Word Count 101: Rare book shrine goes on display, TikTok's 8th Note Press closes
Plus new (to me) podcasts, AI Dreams and Sci-Fi Nightmares catch-up, GoodReads still shit, how do you create characters?, and a stuffed Scottish wildcat.
Hi there,
I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, with another trip up to York for a day long workshop, which was a huge amount of fun but also far too short of a trip. I did manage to cram in a short but marvellous meeting with Prof Pen Holland, my Fieldwork collaborator, during which we had fun thinking about how the rest of the series might pan out.
I’ve also spent a lot of time working on a new professional venture (something’s got to keep Grabbity and Copurrnicus in cat food and Dreamies) with a couple of friends. So, just in case you’re in team leadership/managerial roles in your day jobs, I want to quickly let you know about our first free taster webinar, Leading Through Transformation, at 8:30am BST on 10 July, in which Alison Gow will talk you through how to keep change projects on track. Join us!
Suw’s News: AI Dreams catch-up, Ecoscapes write-up, Artivism panel
Artivism: Imagining Anthropocene Futures
Last week I was back up in York for the Artivism: Imagining Anthropocene Futures day-long workshop, talking with 19 other artists, writers and scientists about the way that art can form an integral part of climate and environmental activism.
It was a fascinating and thought-provoking day, and lovely to be in a room with a load of other artist-scientists amongst whom I felt very at home. There was a lot of conversation about art-as-protest, why we make the art we make, the impact it can have (and how hard it can be to measure genuine impact given there’s no metric for inspiration), and the common challenge we all face, ie lack of funding.
It was both heartening and depressing to see so many other people struggling with funding, and having to cobble together money from multiple small grants, crowdfunding, etc, or having to consign art-making to hobby status. It’s nice to know one isn’t alone, but also sad to see that so many people are in the same boat.
One idea I loved was to move away from artistic residencies and towards longer-term partnerships that foster more durable relationships between scientists (or any other kind of institution) and artists, to support artists in developing their practice over years rather than months, and provide more stability. Given that arts funding is nigh on impossible to get these days, some other kind of model is going to have to come from somewhere, preferably a larger organisation capable of applying for the kinds of grants that are either too onerous for artists or not open to them.
Which leads me to say thanks once again to the fabulous people who donated to my crowdfunder and made my participation in this event possible. You can still chuck me a tenner, if you have one spare, and support further work on Fieldwork.
ABC: Art, biodiversity and collaboration
The University of York published a write-up of the ABC: Art, biodiversity and collaboration panel that I participated in at the beginning of the month.
This special session focussed on the interface between art and science in understanding and relating to biodiversity change. The aim of ecoscapes is to bring together ecologists and people from other disciplines to explore together the complex issues of biodiversity change and response in the Anthropocene.
You can also read my full write-up of the event, plus my visit to the sitcom archives of Ray Galton & Alan Simpson, over on the Fieldwork newsletter. And if you want to gist of what I said, you can watch the talk that I gave the Reading RSA meeting a few months ago, which was largely the same talk.
AI Dreams and Sci-Fi Nightmares
About a month ago, I was on the panel for the AI Dreams and Sci-Fi Nightmares event which was held as part of the King’s Festival of Artificial Intelligence. I’m happy to say that you can now watch the recording at your leisure:
I was joined by science fiction writer Stewart Hotston, medical imaging PhD student Tiarna Lee, and Prof Kawal Rhode from the School of Biomedical Engineering, and was moderated by the Clarke Award’s Tom Hunter for a truly interesting, entertaining and educational conversation!
The rise of artificial intelligence is an enduring theme in science fiction and has long shaped how we imagine machine consciousness.
As AI moves from pop culture entertainment to an everyday reality, new narratives emerge. What stories are being told, both optimistic and dystopian, and what responsibilities do technologists, creators, and storytellers have to the future?
It was a huge amount of fun and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed having the conversation!
Rare book shrine goes on display in Ireland
An incredibly rare book shrine, a sealed “decorative box that contained a manuscript associated with a saint or revered ecclesiastic”, has gone on display at the National Museum of Ireland after nearly 40 years of conservation work. Originally found in Longford Lake by metal detectorists, the Lough Kinale Book Shrine is one of just eight in existence.
Worshiping books is definitely on my bingo card; throwing them in lakes, not so much.
