Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 5

Charlie and George are 6

That’s it, really. Six years ago yesterday they were born as part of a litter of six somewhere in Yakima. They were the only two to survive—and even then it was a near-run thing. The came to us 13 or 14 weeks later. In our cat-friendly neighbourhood they are the Yakima Crew; up the street live their frenemies, the Nirvana Boys (Kurt, Chris, and Dave—all gingers), then there’s Eros (the most ridiculously froofy long-haired blue-eyed Burmese) and the Tabby Pimpernel (we don’t know where he lives; we don’t know what s/he’s called).

George, Biggest and Most Handsome, and International Cat of Mystery—he can appear and disappear as if from thin air—does not like another cat being in any way mysterious; he does not care for the Tabby Pimpernel. Charlie, Best and Brightest, and Demon Beastie, wants to investigate, play with, fight, or just irritate everyone and everything. He’s the bright spark of our lives, always busy, always curious. Here are two recent photos.

They bring us much joy. They seem to tolerate us with relative benevolence. We’re hopeful this state of affairs will continue for many years.

Three weeks until Aud!

Cover design by Thomas Colligan for MCD/Picador

Preorder

Bookshop.org | Amazon.com | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Phinney Books | Target | Powell’s

These are the US editions, out on June 3, from Picador. (The UK editions, from Canongate, are out exactly a month later—I’ll talk about those closer to the time.) But here in the US: just three weeks! In just 21 days Aud will once again be available in all her glory! More specifically in beautiful, easy-to-read matching trade paper editions and of course ebooks. Available wherever books are sold—and very definitely available for pre-order.

Why should you buy them? Because they are perfect, beginning-of-summer reads. And because—eschewing all modesty (okay, I’m lying: I don’t have to eschew it—when it comes to how good I think my books are, I have no modesty)—they are fucking brilliant reads and I guarantee you have read nothing like them, even now, more than two decades after their first publication.

Aud is not a victim. She’s not a trauma survivor. She’s not an alcoholic or addict or red with rage. She’s not an avenging fury and she’s not a cynical beat-down old cop. She’s not the protagonist you’re used to.

Read more about Aud and Always

She is the child of a Norwegian diplomat and a Chicago businessman. Thirty-one. A rangy six-footer with eyes the colour of cement, and the tendency to hurt people who get in her way. On the Atlanta streets, they know her as a retired Red Dogs lieutenant. At cocktail parties, they know who her mother is. She glides from one world to another, utterly at ease: beautiful and functional as a folded razor.

Aud was born in Norway, a harsh and marginal land: in winter, a land of ice and snow, dark and monochromatic; in summer, two months of midnight sun, air sharp as the juice of artic strawberries and smelling of sweet meadow grass. A land of black or white, on or off, yes or no.

That makes her sound cold—but, oh, she’s anything but cold…

Read more about Aud and The Blue Place

Aud knows danger. When it sits opposite and offers you the cup and dice, you should walk away. Danger, that casually violent viking, with its well-used axe and huge ham hands, is out to take you for all you’re worth. Danger loads the dice. Danger cheats. But Aud, like Norway, knows no compromise. She always plays. She always wins. And sometimes she loses herself in that cool blue place where everything slows down, becomes perfectly clear, and violence is bliss…

These books are full of danger and sex and violence and joy and grief and connection and change and thrills. But at their heart, the centre of all, they are about the ever-changing, never predictable Aud.

Read more about Aud and Stay

Some thoughts on post-viral syndromes

As far as I’m aware I’ve never had Covid but I have twice been through long-term post-viral illness and have some thoughts I’d like to share. Those with ME/CFS and/or Long Covid and/or MS may or may not—we’re all so different, and different viruses will lead to different long-term sequelae—find some of this helpful.

Before we go any further: Please remember I am not a medical professional, merely someone who’s learnt some stuff related to my own particular sets of physical dysfunctions. Approach what you read here critically: do not do anything you learn from this post until you’ve done your own reading—there are many (many!) high quality open-access articles available if you search—and then talked to an actual medical professional. Clear? Good.

