Okay, maybe not chainsaw juggling, but the first three are definitely happening this week and weekend at two awesome events.   Apologies - I really wanted to present my picks for the most interesting panels at Nine Worlds that don't involve me. I would also normally endeavour to rave about as many of the other authors at these events as possible, but I frankly haven't had such a manic working week in a while, so I'm afraid time pressures have stabbed all these good intentions to death.  You'll just have to put up with my own imminent schedule. It's all me me me... (*winks to Jack Sparks readers*)

THURSDAY AUG 11: FANTASY AT THE COURT!
6pm-9pm at Goldsboro Books, Cecil Court, London (see pic above)
This annual event celebrates fantasy and science fiction and is an informal gathering for fans of this genre to meet the best fantasy and science fiction authors published today.  Tickets for the event cost £5. Set in the beautiful surroundings of Cecil Court and given the unique history of the location, Goldsboro Books is the perfect place for an evening that is set to be fantastic(al) in every sense.

I'm delighted to have joined a great list of authors who will appear at this wonderfully fun event! See you there, I hope.

SATURDAY AUG 13: NINE WORLDS CON!

FORBIDDEN PLANET SIGNING TABLE
11.30am-12.15pm
I'll be signing at the Forbidden Planet table. Hooray! Please be advised, however, that my autograph automatically halves the resale value of any given copy of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks. BONUS EXCITEMENT: everyone who gets me to deface their copy of Jack Sparks will get a limited edition Jack Sparks bookmark!  (While the number of bookmarks in my inside jacket pocket lasts!)

GENRE FUN-TIME ROOM 101
5pm-6pm (Epernay)
Come one! Come all! See our passionate panelists voraciously compete to declare their choice of the Most Hated Cliche Of All Time - the biggest laugh sees the panelists' pet peeve or authorial nightmare consigned to the dark, dank, despicable, dire depths of Room 101! (All cliches will be fished out and washed off and given a good hug after, we don’t hold with cruelty to innocent plot devices)
Matt Blakstad, Jason Arnopp, Ed Cox, Bex Levene, Stark Holborn, Anne Perry (mod)

NEW VOICES
10.15pm-11.15pm (Bordeaux)
Join us for a set of fun and fast-paced readings from the very best new writers.
Mark De Jager, Rose Biggin, Jason Arnopp, Maria Lewis 
See here for my blog about a recent Jack Sparks reading I did, at Edge Lit.

SUNDAY AUG 14: NINE WORLDS CON!

TRICKING THE READER
11.15am-12.15pm (Bordeaux)
Autolycus. Locke Lamora. The Magicians of The Prestige. Wade Wilson. Unreliable narrators are everywhere in genre fiction and the one question we always ask is why? What’s the appeal of listening to stories narrated by liars? What’s the difference between authorial mischief and shaggy dog stories? Why do we love the twist in the tale?
Jason Arnopp, Mark de Jager, James Smythe, Genevieve Cogman (mod) Emma Trevayne
 
WELCOME TO CREEPYPASTATOWN, POPULATION: YOU
1.30pm-2.30pm (Chalon)
The internet is festering with tales of the grim and gory as it is but these days it’s feasting on creepypasta like it’s apocalypse o’clock. With these little home-grown mushrooms of fiction festering in the darker corners of the internet, creating monsters like Slenderman that have broken out into the wider, brighter world, how has that affected the horror genre? Is this the future, or a new facet of one of the oldest kinds of story?
Jason Arnopp, Catriona Ward, Angela Slatter, Tom Fletcher, Andrew Griffin (Mod)

Other panels, signings and events are available!  A whole galaxy of them, in fact.  Nine Worlds looks pretty amazing this year.  Check out the full schedule.

It's not too late (at the time of writing) to help place The Last Days Of Jack Sparks on the shortlist of The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize!  All it takes is posting a comment.  Do it for Satan! 
​

Well now! I have no idea how this came to be, but my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks has made the longlist of The Guardian's annual Not The Booker prize. 

While the longlist has ninety-nine other books on it, I'm still very much amazed and delighted to find myself on there, alongside the incredible likes of Alan Moore, China Mieville and my Orbit Books stablemate Claire North!

The competition is stiff, to say the very least. I got ninety-nine problems, you might say. But the shortlist will be decided by a public vote that ends at midnight on August 14. And if I win, I get a Guardian mug, which would be nice. So if you feel strongly about Jack Sparks, please do commemorate the poor dead sod by voting for him here!  And/or spread the word. Either of these actions will make me love you even more than I already do for reading this blog.

Cheers! 
​

Hello! My supernatural thriller novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks concerns an arrogant celebrity journalist who finds himself in trouble with unseen forces, after he laughs during an exorcism in Italy, organised by the Catholic church.
 
So to celebrate the current paperback release, I want to tell you about the day my former journo self got into trouble with seen forces in Rome. Namely, the Pope’s armed forces. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Yes.
 
Life sometimes throws up subtle signals that you’ve acted unwisely. Being surrounded by angry men with machine guns is arguably one such signal.
 
Time-whoosh! It’s 1998 and I’m a rock journalist. Photographer Paul Harries and I are in Rome, to cover the Devil’s own metal band Cradle Of Filth (see current line-up above) for Kerrang! magazine.

Aiming to drag some local colour into the piece, we head to Vatican City. Funnily enough, there’s been no prior discussion with the Pope’s press office regarding photo shoots and the like. So we are, of course, foolish to think we can simply waltz onto Vatican turf without getting people’s sacrificial goats up.
 
When we arrive at a square on the edge of Vatican City, it’s early evening and freezing cold. The dome of the nearby St Peter’s Basilica is obscured by scaffolding. “They heard we were coming,” smirks Filth drummer Nick, before leaving in a taxi like a big lightweight. Albeit a big lightweight who doesn’t get detained at gunpoint.
 
Cradle Of Filth have been here before. Like many unsuspecting tourists, they were thrown out for not wearing proper shirts. Tonight proves they have learned nothing. The band’s singer Dani is sporting one of their own T-shirts – the one with the clear slogan I LOVE SATAN. Keyboardist Les ‘Lecter’ Smith sports his trademark vicar’s collar. Spoiler alert: Les is not an actual vicar.
 
The square is deserted as we wander about.  While talking nonsense about fictitious past Popes (like “Lucius The Second, The Masturbating Pope,” according to guitarist Stuart), the Filth admit to being interested in Vatican architecture.  Guitarist Rob takes photos of his own.
 
“Rome is confused,” ponders Lecter.  “In the Colosseum, they used to throw Christians to the lions. And here’s this big monument to Christians.”
 
Dani and snapper Harries disappear to do some pictures.  The singer eventually returns at speed.  “You’ve got to see this,” he yells.  “The Vatican Police have taken Paul’s camera and passport away!  They told me to fetch ‘the preacher’!”
 
“Fuck,” groans Lecter, tugging his collar off as we follow Dani between some massive pillars.  “I’m sick of getting arrested wherever we go…”
 
All of a sudden, we’re surrounded by armed guards. Six or seven of them, levelling submachine guns right at us. Even worse, they’re seriously pissed off. Red in the face, they shout at Lecter until he hands over the collar, which is shaken aloft in a self-righteous fist.

Hello! Step into my study, would you? You'll find it cool enough in here, thanks to the enormous electrical fan whirring away. This costly device also makes for a wonderful white noise generator if you happen to have a spot of the ol' tinnitus.

Now, whether you realise it or not, we're heading towards the July 28 UK mass-market paperback release of my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks. The March release was a mere soft launch, compared to this one. This new release is the big kahuna. The grande fromage, if you'll pardon my immaculate French. And one of the ways we're celebrating this release, is a blog tour. From August 1, the book will be featured on a whole array of blogs, thanks to the kindness of various blogsters. Here's the full list!

A big thanks to all these wonderful blog supremos! As I understand it, the coverage will mainly be reviews of the book, although there will be the odd Q&A. So, look out for these blogs, perhaps by using the #JackSparks Twitter hashtag, and consider checking out the book that Alan Moore himself has branded "a magnificent millennial nightmare"...

The new mass-market paperback at Amazon UK - note the pre-order price guarantee

The Kindle release at Amazon UK 

And here's a handy list of all the outlets I could gather together on one page, together with various other potentially intriguing Sparks-related links

​Should you need further cajoling, here are Eleven Reasons You Need Jack Sparks In Your Life!

