# Brick Through a Window

> writing and other nonsense by Kit Walker


## Posts

- [Yelling dumb things on mic for 10 years and counting](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter72/): This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the I Will Fight You podcast. In celebration, my co-hosts and I decided to revisit the first movie we ever covered: The Swan Princess. I keep track of all the movies I own and watch via a website called Trakt, and when I looked up The Swan Princess, I noticed something unusual about the banner image attached to its Trakt listing: I’ve seen a lot of official promo images for The Swan Princess over the years, and this didn’t look like any of them. That, plus the signature down in the corner, made […]
- [My personal Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood moment](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter71/): Last week, one of my books got a recommendation on Bluesky from KJ Charles. For those of you unfamiliar with the name: KJ Charles is a prominent author in queer romance fiction. Within a certain niche, this is like Stephen King popping up to tell everyone I’m cool. As you might guess, sales of my books experienced a significant bump. Because I’m in such a narrow cross-section of genres, that was enough to briefly kick me to the top of two different Amazon charts: As always, the key to being top of your field is to pick a very small […]
- ["O Canada" playing faintly yet persistently in the distance](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter70/): If you’re a Letterkenny fan you may recognize the name Jacob Tierney; he’s a co-creator of the series and also plays the fantastically homosexual Pastor Glen. Tierney is now running a new show called Heated Rivalry, which is about two male hockey players having an affair with each other. (The show about rival female hockey players having affairs with each other is called “the entirety of the PWHL.”) The show is based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels, which themselves appear to have been based on her Captain America Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes fanfiction. Reid claims she wrote the story as […]
- [The goat must burn](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter69/): The end of November marked the beginning of the Gävle Goat Livestream. It consists of a single camera pointed at a giant goat made of straw, with the surrounding environs pixelated out. There is no audio. The uninitiated may be confused as to why this livestream exists, so let me enlighten you: it’s to monitor any and all arson attempts against the goat. Let’s back up. There’s a longstanding Scandinavian tradition of creating “Yule goats”: small goat figures made of straw. In 1966, the town of Gävle began the yearly practice of erecting a giant Yule goat in the town […]
- [There's no way this won't make me sound demented](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter68/): This week I finished reading Andrew Joseph White’s You Weren’t Meant to Be Human, which according to its one-star reviews is “traumatizing,” “soooo triggering,” “pointlessly edgy,” and “disgusting.” I found it … fine. Kind of tame, actually. You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a book constantly flinching away from itself, desperate to sell you on the horror of all the blood and gore and bugs and body horror built into its own premise but lacking the vivid sensory detail needed to make any of it land. (Good horror writing and good erotic writing have a lot more in common […]
- [Insert Mark Twain quote here](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter67/): As I’ve mentioned before, a large part of writing heist fiction involves a) getting people into rooms they’re not supposed to be in and b) ensuring this process is interesting to read about. That second bit is the absolute bastard, because real-world security—especially physical security—is often a massive joke. Case in point: a recent security audit following last month’s Louvre heist has revealed the password for the museum’s video security system was, uh, “Louvre.” I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to write under these fucking conditions. If I tried to put that in a story, everyone who read it […]
- [Don't panic](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter66/): I’m switching web hosts! Following this issue of the newsletter, I’ll be migrating the whole thing over to my redesigned website at inferiorwit.com. If you’re currently subscribed via email, you don’t need to do anything. If you’re subscribed via RSS, you’ll want to change the feed url to https://inferiorwit.com/rss. The new website also allows me to archive more of my writing; if you’re into that, check out the fiction and nonfiction sections. Some of the longer stories are paywalled — you can sign up for a paid subscription for as little as $1 USD/month (or $10/year) to gain access. (For […]
- [Spooky Season is year-round if you're afraid of everything](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter65/): One consequence of my cat’s brief escape into the wilds of Edmonton is that I’m now a member of my neighbourhood’s Facebook group. Following approximately six weeks of observation, I’ve concluded that many people living in quiet residential neighbourhoods are simultaneously terrified they’ll be the victim of a crime, but so astronomically bored that they’re actually kind of wishing it’ll happen. It’s been interesting to watch my neighbours react to just about anything as if it signifies impending criminal activity. A lot of this might stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of what crime is and why it happens. I realize […]
- [I aten't dead](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter64/): Checking in briefly to report that, unlike John Denver, I did not die in a plane crash. I’m mostly settled now in Edmonton; so is the cat, although she briefly escaped into the great outdoors where, thankfully, she managed to evade getting eaten by coyotes. (They have those here.) Writing has been on a bit of a hiatus while I took care of all the moving stuff, but I’m now back on track with the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story. Watch this space. This Week’s Links Queer developers speak out as adult games remain in limbo following payment processor […]
- [Insert John Denver reference here](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter63/): Moving still underway; this time next week, I’ll be on a plane back to Canada. Overall, the prospect of leaving the UK has been less heartbreaking than I expected—but then again, it’s been increasingly apparent to me over the past year or so that this is not a country that believes in the things I believe in. One example: in Edmonton there’s a yearly event called the Heritage Festival, where all the city’s cultural communities come together and set up pavilions showcasing their cuisine, art, and history. You can get in for free, eat some excellent Ecuadorian food, then walk […]
- [Moving, and a new story](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter62/): My move back to Canada is well underway; so far it’s consisted largely of calling up various utility and service providers and informing them that no, they cannot persuade me to stay, not even if they give me a special discount, as their service is not available at my new address (across the fucking ocean). Anyway, this newsletter’s schedule may slip a bit while I get everything sorted. New Flash Fiction: “Witching Hour” If Sebastian hadn’t woken up yet, it was probably safe for Jay to check his phone. But as he reached toward the bedside table where he’d left […]
- [From new world to old country and back](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter61/): Ever since Sir Keir Starmer personally told me to go fuck myself, it’s been looking more and more likely I’ll be returning to Canada. Which is just as well, since the UK is getting weirder. One example: the Online Safety Act, a law passed under the premise that only internet users over the age of 18 should be able to access “adult” sites. There is, of course, a logistical problem at the core of that idea: how do you tell which users are over 18, and which are not? The British government’s solution to that problem appears to be “compel […]
- [Time to defend some sons-of-bitches](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter60/): So Steam has banned games featuring “adult content” from its storefront, with itch.io following suit a few days later. Both cite pressure from their payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, etc.) as the primary reason for the bans. itch.io specifically points out this pressure was induced by anti-porn activist group Collective Shout, which has some interesting ties to other conservative, pro-censorship movements. (I’ve linked to archived versions of those articles because the original publisher, Vice, later deleted them from its website due to their “controversial content.”) This means Steam and itch.io have joined Patreon, Gumroad, and other sites like them […]
- [Yes I'm late, mind your business](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter59/): By a plurality of reports, I have been released from the Gmail dungeon. Big thanks to all of you who let me know whether your copy of the newsletter came through. I still have no idea why that one email was marked as spam, and I suspect I’ll never find out. This Week’s Links The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers Iaso, who said she deals with some generative AI at her day job, told me that “from what I have learned, poisoning datasets doesn’t work. It makes you feel good, but it ends up using more […]
- [Reporting from the Gmail dungeon](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter58/): 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 goes through—and if you missed it last week, maybe check your spam folder. This Week’s Links Conservative activists gave Alberta government list of ‘inappropriate’ books in school libraries Action4Canada is a conservative Christian group with more than 60 chapters across Canada. The group promotes deeply conspiratorial beliefs, claiming the Canadian […]
- [Books on sale! (plus complaining)](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter57/): 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 it all the more frustrating when I pick up a 300-page novel, for which I paid 15 whole Earth dollars, and find out it doesn’t actually have an ending. Just a sloppy cliffhanger and an ad for the next installment in the series. And this has happened multiple times. I’m […]
- [New book (pope not dead this time)](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter56/): 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 of violence and power is vastly different from that of a conventional male protagonist. And it got me thinking about marginalized characters and revenge plots. In stories where the thesis boils down to “Revenge Bad,” the character pursuing revenge is usually positioned as someone who’s taking justice from the hands […]
- [New preorder, Madame Web, and interesting times](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter55/): 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 about factory owners during the Industrial Revolution and claimed that their major failing was a lack of “growth mindset” in embracing new technologies. The rampant labor abuse and child exploitation in these same factories was a point left undiscussed. Growth Mindset Guy is now advocating for war against Iran, claiming […]
- [New story, plus a publishing fiasco](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter54/): 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 to stiff an author on royalties (which they weren’t paying anyway). Even in the world of commercial publishing, this is an act of soul-sucking evil. The author in question, Aaron Reynolds, apparently scrapped an entire book while operating under the belief that his previous one had flopped—when, in reality, it […]
- [I've decided to be annoying about this](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter53/): 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 recall your Barrie, you’ll remember that it ends with the revelation that Wendy, John and Michael weren’t the first Darlings to go to Neverland: when Mary Darling was a girl, she, too, made the journey. That never happened. You can check for yourself. It may very well be a story […]
- [History repeats, tragedy, farce, etc.](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter52/): 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 gone from an imminently-attainable goal to a very small carrot at the end of a very long stick. As I was talking to a friend in a similar situation, they asked, “Why do we even bother trying to stay in a country that clearly doesn’t want us?” I still don’t […]
- [New website, plus priest holes](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter51/): 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 control myself, which should help me avoid a lot of the pitfalls that come with using somebody else’s platform. If my host goes down or decides they don’t want my business, I can switch to another one. If Jetpack (the service I’m using for subscriptions) succumbs to whatever the hell […]
- [Digital DIY](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter50/): 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 and can delete the books you’ve bought any time they like, or you can buy from a DRM-free platform and (in most cases) download an EPUB file that most devices can’t natively read. I’m sure this is why webnovels remain a popular storytelling format, and it’s one of the big […]
- [The sin of making people read](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter49/): 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 hearing my peers (mostly other millennials) lament that so much information they’re looking for is in video format instead of simply written down. I personally don’t have much time for video tutorials; I read faster than the presenter can talk, and my patience for jumping through a YouTube video five […]
- [Pope's dead, buy my book](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter48/): Overall, it was very inconsiderate of Pope Francis to die right before the release date of my new book. This is the kind of thing PR teams’ nightmares are made of. New Novella: “Moriarty & Moran Contribute to Community Welfare” The Barrie Children’s Hospital is holding its annual fundraising gala, and as usual all of Britain’s brightest luminaries are invited. This year, however, there are two extra guests: former SAS operator Sebastian Moran and his criminal partner, Jay Moriarty. Powers unknown intend to use the gala as cover to sell a computer drive full of valuable data. Moriarty and Moran […]
- [A new preorder, and a farewell to Gumroad](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter47/): For various ethical and business reasons, I’ve decided to shut down my Gumroad store. My account balance with them should pay out on April 18; after that point, I’ll be removing all my books from the site. Any purchases you’ve made from me on Gumroad should still be available in your account library, but I’d recommend downloading backups of everything just in case. I’ve also imported all my Gumroad subscribers to Buttondown, so if you’re wondering why you got this newsletter: that’s why. Preorder: “Moriarty & Moran Contribute to Community Welfare” The Barrie Children’s Hospital is holding its annual fundraising […]
- [Why I'm not on Kindle Unlimited](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter46/): I’ve recently had a few people ask me why my books aren’t on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service. The short answer is, Amazon is evil. Here’s the long answer: In order for an independent publisher like me to get a book onto Kindle Unlimited, I have to submit it to a program Amazon runs called KDP Select. KDP Select offers higher royalties on certain sales, access to marketing tools like free book promotions, and inclusion in the Kindle Unlimited subscription service. However, there’s a catch: a book enrolled in KDP Select must be made available exclusively to Amazon and cannot be […]
- [Turing didn't see this one coming](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter45/): There’s a weird, funny thing about running an online business where people are so often forced to interact with chatbots and “knowledge bases” that they’ll just assume any customer support process they have to deal with is automated. So when you hear from your customers at all, it’s in the form of messages that read, in their entirety, like this: download not working need refund To my customers’ credit, once I message them back they usually notice I’m not a robot and start talking to me like a human being. Which is itself kind of a nice reminder: not everyone […]
- [I am in Portfolio Hell](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter44/): I’m job-hunting at the moment, which means updating and polishing up my portfolio. While I’ve got plenty of documentation and scriptwriting samples in there, I’ve been thinking I want to include at least one prose fiction sample. The problem is that, of the two short stories I’ve written at the appropriate length, one of them is that story about Sebastian Moran taking the strap. The other one is a story which specifically dunks on tech industry recruiters. Why am I like this. This Week’s Links Azoth: The Occult Magazine of America This archive contains 53 issues of Azoth, an occult […]
- [Born to be unmarketable](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter43/): I’m from Canada, where it’s a long-running joke that our celebrities have to wear name tags. It’s certainly true that being an artist in Canada is not a job that makes you rich unless your name is Margaret Atwood; as my dad likes to point out, even Pierre Berton — one of our most celebrated writers — had a day job. But Canada also puts a lot of public funding into creative works, even (or especially) works that have no hope of turning a profit; as a culture, we seem to understand that art has value even if it’s not […]
- [Everything happens so much](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter42/): As previously mentioned in this newsletter, at some point within the past few years I completely lost track of the Hollywood hype machine. I have no idea which movies are being made, or when they’re supposed to come out, until I see whichever ads are on the side of a bus this week. It’s thanks to this state of affairs that I just now found out a Kraven the Hunter movie was not only announced, but filmed and released, completely without me noticing. I don’t know why this movie exists and from the sounds of it neither does anybody else, […]
- [Fleeing the digital old country](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter41/): For reasons that may be obvious at this point, my mother is thoroughly sick of Facebook and wants to leave the site. Unfortunately Facebook is the thing keeping her in contact with friends and family she’d otherwise never see, so she needs a different way to keep in touch with those people. One of the options she’s looked into is Friendica, an open-source and decentralized social network with much of the same functionality as Facebook. But while my mum at 71 years old is pretty tech-savvy, most of her Facebook friends can’t say the same — to them, the process […]
- [There are no dragons in this book](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter40/): Conventional publishing wisdom holds that it’s not a good idea to release a new book on the same day as a highly-anticipated title like Onyx Storm, but I’m pretty sure the overlap between my readership and Rebecca Yarros’ readership is, uh, nonexistent. New Release: “Jay Moriarty vs the Machine God” In the wake of narrowly-averted tragedy, Sebastian Moran returns to his old home in Herefordshire; his partner, Jay Moriarty, insists on coming with him. Together, they discover the cash-strapped local council has deployed a piece of software called AlgoDV to prop up its understaffed social services — and that AlgoDV […]
- [New book preorders (and other stuff)](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter39/): I have not yet figured out how one builds an effective book marketing strategy when one’s target demographic isn’t “queer romance readers” or “crime thriller fans” so much as “people who watched a lot of summer replacement shows that aired on TNT or USA Network in the late 2000s and early 2010s.” Preorder: “Jay Moriarty vs the Machine God” In the wake of narrowly-averted tragedy, Sebastian Moran returns to his old home in Herefordshire; his partner, Jay Moriarty, insists on coming with him. Together, they discover the cash-strapped local council has deployed a piece of software called AlgoDV to prop […]
- [The reign of the Vanessas Hudgen](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter38/): I think the big advantage of writing the way I do is that I’m freed from the tyranny of narrative utilitarianism. If I were writing about characters intended to be Good People, then every decision they made would be kind of a foregone conclusion: they’d have to do the Right Thing, even if that Right Thing is personally unsatisfying. But because all my characters are fucked-up horny little freaks, they can make decisions that are petty and selfish and deranged. Which is much more fun to write about. Anyway. The next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story is almost finished. Podcast […]
- [The trash version of the Criterion Closet](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter37/): I own a lot of DVDs and a growing number of Blu-rays. I’ve been collecting physical copies since I was a teenager; when everyone else started ditching their libraries in favor of Netflix, I steadfastly refused. Considering how little of what I want to watch is available to stream these days, I feel completely vindicated. I left a lot of my movie and television library in a storage locker when I moved to the UK, but now that I’ve got a multiregion Blu-ray player I’ve been digging those discs out of storage. I’ve also been buying movies and box sets […]
- [Free & cheap degenerate literature, inquire within](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter36/): Christ, you post 1400 words of your masc special forces protagonist taking the strap and suddenly everyone’s a fucking coward. Anyway, I’ve just finished the first draft of the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story. It takes place in Herefordshire, and if you pay close attention to the Sherlock Holmes story “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” you might figure out why. This Week’s Links Pornhub Sees Surge of Interest in Tradwife Content, ‘Modesty,’ and Mindfulness “If anything, the fact that ‘tradwife’ is a trending porn search term reminds me that the entire concept of the tradwife is just influencer marketing in […]
- [The rage of Funko('s IP trolling bot)](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter35/): Over the weekend, itch.io (an indie games marketplace, and also one of the sites where I host my books) was taken offline by its domain registrar in response to a complaint by an automated piece of “brand protection software” deployed by toy company Funko. (I initially assumed this complaint was filed against IMMORTAL Pop!bat, but now that the site is back up it appears IMMORTAL Pop!bat is still available, so probably not.) itch.io claims they took down the offending page immediately. But in addition to Funko’s complaint being completely automated, so was the response from registrar iwantmyname; no human being […]
- [The Thick of It was a documentary](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter34/): The UK government has decided to stop issuing physical residence permits to immigrants (like me) and start using “e-visas” instead. The practical upshot of this is that I need to register for my new e-visa using a phone app which, in the grand tradition of this country’s relationship with technology, doesn’t fucking work. From the looks of it, I’m not alone in struggling with this thing. Every time I try to call the app’s helpline, they won’t even put me on hold — the hold queue is constantly full. If I wrote this into one of my stories as a […]
- [It's capital all the way down](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter33/): One of the latest developments in the world of fanfiction is a debate over “archive-locking”: making one’s fanfics only visible to registered users of the archive on which they’re hosted (usually Archive Of Our Own). The argument in favour is that this prevents unintended use of the work (such as scraping into LLM training datasets) while still allowing members of the “community” to read it. The argument against is that this makes fanfiction less accessible, especially to newcomers and long-time lurkers. This isn’t exactly a new issue. I archive-locked a lot of my fanfiction years ago, after a similar uproar: […]
- [I hated Twitter before it was cool](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter32/): My RSS reader this week contains no less than three stories about how Bluesky is the rightful successor to Twitter and will, furthermore, save the internet. Despite this, I will not be signing up for Bluesky because I’ve determined the ideal number of Twitter-alikes in my life and it’s zero. (I also have a hard time believing the thing that will “save the internet” is yet another corporate-owned, venture capital-funded walled garden, especially one packed to the gills with Twitter’s most annoying millennials.) I had to to quit Instagram because it was trying to give me an eating disorder. I […]
- [Just Alberta things](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter31/): A friend of mine sent me this screencap from a livestream of the Until Dawn remake: Until Dawn takes place in the Canadian Rockies, and Edmonton would be one of the nearest major cities to the fictional mountain where the game takes place. It also happens to be my hometown. I’ve shown this screencap to multiple friends from back home, and all of them have had two reactions in quick succession: There isn’t a Clarke Avenue in Edmonton; most of the streets are numbered, not named. T6N isn’t a SW (South-West) postal code. In fact, there are very few addresses […]
- [The endangered lit brick](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter30/): A friend of mine is currently having his novel shopped around by an agent, and what he’s been hearing back is that the Big Five publishers almost exclusively want books with wordcounts of around 100 000 (to the point where authors with longer manuscripts, especially debut authors, are being told they should trim down to that length). Near as I can tell, this has not always been the case; I can personally recall many authors within the last 30 years or so who debuted with 600-page doorstoppers. But longer books are more expensive to edit and manufacture, and so I […]