The first time I went down with a mystery illness I was 8 or 9. I was always a hyperactive child: one of those nightmare children who barely slept (I still sleep much less than most people—though a vast amount more than I did) and was always getting into trouble because I just wouldn’t stop. I had no off switch, really. Always running, jumping, rolling, climbing, singing at the top of my lungs. The only time I was still was when I was reading. Then one day I got a headache that got worse and worse, with a fever that went up and up. And up. By the time the ambulance got me to the hospital it was at 106 and climbing. I remember lots of white coats, ad people rushing about, and the horrors of an ice bath, but mostly I remember the headache—it was scream-worthy pain. And then the blood tests—every couple of hours—as they tried to figure out what was wrong and how to treat it. I was hospitalised for about five days. (I think. I honestly don’t remember.) Eventually the fever and pain went down; the cause remained a mystery.

I remember being sluggish for a few days, just really tired (a novel and interesting thing to me at the time). But I went back to school. And then a week or two later it happened again. Again the fever. Again the endless blood tests as they tried to identify what everyone assumed was an infectious agent. Again eventually it passed and, again, the virus (I assume) remained unidentified.

This time, though, when I went home I was too tired to get out of bed. After some weeks I was allowed to go to school for three hours in the morning but had to come home at lunch time. And even that was taxing. The fatigue was overwhelming; it felt like lying under an iron door that people kept adding weights to. It was tiring to breathe, to talk, to think. I couldn’t hold a book up long enough to read. It was at this point that I started to have dreams of an automatic bed I could ride around in, that cold adjust to a sitting position, that had a built-in reading arm and light, and a tube in the headboard I could suck on for things like water or tea so I didn’t have to lift a cup oro even my head. This lasted a while.

As I turned ten I was back to normal. Mostly. I was doing all the sports, back to not sleeping much and getting into mischief at all hours of the day. But I felt…different. For the first time in my life I felt occasionally fragile. Any childhood illness (cold, flu, stomach bug) would hit me really hard.

Eventually the memory of it all faded: just one of those weirdnesses of childhood. My immune system stayed slightly wonky—I got Epstein Barr and instead of recovering after a couple of days I was extremely ill for three weeks; I got a chest cold that turned to pleurisy; I got migraines that would leave me vomiting for two days every month. I just adjusted to it all, as young people do.1

I left home. Was in a band. Lived a…let’s just say alternative sort of life. Took a manual labouring job (for a while). Was in a band. Did martial arts—I looked and would have seemed to most people perfectly normal and healthy. But I wasn’t. I was prone to passing out, bad headaches, and abrupt fatigue that rest didn’t immediately relieve. By this time that was just normal for me; I didn’t think about it much.

Fast forward to age 28. I’d been in the US the previous summer for seven weeks where I’d met Kelley, and come back to losing my job, the death of my little sister, and getting a new, very stressful job (caseworker at a street-drugs agency—helping meth and heroin users). And I was missing Kelley and stressed over the upcoming choice between her, or my partner of ten years. Either choice would devastate me and hurt at least one other. Stress is a mild word for how I felt.

And then I got a virus. It felt a bit like flu—fever, chills, aches, headache, cough—but it wasn’t, and it was the worst virus I’d had as an adult. (Looking back, in light of all I know now, I’m guessing it was a corona virus—just not SARS-CoV-2.) And I didn’t get better. Suddenly I was back in the nine-year-old’s world of being crushed by fatigue, of feeling as though air didn’t have enough oxygen in it, of so many aches and pains and dizziness and absolutely no stamina at all. I was unable to work; I went on disability until it ran out.

I was diagnosed with post-viral syndrome, and then myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Everyone I knew—my friends, my (previous) work colleagues, my family (except my partner, right there, and Kelley, four thousand miles away)—did not believe I was ill. I looked fine, and every now and again for an hour to two I was fine, talking, laughing, cooking a meal. But the bill always came due. And every now and again some odd set of muscle groups would just…stop working properly: double vision, racing heartbeat, erratic heartbeat, unable to regulate my temperature, throwing up for no particular reason, getting cognitive weirdness. (I went to a 3-day convention in Birmingham and forgot to pack: literally, I got on the train with nothing but my wallet—no contact lens case or solution, no glasses, no clean clothes, no toothbrush. I just…spaced. I would forget ordinary words for things—like ‘chair’—or forget what I was saying in the middle of a sentence.)

Over a period of about two years all this gradually improved—to a point. I remained prone to all the above symptoms; I never walked more than half a mile again; and never ran at all, ever again. And then I started to develop other, more neurological symptoms: more double vision; clumsiness; having a hard time remembering what I was talking about when I got tired; weird paraesthesias—tingles, swarms of prickles, absolute intolerance of heat, dangerously erratic heartbeat, weird cramps and weakness—and then I began to limp. Six months later, on my first book trip to the UK, I started to fall down.

