www.kristicharish.com/news/2025/3/17/the-science-of-romance-young-in-love-enthralled-by-biochem

Could Tariffs Collapse Canadian Publishing? by Wolsak and Wynn

Most of the books sold in Canada come from the U.S. The multinationals that dominate Canadian publishing spend fortunes on marketing campaigns that independent Canadian publishers cannot compete with, which tilts demand toward U.S. books. So what’s to be done? Support those indie presses that are genuinely Canadian.

Link: https://www.wolsakandwynn.ca/blog/2025/03/27/could-tariffs-collapse-canadian-publishing

The America I Loved Is Gone by Stephen Marche

“Canada is a country that disillusions you. America is one illusion after another, some magnificent, others treacherous or vicious.”

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/20/american-dream-trump-canada

The angel gunslinger will Azrael will ride again!

I’m absolutely delighted to announce I’ve written a new tale of Azrael the angel gunslinger — and Beneath Ceaseless Skies will be publishing it! More details to come. In the meantime, here are the previously published Azrael stories:

The Angel Azrael Rode Into the Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse – The angel Azrael rides into the town of Burnt Church for a drink and ends up helping the very strange inhabitants fight off a gang of demons that’s been tormenting them.The Angel Azrael Delivers Small Mercies – The angel Azrael encounters an angel who is determined to turn the world into her own personal Hell and only Azrael can stop her.The audio version of “The Angel Azrael Delivers Small Mercies” with a new introduction I recorded for the storyThe Angel Azrael Delivers Justice to the People of the Dust – The angel Azrael rides into a mining town that is under siege from curious bone creatures stealing the town’s children. When Azrael intervenes, he discovers that nothing is what it seems in this strange place.The Angel Azrael Encounters the Revelation Pilgrims and Other Curiosities – The angel Azrael is hired by a group of pilgrims to guide them through a dangerous stretch of land, where they encounter a city of the dead and an outlaw band of half angels intent on ensuring they don’t make it to their destination.The Angel Azrael and the War Ghosts – The angel Azrael tries to stop a group of ghostly soldiers from preying upon travellers and rides straight into his own troubled past.The Angel Azrael Battles a Dead God Among the Heretics – The angel Azrael encounters a village full of crazed golems intent upon resurrecting a dead god to unleash upon the world — a god that Azrael has already killed once.The Angel Azrael and the Dead Man’s Hand – The Angel Azrael wanders into a strange town and becomes trapped in a supernatural and deadly card game. A recommended read by Locus!

Instagram Live with KJ Aiello

I’m looking forward to doing an Instagram Live with KJ Aiello April 23 (7:30 ET / 4:30 PT). Aiello is the author of The Monster and the Mirror and a lively Instagram influencer, so this should be fun! Follow along on her Instagram channel.

The Write Life: You need a second brain

If there’s one thing every writer needs, it’s a second brain.

No, I don’t mean a brain in a jar — although I’m sure there are some writers out there who have just such a thing decorating their office. Hey, no judgement from me.

I mean an external system for collecting and organizing all the information in your life — in other words, the things your real brain isn’t that great at remembering. Like editor’s notes and deadlines. In the past maybe that was post-it notes decorating every inch of the walls of your writing space like some mad person arguing with imaginary people — aka a writer. Or perhaps it was something more sane, like a commonplace book. These days, for better or worse, it tends to be an app.

Why do you need a second brain when the whole point of writing is to create something out of your imagination? Because it’s nearly impossible to keep track of every idea and element that goes into creating a written work without it. How many scribbled notes to yourself have you forgotten in a pocket or lost on transit, to be found by some other aspiring writer who will then turn it into a bestseller? How many inspiring articles have you emailed to yourself only to lose them somewhere in the depths of your inbox, where a Lovecraftian AI is slowly using them to achieve sentience? How many times have you forgotten what happens next in the outline of your story when those imaginary people refuse to do what you tell them? Our real brains are great at processing information — oh no, here comes a horde of zombies! — but not so good at retaining it. Cue the second brain.

Thankfully, there are a number of apps out there that are of immense value to writers and other people with more productive lives. I use Notion to create mini-wikis for my writing projects where I collect ideas, outlines, character profiles, settings, general notes, divine/infernal visions and so on. I also use it to organize my reading lists and keep track of my publications — published, pending, in progress, weird monstrosities, etc. Notion has a very simple and clean interface but is infinitely customizable once you get the hang of it, which I am sure to do one day. Other writers use Ulysses or Scrivener, while more generalist apps such as Evernote, Asana and Obsidian can also serve well as second brains (although they lack the literary names of the others I mentioned).