What I’m listening to: A Scottish Podcast and Last Dance
I’ve been trying to find fiction podcasts, whether comedy or not, to listen to so that I can get a sense for how other people do it and maybe pick up some tips. Yesterday, a friend shared this post from The Podcast Geek listing his favourite podcasts of the 2024.
From that, I discovered A Scottish Podcast, written and produced by Matthew McLean, which describes itself as an audio drama but is listed by Podcast Geek as a comedy. I’m only two very short (10 min) episodes in, but so far I’m enjoying it. I accidentally listened to half an episode from season 4, though, so very curious about how they get from where they start to where season 4 finds them!
[A Scottish Podcast] chronicles the story of Lee, a washed up former radio DJ who launches a paranormal investigation podcast. Lee wants to see his show The Terror Files mentioned up there alongside podcasts like The Black Tapes, Limetown, and The Message. And he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it.
The other podcast I’m listening to is Last Dance, written and directed by Max Blair. Much grittier and not even slightly comedic, its episodes are more like 30-40 minutes each, so meatier from the get-go. It’s more sort of fantasy Vikings, but the story’s already got me hooked.
The Great South was alone. A small rock formed atop the bones of dead gods and leviathans, drifting within an endless ocean. People left to their own petty wars and dogmas. But now, from that same ocean, comes a wave of death in the form of savage invaders, striking without cause against the Eightfold House of Holy Ichors and its 8 Bleeding Monks. In the wake of their eradication, a battlefield scavenger by the name of Jericho Raeke goes picking through the remnants and discovers something that puts him, and his unlikely allies, at the centre of the conflict.
Two very different podcasts, but I’m enjoying them both.
What fiction or sitcom podcasts are you listening to at the moment? Please let me know in the comments!
TikTok’s closes publishing arm
8th Note Press, launched in the summer of 2023 by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has suddenly shut up shop, despite appearing not to have successfully published anything.
#BookTok, that part of TikTok dedicated to literature, has become so influential in publishing that not only has it launched several careers, some bookshops feature sections with titles such as TikTok Made Me Buy It, named after a TikTok meme.
It seems that ByteDance thought that this would make starting their own publishing company a breeze, so they bought a load of books. Having discovered that publishing is, in fact, a bit harder than it looks, they’ve summarily shut down, “wrecking careers in the process”, according to agent Mark Gottlieb in the NYTimes.
Author Ambrosia Harris posted a long video about the mess on Instagram, detailing just how badly 8th Note Press had screwed up the publication of her books, effectively losing her a year and a half’s worth of sales.
Goodreads still shit
The Bookseller reports that authors are seeing bad reviews pop up on Goodreads before their books have been published, even before proof copies have been made available. And yet, still, Amazon does nothing. Well, that’s not quite true — when authors have pushed back against these fake reviews, Amazon has taken down their response.
This is not victimless trolling. Agents and editors can and will judge a book by its Goodreads reviews, although frankly they should know better. Crime writer Jo Furniss said in a comment piece:
One friend who writes crime for a digital imprint was advised by an editor to retire a long-running series because the average rating for the most recent instalment slipped below 4.2 stars.
Amazon/Goodreads has a long, long history of tolerating shitty behaviour from reviewers, but they have way too much power in the industry for authors to be able to effectively push back. This, folks, is what hypercapitalism gets us.
How do you create characters?
A friend of mine is keen to write his first novel, so I’ve advised him to start reading up on how to create characters as his first bit of homework.
I have my Grist article on how I create characters based on personalities (available with a 7 day free trial), and there’s a lovely piece from Julian Simpson on how he uses a technique from role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Call Of Cthulhu to conjure his characters.
But how do you do it? What techniques get the best results for you? Please leave a comment so I can pass your advice on!
Obligatory cat picture
This week’s obligatory cat picture is a rather yellow looking stuffed Scottish Wildcat, found in the Yorkshire Museum in York. Endangered by habitat loss and cross-breeding with feral domestic cats, efforts are underway to breed and re-release wildcats to help bolster their numbers. In 2023, 19 wildcats were released into the Cairngorms National Park, resulting in at least a few kittens.
The Yorkshire Museum is, by the way, a fabulous place to spend an afternoon, not least because it has a great display about Star Carr, a unique Mesolithic archeological site in Yorkshire. In 2015, an engraved pendant discovered there became the oldest Mesolithic art discovered in the UK.
Righto, m’dears, that’s it for now!
Ttfn,
Suw