Welcome! This is the first issue of The Vector, which is part of my paid membership programme. If you're a Handler or Legend tier member, you should be getting this in your inbox and you'll have access to the full archive of posts from the moment you sign up.
The Vector will (mostly) come out on the first and third weeks of each month, usually on a Saturday (event schedules and novel deadlines permitting), but you'll always get two in-depth craft/publishing/writing essays per month. These essays will be longer, deeper and more involved than the writing I do for free - I'm intending to caveat less, explain more and write thought-provoking and inspiring essays and in-depth, nerdy posts that will help you understand the writing world and your own creativity better (if you have ambitions in that direction).
Thank you for subscribing, and I really hope you enjoy the writing that's coming your way. Here's my first essay, which is very appropriate for the day that I launched my membership programme.
There's an amazing passage in Gabrielle Hamilton's superb memoir BLOOD, BONES AND BUTTER (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) that has stuck with me ever since I read it. Hamilton is a chef and the founder and owner of the (sadly now closed, post-COVID) New York City restaurant 'Prune'.
The passage tells the story of how, while grinding at contract catering work and questioning what she was doing with her life, she is approached by her neighbour Eric, who was the landlord of a restaurant that had gone bust and closed down. He offers to show it to her and the place is a mess - cockroaches, mould, the works. It's not an enticing prospect. But, as she explores it, trying not to breath in spores, she finds a fizzing excitement coming over her: