Mark Chadbourn's Blog: Jack of Ravens

If you like reading or viewing or writing in all its forms, I’ve set up something new just for you. It’s a newsletter where you can get things straight into your inbox and it’s also a website where you can read everything online if that’s your preference.

Infinite Monkeys HQ

I’m going to be writing about all the things I’ve learned along the way — books, TV, film, all of it. I’ll talk about getting agents and publishers, the dos and the don’ts, intel from commissioners, pitching to people in TV, detailing how I got my book picked up by the BBC, showing some of my own work. Reviews of books and movies and TV shows because it’s good to learn from the craft of others.

I plan to interview some industry people — I know a lot who owe me favours — and other creators too. It’s going to be a broad, flexible approach, both small stuff and big stuff, because all of it’s useful.

There will be an associated feed on Bluesky for those who want a more immediate reaction and somewhere to gather and chat. Seek out @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social. And there’s an Instagram feed just starting: @infinitemonkeysHQ

You can subscribe to the newsletter via the link. The free tier will include just about everything I write available for a while before it’s archived. With a free subscription you’ll be able to comment under the articles and get to know each other.

The very affordable paid tier — cheaper than a coffee a week — is for those who want to go deeper or to get extra information: regular Q&As where you can get answers to your own specific queries, full access to the archive, videos, scheduled one on one sessions, and for those who’ve found their way here through my own writing, exclusive fiction — short stories, chapters of upcoming works, sometimes the kind of stuff I like to do that is away from the mainstream.

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A four-part adaptation of my book Testimony is going to land on BBC One this Halloween.

Called The Witch Farm after the hit podcast adaptation, it will star This is England’s Michael Socha and In My Skin’s Gabrielle Creevy.

It’s the true story of Bill and Liz Rich who move into an isolated house in the Brecon Beacons and are instantly pitched into a supernatural nightmare.

I have a consulting production role on the series.

If you’re interested in my investigation of the case, Testimony is available in paperback and ebook on Amazon in all territories.

Here’s UK.

Here’s US.

I’ve written about the need for musicians, filmmakers and writers to take a stand against the rise of the Far Right as they did during struggles in the past.

Shiny new author copies have arrived from Flame Tree Press, a powerful collection of Folk Horror witchcraft tales, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane.

I’ve got a story in there – The Smokeless Fire – about witchcraft in Afghanistan during the US withdrawal.

Looking forward to reading all the others.

I have a story in this: Lost Out Here In The Stars, set in Gobekli Tepe in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war. Out in September.

Proud to be listed alongside these excellent contributors:

Tananarive Due

Christopher Golden

Josh Malerman

Tim Lebbon

Eric LaRocca

A M Shine

Jonathan Maberry

Hildur Knutsdottir

Ai Jiang

Angela Slatter

Priya Sharma

Benjamin Percy

V Castro

Gemma Amor

Cavan Scott

Premee Mohamed

Hache Pueyo

Steve Toase

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got my British Fantasy Award-winning story The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke back into print as an affordable paperback and ebook.

The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke painting hangs in the Tate in London and was created by Richard Dadd while he was incarcerated in the notorious asylum Bedlam. The story tells of Danny who goes on a quest to discover if it’s a portal to Faerie, as some say, only to find himself opening up another door, one that leads to memory and madness.

It’s available in all territories, but here are links to the UK and US editions.

You’re floating along a broad, slow-moving river. The landscape on either side is familiar, peaceful, with outcrops of wildness. Suddenly you flow into a gorge where the furious whitewater threatens to flip over your raft and drown you.

Between those towering walls of stone, you have no idea where you are. You just know that if you want to survive you have to cling on for dear life.

This is where we are now. The world is nothing but turbulence as every unresolved issue of the twentieth century plays out at once. And we have no idea where we are going until the river opens out again into the new, flat countryside.

I first came across that analogy years ago in The Meaning Of The 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint For Ensuring Our Future, a prescient book by the technologist James Martin. It perfectly encapsulated the upheavals that were coming as the twin Ages of Digital Technology and Communication disrupted everything.

That turbulence isn’t getting any less. If anything our pitiful raft looks like it might not make it past those jagged rocks to find the promised land of abundance that allegedly lies ahead.

I’ve started writing on Substack every Friday in an attempt to drain a little of the terror out of our current situation by empowering people with news and information in a dangerous and confusing world. If we can peer through the spray and see the obstacles ahead, there’s a chance…a chance…we might be able to navigate a safe path until we’re out of this mess.

The more you know, the safer you are.

I hope you’ll subscribe to my Substack newsletter. It’s free and you’ll get a few lovingly crafted words in your inbox every Friday, hopefully with information that’s useful to you.

As my pinned post on Bluesky says: “The theme…is Everything is Connected. The posts cover news and politics from all over the world, things that I think it’s worth paying attention to but which may not always get priority in other media.

“Even if it happens five thousand miles away it can still roll up on your doorstep.”

Protests in Tbilisi in Georgia. A conflict between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan. The endless, bewildering upheavals of the Trump administration. The war in Ukraine. Death and destruction in the Middle East. Industrial sabotage in Germany. Warships in the South China Sea. Fascists in Brazil. Russian mercenaries in Mali.

Seemingly disparate events. But if you look closely you can see the strands that connect them all.

On Substack I’m going to be looking to the horizon to highlight flashpoints around the world. In the process this will bring into relief the interconnectedness of everything and will, hopefully, start to reveal what lies behind it all, like one of those Magic Eye pictures.

Not all the bad actors in the world stand centre-stage. The ones you really need to be concerned about are off in the wings, in the shadows, directing what’s going on under the spotlight.

They can’t stay hidden forever, though. The more information you have about global events, the more the light gets in.

Who really pushed for Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 which prescribes life imprisonment for sex between two people of the same biological sex and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, legislation that is now being copied in other African nations? And how are those same people flooding cash into the US, UK and EU to influence local politics?

Everything is Connected.

It isn’t the place to come for deep dives into policy on single issues. There are plenty of excellent academics and journalists giving that intensity of detail. It is the place to try to make sense of the big picture, delivered in an accessible style. Communication is key. Language is important.

A little about me: I trained as an economist. When I left university I immediately became a journalist, working on the big metropolitan newspaper in Birmingham, England, before moving to London to ply my trade in the large media organisations. There I started out as an undercover crime journalist before eventually reporting from around the world.

When my first novel was published, I quit my staff job, but kept all my contacts and my passion for journalism. That meant a few more bylines here and there, but my focus was on books and screenwriting. 

Now though, the world is in a mess everywhere. The media we’ve trusted for decades is dying; not enough readers, not enough viewers, and it’s easy to see a day when it might not be around. Into the growing vacuum, those who seek power and money are flooding lies and deepfakes and propaganda to advance their agenda.

It felt an important time to me to use what skills and contacts I have to get important information out there. Hence my recent activity on social media and here on Substack.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be globetrotting. There may well be a lot of stuff about Trump America because that’s one of the prime sources of global disruption at the moment, but there will be plenty of other news from corners of the world where you may not be paying attention. The big picture will begin to appear.

The aim here, then, is to keep everyone on the raft.

Calmer waters lie somewhere ahead.

We just need to find the channels that will get us there.

I’m back. You didn’t notice I was gone, did you?

Took a brief sabbatical because life is short and the world is an amazing place and sometimes you really need to disconnect from the grind to appreciate what we all have.

It seemed an important time to come back. Things are a mess right now. Science has been forging ahead and we’re on the brink of an amazing golden age of health breakthroughs. There’s enough money in the world to solve every problem in the world. The climate crisis can be met head on.

Instead we’ve got a small group of people in charge who are happy to sacrifice all that for their own gain. Power. Cash. That’s all that matters. Charlatans everywhere.

It would be easy to turn away and imagine you have no agency in the face of everything. Muddle on through the mundane things. But everyone has a voice and the only way things will change is if there’s a chorus that will drown out the authoritarian bleatings.

You stand for Life or you stand for the Void, as readers of my Age of Misrule books know too well.

I’ll be celebrating Life.

On the personal front, a major broadcaster has greenlit the adaptation of one of my books. More when I’m allowed. I’ve written a new novel. Two short stories are going to be out in a little while. And I’ve completed the pilot script for a TV series.

I guess the sabbatical is over.

Keep dancing, even if the world is burning.

The dire wolf has been extinct for more than 10,000 years. No longer.

Now two wolves have been brought back from extinction using genetic edits derived from a complete dire wolf genome, reconstructed by Colossal Biosciences from ancient DNA found in fossils dating back 11,500 and 72,000 years.

The company says: “This moment marks not only a milestone for us as a company but also a leap forward for science, conservation, and humanity.

“From the beginning, our goal has been clear: To revolutionize history and be the first company to use CRISPR technology successfully in the de-extinction of previously lost species.

“By achieving this, we continue to push forward our broader mission on—accepting humanity’s duty to restore Earth to a healthier state.”

The New European asked me to write this piece (£££) on why the UK’s Labour government should legalise weed – to raise billions for public services, for social justice and for public health.

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/why-labour-must-free-the-weed/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10hC517U_TjNBN6WRp5Gipk4CIKAT-pSerdzguvbaqH1rnzOZHFLZliiw_aem_emq7Z3Zmuajt_stwlvi5CA