Lastly (I swear), if you've read and enjoyed the book, please know that a review anywhere, even if it's just a single line, makes a world of difference.

Goodbye!

I'd never done a book reading before, but this weekend's Derby Edgelit genre event has changed all that, oh yes. And no, despite the picture above, I was not on drugs. And neither was I eighty years old. HOW DARE YOU.

Book readings weren't necessarily something I've always been dying to do. Like many authors (I suspect, anyway), I'm happier for people to read the words I've written, vacuuming them into their own brains from the page. Depending on how you choose to approach the task of reading your work aloud, it can start to become a little too akin to acting for my liking. I mean, Christ - have you SEEN awesome Timebomb author Scott K Andrews do a book reading? It's like watching Macbeth at the fucking Globe!  He does all the accents and everything.  Wonderful to watch, but waaaaay out of my comfort zone as a 'performer'. 

I couldn't possibly have had a better experience for my first book read, that's for sure. It was wonderful to be invited by Super Relaxed Fantasy Club to read from my Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks (new mass-market paperback out July 28, fact fans!) SRFC was founded by authors Jen Williams and Den Patrick a few years back, as a pleasantly laidback space. It was an honour to appear at a special SRFC evening as part of Edgelit, along with the excellent Maria Lewis, whose novel Who's Afraid? is the first book of her moon-howlin' werewolf saga, out now through Orbit. Here we are, look, just before entering Super Relaxed Fantasy Club. I think it's fair to say Maria was more super-relaxed than me. Only to be expected, since she's a super-badass who sometimes starts a sentence with "Motherfucker", even when she's not pissed off with you.

In Den Patrick's absence, SRFC co-hosting duty fell to the dashing author Peter Newman, who did a splendid job (and was also very entertaining on panels earlier in the day). Maria went first, reading a pleasingly gory chapter from Who's Afraid?, before fielding questions from the other assembled and super-relaxed attendees. And then it was my turn. 

First thing you notice before reading in public, is how dry your mouth happens to be. You'd think that your brain, knowing that you're about to read, would alert the saliva glands and tell them to increase production, double quick-sharp. But no. It does the frickin' opposite. Still, that's what endless sips of water are for. 

I read a piece of the exorcism in Chapter One - a shorter version of the chunk you can read on the Jack Sparks site here. In this scene, arrogant celebrity journo Jack begins research for his supernatural-debunking non-fiction book, by attending the apparent exorcism of 13-year-old Maria Corvi, in a small, rural Italian church. As Father Primo Di Stefano commences the rite, Jack is endlessly sceptical about the increasingly convincing events that unfold before his eyes.

Halfway through my reading, the microphone I was using died. Just died. It became an ex-microphone. As I momentarily flailed, an attendee chuckled and said, 'Maybe it was Maria...'. Maybe it was, gentle readers! But anyway, I carried on and projected a bit more. Happily, the attendees weren't that far away from me.  And it all seemed to go down well. The penultimate line, which includes the words "cock-sucking", "post-Friedkin" and "fellatio", got the kind of laugh I was hoping for, so that was a relief. The Q&A was very nice too, with some fun questions. And so thank God, the reading was done and I could have a pint. 

As a sidenote to the spooky microphone business - as soon as Peter Newman tried it afterwards, it was working fine. An altogether chilling state of affairs, I'm sure you'll agree.

This was the fifth Edgelit, ably co-ordinated by the author and publisher Alex Davis. Having been chained to my desk for the last few months, toiling over Novel Two for Orbit, all the socialising came as something of a shock. But once you get over the surprise of de-hermiting yourself, it's brilliant to catch up with other writers and non-writers alike. 

My day started at 10am with a panel discussing the difference between the labels horror, thriller and chiller. Hosted by the lovely VH Leslie, the panel also featured the utterly tremendous trio of Sarah Pinborough, Marie O'Regan and Johnny Mains. 

Here's me talking shit on that panel, alongside La Pinborough (thanks for the pic, author/editor/properly lovely fella Paul Kane!)...