I was diagnosed with MS.

Here’s the thing: it’s been generally accepted for a while now that MS is the result of a combination of genetic predisposition; environmental factors; and some kind of bodily insult—whether emotional stress, a virus, or an injury. Many people believe MS is in fact the end-point of post-EBV syndrome—and while that of course is possible, I’ve always believed that my MS began with that coronavirus back in February 1989. Or perhaps the virus when I was 9. The point I’m trying to make is that the basic inflammatory syndrome is caused by a virus—a virus that does one or both of two things: flares up every now and again from some internal reservoir, and/or triggers an overly aggressive inflammatory immune response.

And if you look at what ME/CFS/LC/MS have in common you can see a pattern: metabolic dysfunction (how the body uses glucose vs. lipids for energy; it also affects ATP and mitochondria), epithelial permeability (whether we’re talking about the digestive system, pulmonary system, or urinary tract), aggravated inflammatory responses (whether we’re talking of the nervous system—neuroinflammation—or joints), and more.

I do not use any of the usual disease-modifying drugs (DMTs) for MS. I don’t respond well to them. I can’t use NSAIDs (ditto).2 I have had to find a variety of workarounds—many of which insurance won’t pay for because they are old and out-of-patent drugs (such as low-dose naltrexone (LDN)) or are nutraceuticals (such as ubiquinol, that is, reduced CoQ10) that are not patentable and so no one will bother running clinical trials.

Naltrexone when prescribed at the usual dosage of 50 – 150 mg is used to treat substance abuse disorders. At low doses (0.5 – 6mg) its pharmacological action is quite different. Take a look, for example at this piece on the various therapeutic utilisations of LDN and this piece on its properties as a glial cell modulator. LDN is a drug for which you need a prescription, and because it’s not a commercially viable product for Big Pharma it must be compounded, but most decent-sized towns and of course cities will have at least one compounding pharmacist—and it’s very cheap (working out at a dollar a day or less). I take one 3.75mg capsule daily—it doesn’t really matter whether you take it with or without food, in the morning or at bed time, though personally I’ve found I sleep better if I take it first thing rather than late at night.

So what does LDN do for me? One, and most importantly, within two weeks of starting it I went from having spent once a week or so for the last five years waking up at two n the morning to spend the night throwing up, having diarrhoea, and semi passing out from a kind of shock, to…never doing that again. Okay, almost never: once every year or two when I’ve subjected my system to intolerable stress and had too much to drink and eaten high-histamine food I know I don’t deal with well it’ll happen. Once every two years compared to once every week? Worth a dollar a day. How does it work? Basically it reduces epithelial permeability—or ‘tightens the holes in a leaky gut’.

But LDN has other properties. As for example a glial cell modulator it can also improve the protections of the blood-brain barrier. It reduces neuroinflammation, joint inflammation, and pain. Is it a miracle? No. Does it help? Oh, yes. And more to the point LDN is extremely well-tolerated.3 And whether or not it’s a coincidence, in the years since I’ve been taking LDN my hearth rhythms have stabilised considerably.

In terms of lipid metabolism, well, there are a variety of ways to approach improvement. The first thing I tried was diet: for many years I kept to a very low-carb regimen of vegetables and protein and good fats. (You can read all about that here.) But like most mere mortals, the better I felt the more likely I become to let things slip (“But, hey Doc, I feel so good now on these drugs I think I’ll come off them because I do’t need them any more…”). My diet is still very good in terms of what I eat—but it’s also bad with the number of ‘treats’ I allow myself: wine, beer, ice cream; potato chips and shortbread at the weekend; and sandwiches sometimes when we go out for lunch or are travelling. As a result, I’ve gained about twenty pounds in the last six or seven years. Oh, well.

There’s a vast amount of research beginning to accumulate to suggest that interrupting various parts of the metabolic cycle—whether with statins, or metformin, or GLP-1 receptor agonists (e.g. semaglutide) and/or GIPs (such as terzepatide), and at least one very promising new drug currently under investigation4 can be very helpful with various inflammatory processes, including neuroinflammation. I’ve just started a low-dose statin; assuming I can tolerate it I’m hoping it will help.

