Emma Newman's Blog

Look, I have a book I should be writing, but I have so many other words screaming in my head that I need to write them down first. Buckle up, my darlings, because this post is breaking my social media rule of ‘Try to only be positive online’. I'm angry and upset. This post is too long. It’s probably riddled with flaws, but I’m not doing this for any other reason than to get it out of my damn head, and out into the world, because screaming into a pillow just isn’t cutting it anymore.

This story begins at a kitchen table in Shropshire

About two and half years ago, I had a conversation with one of my closest friends, in which I was full of despair about generative AI. She couldn't understand why I was so afraid. She said something along the lines of “People will always want art made by people, you’re worrying about nothing” in the kindest way she could. 

(And before I go any further, I am NOT talking about the sort of machine learning advances that have led to good things in the biomedical field, for example.) 

I tried to explain to my friend that I didn’t fear being replaced, that instead I feared that generative AI would be used to take away the jobs that authors like me rely on. That whatever it made would be mostly shit, but tech bros have become really good at convincing people who know nothing about tech to invest billions into it, and that this was going to vastly more harm than good before it collapsed just like any other tech bubble.

By 'authors like me', I mean those whose books are not bestsellers. I mean those who have to do one or more other jobs to be able to afford to live, so we can write. I consider myself very lucky because I have managed to carve out a life in which the other jobs I do are also creative, i.e audiobook narration, podcasting, making and selling visual art at conventions, and (very rarely) think tank type stuff. 

But I don't earn a decent living from all of these things combined. I live a frugal life, like millions of other people struggling to survive in the UK. I don’t go shopping for anything other than food, and that’s always the cheapest I can find. I don’t go on holidays, or out on day trips, or out for meals (unless it is a very special occasion for someone else and then I get so damn stressed about money). I only go to conventions that have some sort of financial compensation/accommodation provision (vanishingly rare) or an art show that can subsidise my attendance (displaying art is logistically difficult, a lot of extra work, and fundamentally a gamble as sales are not guaranteed). And as much as I love conventions, I simply could not attend at all if they weren't part of my job. LARP is my only frivolity, and I’ve cut back on that this year too. Sound familiar? Yeah, it's not fun worrying about money all the time, is it?

Narration work is very sporadic. I refuse to have advertising on the podcasts I currently produce, so the very small income from those is through Patreon. Making the Imagining Tomorrow podcast actually financially crippled me, as there was only a small amount of funding and it took up over a year of my life. The total words written for that one season was the same as a full-length novel, and on top of that was research, interviews and all of the audio production. Making it was a terrible decision for my finances, as I couldn’t write anything else at the same time. But it was important to me. I am proud of what I made. There is absolutely no way I would be able to make another season without a substantial grant.

Royalties from my nine novels, two novellas and short story collections are paid twice a year and barely keep me afloat. My Patreon is tiny but literally enables me to put food on the table. Book advances are shrinking across the entire industry. Social media has fractured and become algorithmically hostile to creators on so many platforms that it makes it even harder to get the word out there about our books. There is a cost of living crisis that is making absolutely everything harder.

I feel conflicted about writing all of that, because some might think I’m moaning. I’m not. I’m trying to give an indication of how precarious this is. I am autistic. I went through over fifteen years of trying to hold down ‘normal’ full time jobs, and went through repeated cycles of catastrophic burnout as a result. Teaching was the job that lasted the longest, and only because of the holidays. I still almost destroyed myself doing it, and couldn’t go back to it now. This patchwork, insecure, fragile working life I’ve struggled so hard to establish is my only option.

In that conversation with my friend I explained that I am barely scraping by. (I still am barely scraping by 2.5 years later). I am a single parent. If I didn't have a housemate who earns vastly more than me and is happy to pay a greater proportion of the bills, I'd be in even more trouble. I am very lucky in so many ways. Because all these other things I do to survive take time and energy and mental bandwidth, I cannot write books fast enough to maximise the potential royalties pool.

I told my friend that in 5-10 years, my audiobook work was likely to dry up completely. Not because AI generated voices would get good enough to 'replace' human narrators (I firmly believe we are many more years away from that). I explained it was because Audible will use the tech to destroy the economic ecosystem that makes the costly production process I am part of viable, making it too expensive to produce books the ‘old fashioned’ way. 

Audible and of course, its owner Amazon, have a long history of using business practices to crush and devour competitors. Two and a half years ago I said that this would just be another way for them to do that. That it would probably start with an offer of the service to self-publishers who can’t afford to pay narrators, to build up a vast number of audiobooks that use their generative AI narration service, to get consumers used to them at both ends of the process; producer and consumer. Then access to the service would be widened. And publishing companies will be convinced that using the service to maximise profits by cutting out the narrator and sound engineer and producer and proof-listener is the only way forwards. 

It would be no-one’s fault, of course. It’s economics, I said. It’s always economics. Using real people, with decades of hard-earned experience will become a luxury expense. People will start saying that it’s unfair to make publishers and consumers pay for audiobooks produced the ‘old-fashioned’ way. Any dissenting voice will be branded as a ‘luddite’, or cruel for not giving self-publishers the opportunity to publish an audiobook, when they don’t have the money to pay for it the ‘old-fashioned’ way. “All the narrators I’ve heard are rubbish! Screw ‘em!” will fill the comments sections on newspaper websites. 

My friend thought I was catastrophising. Because, in fairness, I have a tendency to do that. But not long after that conversation, I heard about a novelist with a journalism day job getting fired, along with many colleagues, because the publication was pivoting to using gen AI software to produce endless slop to fill pages with advertising space that could be sold. Visual artists have been suffering for far longer. Incredibly skilled linguists, who bring nuance and deep understanding to translation work are being laid off all together or forced into being editors, narrowing the scope of their work, and of course, the change being used to justify lower wages. 

In the time since that conversation, I have seen countless examples of fellow writers losing their day jobs, desperately seeking replacement work in the hope of staying afloat long enough to be able to write the next book. Look, it’s bad, okay? Across all of the creative industries. 

So did any of that catastrophising come true?

Two and half years after that conversation over 40,000 AI narrated audiobooks are available on Audible.

And Audible has just announced that it’s opened an end-to-end production service to a selected group of publishers to produce AI narrated audiobooks. Which will ultimately be widened, no doubt.

Of course, it’s all being framed as a fantastic opportunity for Audible and rights owners to make even more money. To compete with Apple and Spotify in the booming audiobook industry. People will argue that it’s only the audiobooks that never would have been made in the ‘old-fashioned way’ that will be made using AI, so they can co-exist! Everyone wins!

Spoiler: only a very small number of people are going to win here

To me, this looks like yet another example of an industry’s booming profits only being seen by an incredibly small number of people, the vast majority of whom haven’t actually created the source material. And yes, some self-publishers may be able to earn some money from this, when that wasn’t an option before. But obviously, they'll have to pay Audible for the service, or take a bigger hit on their royalties if it's not an up-front payment. Good luck having your audiobook found out there amongst the other thousands of AI narrated books that lots of people are filtering out of their searches, my friend.

Every single time I see some industry development that is touted as being good for everyone, I see a development that makes a small number of people insanely rich, starves out the creators (aside from a tiny, tiny percentage) and makes the end product cheaper and less valued than ever before. The people who commission the audiobooks, who have genuine passion for human narrators, may hold out as long as they can, but when the market is flooded with audiobooks that cost a tiny fraction to produce, and gradually erode away the consumer’s expectation of and preference for human narration, the financial pressure will grow to limit the number of non-AI audiobooks. It will only be the mega-bestsellers, and/or the authors with enough clout/money/sheer bloody-mindedness to refuse an AI narration that will keep the non-AI audiobook industry afloat. All the while the money is sucked ever upwards to Audible, and profit margins are squeezed, and production companies are forced to keep everyone’s wages/narration fees as low as they possibly can.