- [New book (and last gasp of the Spooky Sale)](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter29/): The thing about publishing as frequently as I do is that you eventually run out of ways to say “I’ve written a new thing, please check it out.” Anyway: I’ve written a new thing, please check it out. New Novelette: “Sebastian Moran Inflicts Six Traumatic Brain Injuries” When an art heist goes wrong, Jay Moriarty calls for help — and in the middle of the night, Sebastian Moran heads out into the streets of London to find him. But he’s not the only one hunting Moriarty, and it’s not long before Moran’s search leads him into a clash with a […]
- [New preorder and some horny opera](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter28/): I think I’m done with Booksprout, the service I’ve been using to provide free advance copies to book reviewers. The service itself is fine, and the reviews I’ve been getting are largely positive. Near I can tell, though, said reviews haven’t contributed to book sales in any meaningful way. And while I’m generally not bothered when it comes to whether my books sell, it’s hard to justify sinking $13/month into a service that doesn’t make any difference one way or the other. If you’ve been reviewing my books on Booksprout and you’d like to keep doing so, get in touch […]
- [I return from the frozen north](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter27/): So I’m back in the UK now, after three weeks visiting in Canada — specifically Edmonton, a city I am now woefully maladapted to living in. People here in Newcastle constantly complain about the state of its public transit system, but that’s only because they’ve never been to Edmonton: a place where you will wait 90 minutes for a bus at 40 degrees below zero until the wolves get you. Despite the jetlag, I’m currently working on final edits for the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story. It’s turning out to be around 12 000 words long, which brings the […]
- [A dispatch from abroad](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter26/): I’m on vacation back home in Canada, following 30 hours of transatlantic travel ending at 1:00 AM. If you ever need to completely reset your sleep schedule, I hightly recommend 30 hours of transatlantic travel ending at 1:00 AM. Because I’m staying with my parents, who have more streaming subscriptions than I do, I’ve now seen Drive-Away Dolls. I missed seeing it in theatres, as I was reliably informed at the time that it wasn’t very good. Now, having watched it, I can report that it isn’t very good. It’s not bad, but I don’t think it achieves anything it […]
- [Meme fraud](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter25/): Committing a crime is easy. Committing a crime and getting away with it — that’s hard. One of the big stories on the internet last week was the Chase bank “viral TikTok trend.” Long story short: The prevailing narrative surrounding this whole thing is one of stupidity. There’s no shortage of posts and TikTok videos mocking those who tried to exploit the “glitch” as idiots for not realizing what they were doing was illegal, or for believing there’s such a thing as “free money.” And I’m not sure this is a matter of not knowing what cheque fraud is, or […]
- [Read my degenerate literature](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter24/): I’ve got a new(ish) story out this week, which means I must once again calculate how much of my personal dignity to sacrifice in the name of selling books. I don’t have the personal charisma or humiliation kink necessary to become an “author-influencer,” so my marketing options are limited to this newsletter, what little social media I can tolerate, and stuff like whatever the hell Crad Kilodney was doing. Anyway: New Short Story: “Move Fast and Break Things” There is something wrong with Victor Keane. This makes him the ideal choice to lead a team of mercenaries, hired to recover […]
- [Move Fast and Break Things](https://inferiorwit.com/mfbt/): Victor Keane is hired to lead a team of mercenaries and recover an oil baron's granddaughter from a tech billionaire's personal cult.
- [This is my brick](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter23/): I finally got around to uploading an avatar for this newsletter. It’s a photo of the brick I keep on my desk at work: It is perhaps worth noting that the brick was not a decision I, personally, made. A colleague bought it for me (and commissioned an Etsy artist to engrave the words “TEXT LOCK” on the side) and, later, another colleague stuck some googly eyes on it. However, I cannot recommend enough the practice of keeping a brick with googly eyes on your desk. It’s a very effective communication tool. What it communicates, specifically, is that you have […]
- [On breaking into imaginary buildings](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter22/): Still working on the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story, which involves an art gallery heist. The thing about writing crime fiction is that you are constantly figuring out: At least one of those things needs to be something your characters haven’t handled before, and ideally all three of them should be novel and interesting. This is probably why most long-running heist serials turn into science fiction after a while; they’ve simply exhausted all the real-world security measures and countermeasures the writers can find and have to start making stuff up. Well, that’s what I hope happened to them. Preorder: […]
- [Stargazing in Tynemouth](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter21/): I went to the beach with some friends last Friday night in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower. Unfortunately I live in a country forsaken by the sun with near-100% cloud cover most of the time, so that didn’t exactly work out. There was also a vague plan to roast some marshmallows, but fires weren’t allowed on the beach. My friends did, however, have a collection of tea candles and a couple of lighters. The result was this stunning example of British ingenuity: It did not work. Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You In the […]
- [I have immediately failed at TikTok](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter20/): My mum has been asking me about ways to promote my dad’s work online, and TikTok came up as a possibility. So I decided to sign up for a TikTok account and see what it was like from the creator side. My findings were as follows: Thus ends my experiment with TikTok (for now, at least). I’m not sure what I learned, if anything. If this is supposed to be the app brainwashing the world, I don’t think it’s doing a very good job. Recommendation: Terry’s Sunday Reader Where this author, reformed journalist and retired consultant waxes on with cringe-worthy […]
- [ACAB apparently includes horses](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter19/): Thanks to the shortest and least effective real estate deal in the world, I recently moved to the town of North Shields. It’s out on the coast — roughly 20 minutes away from Newcastle by car, a little longer than that by transit. By Canadian standards, this is a pleasantly short commute. By British standards, I may as well have moved to the furthest corner of Hell. North Shields is not a rural area by any stretch of the imagination. So you can imagine my surprise when, on a trip to the grocery store, I encountered a massive pile of […]
- [Y2K24](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter18/): Usually when I write about absurd technological fuckups, I’m exaggerating; the point is to show what happens when you push current tech policy and practice to its furthest extent. And then something just as dumb as a thing I sarcastically made up hits the news. Case in point: Crowdstrike. One bad patch managed to paralyze digital infrastructure worldwide because: This feels like something I wrote. A friend of mine is convinced I have reality-distorting powers, and I’m sure this will do nothing to assuage those fears. Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale We’re into the last week of the Summer/Winter Sale over at […]
- [I only lie to you sometimes](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter17/): My dad reads my writing. Well, some of it. He can handle the gay stuff okay, but the parts of my work which involve graphic werewolf maulings are a bit much for him. Anyway, he just got to the point in “Jay Moriarty Ruins Everybody’s Childhood” where a device called a Pardella is used to intercept signals from a keycard reader, and asked me where I got the idea. Here’s the thing: the Pardella is real. Sort of. It’s based on a device called the ESPKey and its successor, Mellon. They function much like the Pardella does, by hooking into […]
- ["Why, it's New Book Day, sir!"](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter16/): I’ve got a book out today, which means it’s time to make myself utterly insufferable on those few social media platforms I actively use. Fortunately I have a day job, which means — for the moment, at least — I can forego signing up for a TikTok account and attempting to sell my work as “dark academia grumpy sunshine booktok-ready romance” etc., etc. I don’t know what any of those things are and I don’t care to learn. New Novella: “Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked” A spur-of-the-moment invitation brings Sebastian Moran along for the ride as Jay Moriarty recovers […]
- [My back hurts but I have so much pizza](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter15/): I helped a friend move this weekend, which is one of those social rituals that has remained oddly unchanged throughout my lifetime. So much of what we once considered the building blocks of society have been paywalled and offshored and app-ified, and yet the most effective way to get your shit from one address to another still involves wrangling a group of friends and colleagues with the promise of free pizza. On a related note: if you make the mistake of referring to Papa John’s Pizza as “Daddy John’s” in mixed company, this is a door you can never again […]
- [It's preorder time again](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter14/): I’ve moved into the new flat, which lacked a stopper for the kitchen sink. So I had to go buy one. Do you know how hard it is to just walk into a store and buy a sink stopper? Regular retail stores don’t have them, even the ones that ostensibly stock housewares. You can order them online, but mostly only in packs of 4 or more and you’ll pay more in shipping than you will on the actual product. Instead I went on an arduous journey to the nearest big boy hardware store, where — after considerable time spent searching […]
- [Material possessions were a mistake](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter13/): I’m moving this week, for the dumbest possible reasons. At the end of April, my landlord informed me he’d sold the building and that I had two months to move out. I found a new flat, worked out a move-in date, and signed the lease. Two days after I picked up the keys to the new place, the landlord of the old place informed me the sale of the building had fallen through and asked if it was too late for me to stay. I have not stabbed anyone. I think I deserve credit for that. Anyway. I’m on final […]
- [Just some links today](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter12/): I’m heads-down on getting the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story finished, so I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the newsletter this week. This Week’s Links What Happens When a Romance Writer Gets Locked Out of Google Docs There’s been a lot of confusion over the last few months among writers — especially fanfiction writers — over content restrictions on Google Docs and whether they can ban you for writing smut. Google has not offered any clear verdict on the matter. This is the fundamental problem of relying heavily on services controlled by third parties, like […]
- [Too old for the hype machine](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter11/): My general outlook on the state of popular media is: it’s too many. I can’t keep up. Every movie I see advertised on the side of a bus is something I’ve never heard of and looks like a background gag from a 30 Rock episode. Have I seen Civil War? Of course not. I only found it existed after it was already out and everyone suddenly had an opinion on it. I am busy rewatching Stargate: SG-1. Stop bothering me. Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You The latest episode of I Will Fight You is about Vampire: The Masquerade – […]
- [Free stuff and a book update](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter10/): The first draft of the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story is done and already sitting at over 17 000 words, which means the final draft will likely be somewhere over 20 000. This is probably why it’s taking longer to write than the others did, even accounting for other circumstances. The first book in the series, “Jay Moriarty Violates the Official Secrets Act,” was about 10 000 words. The next two were around 15 000. I’m not married to 15k as the standard for the series — I’m content to let these be as long as they have to […]
- [Corporate warfare via journalism](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter09/): There are things I write about in this newsletter specifically because my dad reads it, and would find those things interesting. This week, it’s Hunterbrook Media. Depending on who you ask, Hunterbrook is either a news-powered hedge fund or a hedge fund-powered newspaper. They’ve hired journalists to investigate various publicly-traded companies; if these investigations reveal any shady practices, Hunterbrook then shorts the companies in question before making their findings public. In their ideal scenario, the value of the targeted company’s stock then goes down and Hunterbrook makes a lot of money. Apparently this isn’t insider trading, because Hunterbrook’s reporters are […]
- [Okay, I'm back](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter08/): Took a week off the usual newsletter schedule to deal with, y’know. And also to figure out what the fuck is going on with my taxes. I won’t bore you by complaining about that here, but let me assure you: shit’s fucked. Recommendation: Blindsight In Peter Watts’ novel Blindsight, a group of specialists are sent to make first contact with what appears to be an alien vessel at the very edge of the solar system. The resulting encounter begs terrifying questions about language, xenobiology, and the nature of consciousness itself. This is hard sci-fi, and I mean hard. There’s a […]
- [In Memory of Pam](https://inferiorwit.com/pam/): When I was a kid, my dad once went out to buy a goldfish and came back with a cocker spaniel. Many years later, my parents went to the pet store for dog food and came home with a Jack Russell terrier. It's therefore pretty typical that I went out to adopt a kitten and came home with the biggest, oldest, crankiest cat available.
- [Too hot for Gumroad](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter07/): Gumroad — one of the services I use to sell my books — has instituted a new content policy on their platform, banning “media that is created for the primary purpose of sexual gratification.” This rule strikes me as, among other things, difficult to enforce in any consistent way. If Gumroad points at a sex scene I wrote and says it’s intended to get someone off, and I say it isn’t, who has the final word? Who decides whether I’m a pornographer? For now, I haven’t removed any of my books from Gumroad. I’ll play the situation by ear. One […]
- [Motivate deez nuts](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter06/): I write 200 words a day. Sometimes more, but rarely less. I call this my “daily half-Pratchett.” Terry Pratchett wrote his first novel while he was working a full-time day job, and ostensibly pulled this off by writing 400 words a day. I figure being half as productive as Pratchett is a reasonable goal, so: 200 words a day. It’s not that much — one or two paragraphs, really — but it’s a steady enough pace that I can finish projects at a surprising rate. I remember reading a quote somewhere about how it’s better to rely on discipline than […]
- [My stuff's on sale again](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter05/): After some very kind reviews for “The Scent of Blood,” I’ve found myself sketching out a few more Saintstown stories. Saintstown isn’t intended to be a serial in the same way The Casefile of Jay Moriarty is. It doesn’t have a strict linear progression; I have a general idea of where I want things to go, but when and how we get there is something I’m figuring out along the way. My general rule, though, is that every Saintstown story I write should reveal some new, interesting facet of the characters or world. Anyway, for those here because of “The […]
- [Poor impulse control and government paperwork don't mix](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter04/): I’ve spent much of this week filling out visa renewal forms, which involves answering questions like, “Have you ever committed an act of terrorism?” and, “Have you ever been involved in war crimes or genocide?” I can’t help but wonder what happens if you say “yes.” Anyway, I’m also trying to read every Hellboy comic. Recommendation: Shrinking the Heroes Minister Faust is a cultural fixture of my hometown. I first encountered him and his work at Pure Speculation, an Edmonton-based sci-fi/fantasy festival which, tragically, doesn’t seem to have survived the pandemic. Shrinking the Heroes (originally published as From the Notebooks […]
- [I think I broke Spotify](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter03/): It’s no secret that Spotify is bad for music and bad for artists. Nobody should use it, except me, because the way I use Spotify is both utterly deranged and impossible under any other form of music distribution. Basically, to compile a writing playlist, I find a bunch of albums (usually movie or video game soundtracks) that seem like they have the right mood and add them in their entirety to a playlist without listening to them. Then I put the whole playlist on shuffle while I write and remove the tracks I don’t like once I finally hear them. […]
- [Bing, show me Anime Orson Welles](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter02/): Plotting work continues on the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story. I also finally got around to watching The Killer; I read the comic last year, which had a lot to say about Western imperialism and its effects on the Global South. The movie … doesn’t, and I can’t help being disappointed by that. On an unrelated note, I want to get back into attending SFF conventions this year. Not the kind where you’re expected to line up for a photo with some shit-tier actor from a Marvel show, but the kind where you can attend an absolutely unhinged panel […]
- [And Now For Something Slightly Different](https://inferiorwit.com/newsletter01/): I’m trying a new format for these, so they’re more like an actual newsletter (rather than a series of ads). At the moment I’m doing research and plotting for the next installment of The Casefile of Jay Moriarty. Research topics so far include the Costa del Sol, Silk Road, and organized crime. Recommendation: After the Storm After four years of hell serving aboard the Sympatico, a dysfunctional ship with a deadly crew, all Rich wants is to prove himself worthy of an unexpected second chance. Get some sun, make some friends, maybe hook up with a cute guy and even […]
- [Nobody is normal about Irene Adler](https://inferiorwit.com/ireneadler/): All these takes on Adler don’t make for a more empowered female character. Instead, they reflect a desire from their creators to punch her up — to make her more worthy of her title as "the woman who bested Sherlock Holmes."
