Matthew Hurst

Read: Never Flinch by Stephen King 📚

King is always compulsive, without me being able to figure out why. He’s sneaking some suspense in there without me realising how. #Booksky #amreading #bookstodon

Trump’s been outplayed by Putin, Netanyahu and every other world leader because he’s all ego and bluster and not very bright. All he has left is lying to his base

Read: Mood Machine by Liz Pelly 📚 Audiobook recorded by the author, Liz Pelly, in an intensely irritating? slackjawwwd valleh girrl drawl? that almost made me? stop listening? Not helped by? Adolescent horror that? the music business? is a business? #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

Read: Who Could Ever Love You by Mary L. Trump, PhD 📚

As fellow family-of-a-narc, I found a few moments in this resonated, but if you’ve come across The Donald ever before, there’s not a lot new here. #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

I bought a stack of very cheap CDs yesterday at a stall at a Thing. They sound marginally better than Tidal High Quality but mostly, I can’t curate what’s on them. I can’t think about which playlist to add tracks to. I just have to listen to them. #MusicSky #Music

Read: Come Closer by Sara Gran 📚

New York architect is either possessed or has a psychotic breakdown in a tightly written novella. Psychological thriller or horror? You choose.

So that’s the plotting done. Now it’s just… typing. Which is great and also daunting.

#writingcommunity #iamwriting

The world’s richest man and most powerful man bitching about each other like mean girls. Meanwhile the climate is in meltdown, there are at least 3 international confrontations that could lead to world wars, and dictators are seizing power everywhere. I’m off to watch Midsomer Murders.

Read: The House of My Mother by Shari Franke 📚

What life was actually like for the kids of picture perfect but abusive 8 Passengers vlogger Ruby Franke. Gets the nuances and complications over better than the Netflix doc, including the spineless and acquiescent father.

#booksky

Read: Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow 📚

Courtroom thriller that actually uses the legal procedures and tactics for its twists, and plays with the reader’s knowledge of Presumed Innocent. Class.

#booksky

Read: How to Lose a Country by Ece Temelkuran 📚

Turkish writer who’s fled Erdogan tries so hard to stay humane, humorous and hopeful despite the pandemic of populist demagogues. She almost succeeds.

Is my brain declining at a greater rate than I thought, or is this piece in the Guardian about yet more White House shenanigans badly written to the point of incomprehensibility?

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2…

Watched/went to a webinar about making money from short stories. The good news is that there are many more outlets for my genre than I thought. The bad news is that ‘payment’ is not really a thing. Good for just getting stuff out there anyhow.

Read: Black Money by Ross Macdonald 📚

A classic noir thriller apparently, but felt more like it appealed to the 1960s desire for genre fiction to be profound.

Read: The Rule of Stephens by Timothy L. Taylor 📚

Elizabeth Holmes-alike has some kind of existential crisis over her biotech startup after miraculously surviving when the plane she’s on crashes. At least that’s the set up, but it’s never really paid off. Unsatisfying.

#BookSky #books #novel

Read: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

One of those high concept books that falls in love with its premise and gets tedious after a while.

A 16 year old skateboarder - baseball cap, plaid shirt - takes repeated runs at jumping off an 18 inch concrete step on the concrete plaza. Every time, he falls off, hands fly out behind him as he crashes onto his arse. He gets up, grins, does it over again.

#WritingCommunity

Commendably long and thoughtful piece by Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic arguing that Substack’s @tedgoia ‘s declinism in essays about 21st Art And Culture is over pessimistic. Instinctively, I want it to agree with Ted Gioia, but Kornhaber’s main argument is that artists are being just as creative, but faster, because (essentially) The Internet. Trouble is, that The Internet demands reams of content creation, not thinking, so the actual content created is cosmetic and puerile. There might be new art, but it’s just not very good.

Try new ‘Woombitz’, the perfect BBQ crunchy snack for the menstrual woman. Artisanal and free-from most things, except hormones.

Two twenties women on main street are wandering up to blokes and asking them something… it’s all fun and not sketchy but who knows what it is. One of them takes a photo of the other talking to the bloke (or occasionally woman).

#WritingCommunity

My therapist once pointed out that ‘everyone is not your mother’ - ie don’t respond to everyone like they’re a malign narcissist. Dont let that dynamic dominate everything.

But that’s how the world seems to be reacting to Trump and his fascist minions. I heard a UK politician talk about the increasing price of eggs the other day. Egg prices haven’t increased much in the UK. They were picking up on US issues.

Trump and co consciously

A tiny woman slides past slowly on a huge Harley chopper her hands reaching way above her head to grip the handlebars. It’s way too big for her. Dudes sitting at a pub table on the pavement notice and hold their hands up, mimicking her odd position.

#WritingCommunity

Finished reading: The Survivors by Jane Harper 📚

As ever, quality small town murder mystery, intelligent and grown up.

Finished reading: the company by Robert LIttell 📚

Long, suspense-free fictionalised history of the CIA in novel form. I’m sure the CIA approved it.

I must look like I’m meditating. I’m not. I’m waiting to die.

I sit, foursquare on a bric a brac dining chair behind the empty boho cafe counter, palms on my thighs, waiting for impact.

I’m waiting for the sound of an old school shop doorbell, the kind designed to call staff running from their back room when a customer arrives.

I’m fighting an inchoate, terror-soaked impulse to flee, with the only thing I have: intense concentration. The most I can do is clench my eyes shut, so at least I have the extra few seconds of not knowing the end is a few seconds away. Here I sit, eyes closed. Experiencing my final moments as fully as I can.