And here's me getting to know Johnny Mains later on. I'd never met him before and like him a lot - a very funny man with a real passion for horror and more than a hint of rock 'n' roll about him. Check out his Dead Funny anthologies that he co-edits with Robin Ince, gathering horror stories by comedians including Stewart Lee!

The second panel I quacked on, moderated wonderfully by Marie O'Regan this time, was all about what it's really like to be a professional writer. Definitely one of those panels where you find yourself trying to listen to the other panelists rather than talk: especially when those other panelists are of the calibre of M John Harrison, Nina Allan and Ali Shaw. I find it endless fascinating to hear other writers' experience of doing this job. At one point, I may have said that writing fiction is a ridiculous and stupid thing to do for a living. Actually, I totally said that and stand by it. Thankfully, the wonderful parts of writing fiction (the 30-second commute, having a great team around you, occasionally getting told you did an all right job, those all-too-rare times when you write with confidence and authority, feeling nigh on un-fuckin'-stoppable) make it absolutely worthwhile. 

It's always lovely to see such genre titans as Paul Cornell and Mark Morris, albeit far too fleetingly amid the maze of panels and workshops. I also met some great people who I'd previously only known via email and/or the gift of social media. Gollancz author Edward Cox, for one! What a lovely man - you must check out his Relic Guild fantasy series, if you haven't already had the pleasure. I also finally met my Orbit press officer Nazia Khatun, who is brilliant at press and also brilliant in person; the mighty writer and podcast supremo Alasdair Stuart, who proved to be a really, really nice man in person (no surprise, frankly); and the author Gemma Todd, whose 2017 debut Defender certainly looks to be one to watch out for.

I also met some people who I hadn't known via any medium, like Kit Power. Very much a kindred spirit (horror, metal, Doctor Who, sayyyy no more) Kit has a novel brilliantly entitled GodBomb! and having met this fine fellow, I plan to add it to the reading pile. I also enjoyed meeting the author Russell Smith, who seemed to be doubling as a photographer for the day, multi-talented gent and British Fantasy Society chair Phil Lunt, the enigmatic-sounding-but-lovely author A K Benedict and one of the event's guests of honour, Emma Newman.

This post has now fundamentally become a list of people, which is all very well and good, but I must now stop listing people (if I inevitably missed anyone out, it's PURELY because I'm afraid of the depth of my FEELINGS FOR YOU) and keel over. Thank you Derby Edgelit - that was great. You rock, goodbye.

Hey, look at these brand new Jack Sparks bookmarks! I will definitely bring some of these to Edge-Lit 2016, the Derby genre event at which I'm appearing this Saturday alongside a whole constellation of star writers like Sarah Pinborough, Paul Cornell, Edward Cox, Alistair Reynolds, Emma Newman, Conrad Williams, Johnny Mains and many more. If you're at the event, stride up to me and pledge allegiance to Satan (or just say hello) and I'll hand one of these bookmarks right over. If you want one, that is, obviously.

At Edge-Lit, I'll be doing my first ever public book reading, from The Last Days Of Jack Sparks. I'm very happy to be doing this as part of Super Relaxed Fantasy Club, the monthly event founded by authors Jen Williams and Den Patrick - and am very grateful indeed to Jen and Den for the invite, especially given the fast uptake of SRFC's author slots these days.

I'm also on a couple of Edge-Lit panels as follows (full schedule here):

10am-11am Horror, Thriller, Chiller... What's The Difference Really? Jason Arnopp, VH Leslie (chair), Johnny Mains, Marie O'Regan, Sarah Pinborough. Sponsored by Crowded Quarantine Publications

4pm-5pm The Truth About Writing: What's It Really Like To Be a Professional Writer? Nina Allan, Jason Arnopp, M John Harrison, Marie O'Regan (chair), Ali Shaw Sponsored by Fox Spirit Books

Looking forward to all that. See you there?

And while I have you: the paperback release of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks is out on July 28 in the UK, with cover quotes from M.R.Carey and Alan Moore! The Kindle version is also still half price at £2.99, at the time of writing.

In the States and Canada, there's a hardback edition set for September 13! I've seen the dust jacket design and it looks tremendous. And if you're in those parts of the world and simply can't wait, stop hyperventilating: I have you covered right now with the Kindle edition. Because that's simply the kinda guy I am. Goodbye.