- [Lockout](https://inferiorwit.com/lockout/): Alone in a new city, Jackie bonds with her troubled neighbor.
- [Runners](https://inferiorwit.com/runners/): In the not-too-distant future, staff recruiting has escalated to bloodsport.
- [Epilogue](https://inferiorwit.com/epilogue/): In the silence of an empty house, Nathaniel Sinclair staggered back to the safety of his study.
- [IV](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown03_ch4/): Danny, Eli, and Jack found themselves cuffed and loaded into the back of a police wagon.
- [III](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown03_ch3/): Jack woke with a howling gasp, lurching forward onto his knees before collapsing to all fours. One hand clawed at the front of his loose shirt, scratching frantically at the scars beneath it. The marks on his hands and throat began to move, twisting and writhing across his skin like a nest of snakes, scar tissue flushing an angry red.
- [II](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown03_c2/): Landry was a picture of the friendly neighborhood policeman, pressed uniform, broad shoulders and all. There was a certain fatherly aspect to him, despite the fact that he only had about a decade on Danny and Eli; in another life, he might have been a schoolteacher. He’d beaten a man bloody two weeks ago, on this very block.
- [I](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown03_c1/): Among the boxes and sacks that filled the cargo hold sat a large crate, labeled “Property of N. Sinclair.” Two bodies lay on the floor nearby: one with its eyes gouged out, still clutching a knife buried in the other’s chest.
- [III](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown03_c3/): “I’m not trying to wring a confession out of you,” Faulkner said. “I have no interest in judging or absolving your sins. But if I’m going to help you, there are things I need to know.”
- [II](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown02_c2/): The man went down, but his sister scored a swift punch to Caleb’s face. Pain flared from his nose all the way up to his eye sockets. A familiar red haze descended.
- [How to prevent Amazon from ruining your life](https://inferiorwit.com/how-to-prevent-amazon-from-ruining-your-life/): If you sell ebooks on Kindle and you want to insulate yourself from whatever raw deal those maniacs come up with next, you should make sure your ebook is also being sold elsewhere.
- [I](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown02_c1/): “Your execution is in a few hours,” Faulkner continued. “You and I both know it would be a trivial matter for you to break those chains and kill anyone barring your way to the exit. Yet I’m told you’ve made no attempt whatsoever to escape. Which means—” he tilted his head, as if observing a peculiar scientific specimen, “—you must want to be here.”
- [The Familiar](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown01/): Grace Foster's hunt for her husband's murderer has brought her to the city of Saintstown. But her quarry has killed again, and she'll need to rely on new, unexpected allies to bring her hunt to an end.
- [Contactless](https://inferiorwit.com/contactless/): A set of directions.
- [Beyond contains Valdemar's first "fuck"](https://inferiorwit.com/beyondreview/): Rereading Valdemar as an adult, I started to pick up on things I'd missed as a kid. Where most secondary-world fantasy is set in Fantasy England (or, if you're a relatively imaginative author, Fantasy Eastern Europe), Valdemar is very much Fantasy America.
- [I don't care why the Klingons look different](https://inferiorwit.com/klingons/): There are people who will tell you these explanations are vitally important, and every little timeline discrepancy needs to be explained. These people are annoying and you don’t have to listen to them.
- [Death, Widowers, Love, and Writing](https://inferiorwit.com/widowers/): “Gritty antihero with a dead wife” is practically a meme at this point, and yet there’s still a slew of movies, books, comics, and video games that lean on the trope with completely straight faces. It’s impossible to take these portrayals seriously, despite the fact that the reality—that of someone who's lost the person they chose to spend the rest of their life with—is utterly heartbreaking.
- [The movie we need most in 2019](https://inferiorwit.com/billnted/): I’m here to tell you Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure has something to say, and what it has to say is important.

## Pages

- [Books](https://inferiorwit.com/books/): Get my books from your favourite retailer! The Casefile of Jay Moriarty Saintstown Standalone Works Also appearing in …
- [Saintstown](https://inferiorwit.com/saintstown/): Saintstown is a city born of vice, greed, and corruption–and dark things walk its streets. A series of interweaving novelettes and short stories, all set in a fictional Gilded Age city.
- [About](https://inferiorwit.com/about/): Kit Walker is a genderqueer Canadian who spent four years in the United Kingdom, and who once slapped a pigeon on the steps of the Palais Garnier in Paris. They enjoy both reading and writing about little freaks getting into situations.
- [Privacy Policy](https://inferiorwit.com/privacy-policy/): Who we are Our website address is: https://inferiorwit.com. Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. Media If you upload images to […]


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