Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 23

The cats of Menewood

Of all the phrases from my novel Hild that I might have imagined being quoted, it was not “Dogs own space and cats own time.” But I see it everywhere.

In fact I just stumbled across a Parade magazine list of 60 best cat quotes and this nifty little graphic.

From Parade magazine

Now I’m wondering what on earth will get plucked out of context from Menewood. Wait, you say. Are there cats in this one? Why, yes! Yes, there are! There’s Cath Llew, one of Hild’s bynames, from the Brittonic for ‘lynx’ (Old English would be lox, but it seemed plain wrong to use a word most of us associate with brined salmon). I’ll talk more about that in . And then there’s Clut (OE for ‘patch’), the moggy majesty of Menewood valley, who at one point brings a whole band of mounted warriors to a standstill. BUT nothing bad happens to Clut—Clut is just fine. She owns space and time: there are no dogs in Hild’s valley for reasons you’ll understand when you read the book.

Clut is a thick-furred, all-weather moggy with a black patch over one eye. She’s young, healthy, utterly in charge of her world—and, eventually, of her kittens’—and is, basically, the pet of the valley with a very important job: eating the wee beasties before they can eat people-food.

In my mind’s-eye she’s a tortoiseshell. I tried to draw her once and it was an abject failure. The closest thing I’ve found to represent her personality is this image.1

My futzed-with version of an anonymous original

While we’re on cats and the Heroic Age, though, below, for grins, is the very first thing I drew on a graphics pad in the mid-1990s. Long before I started writing Hild—even before I started researching it (which was a very long time ago)—I read Poetry for Cats by Henry Beard. It’s a brilliant little collection that wonders and marvels at all things Cat, paying homage in the form of poetry pastiche. One of my favourites was the howlingly funny “To a Vase, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Cat” (How do I break thee? Let me count the ways./I break thee if thou art at any height/My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight,/I sulk, or have one of my crazy days./I break thee with an accidental graze…).

It wasn’t long after I read this that I got my very first graphics tablet, some kind of Wacom (though I forget the model). They were difficult to use—drawing on the pad with the image appearing on the computer screen—with slow response time, and it was the first time I’d done any drawing since I was a teenager, so the results were crude and shaky. It was so obvious to me that I’d never have the time, interest, or talent to develop into anything worthwhile that I started using the pad as a kind of meditative device: draw a random line then create some kind of image based on what immediately came to mind.

What came to mind were animals: mice, dogs, cats, hedgehogs, a snake. They were crude, pixelated, oddly particular cartoons with human expressions: homicidal delight, mournfulness, smugness, simple joy. One turned into Battle Kitty, inspired by another Beard poem:

Grendel’s Dog, from Beocat

Brave Beocat, brood-kit of Ecgthmeow
Hearth-pet of Hrothgar in whose high halls
He mauled with mercy many fat mice…

Brave Beocat, short-haired Hrodent-slayer, greatest of the pussy Geats

You can meet Clut and Cath Llew and lots of other animals—horse (so many horses!), donkeys, mules, hedgehogs, a slow worm, birds, bees, an otter, two water voles, a stoat, an adder—in 32 days when Menewood hits the shelves. But if you can’t wait for your early medieval kitty fix until then, take a look at this whole page of Hild-related cat pix and fan art.2,3

1 I’ve searched for two years on several search engines using different terms. Used reverse-image searches. Put a call out on all my social media platforms. The trail is hopelessly confused. Any info gratefully accepted.

2 And dog, and parrot, and crocheted tardigrade…

3 Also this page of the finned, furred, feathered friends of Spear

Snippets—of speech, superbatteries, luna landings and metabolic miracles

Today is mostly about exciting ways to make the world a better place, but also a brief update on the BA.2.86 SARS-CoV variant I mentioned the other day.

