The end is coming

Dark sky. Dark days. Dark nights.

Dec 15, 2023

New moon. Dark sky. Dark nights. Dark days. End of the year. We’ve got another week to go before we hit the winter solstice, the longest night, and then — at long last — the light will start to return. My dad made it an annual ritual to stay up until sunrise on solstice night; a pagan act of sympathetic magic, an act of faith and trust. Keep the hearth lit, keep the fires stoked. Steward our own sources of light and warmth until the sun comes back.

The longest night of the year is coming, and this is my last letter to you of the year. I’ve loved sharing more longform writing with you through these letters this year. For better or worse, I’ve been sharing some form of my experience with friends and strangers alike online since my teenage Livejournal days of hardcoded html, neon text on black backgrounds and flashing animated avatars. And — like I wrote way back when I described wanting to start this newsletter — processing the gore, grief, joy, chaos and confusion of being a human through letter- and diary-writing has been a cornerstone of my reflective and creative process for as long as I can remember. Then and now, I’m grateful for the space to sort my thoughts out (sort my head out) by putting words into sentences like a jigsaw puzzle, then chucking the results out into the digital ether to see what sticks, what echoes, what comes back.

But today I want to share something different with you. You might remember a while back, when I performed live with my friends’ band, backofthebrain. I’ve performed my spoken word in a lot of places, from Edinburgh Fringe to the Royal Albert Hall. But crawling around on the floor of a tiny clandestine venue in the shadow of Strangeways prison on the night of a lunar eclipse while four sonic powerhouses collaboratively weaved a real-time sound spell over and under my words… that was a first. Doing it with fragments lifted direct from my journal pages — the most intimate, hopeful, confessional things I’d written for no-one other than myself — that was another. And sharing it with no sound check, no song sheet, no rehearsals, no real other plan than to give ourselves the permission and chance to experiment and trust… for me, another first.

Here it is, remixed into this brilliant video edit by my amazing partner:

There are moments where the words are inaudible. There are moments where you can see me get my pages muddled. There are moments when everything blurs into chaos and noise. But we’re here for queer failure, remember? We’re here to be imperfect. We’re here to be brave and honest and to do things that scare us, that connect us, to make things which are messy and raw and human. I did that. We did that. Together.

That’s the energy I want more of as we transition into 2024 and beyond: stewarding ourselves and each other through dark days and dark nights; stoking our fires; putting our faith and trust in each other; screaming; making art; making music. Believing in the return of the light.

You can stay in touch with backofthebrain via their Instagram. Their next gig will be at Manchester Folk Horror Festival in February, where I’m really excited to guest with them again.

Some other things I’m into right now and thought you might be too:

I’m buzzing to be part of New Writing North’s new project: Northern Bookshelf Live. I’m one of ten authors involved in the project’s inaugural year of connecting readers and writers through events in libraries. As anyone who’s read my novel Dear Neighbour will know, I’m a big believer in the importance of libraries, so I’m proper chuffed to be included. (And continuing the theme of library love, I loved this adorably nostalgic and affectionate post about libraries by Janelle Hardarce).
Surrender by Jenkin van Zyl is my favourite art show of the year, if not the decade. Weird, gruesome, immersive, dazzling and disorientating, it features rat kings, love hotels, dance marathons and more in a glitzy ballroom inside a giant silver inflatable rat. I saw it at FACT in Liverpool on my birthday last month and am definitely heading back before it finishes in January.
More post-apocalyptic queer body horror of a totally different flavour: I finally read Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin and bloody loved it. Gross, violent, tense, totally original and strangely hopeful — one of the best novels I’ve read this year.
Eerie River Publishing are accepting submissions for the next anthology in their tarot series, calling for horror shorts somehow featuring wands until the end of the year.

Wanna start 2024 by working with me? I’m collaborating with Out on the Page to deliver two online workshop sessions next month, exploring burnout and boundaries on 16th January and what to do when you feel like a failure on 23rd January.

And before I say a final farewell of 2023, a last gushy message: thank you for all your support this year. I started this newsletter in 2020, moved to Substack in May 2023 ahead of Dear Neighbour being published in June, and it’s been a real joy sharing my journey with you here. Some older posts are paywalled, but — whether you’re new around here or just wanna revisit some gems from the vaults over the break — here are a few of my free-to-read faves: