Jared Shurin's Blog, page 8
July 6, 2020
The end of the mystery
I’ve spent the past year or so trying to track down and read as many of the winners of the Mystery Writers of America’s ‘Best First Novel’ category as possible. This has been a self-imposed reading challenge and a very silly one, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. I wound up reading 56 of a possible 76, which isn’t too shabby.
There were some lessons along the way, such as exploring identity, remembering what ‘good’ looks like, and learning that the digital market is just plain weird. I’ll admit that I ...
June 30, 2020
The Best of British Fantasy
A quick one: The Best of British Fantasy 2019 is out today.
It looks like this, thanks to Jonathan E:
You can pick it up on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and your local bookshop. There’s a (very limited) number of signed hardcovers, available only through the publisher.
It is, to put it mildly, a crappy time for a book launch.
But it is a great time for stories, and this book collects two dozen of the very best.
Inside, you’ll find pensive houses, angry gods, ghosts, Tube monsters, living statues, wer...
June 20, 2020
Catastrophe Theory
I have lost so many pitches.
So many.
And these aren't all glamorous, Mad Men-style efforts too. For every dramatic down-to-the-wire battle for an international airline, I've had three lacklustre fizzles for oven-cleaner.
One particular favourite. Four meetings with a potential client: credentials, briefing, campaign presentation, revised campaign presentation. A few train journeys each way. And then, quite literally, nothing. Ghosted.
Another. We'd been working, full-tilt to put together the Pres...
June 1, 2020
Words and words
On Wednesday, I’ll be in conversation with Kurt Braddock, author of Weaponized Words. It is a free, public event, but advance registration is required.
Braddock researches the power of persuasion at its most bleak, looking into the techniques and narratives of terrorist propaganda. He’s also done some fascinating fieldwork into counter-narratives, to understand that awesome persuasive power be used for good instead.
Weaponized Words is immensely readable, which is actually a bit surprising, given...
May 15, 2020
Alien 3 is better than Aliens
I hold a lot of controversial opinions.
I’m a geek and a Royals fan: I’ve spent my entire personal and professional life making arguments for lost causes. But of all my opinions, might be my most inflammatory.
Why do I believe Alien 3, a film so derided that even its own director has disowned it, is better than Aliens, the Cameron-vehicle once voted ‘the greatest film sequel of all time’?
Alien 3 is loyal to what made Alien great
Alien is terrifying. It uses science fiction to build horror, rather ...
May 1, 2020
Extinct, but not forgotten.
Anne and I started our own small press - Jurassic London - about ten years ago. A clever publisher spotted Anne after a few years, and yoinked her up into the major leagues. I floundered around without her, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun, and Jurassic eventually went ‘extinct’, after almost fifty books.
I still crash the occasional event to talk about my brief experience. Last week I took part in a (virtual) panel at a (virtual) convention on Reddit - it was a (very real) pleasure. The benefit...
April 12, 2020
Baghdad, Bureaucracy and Bikinis
Four things prompted this.
According to the sign Anne hung behind me, we’re currently in day 34 of lockdown. (We were both symptomatic early, so got a ‘jump’ on the rest of the country.) Listicles are the extent of my concentration at this point.
A rather fabulous virtual lecture by the erudite and endlessly-amusing Adam Roberts. I hope to revisit some of the questions he raised later on, or in future emails. One theme he touched on was a sort of critical self-examination of ‘what we want from wri...
October 12, 2018
The Outcast Hours
An announcement - The Outcast Hours has been revealed to the world. An anthology of new stories about 'life after dark', coming next February, edited by Mahvesh Murad and myself. Some details over at Barnes & Noble, a full contributor list on Goodreads, and more to come.
Sometimes I worry that my newsletter isn't esoteric enough. Then I go off on a tear about Talmudic scholars and the Kickstarter economy, so, you know. There's that.
October 5, 2018
Kitchen & Events
More on middling, this time in the kitchen:
Recipes work because they can be tailored to an audience need. You analyse the audience requirement (money, time, ingredients, servings, diets, etc) and provide the output: a meal that solves that problem. A meal that feeds six. A meal that costs a fiver. A meal that contains exactly 350 calories, or doesn't use dairy, or builds muscle, or adds, I dunno, mindfulness. Recipes are about working towards exact results - and the key word there is "results". Recipes don't middle.
Elsewhere - an appropriately short post on Short Stops, sharing the call for submissions for The Best of British Fantasy.
Upcoming events:
Literary Landscapes panel at Lutyens & Rubenstein (23 October)
A details-to-come-very-cool-thing at the Museum of London (26 October)
The Self Publishing Exchange at King's College London (3 November)
Fun!
September 28, 2018
Old Newsletters, New Events
On middling (and Lord of the Rings):
Yes, Tolkien could've thwarted Evil in six emoji rather than a half-million words, but, that would've been a bad story. Even if all of this stuff, this middling, is procedurally meaningless, it is the point of the epic.
On value (and bookplates):
To put a bookplate in a book is therefore a great imbalance in the Force: a declaration that the book's personal relevance offsets - or trumps - all other values. I'm arbitrarily assigning a high value to the historical factor of my own ownership and, by acting on it, 'betting' that the increase of that value offsets the corresponding depreciation that results from putting a whopping big sticker in it.
And on nothing in particular (or, more accurately, lots of little things):
Juicy new survey on American reading habits from YouGov. Not new news, but nor is it great news. Only about 40% of Americans read one book a month or more. Only 6% read a book each week. (That rises to 9% of women, 2% of men.) Oh, and hey, 2/3rds don't read for pleasure - meaning a large chunk of the reading that is happening is in the functional space (work, study, cookery, DIY...).
In other places:
A terrific piece in Newsline on the rise of the djinn in literature, featuring my partner in crime, Mahvesh Murad.
I'm joining a panel on Literary Landscapes on at Lutyens & Rubenstein on 23 October. Tickets here.
There's also an event at Waterstones Hampstead on 18 October. Tickets here.
Kind words from Naomi Foyle about The Djinn Falls in Love, over on the blog for Jo Fletcher Books.
The Best of British Fantasy reading continues apace, with over 150 stories. Phew. Keep 'em coming.