I self-published a short story collection called Before, After, Alone which is set in the same universe as my (traditionally published) Planetfall books. To create an ebook in 2023 was far, far easier than it was back in 2010 which was the last time I looked into it seriously. Progress! How marvellous! And as I’m lucky enough to be a narrator and experienced audio producer I made the audiobook version too. 

Amazon has driven down royalties for self-publishers over the years. There was a time when people could make a decent living from it. Then the Fire Nation attacked. Sorry, I mean, Amazon realised they’d sucked enough people into their ecosystem and destroyed enough of their competition to drastically reduce the royalty shares given to authors, thereby maximising their own profits. The most successful self-published authors lost a catastrophic share of their livelihoods overnight.

I didn’t want to only publish on Kindle, because of my ongoing disgust with Amazon, so I ‘went wide’, distributing to other platforms so my readers would have a choice on where to buy the ebook, meaning I receive a much smaller royalty per copy.

That decision literally cost me over £2000 in lost earnings on the ebook alone, because the vast majority of readers buy through Kindle, and I earn less per copy because I wouldn’t give Amazon exclusivity. 

I published the audiobook through Findaway Voices, which at the time was an independent audiobook distributor, and ‘went wide’ through them too for the same reason. That decision also cost me money (I can't face totting it up right now, but hundreds of pounds at least), because of the same smaller royalty share thing.

And then Findaway Voices was bought by Spotify, who have moved into audiobooks, because clearly they weren’t satisfied with devaluing music and wanted to branch into other types of audio too. So going wide simply led to me losing royalty share on Audible, and then being sucked into an arguably worse ecosystem. The only place I can sell my ebook without anyone taking a cut is on Ko-Fi, and that’s only because Ko-Fi were kind enough to give me a gold level service because of the money I raised through them for the RSPB off the back of my Dad’s balcony duckling adventures. I am lucky if I sell a couple of copies through Ko-Fi a month, even though tens of thousands of people bought the traditionally published Planetfall novels. I dread to think how few copies I would have sold of the ebook or audiobook if I didn’t already have an established audience.

Who cares?

You know what? I’m so tired. So fucking tired of doing all I can to financially stay afloat long enough to make the next book/podcast/audiobook, while the people who are running these distribution platforms do all they can to make that harder, whilst getting even richer.

Sod it, I could just get ChatGPT to ‘write’ a book (trained on our stolen work), then get Audible’s AI service to make an audiobook (probably trained on our stolen narrations) with no human being involved at all! Who cares if it’s slop? Who cares if it’s good? None of it is worth anything any more. But I bet the Audible subscription price won’t come down, will it? 

I should just go and get a proper job. Like those jobs in which people are using AI to summarise meetings and documents, to read emails, to reply to emails, entire email exchanges never passing through a single human consciousness. None of that matters either! All those skills being degraded, all that institutional knowledge being lost, all those mistakes being made and compounded upon, all those jobs eventually being such a reduced fraction of the original that wages are driven down more and more… who cares?

Those plucky venture capitalists need something to invest in, after all, and what better than generative AI? Be glad, fellow tiny economic unit, for a small number of people are getting insanely rich! That’s what being human is all about, right? Not to create anything. Not to deepen our understanding of the world and being a human. Not to love, not to alleviate suffering, not to try our best to make things better for each successive generation. No, the only true purpose of existence is to get rich, and if you’re too stupid/lazy/poor to do that yourself, then the only value you have is how you can enable rich people to get richer.

But I’m just catastrophising! They can’t get rid of everyone’s jobs! They can’t starve writers and artists out of creating! They don’t want you to stop, so they can still make money from you! If they destroy all the jobs, how would anyone be able to buy anything anymore?

But darling one, have you not realised that the infinitesimally small number of people benefitting from this foul, ridiculous system are already so rich that it doesn’t matter to them? They fundamentally do not live in the same world as we do. Do you think, for one single moment, that they will ever struggle again? Bezos could close Amazon down and never, ever need to dip into anything other than the interest payments of his current assets. He’s won the Game of Life.

And they can starve some of us out of creating, and already have. It feels like I am being ground to dust. That there are so many different existential threats I don’t even know which one to be more concerned about. And it doesn’t have to be this way. We could have libraries in every town, meaning absolutely everyone could access our work and we could actually earn a living from it. We could have functional public services, a first-rate national health service, healthy affordable food, social housing, the money to really start turning the climate crisis around - the list goes on! But no. No, we can’t have those things because then the people in power would have to reverse the decisions made by Reagan and Thatcher (and all the successive governments) to funnel money up to the rich. And funnily enough, the vast, vast majority of the rich are also either the people in power, or funding them. 

If you’ve got this far, hell, thank you. I’m not usually like this, I promise. I’m just so damn angry. And tired. And scared. For all of us. This is only a fraction of the damage being done by the generative AI industry. I could spend months writing about it, but all I would be is poorer, my book would be late, and not a damn thing would change.

I’m just a girl, standing in front of the British government, asking why they want to give away all my work as part of the UK's 126 billion pound creative arts industry, to serve another industry being run by greedy tech bros, just so they can destroy everything else just that little bit faster.

Hello my lovelies,

I would really love to write one of the blog posts that have been percolating over the past few weeks, but truth be told I’m on a deadline that a broken ankle and then covid have made tighter than I would like. So this is going to be one of those rather functional posts to give you all the news, I'm afraid. There’s a fair amount, so let’s crack on!

Firstly, my new book The Vengeance is now available for sale wherever you usually buy books, and it’s been wonderful seeing copies popping up on my BlueSky feed as pre-orders have arrived. 

There’s a new episode of Starship Alexandria available wherever you listen to podcasts, in which Adrian and I discuss The Etched City by KJ Bishop. The second patrons-only episode is also live over on the Starship Alexandria Patreon, in which we are very enthusiastic about the movie Aliens. 

In the next episode we’ll be discussing Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. That episode will go live on June 9th, so if you want to read it before listening to our discussion, you still have time!

Eastercon in Belfast was wonderful (despite the fact that I caught covid on that trip for the first time ever) and I am delighted to let you know that I am one of the Guests of Honour at Iridescence, the 2026 Eastercon, along with fellow authors Dr Karen Lord and RJ Barker, for the convention next year! I am absolutely tickled pink! Anyway, during the Belfast Eastercon, the wonderful authors Lauren Beukes and Jeannette Ng started the Genre for Trans Rights charity auction which raised £20,000, to which I donated an online 1-to-1 version of my workshop on overcoming procrastination for writers. A second auction is now running with a whole new slate of wonderful things you can bid on, which you can find here: https://www.32auctions.com/genrefortrans

Out and about

I’ve got a few events coming up that you might be interested in:

It's Strange Up North, Leeds, Saturday 24th

Cymera Festival, Edinburgh, 6th-8th June. I’m on a panel at 5pm on Friday

Norcon, Oslo, 13th-15th June (I’m one of the Guests of Honour! So excited!)

Will I be seeing you at any of them? Let me know in the comments!

Right, that’s all the news for now. Sorry this has been such a whirlwind post, but I need to go back to the 1660s now. Let me know in the comments if you've read anything brilliant lately, or watched a great film! Bye!

For the last few months, I been working on a secret project with my lovely friend and fellow author Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a podcast called Starship Alexandria and is, at its heart, all about loving a book/film/graphic novel so much that we want to not only tell everyone about it, but also discuss why we loved it. You can either listen to the episode directly from the embedded player below (if that isn’t appearing in your emailed newsletter, simply go to www.enewman.co.uk to read this in your browser) or just go straight to https://starshipalexandria.com/episode-1-the-kraken-wakes . It should be available in the places you already listen to podcasts too.

In the show, set several centuries in the future when all of Earth’s problems have been solved, we take turns to recommend something we love to the other, who then reads/watches it for the first time and then decides whether to recommend it. It’s relentlessly nerdy and positive, and I really hope it brings you as much joy to listen to as it brought us to make it. 