Hello! Step into my blog boudoir and for Christ's sake put down that axe. Here's the latest news on my authorly behaviour.

In five weeks on July 28, the mass-market paperback edition of my Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks will be unleashed. It's a story about an egotistical celebrity journo who laughs at the Devil and pays the ultimate price.

​In addition to the original cover blurb courtesy of the great M.R.Carey, this new edition carries a new quote from the one and only Alan Moore - 'A magnificent millennial nightmare'!

If you simply can't wait to read the book, though, the good news is that the first edition is still available. The C-format paperback can be found here at Amazon UK - and the Kindle version is half price for the next week!

Yes indeed - the Kindle book is usually priced at £5.99, but until Monday the 27th it's a mere £2.99. If you don't believe me and are now shrieking, 'But Jason Arnopp, that's just a DERANGED BARGAIN', then you'll just have to see it with your own two eyes right here.

Rather a lot of good stuff has happened around the book, since I last blogged about Alan Moore phoning me up. There's more surreal stuff in the pipeline too, some of which I can't blab about just yet. But here are some things I can say about Jack Sparks: 

I'm interviewed in a double-page SFX feature (see pic above), in the August issue out on Wednesday, June 22. Huge thanks to the mag's Jonathan Wright for the feature, and to photographer Joe Branston, who made the impressive effort of travelling from Bath to Brighton to capture my soul in his evil photo box. You'll never know how many chips we had to feed that seagull, in order to bribe it to fly past at the correct moment.

I'm also interviewed in Sci Fi Now magazine soon! Really enjoyed doing the interview with the splendidly-named Jonathan Hatfull. I'm not sure when that issue is published, but rest assured I'll let you know on Twitter when the time comes. 

The Last Days Of Jack Sparks receives a very enthusiastic review indeed, over at top blog Liz Loves Books. Liz declares it to be, 'creepily, stealthily, hilariously, inventively brilliant'. Christ on a bike.

Here's another great blog review, from sci fi author Jamie Sawyer: 'From the get-go, Sparks grabs you, shakes you and won't let go'. Cheers Jamie!

Down under in Sydney, reviewer Verushka at pop.edit.lit declares that Jack Sparks is, 'like nothing you've ever read before'. And thank God, she seems to mean this in a good way.

And here's a remarkable tweet from Jess Radl (@JessRadl), who says, 'I've never been so enthralled by, excited about and resentful of a book in my life (except maybe Stephen King's It). Wow, thanks so much Jess!  And here's Dan Chamley (@dansmonsters) tweeting, 'It's like a bastard book child of Stephen King and Lucio Fulci. Just magnificent'. Since King and Fulci are two all-time favourite creators of mine, this is praise indeed, to say the least. 

But that's enough quacking about praise (yes, yes, I know, it was already enough about three paragraphs ago). In other news:

• I'll be among the guests at next month's Edge Lit fest in Derby, with other festivals to follow this summer.
• Author Rob Boffard included Jack Sparks in his wonderful three-minute rap in praise of 64 genre books! Check it, yo.
• Orbit US are releasing a special hardback edition of Jack Sparks on September 13!
• There's currently a Goodreads giveaway to win a special advance reading copy of the novel. Ends July 10!
• Oh, and keep your eye on the Jack Sparks tribute site, which is rolling out new additional content as we shriek and will continue to do so, posting a new segment of the book each week!

Now I must haul down the blog-shutter and leave you with some ever-so-handy Amazon links...

Good day to you.

The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, half price on Kindle at Amazon UK 

The Last Days Of Jack Sparks in C-format paperback at Amazon UK

Pre-order The Last Days Of Jack Sparks mass-market paperback, out July 28 at Amazon UK

The Last Days Of Jack Sparks on Kindle at Amazon US

Pre-order the hardback edition of Jack Sparks at Amazon US!

​And hey, this may shock you, but other genre books ARE available. Here are some really rather splendid ones at Amazon UK...

