That Rusty Old Rollercoaster

An Ode

Hello my friend,

I hope these words find you today in a warm, dry place with a full stomach and a happy heart.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’ve got a lot of things to talk about: there’s the recent trip to Nara and a hike up into the snow-covered hills where I found an abandoned hot spring hotel and shrine…

Or there’s the recent incident concerning a jinxed taxidermied pine martin that is still fucking with me, or I could talk about a strange meeting with a very cool guy who seemingly lost his battle with OCD, a meeting which has haunted me ever since as I feel I’m only a few mishaps away from ending up the same way… Sanity is a very thin line we all walk along.

I could talk about all those things, but today, right now, I’m going to talk about…

The wonders of eating ramen after twelve o’clock on a bitterly cold night?

Unfortunately no. Guess again…

drum roll…

Okay, you got it!

That’s right!

Writing!

The good thing about talking to you about writing is that I know you’ll understand what I’m saying. The likelihood is if you’re one of the few who read this newsletter you’re a writer too and at the chance of sounding like the drunk at the bar after last call, “no one understands me, but, you, you, you really get me…”

Writing is a god damned rollercoaster. Well, no, not the writing as such, it’s the publishing aspect, isn’t it? It’s a rollercoaster we ride until we vomit and then we get off, stretch our legs a minute and then get back on.

I’m a writer, you’re a writer, we’re writers and we fucking love writing. That’s a given. We have to love writing to put ourselves through what we do. The waiting and the rejection and the frustrations and the disappointments. Hell, the writing is the easiest part of all.

I finished my Japanese thriller in February of 2024 and sent it to my dream publisher, who told me they’d like to look at it. Every so often I’ll hit them up to see if they’ve read it yet and they’ll reply it’s still under consideration. A year of waiting… Obviously, I should start sending it elsewhere, but I’m hoping my patience will pay off. Stupid, I know. But with recent developments in my private life I’m not sure I have the energy to run the agent gauntlet right now…

See, for the last year I haven’t really written anything. Even though the will is there, the drive is gone, because last year I got another one of life’s kicks in the gonads in the way of a health diagnosis. When you’re worrying that you may not get to see your kids graduate high school it really puts things in perspective. Not getting a short story published in an indie mag that gets read by fifty people, or the latest in a long line of indie twitt/lit dogpiles... Those things don’t seem so important at all anymore. Neither does spending hours of my free time in front of a computer pouring my life and soul into something that will probably end up in a publishers unread emails for the next nine months before being replied to with a form rejection…

And there’s also the shock discovery of learning most of your literary heroes who are crushing it, (in your mind anyway) are just as disappointed and dissatisfied as you are sometimes. It seems the literary ladder, is just that, a literary ladder. You’re never going to be truly satisfied with where you’re at. You’ll always want more.

So where the hell am I going with all of this?

I woke up this morning after a very strange dream with a great idea for a novel.

It isn’t a crime fiction novel. I don’t know what genre it is yet. All I know is, it’s a story my heart is telling me to write, one I want to tell others and I’m going to write it because after all the pissing and the moaning that’s what I am. A writer. And after so much time away it’s time to clean the vomit away from my lips and get back on that rollercoaster because it’s the only ride in town I want to be on. Will I be satisfied? Probably not, but it’s a race to the end, isn’t it?

As I mentioned above, my shitty health diagnosis even took the wind out of my sails when it came to my first love: reading. I haven’t read a book in almost a year. Crazy, I know.

But I do have some diamonds on my To Be Read shelf: If you haven’t read these, please do pick them up as they’re written by some of the best.

I have been listening to a lot of Audible novels lately though. I forgot what a masterful storyteller Michael Crichton was. Back on board with him now though.

One of my loves that wasn’t stripped away by the funk I’ve been in the last year was editing PUNK NOIR MAGAZINE (which has its own Substack too now). To be honest, publishing others this last year has kept me sane and I thank everyone for contributing to my raggedy little zine which actually received over 35,000 visitors in 2024. Pretty damned cool and I’m proud as hell of it. It makes my day when I receive emails from people telling me that getting into Punk Noir made them feel happy. That’s what it’s all about really. Giving someone a lift up when I can.

Anyways, thats me for today. Spelling mistakes and typos be damned.

Until next time my friend.

Thanks for reading.

All the best,

Steve