It doesn’t matter what system you use as long as you develop a second brain to help keep yourself organized. Your real brain will thank you once it realizes it no longer has to futilely attempt to keep track of things and can now focus on creating. And procrastinating.

And yes, I originally created this post in my second brain.

Weird Blood – The March 2025 Bibliofiles

My reading has been a little weird this month — weird westerns, weird SF, weird horror and so on. But hey, it’s a weird time!

Fiction

Blood Rush by Ben Galley

A young Merion Hark is sent to the wild west to live with a mysterious aunt after his father, Prime Lord Hark, is found murdered. Used to a life of luxury and power, Merion is out of his element in the rugged town of Fell Falls, where the railway is being expanded into the territory of those who don’t want it there and strange railwraiths terrorize everyone.

But Merion is not alone. A faerie warrior named Rhin has accompanied him to this new land and watches over him. But Rhin has secrets of his own that follow him to the new world and threaten to unleash chaos upon everyone.

In fact, everyone has secrets in Fell Falls, including Merion’s aunt, who collects the blood of different creatures, and her companion Lurker, who drinks blood to give him mystical powers.

But perhaps no one’s secret is greater than Merion’s, for it turns out he, too, has the ability to gain power from blood, but he is so much more powerful than Lurker or any others. So powerful, in fact, he draws the wrong sort of attenion.

A great start to a very weird west series!

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/23956571-bloodrush

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Breq, the ancillary that is all that is left of the ship Justice of Toren, is given command of a new ship by the emperor (or one of the emperors anyway, as it’s more or less a bunch of clones) and travels to the distant Athoek Station. The mission puts her in the middle of intrigue, as the station is near a strange Ghost Gate that periodically spits out strange artifacts and is watched over by a military ship that is clearly hiding something, while there’s also an ambassador of the alien Presger aboard the station.

The mission also puts Breq in contact with the family of a soldier she once knew — a soldier that Breq herself killed. Somehow, all of these stories become intertwined, along with a storyline about the a plantation planet and the exploitation of its workers. This isn’t a blasters and battle stations space opera — it’s a political mystery steeped in class struggle. It’s more Jane Austen and Downtown Abbey than Star Wars or the Expanse. It’s an interesting flavour but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20706284-ancillary-sword

10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days by Samantha Mills

“There is a future where a hellgate opens off the coast of California.”

Things get weird and worse after that. An unfortunately timely tale.

Link: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/10-visions-of-the-future-or-self-care-for-the-end-of-days/

The Vermillion Guestbook by Andrew Zhou

A front desk clerk at an apocalyptic hotel where time makes little sense records notes about ever stranger guests and reveals secrets about his own past. It’s equal parts black comedy, weird SF and tragic romance.

Link: https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/35/the-vermillion-guestbook-aug-13-1998-by-andrew-zhou

Non-fiction

Transcendence in Horror by Simon Strantzas

“Horror is, of course, about how all love will end, how all lovers will die, how all plans will fail, how nothing will survive; but it can also be about how we deal with adversity and our fears and pains and not just persevere but how we can rise above them and be changed by them.”

Can horror be positive?

Link: https://www.weirdhorrormagazine.com/on-horror-10

Twenty-one Ifs by Thomas Wharton

If your inner voice could have a celebrity cameo for a day, who would you choose to narrate your thoughts? Werner Herzog? Margot Kidder? James Earl Jones? How might this guest voice change your behaviour and decisions?

If your anxieties had a customer service phone line, what would be their “please hold” music?

If every ordinary object had a hidden purpose completely unrelated to its usual function, what would be the most mind-boggling hidden purpose you could imagine for your toothbrush? Your favourite hat? That cracked slab of sidewalk down the street from your place?

If you could live inside a painting or work of art for a day, which painting or artwork would it be?

And so on.

Link: https://substack.com/home/post/p-158612818

A Weak and Misshapen Industry by Kenneth Whyte

Do Canadian publishers need to be more like U.S. and U.K. publishers? I think the emphasis on every cultural field turning more commercial is deeply misguided, but there are some interesting points here nevertheless — especially about how publishers embracing niches.