Season 1 has ten monthly episodes all in the can, and there will be a bonus episode every month for patrons too. If you like the show and want to listen to discussions of things both of us had already consumed and just absolutely love, recommend works that YOU love for the special patrons only episodes, and maybe even become the captain of your own vessel in the fleet, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/StarshipAlexandria .

Eastercon approaches!

I will be at Eastercon in Belfast over the Easter weekend and am really looking forward to it. I will be exhibiting in the art show with lots of painted planets among other abstract art, and also unique planet pendants will be available at the art show's 'print shop' too, just like they were at Worldcon in Glasgow last year. Here is where you can find me through the weekend:

Table Talk
ICC Boardroom 2  Fri 15:30–16:30
Join me for an hour of cosy & casual conversation!

Autographing
ICC - Hall C&D Sat 11:00–12:00  There may be early copies of THE VENGEANCE available if we are lucky!

Reading from THE VENGEANCE
ICC Boardroom 1 Sat 12:30–12:50

In Conversation - Guest of Honour Jeannette Ng
ICC - Hall 1 A  Sun 12:30–13:30
I will be interviewing Jeannette, who is an absolutely stellar person!

Writing Workshop: Overcoming procrastination so you can write
ICC Boardroom 3 Sun 14:00–15:00

Panel: Approaches to Worldbuilding
ICC - Hall 1 A Sun 17:00–18:00

If you’re going to Eastercon, come and say hello!

How to be a bless-poppet

Speaking of The Vengeance, there might be early copies at Eastercon if we are really lucky, and of course, it’s available for pre-order: geni.us/thevengeance and here's a link for pre-ordering from local independent bookshops in the UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-vengeance-emma-newman/7713374

Pre-ordering a book is super helpful for me as an author as it shows my publisher that people are eager to read new things from me. It’s also the easiest way to become an absolute bless-poppet.

That’s about it for news. To be honest, it’s been a really rough few months, thanks to the broken ankle (which is recovering and I’m off the crutches, thank goodness) and a couple of major hits of bad news in my family, so I’ll leave it there for now. I hope you enjoy Starship Alexandria and that it helps to get you through these horribly interesting times we live in.

Em xx

A few weeks ago I got to play Bridge Command in London and I got to be Captain! It was amazing! That picture was taken by my friend Tony, and posted with his permission. You can see me in the middle there, looking a little bit stressed! (If you’re reading this as a newsletter and the picture hasn’t come through, you can see it on my blog at www.enewman.co.uk) If you want to find out more about what it’s like to play the game, it’s the focus of my latest Tea and Sanctuary episode.

Right, before I get stuck into a big long post about… stuff, I want to let you know about a few things coming up.

I will be attending Eastercon in Belfast! Are you going? I will be taking some paintings and pendants for the art show, and have applied to be on programming. Let me know in the comments if I will see you there!

At the time of writing, there are a few days left to nominate for the 2025 Hugo Awards. Many I humbly present my podcast Imagining Tomorrow for your consideration in the Best Related Work category?

Oh, and of course, The Vengeance is out on May 8th and available for pre-order in both ebook and paperback formats (there will also be an audiobook version, that I narrated).

I’m gradually moving over the archive of Tea and Jeopardy episodes to YouTube over the next few months as I streamline my web hosting. You can find the playlist here if you want to listen to the show again (though my goodness, the sound quality is terrible! Podcasting has come a long way since 2013!).

Further to my last post, I’ve taken Instagram off my phone, so won’t see things if you try to contact me there. I’ve also received several friend requests on Facebook lately. Apologies if you have sent one, but I’m not responding to them as I’m spending as little time there as possible (it’s frustratingly difficult to ditch completely due to LARP and other niche groups that just aren’t anywhere else). The only social media site I check semi-regularly now is BlueSky (and I am minimising use of that too). So if you want to connect on social media, that’s the place to do it, but I recommend subscribing to this blog as the best way to keep up to date with what I’m up to.

Brain tangles about social media

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging again was to work out how I feel about things. When I get all tangled up about something in my head, trying to press it into the page in such a way that it makes sense helps me to sort out the mess. Lately, that mess has been bubbling up when navigating life online.