I’ve experimented with a variety of nutraceuticals over the years but if I had to pick only two it would be vitamin D (2,000 µg daily) and ubiquinol, a reduced form of CoQ10 (x 200 mg daily) which, amongst many other Good Things, facilitates production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)—which is sort of like the money that keeps the cellular economy going; the currency and energy of life. I rarely get that the-air-has-no-oxygen feeling anymore.

The other thing is stress and energy management. This is probably the hardest thing of all because, optimally, it requires you to stop doing things—even things you love—before you get tired. Sub-optimally, stop as soon as you notice you’re getting tired. Absolutely vitally, one hundred percent necessary—and I cannot stress this enough—do not ever redline. Never, ever run your battery flat. You will set yourself back months or even years, or even wreak permanent, irretrievable damage. I’m speaking from experience here. Please don’t be me. This also applies to stress. If you have to change your job, if you have to lose friends—whatever it takes, and I’m serious about this—reduce your stress. Stress will kill you—it’s what kills even healthy people. And if you’re still reading this post it’s probably because you’re not healthy.

Sleep, too, is part of this. There are a million books, videos, lectures and articles on the Importance of Sleep. I’m not gong to lecture you here except to say: pay attention. Do the best you can.

Finally, exercise. This is a tricky one; those newly sick should consult an experienced professional; preferably a physical therapist who specialises in neuro-rehabilitation. Those of us with long-term post-viral syndromes, whether the sort that’s undifferentiated (not underestimated, not inconsequential, just to be clear) like ME or LC, or the Oh-fuck-well-here-it-is specific sort like MS, will go through different phases: relative wellness, pseudo-relapses, relapses, aggravations, deteriorations, improvements, exacerbations, and back again. Sometimes it will be most important to have absolute rest: do nothing. But often it would be beneficial to do something—and that will vary from very short and very gentle breathing exercises all the way through to cardio and High-intensity interval training. As I say, please consult a professional. But please don’t ever give up on the idea of some exercise at some point. Exercise might be the single most important healthful activity (after, y’know, eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping) you can do.

So that’s basically it. Find a good healthcare team; surround yourself with people who love you and believe you; try not to despair. And do what you can to mitigate some of the crap that one visit from one tiny little viral particle once upon a time is still heaping upon you. There are things you can do. You are not helpless. There is hope. You are still you and you deserve a good life.

I wish you luck.

Youthful resilience or just not knowing any better? No idea. ︎I have two variants in cytochrome P450 that affect how I metabolise certain medications. ︎I don’t actually know of any side-effects or contraindications. I mean, there must be some, somewhere, for some people, I just don’t know what they might be. ︎I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about that or not—but it’s pretty fucking exciting. ︎

She Is Here! Or will be January 27, 2026

She Is Here by Nicola Griffith. PM Press, 27 January (US) and 12 March (UK), 2026. Photo of the author by Kelley Eskridge.

US: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | PM Press
UK: Amazon | Waterstones | Blackwells | WH Smith

In the Beginning…

For many years Terry Bisson edited the Outspoken Author series from PM Press in which “today’s edgiest fiction writers showcase their most provocative and politically challenging stories.” Outspoken Authors books, designed to fit your pocket and stretch your mind, include in-depth interviews, short stories and novellas, essays, bios, and bibliographies. There have been many marvellous books produced under his supervision, from authors such as Margie Piercy, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jonathan Lethem, Samuel R. Delany, Karen Joy Fowler, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Hand, and many more. Towards the end of his life, Bisson worked closely with Nisi Shawl who, along with Nick Mamatas, has now taken over as series co-editor. Nick’s first book will be Nancy Kress’s Not What I Intended (out in September). Nisi’s first book will be mine: She Is Here, which will be published US on 27 January and in the UK on 12 March, 2026. For review copies, please contact the appropriate publicist, listed here.

Obviously I’ll have a lot more to say about the book closer to the time, watch the book page for that, but for now let me just say it includes not only previously published short stories and essays, unpublished poems, a new interview, and some drawings, but—taking up about half the book—a previously unpublished novella, “Many Things in Dumnet.” Paid Patreon members have an unfair advantage here because they have had a tiny glimpse of something connected to that novella. But for everyone else, all will become clear in time. Either way, it’s a story of music, magic, and the power of the land…

From the Publisher

Widely acclaimed as a novelist, here Nicola Griffith displays her power, precision, and clarity of thought in multiple modes and forms.

