Conventional publishing wisdom holds that you’re supposed to adopt a buzzy, overexcited tone when announcing the release of a new book, the better to build up hype. I’m not sure that wisdom holds when the book in question is about a very serious, very horrible thing that won’t stop showing up in the news while you’re writing and publishing the book.
New Novella: “A Reckoning in Whitehall”
Jason Collier is on his way up in the world. Wealthy and well-educated, he’s translated a successful business career overseas into a parliament seat at home in Britain. His marriage to one of the world’s most powerful tech executives has made him a key asset to the government. It is, in light of all this success, of little concern to anyone who matters that Collier has left a trail of violated and abused victims behind him.
Jay Moriarty certainly isn’t anyone who matters — but twenty years ago, Jason Collier hurt a boy named Sebastian Moran. For that, Moriarty is going to destroy him.
“A Reckoning in Whitehall” is the tenth story in my series The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, a modern-day queer take on the iconic Sherlock Holmes villain, his partner Sebastian Moran, and the various crimes they commit together.
This one gets pretty heavy. It’s about abuse and sexual violence, and the ways in which they’re enabled by structures of power. I originally hashed out the concept early last year in an attempt to understand what were, back then, current events; I was not expecting it to be even more relevant by the time it came out.
I put a lot of love, anger, and grief into “A Reckoning in Whitehall.” It’s not a nice story, but I did my best to make it an honest one.
This Week’s Links
How Black were the pharaohs?
The surge in genetic testing coincides with rising nationalist fervour in Egypt, where economic crisis, weakening regional influence, and an influx of refugees have converged with government promotion of what some researchers call “neo-pharaonism”.
No, AI Written Romance Novels Are Not Inevitable
In between these two buried pieces of context–that both of these writers have an economic interest in the success of AI in the writing space because they sell courses on how to use AI to write books–this article only barely describes whether or not these books are any good or if readers like them.
list animals until failure
Animals must have Wikipedia articles.
You have limited time, but get more time for each animal listed. When the timer runs out, that’s game over.
I can’t help feeling like I’ve pulled a mean trick on everyone who showed up after KJ Charles called the Casefile “great fun.”
-K
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