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Thank you for reading it.

Which is a long-winded way of saying: This is why I'm giving a signed book and a hare away today, and logging out of this account for a couple of weeks. It's my way of drawing a line that needs to be drawn.

... for the second or third time - self-promotion always kind of makes me want to puke. And I feel like if I don't shut out the noise and get back down to writing the novels I need to write soon, I'm just going to get more sad and more annoyed with myself.

... it also kills me, because what I love more than anything is writing novels & waited a long time before I was able to write the kind I wanted to write. And - while I get a buzz out of people telling me Everything Will Swallow You is their favourite book of the year or that they're reading it...

... written an entire collection of short stories (it's out via @breakthroughbook.bsky.social in Sept) but I have also started and abandoned a novel several times, due to the hard work I've had to put in to revive my career after the Unbound collapse, and while I can see that's been necessary...

... person on Bluesky unfollows me or gets annoyed because I mention the book a lot, because what I care about is books, not transient shit social media stuff, nor my internet self. However what I really want to do is write. In that almost-two year timespan since this book was finished I have...

.. with them into hell. And it's that incident which - since finding a different publisher - has made me so fucking uniquely doggedly determined to not let this book die. Because I feel like I'm fighting evil and utterly refusing to let it win. And I honestly do not give a shit if some media...

... UK bookshops, and finally available outside of the UK. I have to draw a bit of a line at some point, though. This book was finished almost 2 years ago. After that, my ex-publishers, Unbound, collapsed, taking what I was owed for Everything Will Swallow You, & the 6 books directly preceding it...

... one of those two readers also says something nice about it, and the cycle renews itself. But how long can it go on? I keep hoping that all the voices talking about the book will kind of coalesce slightly and finally turn it into something that's more solidly out in the world, more visible in...

... can transcend the obstacles of lack of marketing budget and zero publishing industry hype. So I give a book away, reshare the extract, repost someone saying something staggeringly kind about it, and in the process, I piss a few people off, and gain another reader or two, and then sometimes...

... you are kind of screwed, & what I've been doing on Bluesky recently is sort of a stubborn way of trying to prove to the romantic idealist part of myself that this isn't true... that actually when a lot of people are spreading the word about a book that kind of grass roots word of mouth support..

... from it to this point is pitifully far below the minimum wage. I wonder if that might change at some point. I still hope it will, since I have no doubt that it's book that many people fiercely love. I am shown repeatedly that without big marketing spend & publishing industry hype on your side...

There was part of me that thought, as I approached 50, that this one - my 15th - would be The One. Not the one to make me more well-known (which I don't want) but the one that just sold that little bit more, got released outside the UK, and made everything more sustainable. But what I have earned...

The thing I've learned about writing books is it's not a meritocracy. I should have learned it ages ago but my idealism and romanticism clouded my vision. I thought if I wrote better & better books then I'd be more likely to find a way of sustaining a full time living from it. But that's not true...

There's an extract here. If you dislike it, you'll utterly despise the rest of it: www.tom-cox.com/one-week/

ONE WEEK!It's now exactly one week until the publication of the paperback of Everything Will Swallow You, and I bring good news: not only will Blackwell's UK send to you with free international delivery; next ...www.tom-cox.com

100%.

Absolutely. All the albums after this are intermittently brilliant, with some of their highest highs, but every one of them is frustrating and annoying in places. Sometimes many places.

Scariest pair of witches' knickers I ever saw.

Just when you thought you'd heard all the reasons.

Signed ones still available with free international delivery, btw: blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...