Known for her gorgeously supple prose that soars effortlessly over genre boundaries, Griffith is also an incisive essayist whose ground-breaking, data-driven work on gender bias in the literary ecosystem sparked self-searching conversations worldwide. In this heady mélange of essays, poems, art, and stories—some seen here for the first time—the author makes foundational assertions about love versus ownership (“Wife”), advocates for the writer as explorer (“Branding: It Burns”), and points out the gaping hole in our literary landscape where we’d expect to find disability fiction (“Overwriting the Old Story”). These and other public-facing essays are followed by four powerfully intimate poems. Returning to prose, Griffith immerses us so seamlessly in her viscerally imagined fiction that we feel how it is to be hurled like light through the stars in “Glimmer,” hunted through the urban alleys of “Cold Wind” during a holiday blizzard, swept along irresistible currents “Down the Path of the Sun,” and, in “Many Things in Dumnet,” a novella published here for the first time, brought ashore as a stranger to a land where something is very wrong.

Finally, series editor Nisi Shawl’s interview with the author, “Otherwise Unremarkable,” teases out sometimes startling and always satisfying answers to questions on power, activism, immigration, cognitive poetics, and art.

Available for Pre-Order

Right now you can pre-order the book in the US and UK. I have no idea at this stage whether it will be translated into other languages, if there’ll be an audiobook, or any Commonwealth Territories publication (as opposed to being available as exports). I’ve no idea if I’ll be doing readings or signings. This whole thing came together so fast there’s been little time to sort details. But we’ll get there. And when I know, you’ll know.

US: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | PM Press
UK: Amazon | Waterstones | Blackwells | WH Smith

Get a first edition, first printing of Spear

I’ve donated a copy of Spear to the Locus fundraiser. What the promo page doesn’t tell you is that it’s the first edition, first printing—a beautiful little book with gorgeous interior illustrations. Also I will sign it (and personalise it, if you like) and mail it to you anywhere in the world. Also also (and I’ve just remembered this—i’ts an extra not mentioned in the promo), I believe I still may have one of the fantastic enamel pins created especially for the book (I wear one on my own jacket)—oh! and a full set of the colour postcards and bookmarks to match!—which I’ll include in the package. Want to snag it? The money you pay will go directly to benefit Locus.1

Click here to check out Spear and all the other great rewards: https://igg.me/at/locusmag2025

In full transparency, while I’m pretty sure I have those pins, cards, and books, I’m ot 100% positive. So donate at your own risk. ︎

Get a first edition, first printing of Ammonite

** EDITED TO ADD: It’s already been claimed — But there’s another perk from me coming soon, so be ready for that one **

I’ve donated a copy of Ammonite to the Locus fundraiser. What they promo page doesn’t tell you is that it’s the true first: first edition, first printing—that one in the middle, the mass market paperback with the jellybean spaceship on the cover that was designed to be read once and thrown away.

Well, this one survived. And I will sign it (and personalise it, if you like) and mail it to you anywhere in the world. Want to snag it? The money you pay will go directly to benefit Locus.

Click here to check it out and all the other great rewards: https://igg.me/at/locusmag2025

What your money will buy

Over on Patreon I’ve just posted the first of a 3-part series about how maps informed the major battles of Menewood and how I used them to work out who did what when and where. And why events occurred as they did. If you believe Early Medieval writers such as Bede and Adomnán, normally reliable chroniclers and careful historians, a certain king won a certain essentially impossible battle because, well, god intervened. I’m not a fan of divine intervention. I believe in terrain, tactics, and a smart woman’s strategic supply chain and logistics. But to get there I had to use maps.

I really enjoy making these maps—drawing the little icons, deciding whether to use false-colour topography or OS-style designs. And I absolutely *love* sharing them. So here’s one, because I just can’t resist.

Those who’ve read Menewood will probably be able work out what’s going on here. Everyone else should go read the post.

But I also frankly need to be making more money every month so that when the Aud books are reissued this summer—and my new book that I haven’t told anyone about yet is published very early next year—I can pay a publicist to help get the word out. And for that I need more patrons, specifically, paying patrons.

What will an independent publicist do for me? They will push, and persist, and pull together all the different strands of my career. They will remind readers of Hild that Spear exists. Remind readers of Ammonite that Hild has many resonances with a novel set two thousand years later. Point out to my SF readers that I also write kick-ass queer crime fiction, to my crime fiction fans that Slow River is also a thriller, only set amidst the ecologically-degraded near future. And so much more. How will they do that? Well, it depends on how much money I raise. There are different ways to go: targeted advertising; mailing out finished books to influencers; pitching profiles to prestigious journals, wheedling promises and calling favours from review editors; running targeted marketing campaigns and store promotions… That’s just off the top of my head—the professionals will have a better idea. But professionals cost money.