Let’s get that one over with first. The new variant (unofficially ‘Pirola’) is already widespread and gaining ground. No one knows how severe its effects will be, and won’t for a while, but it’s already obvious that there will be massive immune escape—this is not what the about-to-be-released new Covid vaccine was aimed at. (That jab is still very much worth getting, though, because right now it’s a good match to the current most prevalent strains, both XBB descendants.) So this is going to be one of those ‘take precautions and fall back on your T-cells’ situations. Eric Topol has a good explainer here.

The Economist is pretty excited about a new generation of superbatteries that will transform the electric vehicle landscape. These are solid-state lithium-ion batteries that will be able to store massive amounts of power in a relatively small space. Toyota “claims its new battery will provide an ev with a range of around 1,200km (746 miles), which is about twice that of many existing models, and can be recharged in around ten minutes.”

People in India are pretty excited, too: India just because the first country to land a vehicle close to the moon’s south pole—and just the fourth country to manage a controlled landing on the lunar surface. It was an uncrewed mission (India does not yet have the capability to send people to the moon) but pretty impressive.

Nature published two papers from two different research groups showing that people who lost their original ability to speak due to ALS or brainstem stroke can now communicate via artificial speech produced by brain implants and AI. Right now it’s rather slow—both cases still under 80 words a minute—but still “It is now possible to imagine a future where we can restore fluid conversation to someone with paralysis, enabling them to freely say whatever they want to say with an accuracy high enough to be understood reliably,” said Francis Willett, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California. This really is a big leap forward.

But what’s got me super seriously excited is a study published this morning in the New England Journal of Medicine, Semaglutide in Patients with Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction and Obesity. Doesn’t sound that exciting, does it? But it’s massive, it’s huge, it’s sort of miraculous, frankly. It’s hard to know where to begin in terms of which bit is most amazing.

Okay, first, semaglutide is also known as Wegovy, an FDA-approved drug prescribed usually for weight-loss; it has an excellent safety profile. It is also known as Ozempic, which is approved, per the FDA, to “lower blood sugar levels in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus, in addition to diet and exercise. Ozempic is also approved to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus and known heart disease.” It also has an excellent safety profile—which is no surprise because Wegovy and Ozempic are exactly the same drug that works in exactly the same way. It is a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists—it mimics the GLP-1 hormone that the guts release when we eat. One of the things it does is prompt the body to produce more insulin, which reduces blood glucose (sugar). GLP-1 in higher amounts also interacts with the parts of the brain that reduce appetite and signal a feeling of fullness. Still not that thrilling, right? But, oh but but but! This new, gold-standard—double-blinded placebo-controlled randomised clinical trial of 529 adults over one year—shows that semaglutide reduces the symptoms of the most common and difficult to treat heart failure. And it doesn’t improve it just a bit, but a lot. It also improved mobility significantly and (to no one’s surprise) led to weight loss.

But the most exciting part? Those effects increased with time. Basically, this drug improves metabolic syndrome; it treats metabolic and inflammatory abnormalities. The longer you take it, the better you get—and it’s a very safe drug. (No drug is perfectly safe but this one is comparatively benign.) Heart failure. Type 2 diabetes. Blood pressure. Cholesterol. Mobility. Weight. All improved, with not much down side. That, in an of itself, is worth celebrating. This drug is going to change so many lives—save so many lives. One thing I haven’t mentioned so far, though, might be the most exciting for me: a possible connection to lipid metabolism that might lie at the heart of multiple sclerosis. But that is something for another time.

Have a great weekend. I plan to!

Snippets—of virus, of experiment, of relief

I’ve been feeling a bit blank the last week or so. Lots of in-law medical emergency stuff meaning constant interruptions in the middle of the night and not much sleep, plus air the colour of spiced sand but smelling like old tires burning on a bonfire, plus wrestling with taxes, have made me feel less than shall we say focused.

So today I’m just going to list some snippets I’ve found interesting in the last few days.