Scott K Andrews' new Time Bomb novel Second Lives

Laura Lam's new novel False Hearts

The paperback of Jenny Colgan's Resistance Is Futile

The paperback of Chuck Wendig's Zer0es

​Pre-order Paul Tremblay's latest, Disappearance At Devil's Rock

​Joe Hill's new epic, The Fireman!

M.R.Carey's latest novel Fellside!

​Claire North's latest novel The Sudden Appearance Of Hope!
​

The call went to voicemail last week, while I was in the shower.

When I returned to my desk, I saw the call had come from my friend John Higgs' mobile. Nothing strange about that, I thought to myself, while pressing play on the voicemail.

That’s when the unmistakable tones of Alan Moore filled my ear and the room went as hot and hazy as Arizona.

“Jason, I thought Jack Sparks was an excellent book,” said the man behind Watchmen, V For Vendetta, From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The final twists were absolutely amazing.” He went on to say some other ludicrously nice things, but they would spoiler you, so I’ll draw a veil.

Incredibly, when I finished playing this voicemail back, I did not wake up. Seriously, I didn't. Not even after the twenty-seventh play. While this was very much the stuff of dreams, it had actually bloody happened, in reality and everything.

I had known that John Higgs, who is a friend of Alan Moore, had placed a copy of my Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks into the great man’s hands at some point last year, motivated by the belief that Alan would appreciate a modern take on horror. But who knew if Alan would ever read it, let alone even vaguely enjoy it? Far as I was concerned, I’d have genuinely been happy if the book had ended its days propping up a wonky table in the Moore residence.

I sat down for a while. Then stood up and paced around. Finally I mustered the courage to phone John back. After picking up, he handed me over to Alan (apparently my tinny voice was heard squeaking out of the phone at this point, going, “Oh fuck!”), who said ludicrously nice things all over again, but this time directly into my brain in real time. All I could really do was try to balance my insane level of gratitude against the need to stay relatively cool while talking to Alan Moore. That, and try to ensure that I listened a lot more than I spoke.

I definitely jabbered about how I’d been recently been watching and enjoying Show Pieces, his and Mitch Jenkins’ collection of linked short films. That aside, I’ve no idea what I said. Hopefully I really did just listen. But what a very lovely man.

Before leaving John's company that day, Alan hand-wrote the following blurb quote about The Last Days Of Jack Sparks...

‘Classic supernatural horror that takes a frenetic and self-obsessed modern world in its confident stride. The Last Days Of Jack Sparks gives us ingenious and funny diabolism, repurposed for the 21st Century. A magnificent millennial nightmare.’

Wow.

Wowww.

I still haven’t got my head around this. No, not at all. It really is the cherry on the cake after such kind words on the book from the mighty likes of M.R. Carey, Sarah Lotz, Chuck Wendig, Christopher Brookmyre, David Schneider, Lisa Jewell, Paul Tremblay, Andy Nyman, Rick O'Shea, Ken Bruen and Andrew O’Neill.

Also, let's be clear: this blurb means that if you don’t enjoy The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, you might as well be calling Alan Moore a liar.

Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what it means. Ahem.

Partly because writing is really really tough, my writing confidence had blipped, the day before Alan Moore’s voicemail arrived. Happens to us all from time to time. And sometimes the universe seems to know exactly you need and sets about delivering it to you in a bizarre and surreal manner.

I now have possession of Alan Moore’s actual handwritten quote on Sparks. It’s going up on the wall above my desk, to remind me never to doubt myself again. Not unduly, anyway. Regular flashes of self doubt are absolutely essential, in a Can I Do This Better? or Have I Taken A Wrong Narrative Turn? or Would Crystal Meth Reaaaally Help Me Hit This Deadline? kind of way. When self doubt gets out of control, though, that’s when you run the risk of paralysis. And we simply can't have that. Like sharks, we must swim or die.

So. That’s put a spring in my step for the rest of the millennium. If you haven’t read The Last Days Of Jack Sparks and would like to become an early adopter, here’s my handy Jack Sparks page listing various worldwide outlets. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a lie down with a cold flannel on my head.

For some months, I've been working on my second novel for Orbit Books. It's going great now, thanks for asking, but in the early days the book hurled some alarming curveballs right at my face, because that's what books do.