So if you like maps, if you like the idea of supporting me, please do go sign up.

Also, paying patrons will be the first to hear about the new book when I’m ready to share.

Also also, if you want to hear me read the prologue of a big old fantasy/alt-history novel I’m contemplating, that’s up there too.

Also also also, because I’ve now had my page up for six months I can finally offer discounts for annual memberships.

Then of course there’s all that hot lesbian poetry. (Okay, right now the lesbian poetry is about other lesbian stuff, but scheduled for next week is a set of poems about need and desire.)

So, anyway, I think you’d enjoy the posts. I know I love to share them. We’d all benefit. So why wait?

patreon.com/NicolaGriffith

Fighting, bonobo style

Females ganging up to fuck-up and shut down the I’m-bigger-than-you bullies of the world: some recent science news about bonobos once again demonstrates how it’s possible to stand up to the swinging dicks and would-be autocrats. And a second study, this time of Early Neolithic people of Central Europe, demonstrates how humans once—and, I could argue, given evidence from other archaeological sites and eras, very possibly for vast chunks of our history—behaved far more like the equality-minded bonobos than their (and our) more hierarchical, might-is-right cousins, the chimps.

Homo sapiens, that is, humans, share 99.7% of our DNA with Pan paniscus, or bonobos. We also, of course, share 99.7% of our DNA with Pan troglodytes, that is, chimps. But they are not the same 99.7%. Humans and bonobos share a set of genes that chimps do not: genes linked to the detection of social cues via scent. Which might go some way towards explaining the difference between a) bonobo and chimp approach to conflict resolution (communal action1 vs might-is-right) and b) why, although today humans seem more like chimps in our territorial wars and capitalist rapaciousness, we have been—and so therefore very possibly could be again—much more like bonobos.

Here’s the abstract of a recent Nature article (it’s open access; no excuse not to read it):

In mammals, female dominance over males is a rare phenomenon. However, recent findings indicate that even in species with sexual dimorphism biased towards males,2 females sometimes occupy high status. Here we test three main hypotheses explaining intersexual power relationships, namely the self-reinforcing effects of winning and losing conflicts, the strength of mate competition, and female coalition formation. We test these for bonobos (Pan paniscus), one of our closest living relatives, where females have high status relative to males despite male-biased size dimorphism. We compiled demographic and behavioral data of 30 years and 6 wild living communities. Our results only support predictions of the female coalition hypothesis. We found that females target males in 85% of their coalitions and that females occupy higher ranks compared to males when they form more frequent coalitions.

Basic lesson? Band together. Fight the bullies. It works. And we know it’s possible it can work for people, too, not only because I’ve, y’know, said so before,3 but also because of another relatively recent study, this time of Early Neolithic.

According to a press release from the University of Vienna, an international team of researchers, led by Pere Gelabert and Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna and David Reich of Harvard University, has produced the most complete set of Early Neolithic genetic data from Central Europe to date. The results of this study, just published in Nature Human Behaviour, (sadly not open access) reveal that the culture responsible for the expansion of agriculture in Central Europe 8,000 years ago showed no signs of population stratification.

As Pinhasi explains, “we report for the first time that families at the study sites of Nitra in Slovakia and Polgár-Ferenci-hát in Hungary do not differ in terms of the foods they consumed, the grave goods they were buried with, or their origins. This suggests that the people living in these Neolithic sites were not stratified on the basis of family or biological sex, and we do not detect signs of inequality, understood as differential access to resources or space“.

This is a pretty big deal because there is still a large subset of cultural talking-heads who believe that it was the advent of agriculture and therefore production of surplus that led to an inevitable change from more egalitarian hunter-gatherer communities to hierarchical, I-control-the-resources-and-therefore-you societies.4 But nothing about human behaviour is inevitable; biology is not destiny. But even if it were, we can now point to some evidence that this particular behaviour is not, in fact, part of our DNA. 5

To me the lesson is really clear: human are not destined for the kind of might-is-right, men dominate women, capitalism-is-culture most of the world has today. There’s a better way. There’s always been a better way. All we have to do is be brave and stand together. Seriously. Band together, stand together, fight together—and I mean fight; sometimes we need more than harsh words; sometimes we have to be ready to physically fuck-up and even kill the bullies of the world.