Metaphorically there’s a lot of truth to the old saw (okay, poem), Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite them, and little fleas have lesser fleas and so on ad infinitum. (Capitalism is the first thing that springs to mind.) But it’s an apt metaphor for bacteria and viruses, too. I found out from a a paper in Cell that not only do bacteria have phages (viruses that infect bacteria) but that there are also little hitchhikers on those viruses called SaPIS, pathogenicity islands formed of chunks of the bacterium’s DNA—and it’s this lateral transduction that leads to, for example, rapid antibiotic resistance.

There’s a new SARS-CoV-19 variant, BA.2.86, to pay attention to—a variation on an old theme, probably produced in the compromised immune system of a single individual where it mutated and changed over time (much like Omicron). The good news: there are only a handful of cases in four countries right now. The bad news: it has many changes in the spike protein and it appears to be spreading very fast. The unknown: too any to list. So for now, watch, wait, and for your own sake and others’ wear a fucking mask. I’m still miraculously Covid-free, and I’m vigilant, but my safety relies on everyone else being vigilant, too, because no single individual can be both perfectly protected and have a life. If I fly, I have to take my mask off to eat and drink (and trust me you do have to eat and drink when flying between continents). If I’m on a panel or doing a reading it’s easier for me—and for some hearing impaired people in the audience—if I can take my mask off.

Still on Covid, a new study just published in Nature shows that the postacute sequelae of Covid-19 (PASC) , aka Long Covid (LC) just keeps…getting longer. The “risks of PASC for coagulation and hematologic disorders, pulmonary disorders, fatigue, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal disorders and diabetes remained increased 2 years after a SARS-CoV-2 infection in those not hospitalized for COVID-19.” I have two family members (one on each side of the Atlantic) who’ve been briefly hospitalised with pulmonary and cardiovascular sequelae—in neither case did the attending suggest that what it was (the two diagnoses were, respectively, acute coronary syndrome and pulmonary thrombosis) but both events came out of the blue about three months after a Covid infection. The study also measured disability-adjusted life years of those with LC. You want to know why Covid is not flu and why you should wear a fucking mask? Go read the study.

And still on heart attacks—metaphorically speaking—I nearly had one the other day when I stumbled across something I’d never heard of, linothorakes. This, apparently, was the top-tier body armour of ancient Greeks, Romans, Macedonians and others. It’s ten or so layers of linen laminated together with rabbit glue that dries so hard and tough that it protects against swords, spears, and arrows. I read that and felt a cold wind at the back of my neck, a vertiginous, Ah shit moment about Menewood. If it was so effective why wouldn’t Hild and her contemporaries have worn it? Why hadn’t I known about it?? What else had I got wrong??? I closed my eyes imagining this massive experiment I’ve been running for over ten years just falling apart. But then I opened them again, and kept reading, discovered that, around the first century BC, advances in metallurgy—sharper, harder edges and points—rendered the armour ineffective. So: relief.

Writing the kind of historical fiction that I’m doing with Hild is an interesting experience. It’s fiction first and foremost, of course: if it does not enthrall the reader I’ve failed at my most basic job. But frankly I’m good at that part; I don’t worry about it. But the sequence of Hild novels is also a giant controlled experiment trying to show that women/queer folks/disabled people/Black people/the gender nonconforming/underclass people not only existed in Early Medieval Britain but mattered. That someone like Hild did not have to make her way in the world as someone’s wife, mother, daughter, or sister but could find power—power over self mostly but also the power to change others lives—in her own right. Getting basic facts wrong weakens my argument. This is less true of something like Spear, which has magic and otherworldly beings, but given that my aims with that book are adjacent, only for myths and legends of the past, I still tried to get most things right.

And speaking of Spear, I’ve just added a couple of events to my schedule—which means the Menewood tour is getting a bit complicated. Which reminds me I need to add the tour to my Events page which is sadly out of date. I’ll do that soon. Until then, while I go figure out some publicity stuff—Menewood is out in less than six weeks!—go pre-order. And remember if you pre-order from Phinney Books they will ship you a luscious hardcover, signed and personalised, the day it’s published.