Link: https://shush.substack.com/p/a-weak-and-misshapen-industry

The Science of Fantasy: Respecting the Ecosystem by Kristi Charish

A great new column by Kristi Charish, author and science PhD, on what fantasy creatures would really be like in real life. First up, the charming fairy — which would likely be much less charming in reality!

Link: https://www.kristicharish.com/news/2025/3/8/the-science-of-fantasy-respecting-the-ecosystem

Another day, another pirated-books database

The Atlantic has created another search tool to reveal what pirated texts Meta used to train its AI, and once again many of my works appear, including Has the World Ended Yet? and several of my Azrael the Angel Gunslinger stories published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

This is incredibly frustrating as I suspect a company like Meta could certainly afford to pay licensing fees to use works rather than rip off creators (struggling or successful). But as The Atlantic makes clear, the use of pirated works was approved at the highest levels of Meta.

Hopefully there will be some legal action that addresses this scandal. In the meantime, if your AI seems fascinated with homicidal angels and has an unnatural obsession with supernatural six shooters, then you know who to blame.

A Tiny Newsletter: Now Tariff Free!

For those who prefer to read my journal in a newsletter format, I’ve published my latest newsletter. It includes a bit of publishing news and links to my most recent radio interviews. The subscribe button is at the bottom of this site if you want to sign up.

Stay sane!

Get Lit with The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

I had a great conversation with Canadian writer and radio host Jamie Tennant for his show Get Lit on 93.3 CFMU. We talked why anyone would ever want to be a writer, where the idea for my Cross series of supernatural thrillers came from, and what it’s been like to publish the books in new editions, among other things. The interview is only a half hour so check it out when you have time!

Related: My other radio interviews and assorted video pieces.

Rituals, Hope and Ancillaries: The February 2025 Bibliofiles Edition

My reading list was varied this month. I finally finished Nick Cave’s Faith, Hope and Carnage, which I’ve been reading slowly over the course of several months. It’s the sort of book that needs you to take your time with it. The same goes for Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals. And I finally got around to reading Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice after all these years! Thanks, book club!

Fiction

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Breq is a soldier on a mission of vengeance on a frozen planet at the edges of the Radch, the galactic empire that has conquered much of the galaxy.

Breq is also one of many ancillaries — victims of the empire that have had their minds wiped and been replaced with a collective artificial intelligence that is Justice of Toren, the ship the ancillaries serve.

Only Justice of Toren has been destroyed and Breq is the last ancillary.

Ancillary Justice is not only a stunning first novel, it’s also an instant sci-fi classic. The book mixes history, politics, class, tech and philosophy — and throws in some action as a bonus!

Largely told in two storylines, it’s initially confusing as we see Breq in the present contrasted with the multiple POVs of countless ancillaries in the past. There are wonderful scenes in the past in which the narrative POV bounces from one ancillary to another and even the ship itself, telling part of a larger story. The scenes set in the present are a compelling counterpoint to these scenes, where we are confined to the POV of the surviving ancillary, who has much more agency and is driven to get payback for what happened to her ship.

The storylines begin to fuse together seamlessly as the book goes on, until readers are caught in a tale of political intrigue and covert warfare that leads Breq all the way to the head of the empire — or heads, in this case, as it is run by a cabal of clones that have their own agendas.

This is not your standard space opera with big ship battles and heroics. Instead, it’s an interrogation of humanity itself and thus one of the most compelling sci-works in ages.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333324-ancillary-justice

World War Jake by Brad Dehnert

Jake works for an alphabet agency (think CIA but more tech) helping to edit the world order through use of misinformation and AI bots. When his work to install a Russian puppet goes wrong, Jake has to figure out a way to undo the nightmare he has created. A clever and timely look into how AI and disinfo is changing our world.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227005603-world-war-jake

Non-fiction

Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan

I’ve long been a fan of the musician Nick Cave because, well, he’s Nick Cave. If you like your music dark, with blends of twisted romance/lust, poetic songwriting, biblical and literary themes, sheer irreverence and gospel meets rock meets punk, then Nick Cave is your musical fallen angel.

But I never really expected Cave to also become a sort of modern-day prophet of uncertain, contingent faith and perhaps the most important philosopher of grief alive today.