We used to do it. The bonobos still do it. So to paraphrase a paraphrase of Robbie Burns: Are you a bonobo or are you a chimp? It’s probably time to decide.

In, ah, many senses of the word. Group sex, communal sex, queer sex, sex toys… Bonobos really understand how healthy sex is, what enormous delight it provides, and how well it promotes interpersonal bonding. If I believed in reincarnation I’d want to come back as a bonobo. ︎That is, when most males are much bigger and stronger than most females. ︎And not just in this wider sense. There is a lot of data—so very, very much—about the power of women, individually, severally, and collectively, to get out from under the threat and domination of men. If you want to know more about this from a one-on-one self-defence perspective, read Always , being reissued in June. ︎Though of course it’s not the first time this has been shown. It’s just that it takes a long time and a lot of repetition to bash bad information from our heads and replace it with something more accurate. Especially when the truth clashes with the dominant paradigms of patriarchy and predatory capitalism, not to mention nationalism. People in power don’t like to feel uncomfortable. Oh, well. ︎I can’t emphasise enough how much I disagree with the biology-is-destiny crew. Just to be clear. ︎

George and his dragon

Today is St George’s Day—feast day of St George, the patron saint of England, the one who killed the dragon. Understandably, our cat George has a fondness for the saint, and regards him as a bit of a role model, especially when it comes to killing things—though of course our George has not yet reached the giddy heights of slaying a dragon.

Why is the dragon-slaying George the patron saint of England. I have no idea. I’m not even sure he really existed, but if he did he was a fourth-century soldier who is buried somewhere in Palestine. His cult started around his tomb in the sixth century. By the seventh it had spread to Turkey, Armenia, Syria, Cairo and Crete.

In terms of an insular cult, we get a mention from Adomnan in Iona in the late seventh century, and Bede, in the north of England, mentions him in his eighth-century writings. But compared to the home grown saints like Oswald and Hild he was nothing special so I never paid attention. At some point there appears the story of Saint George and the Dragon, in which Saint George kills a dragon at Uffington—yes, the same place where the famous white horse is cut into the hillside—in Oxfordshire. And at some point after that his symbol, the red cross on a white background, becomes the flag of England. But seeing as it’s more of a Late Medieval thing than the period I’m really interested in, I’ve never bothered to sort it all out.

Having said that, as I say, kitty George takes a keen interest—and believes that, as it’s almost his birthday, I should do, too. And also, sort of by mistake, I ended up making a bit of graphic fiddlery that’s based on the legend. Sort of. That is, as part of my Zoomorphic Series I created a lion in the style of what I thought a scribe of the Book of Kells and/or the Lindisfarne Gospels might use, but given its pose it needed to be fighting something, something that would fit neatly into a circle, and a dragon fit the bill. And as the lion is the symbol of England, heraldically, suddenly, Boom!, a graphic representing George and the Dragon.1

English lion vs nassssty foreign dragon

Anyway, it pleased George, and that’s what counts. So here’s an old picture of him looked both pleased and saintly. Happy George Day!

That killer glow…I’ve made a whole post about the whys and wherefores and whens and hows that will go up on Patreon in a week or two. But, hey, given the anniversary and feast day it seemed a shame not to use it here. ︎

10% off!

I’ve finally been on Patreon long enough that I can now offer annual memberships, which for now I’m pricing at 10% off the aggregated monthly cost. So if you’re a free member who’s thinking about upgrading, now’s the time.

Recent posts available only to paid members include today’s—a 5-minute reading of the prologue of a novel, The Burnt Man; a long, juicy, illustrated post about trying to turn images of my cats, Charlie and George, into medieval-looking cats; two sets of lesbian poetry—one about small moments, and one about love and decisions (oh, wait, I already made that one available for free); a chewy illustrated post about maps; an original essay, and much more.

Coming up soon: more maps (so many maps!), some video of the UK galleys of Aud, some short-fiction audio, more dyke poems—this time about lust and desire, the finished images of Charlie and George as Lindisfarne and Kells cats, and lots more.

If you have friends who might find any of that interesting, please feel free to spread the word: the more money I earn from this, the more time I can take from other paying work to experiment with writing new things and creating new recordings and images. (Because Kelley and I have had a lot of extraordinary expenses lately…)

But if you really are skint, there are still many posts (about half of them, actually—though that percentage will go down as I post more) available to those who join for free.