December 2012


This work of festive genius is Santa Cthulhu, by Amy L. Rawson and Brian East:

SantaCthulhu

I saw it on Laughing Squid – click here for a closer look. And if this is the first time you’ve met Cthulhu here’s a fine way to find out more.

Happy Holidays to all readers, and power to your tentacles for 2013.

Sam

I caught this wonderful video a couple of weeks back when it appeared on Boing Boing.

If you want to see more of the Bank of England then, like O, I guess you’ll just have to break in. To find out how, read the book: full instructions are included. 😀

Some excellent reviews here for My Name is O

MyNameIsOQuotes2012

…Thanks to Barrington Stoke for passing these along. 😀

Today I was also shown this wonderful review of my book Crawlers, written by Cosmo, 11, for The Big Green Bookshop.

CosmoOnCrawlersDec2012

It’s exactly the reaction I was hoping for when I wrote the book, and I am delighted and honoured by this talented young writer’s kind words.

This has been a strange year. In air miles, imagination and sometimes both I’ve spent most of it far away. Since it’s been about twelve months since I last did this, here are some music recommendations – stuff I’ve been listening to while out there.

I brought a whole bunch of great music back from Japan. The album I probably love most – though it’s far from comfortable to listen to – is Seven Idiots by World’s End Girlfriend. This is Les Enfants du Paradis:

I think it sounds like a fairytale, perhaps by Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Andersen, in which you do a deal whereby you get to live a total life of passion, thrills and wild romance on the condition that the whole thing is compressed into seven manic minutes then you die.

Zac Bentz, under the name Dirty Knobs, is making some of my favourite new music in the world right now. I first heard about him via Warren Ellis who linked to Bentz’s majestic and desolate Field Recordings from the Edge of Hell, and I’ve been a fan since. October’s Hallow was the highlight of my pumpkin season, but my favourite album of his at the moment, one that’s grown on me enormously in the last six months, is Ghost Geometry.

This music is huge and slow. Listening to it I imagine wandering through vast, echoing, eternal spaces, sometimes scared, sometimes inspired. Click here to hear or download it for yourself.

Best rediscovery of my year was Sonic Youth. I hadn’t listened to them since I was a teenager – and was therefore all the more awed and delighted to find out that in all the years they’ve now been playing together they’ve never stopped making new and wonderful music. You’d have to search hard to find another band who’ve so consistently kept pushing themselves, each other, and the possibilities of what guitars, bass and drums can do. Here’s Washing Machine.

 

From classic roots it grows and spreads until gloriously weird new territory opens up around you.

Here’s to that.

Sam

Hello. Would you like to buy my books?

You would? Awesome! Then here’s the best way to do it:

Order them from The Big Green Bookshop. As well as supporting me, you’ll also be supporting a brilliant local business that – through hard work, imagination and wild enthusiasm – makes everything it touches better, every single day it’s open. If you order through the BGB and ask them, I’ll also sign the book(s) for you or whoever you wish.

Postage in the UK is free; international delivery is reasonable and just as easy to arrange. Here’s The Big Green Bookshop’s website, here’s their blog, and here’s a terrific recent article about the shop and some of the wonderful things that happen in it.

Thank you for reading.

Sam