Faith, Hope and Carnage is a must-read for any fan of Cave, but it’s also an important read for anyone concerned with spirituality in our troubled age, the role of music in an increasingly sterile society, the mysteries of artistic creation, how to grieve and live at the same time — and how all of these things come together.

The book chronicles a series of phone conversations between Cave and journalist Sean O’Hagan to record some of Cave’s thoughts on life. Much of it focuses on the tragic loss of Cave’s son Arthur, and his ghost very much haunts these conversations. How does one cope with such an event? In Cave’s case, he turned even more to music and spirituality.

“Things happen in your life, terrible things, great obliterating events, where the need for spiritual consolation can be immense, and your sense of what is rational is less coherent and can suddenly find itself on very shaky ground,” he says. “We are supposed to put our faith in the rational world, yet when the world stops making sense, perhaps your need for some greater meaning can override reason. And, in fact, it can suddenly seem the least interesting, most predictable and least rewarding aspect of your self. That is my experience, anyway. I think of late I’ve grown increasingly impatient with my own scepticism; it feels obtuse and counter-productive, something that’s simply standing in the way of a better-lived life.”

In his interrogations of spirituality, Cave has parallels with poet Christian Wiman’s meditative essays collected in My Bright Abyss. Both seem to share a sensibility that rejects any concrete truisms about spirituality while embracing the impulse toward it.

“Maybe the search is the religious experience,” Cave says in an echo of Wiman. “The desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving towards the ineffable. Maybe that is what is essentially important, despite the absurdity of it. Or, indeed, because of the absurdity of it. When it comes down to it, maybe faith is just a decision like any other. And perhaps God is the search itself.”

Cave sees a similar wonder in artistic creation: “You have to operate, at least some of the time, in the world of mystery, beneath that great and terrifying cloud of artistic unknowing. The creative impulse, to me, is a form of bafflement, and often feels dissonant and unsettling. It chips away at your own cherished truths about things, pushes against your own sense of what is acceptable.”

And then there are the conversations on grief, which connect many of the strands of the book and are sure to offer something deeply personal to every reader. “In grief, you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality,” Cave says. “You go to a very dark place and experience the extremities of your own pain – you are taken to the very limits of suffering. As far as I can see, there is a transformative aspect to this place of suffering. We are essentially altered or remade by it. Now, this process is terrifying, but in time you return to the world with some kind of knowledge that has something to do with our vulnerability as participants in this human drama. Everything seems so fragile and precious and heightened, and the world and the people in it seem so endangered, and yet so beautiful. To me it feels that, in this dark place, the idea of a God feels more present or maybe more essential. It actually feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. It feels that, in grief, you draw closer to the veil that separates this world from the next.”

I couldn’t help but think as I read these conversations that Cave has become as much a sort of prophet as a musician — a prophet of creativity, a prophet of spirituality, a prophet of grief. The church of Nick Cave is a church that more of us should attend.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59851730-faith-hope-and-carnage

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals gives a glimpse into the working habits of pretty much any historical creator you can think of. Franz Kafka, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens — if you can name them they’re probably in this book. There are many interesting insights into these creators collected here — and many anecdotes of sheer eccentricity! For instance, Currey describes Jonathan Franzen writing while wearing earplugs, earmuffs and a blindfold and Ayn Rand as going on writing binges fuelled by Benezdrine. (Substance abuse is a common theme among artists found in the collection.)

If you’re looking for tips to help you develop your own rituals, however, Daily Rituals will be of limited use. Often the creators featured here tend to be driven by some psychological quirk, addiction or even madness — hardly something to cultivate. Many others are able to lead a life of creativity because of family wealth — more desirable than madness, perhaps, but also more difficult to cultivate. The book is more interesting as a collection of trivia than a how-to guide.

If you’re curious about the lives of famous artists, though, Daily Rituals is worth the read. Think of it as a Lifestyles of the Eccentric and Famous.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15799151-daily-rituals

Poetry

Northerny by Dawn Macdonald

I was delighted to read Northerny by poet Dawn Macdonald because I was in the same writing group with her back in my university days. Dawn has always been one of the most unique souls I’ve ever met, and I urge all poetry lovers to read her book. It’s part examination of myths of the north, part memoir, all genius.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/183935565-northerny

See also Dawn’s interview with poet rob mclennan about publishing her book in the midst of chaos, both cultural and personal: http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2024/06/12-or-20-second-series-questions-with_0623544362.html