Hollowed by sorrow and filled with joy

✤

Menewood is a searing depiction of a world at war and the ferocious and complicated woman at the center of it. Griffith maps the entirety of this landscape and the profound emotional journey of Hild, a woman in a time of reckoning, protecting her people. Menewood is the story of Hild’s joy, anguish, hard-won survival, and journey into newfound power, filling the past with the people who’ve always been here, unseen and unsung. This is a canon-expanding story and, as the most extraordinary historical fiction does, it feels wholly true. Nicola Griffith has brought all her genius to this book. 

— Maria Dahvana Headley, NYT-bestselling author of The Mere Wife and Beowulf: A New Translation

✤

Menewood by Nicola Griffith (MCDxFSG, 3 October, 2023. Cover art by Anna and Elena Balbusso.)

I have two new blurbs for Menewood. The one at the top of this post, from Maria Dahvana Headley, and the one at the bottom, from Carolyne Larrington They are both very different and both very true.

Menewood is full of war. Bitter war, winter war: ruinous, scorched-earth war with no quarter. A single war with a series of battles and their aftermath of death and destruction, cruelty and chaos, interspersed with resistance and recovery, gain and growth, beauty and new beginnings. But Menewood is not grim. It’s not miserylit, it’s not grimdark, but it’s not really hopepunk either. Menewood is a book about life; it’s a book of life. In that sense it’s an expression of my personal writing philosophy: I’ll only hollow out a character with sorrow to make more room to fill them with joy.

Look at the face of Hild on the cover: this is a woman who has experienced almost every emotion a human of any era can: love and lust, struggle and victory, grief and loss, pain and hopelessness, satisfaction and savage joy. She grows and changes, moving through not just searing loss and soaring triumph but also the dailyness of life, how to persist and resist—to grow and nurture both community and power. She has been hollowed and filled.

Menewood is also full of quieter moments: peace, pleasure, and contentment; forgiveness, friendship, and farewells. As I say, it is a book about life—how it feels, what it means, why it changes—though set against a backdrop of total war and regime change. Above all, though, Menewood is about Hild, about exploring and really inhabiting who she is, learning to live life on her own terms, and to build and wield power—personal power, as well as the real-world power to make, break, and shape kings.

Hild is on every page of Menewood, the burning heart around which events turn—all the events of this book could have happened, and many of them actually did. Because Hild was a real woman who lived 1400 years ago—an extraordinary woman whose impact on history was not as a wife or mother or sister or daughter, but as herself.

I can’t wait for you to see who she’s become.

✤

Menewood is an absolute triumph. Hild is truly a hero for all women, here and now.

— Carolyne Larrington, Professor of Medieval European Literature, University of Oxford

✤

PRE-ORDER — Published 3 October

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Divine intervention or Hild?

Yesterday I saw this tweet marking the anniversary of the death of Oswald, king of the Northumbrians (now Saint Oswald—5 August is his feast day):

Oswald died fighting Penda of Mercia in the Battle of Maserfield (on 641, or 642, or 644 depending on source and interpretation), which is usually identified as present-day Oswestry in Shropshire. This identification makes no sense to me and never has—but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something that makes even less sense: how, eight years earlier, Oswald became king in the first place by killing Cadwallon. (Who in turn, earlier, had killed Edwin at Hatfield Chase then stormed north, burning, slaughtering, and torturing indiscriminately for over a year.)

According to Bede1, Oswald “mustered an army small in numbers but strong in the faith of Christ; and despite Cadwalla’s vast forces, which he boasted of as irresistible, the infamous British leader was killed at a place known by the English as Deniseburn, that is, the Brook of Dennis.”

What isn’t clear here is the context. Oswald was an ætheling in exile in Dál Riata, whose capital, Dunadd, lies at least two hundred miles from Deniseburna (not far from Hexham) if travelling overland—200 miles of enemy territory.

Based on an image from

So how did Oswald surprise Cadwallon’s vast, well-armed, well-supplied, confident army on their home turf and overcome them?2 He could of course have travelled by boat—in fact I assume he did. But then it’s still a distance inland, and still through enemy territory. And where did he get the horses? And then look at that careful wording: Cadwallon ‘was killed’. Not ‘Oswald killed him,’ or ‘Oswald’s army was victorious that day’ or even ‘God killed him for his wickedness’.

So the whole thing is full of holes. Bede—and other commentators such as Adomnán3—attribute the unlikely victory to God. Bede spends much more time talking about Oswald’s faith and spiritual preparation—such as erecting a monumental wooden cross at the place later known as Heavenfield—than he does the military aspects of the campaign.4 But, well, I’m not a fan of ascribing military victories to divine intervention. So at the risk of making Menewood sound like a Secret History, let me tell you I’ve come up with a much simpler, much more satisfying explanation. And I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. In fact I’m positively chortling with glee at the thought of you reading it!

PRE-ORDER

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[1] Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (III.ii)—I’m quoting from my old Leo Sherley-Price translation, revised by R.E. Latham. There are better ones, but this is the one I’ve had for twenty years and can find what I want almost by touch.

[2] Cadwallon’s men had been plundering the north for over a year: after they killed Edwin and the cream of Northumbrian gesiths they killed Osric and his army, and then Eanfrid and his followers.

[3] Life of Columba

[4] But here’s an interesting tidbit: Archaeologists specialising in the era, such as Rosemary Cramp, don’t buy that nonsense of Oswald raising a massive cross at such an early date. No, they say, there’s evidence that the first Northumbrian monumental cross might have been at :: drumroll :: Whitby Abbey! And you know who built and ran that foundation…

Britain’s coastline now versus then

The landmass of Britain as we generally think of it today vs how it was 1400 years ago

This is a very rough version of an animation of the difference between Britain’s coastline today and in Hild’s time, the early seventh century. When I do this properly it will a) be focused on the north of England, b) include false-colour topography, roads, defensive earthworks, and settlements, c) be much more accurate,1 and d) go up on my research blog, Gemæcce.com.

The purpose of this initial post is twofold:

Proof of concept: Testing that I understand how to build an animation in Photoshop and that said animation will demonstrate the stunning difference between the two eras—and, therefore, why, when discussing everything from armed conflict, ethnogenesis, and polity boundaries in Early Medieval Britain, it’s imperative to take into account the changing landscape.A call for input: If you have access to any data regarding water levels and/or agricultural use before c. 50 CE and/or c. 625 CE, please get in touch.

Basically I’m tired of relying on everyone else’s wildly various guesses about the boundaries of Elmet and Craven (and of course Deira, Bernicia and Northumbria). None of it is truly knowable, but for my own peace of mind I need to build a detailed and specific map based on clearly laid-out reasoning. (Readers don’t have to agree with the reasoning but they should know that I have reasons.) As I’m a creature of the body, both as a writer and a human being, my main focus is physical and tangible: the landscape, geology, geography, climate, and so on. If my fictional people are going to die defending their territory or trying to steal someone else’s it makes sense to know exactly where that territory lies.

So that’s what I’m working on.

1 It really is very rough. For one thing, the two maps don’t match very closely and the islands aren’t entirely to scale. For another, it’s surprisingly difficult to be accurate. It’s not too hard—though it can be tedious—to work out how things might have looked before the Romans came and dug ditches, drained wetlands, and built roads. But without access to the latest archaeological investigations of the Humber Levels I have to rely on guesswork to build a picture of how things looked two or three hundred years after the imperial tax structure—and therefore, to some arguable degree, landscape maintenance—collapsed. But hey, I’m a novelist; when I’m making shit up I’m happy as a clam. Meanwhile, I’m more confident of the northeastern segment of the map than anywhere else, because that’s what I’ve spent the most time thinking about.

Spear is a World Fantasy Award finalist

Spear has just been nominated for a World Fantasy Award—alongside many books you’ll find familiar if you’ve been keeping track of the Little Book That Could’s nominations so far.1 It’s a cracking shortlist. And I’m very pleased to be nominated.

