Well, it looks like Gmail sent last week’s newsletter to the spam folder. Possible reasons for this include: Google (like most tech companies), doesn’t employ humans to deal with issues like this anymore, so it’s basically impossible to know which of the above is the case. Hopefully this week’s newsletter… (keep reading)

Despite the fact that I’m mostly writing episodic shorts in an ongoing series, I try to make sure each individual story has a definitive ending. Most stories in The Casefile of Jay Moriarty could, in the event of my untimely demise, serve as a conclusion to the series. This makes… (keep reading)

This video on Women and the Men Who Write Them discusses, among other things, the way The Last of Us Part II ends up arguing against itself on the subject of revenge because it tries to apply a narrative about “breaking the cycle of violence” to a character whose experience… (keep reading)

A few years ago, the company I worked for at the time hired a speaker to come and do a talk about “growth mindset.” Attendance was not optional. The speaker listed, among his qualifications, that he was quite good at table tennis. In one part of his presentation, he talked… (keep reading)

Book publisher Unbound went into administration (functionally, bankruptcy proceedings) last month. They’ve been behind on royalty payments to authors for a while (and openly intend to keep not paying them for the foreseeable future). It also looks like, in at least one case, they were deliberately under-reporting sales of books… (keep reading)

Hey, so what the fuck is up with Cory Doctorow lately? Earlier this month he posted a review of Pat Murphy’s new book Mary Darling and managed to be demonstrably wrong about both Sherlock Holmes and Peter Pan. First, here’s what he had to say about Peter Pan: If you… (keep reading)

The UK government has announced their intention to introduce new immigration restrictions, cribbing turns of phrase from Enoch Powell in the process. I’m not going to get into the details of my visa situation but the practical upshot of this is that, for me, permanent settlement in the UK has… (keep reading)

Following up from last week, I’ve set up a new website for The Casefile of Jay Moriarty! The first story and two interludes can be read for free, and subscribers can get access to the full Casefile for as little as $1 USD/month. This is a webspace I own and… (keep reading)

I love ebooks, but as a format they’re a real pain in the ass. If you’re not already An eBook Person, getting started is a labyrinth of confusion; you can either sign up for one of the big user-friendly platforms like Kindle, which lock you into using only their bookstore… (keep reading)

I’ve had to look at a lot of job postings recently, and one sentence in a listing for a media production company jumped out at me: “Today, people want to watch and listen, not read.” First off, I don’t think that’s universally true. In my particular social bubble, I’m constantly… (keep reading)