Smoke grenades led me staggering down blind alleys of narrative. Characters who had once seemed integral to the story, actually needed to be winched clean out of the manuscript forever, taking many thousands of words with them. Ideas that had once seemed great in my head, actually weren't so great and it turned out there were far better ways to do this. Cue more thinking, more planning, more gnashing of teeth, more demons dancing around my head shrieking, "You can't do this writing thing! You're an idiot!"

Chances are, if you write then you've experienced similar issues, regardless of your experience level. Every new project feels like it requires a brand new skillset.

And you know why that is? It's because you're conjuring up something out of absolutely nothing, out of the clear blue sky. And that's incredibly difficult. If we writers are all gifted at one thing, though, it's forgetting that it's always hard. Oh yeah, we're great at blaming ourselves until we remember how hard it always is.

As I quacked on Twitter recently...

There are positive sides, however, to accepting just how brain-meltingly tricky writing should be. More positive sides than negative, I'm saying.

​First of all, what's the alternative: labouring under the delusion that writing's a breeze? That's a surefire way to churn out complacent and under-cooked work. Whereas if you know how hard writing is, you know how high you need to aim. As a result, you're much more likely to turn a realistic and unblinking eye to your work and see its flaws and problems, hopefully before non-editorial readers get a chance to point them out in an excruciating Amazon-based smackdown.

I certainly never thought writing fiction was easy, but I suspect there was a time, many years ago, when I reckoned it was easier than I do now. I multi-tasked more and was probably more productive in terms of the number of projects I took on. But looking back, perhaps I wasn't aiming quite as high as I thought I was. These days, I hope I genuinely aim to write something properly great. I may very well fail, and that's for the reader to decide. But I know I devoted more back-breaking work to my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks than I'd ever put into anything before. Because in a world that effectively offers endless alternative channels of entertainment, why should we expect readers to commit to a book that's anything less than great? Anything less than next level, even, in some respect or other? These thoughts are as terrifying as they are true.

Regardless of whether we succeed in our lofty aims, acknowledging the size of the challenge and facing up to it, that's half the battle. And I think that's why writing perversely seems to get tougher, the more experience you gain: you realise how insanely perilous this mountain you pig-headedly keep attempting to climb really is.

You come to realise exactly what writing takes. What it really takes. Especially when you're operating on a landscape liberally studded with geniuses.

So. If you often feel like writing is tougher than wading through a swamp in concrete boots, and the sheer difficulty of it all regularly inflicts a terrible paralysis upon your very soul, then congratulations: you're so one of us. Because the vast majority of writers feel exactly the same way. Here's to tipping your head back, gazing up at the mountain's peak and feeling the fear, then digging the first crampon in anyway. (And of course, if you find writing a breeze, then I'm delighted for you and you're still one of us. Just a bit weird.)

We'll end with the words of one of those aforementioned geniuses. One who, in this great quote, references two other geniuses.

Steven Moffat: "There isn’t one single script when I’m not, at some point, sick-makingly terrified of my inability to write it. I mean, it’s just hard! I asked Russell T Davies, 'Do you ever wanna stick your head out the window and shout that you don’t know what you're doing?' And he said, 'Oh God, every day.' He then mentioned it several times, saying how Cardiff Bay was echoing to his cries!"

"And every time I make a script work," Steven continues, "it feels like luck. I don’t think that feeling ever goes away. It really is that hard, and that’s what it’s supposed to be like. The sheer amount of thinking you have to do, to make this work! When I read scripts that are bad, it’s often because they’re just lazy. The writer hasn’t thought things through in the way that I would. There was a quote from John Cleese, around the time he was ruling the world with Fawlty Towers: 'If I’m any good at writing comedy, it’s because I know how hard it’s supposed to be.' And that’s it. It’s shockingly difficult and emotionally upsetting!” 

I don't go on ferris wheels, but they're fun to watch. So when the Brighton Wheel was being built on the seafront five years ago, I found a suitable vantage point to take a few snaps. 

And now sadly, the Brighton Wheel has gone, to make way for the ludicrous donut on a stick that is the i360. But I took a few snaps of the wheel being dismantled too.

So here, for your pleasure, is The Rise And Fall Of The Brighton Wheel. (Click on Read More to reveal the photo gallery.)