I’ve been nominated for the Best Novel Award before, for Hild—which delighted me, and freed me from pressure because I knew, given Hild isn’t a fantasy, that it couldn’t possibly win.2 So it was nothing but a wonderful weekend. And I’ve actually won the World Fantasy Award before, in 1998, as editor, for Bending the Landscape: Fantasy. But I couldn’t be there for that (I forget why—perhaps I was in the UK). That was when winners were presented with a bust of H.P. Lovecraft: a Gahan Wilson-designed statuette modelled on H.P. Lovecraft, an ugly racist (ugly prose style, too, but that’s forgivable). It’s something I’ve never felt the remotest urge to display. But the current award designed by Vincent Villafranca? It’s lovely! I’d be happy to show that off.

Will I be going to the award ceremony in Kansas City? Yes! At least I hope so. I have a couple of Menewood publicity things to reorganise but assuming that can be done, yes. World Fantasy is one of my favourite conventions: a thousand or so genre professionals (writers, editors, producers, publishers, agents, critics, booksellers) all jammed into the bar and talking a mile a minute. World Fantasy is where I catch up with people I haven’t seen for a decade or more. I love it. So, yes, right now I’m planning on it. If and when that changes, I’ll say so.

Meanwhile, here’s the complete list of World Fantasy Awards Finalists:

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Peter CrowtherJohn Douglas

NOVEL

Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney (Solaris)Spear by Nicola Griffith (Tordotcom Publishing)The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings (Redhook/Orbit UK)Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom Publishing)

NOVELLA

The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia (Tachyon Publications)The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer (Stelliform Press)Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk (Tordotcom Publishing)Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum (Undertow Publications)Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (Absinthe Books)

SHORT FICTION

“The Devil Don’t Come with Horns” by Eugen Bacon (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)“Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” by Tananarive Due (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)“The Morning House” by Kate Heartfield (PodCastle, July 5 2022)“Telling the Bees” by Kat Howard (The Sunday Morning Transport, Jan. 30 2022)“Douen” by Suzan Palumbo (The Dark magazine, March 2022)

ANTHOLOGY

Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Ellen Datlow (Tor Nightfire)Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, eds. Vince Liguano and Rena Mason (William Morrow)Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror, ed. John F. D. Taff (Tor Nightfire)Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight (Tordotcom Publishing)Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan, and Troy Wiggins (Third Man Books)

COLLECTION

Dark Breakers by C. S. E. Cooney (Mythic Delirium Books)Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw (Undertow Publications)All Nightmare Long by Tim Lebbon (PS Publishing)Boys, Beasts & Men by Sam J. Miller (Tachyon Publications)A Different Darkness and Other Abominations by Luigi Musolino (Valancourt Books)

ARTIST

Kinuko Y. CraftGalen DaraMatt OttleyLauren Raye SnowCharles Vess

SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

Irene Gallo, for Tor.comGavin J. Grant and Kelly Link, for Small Beer PressTim Lebbon and Daniele Serra, for Without Walls (PS Publishing)Fiona Moore, for Management Lessons from Game of Thrones: Organization Theory and Strategy in Westeros (Edward Elgar Publishing)Matt Ottley, for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness (Dirt Lane Press)

SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL

Michael Kelly, for Undertow PublicationsCristina Macía, for The Celsius FestivalLynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny MagazineDave Ring, for Neon Hemlock PressE. Catherine Tobler, for editing The Deadlands

1 Babel (which was also nominated for, and won, both the Nebula and the Locus Award); The Ballad of Perilous Graves (also nominated for the Ray Bradbury Award and a Locus Award); and Siren Queen (also nominated for a Locus Award). I don’t remember Spear being nominated alongside St Death’s Daughter before, but I’m happy to be corrected!

2 I was truly touched by the nomination though—as I was when Hild was nominated for both a Nebula Award (for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel), and a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (for Best Science Fiction Novel).

Tomorrow! Me and Chuck Tingle at Third Place Books

Image description: square graphic split in half vertically. On the right, “Third Place Books, Chuck tingle with Nicola Griffith” above a book cover image, followed by “Wednesday July 26. 2023. 7:00pm Lake Forest Park.” And on the right a man in a white gi, wearing a pink sack bag over his head labelled ‘LOVE IS REAL’ and dark sunglasses.

Tomorrow at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, I’m talking with @chucktingle about his new book, Camp Damascus (“Horror with a heart of gold”), love in dark places, queer horror, writing on the autism spectrum, the body, and so much more. Come join us!

Wednesday, 26 July, 7:00 pm. It’s free, but you need a ticket.

Video interview about winning the ADCI Literary Prize

In which I talk to the prize’s co-founder and judge, Penny Batchelor. Enjoy!

Afternoon Tea with Nicola Griffith from The Society of Authors on Vimeo.

Update: Where to find me online

Image description: 8 social media icons ranged in two rows of 4. Image by Social Media Icons Vectors by Vecteezy

Obviously, you can find me (Nicola Griffith, writer, scholar, and queer crip; see About for more) here, on my blog and website, where you are now, reading this. Starting in 1995 I began Ask Nicola, a subsite of a website run by friend, Dave Slusher. In 2001 I launched nicolagriffith.com, where, again, I ran a section called Ask Nicola. And in 2008 started a blogger site, also Ask Nicola. In 2014 I consolidated everything into this site. I post whenever I feel like it—sometimes often, sometimes rarely. Take a look at the Top 15 posts of the last year and you’ll get a sense of my range of interests. If you like what you see, sign up to get new posts sent directly to your inbox (find that form in the right sidebar or at the end of each specifically-linked post, depending on how you’re reading this).Another site I run is Gemæcce.com, home of my research blog, which I started in 2008 to have a place to ruminate on the research I do for my sequence of novels about the seventh-century figure, Hild of Whitby. This goes through phases. I can go a year with no post, then when a book approaches publication, or when I’m in the initial, intense phase of research for a new book, post in a hurry and flurry.Twitter—the place I’m most likely to see what other people say and interact online. I mostly work through curated lists of early medieval history, disability, life sciences, and books. Over the last few years I’ve become less politically engaged—not because I don’t care but that Real Life is eating all bandwidth right now—but every now and again something irritates and/or excites me enough for a wee rant.Facebookboth a personal profile (often, but not always, mirroring my personal blog and/or Instagram feed) and an Official Page, though my page is sadly neglected (right now it mirrors posts from my research blog, Gemaecce.com).Instagram—where I post pictures of books, drinks, flowers, cats, and Kelley on an irregular schedule.Bluesky: @nicolaz.bsky.social I signed up a while ago but am only just getting around (as of this week 7/20/23) to populating m profile. Right now I know so little about how it works that I can’t even figure out how to link to my profile So far, I like it. Follow me, I’ll follow you back.Threads: @nicolagriffith Ditto with just starting to use it—but at least I know how to link via a browser instead of this weird appinessYouTube—where I’ve posted a miscellany of videos, mostly toBlow Shit Up!, my playlist of FX vids based largely on finding inventive ways to destroy our Christmas treeReadings, which is, well, me reading from and talking about my booksA few music videos of Janes Plane, the band I fronted in the Long Ago.LinkedIn—which just mirrors my personal blog.Tumblr—ditto.Muckrack—where I sometimes remember to add portfolio links to Op-Eds, newspaper reviews, and essays I’ve written.Author pages on Amazon and Goodreads—but I rarely do anything with them.Various placeholder accounts on Mastodon, Spoutible, TikTok, Post, Medium and others. Whenever a new thing comes along I sign up, just in case, but rarely bother to establish any kind of presence there. As and when that changes I’ll link the accounts.Finally, and very meta(but, confusing, not Meta) Linktr.ee, which is what I put in my social profiles so that users can easily find the link to whatever it is I’m talking about in my post, tweet, whatever the particular platform calls their updates.