A long time ago, I decided upon a series of social media rules for myself. They were pretty much as follows:

Maintain a strict privacy line when it comes to my home life, especially my child. If I post anything about him, it is only when I have his enthusiastic permission.Be open about suffering from anxiety (and, more recently, receiving a late autism diagnosis), to help other people not feel aloneIf I haven’t enjoyed something, don’t talk about it online. Only talk about stuff I’ve loved.Don’t boost stuff that is overtly click-baity, rage-inducing, or seems to be designed to increase polarisationDon’t offer commentary on subjects outside of my expertise (especially political ones)Try to add warmth and a sense of cosiness, providing something close to respite from the world

The thing is, I made those personal rules for my own online conduct about 16 years ago. It was a different world in so many ways. And now we are living in what feels like the darkest timeline.

On social media (by which I mean, online social spaces that I do not curate, unlike this blog/newsletter) I have not been talking about the techno-fascist coup happening in real time in the United States, and how they’re throwing Ukraine under the bus while they’re at it. I have not shared my rage and grief at the genocide in Palestine. I have not been venting my frustration with watching my government continuing the mistakes of the last forty years in prioritising the interests of capitalists over the fabric of society. Or my rage that my trans friends are suffering the onslaught of hate directed towards them. Or my eternal frustration that disgusting men fail upwards again and again. I am not posting about all of the ways in which billionaires who have more money than they could spend in multiple lifetimes are finding new ways to destroy the lives and livelihoods of people who are already struggling to survive.

I talk about all those things in the real world. But I don’t talk about any of this on wider social media because it breaks several rules. For one thing, if I talked openly online about all of the horrors I mentioned above and more, I’d hardly be providing respite or solace. I don’t offer commentary on political subjects for two reasons: 1) I am not nearly well-educated or qualified or relevant enough to offer anything more than a barely informed opinion, and lord knows there are already FAR TOO MANY of those online and 2) because I fear that I would merely being cranking the handle of the machine made by techbros to keep us all arguing with each other instead of focusing on more important things. You know, like the staggering wealth inequality that is destroying the fabric of society, amongst others.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I have no faith in the ability of social media to do anything except polarise opinion and reduce debate to something so shallow that it is actively dangerous, so I am loathe to use it for anything other than trying to boost non-upsetting things.

That rule was broken a few times lately, when I re-posted some stuff relating to the recent AI consultation being run by the UK government, and boosted a post from someone in the SFF community rightly drawing attention to the appalling intention of the US government in deny visas to trans people and how those of us living outside of the US shouldn’t attend US based Worldcons because of it. I am not able to attend Worldcons outside of the UK and Ireland anyway, so it’s hardly a sacrifice on my part, but I felt it was an important point to make.

And even that feels hard as I know there are people organising the Seattle Worldcon right now, pouring thousands of hours into creating an event for an international community that wants no part of this right wing driven horror.

Does social media even matter?

Who actually cares what I say online or don’t say online, other than me? Nobody, really, but the reason I keep wrestling with all of this is because I know that the hateful views of a tiny minority are being constantly amplified to look like they are the views of the majority, and it feels wrong to let that go unchallenged.

I think about all the times when I pushed back against bigoted comments made at real world gatherings during my son’s childhood, not because it would make any difference to the opinions of the people saying them (in fact, I suspect they delighted in making me angry), but because I wanted my child to know that what they were saying was wrong. I think about the deep conversations I have with friends in which opinions are shifted, in which both of us learn things and are actively engaged. I think about conversations with family who are not as left-leaning as I am, and I gain an understanding of how the way they see the world differs from mine. And sometimes, just sometimes, I manage to help them see things differently too.

But the online world is not the same as having an in-person conversation over cups of tea. The people who follow me online are not my child and I have no responsibility for them. Quote-posting information about awful things and expressing disgust feels like cranking the tech-bros outrage machine. And fundamentally, social media is not the best place to have discussions about complex issues.

At the end of the day, I’m just a tired woman trying to write books, survive under capitalism and help her kid to thrive. I don’t think what I say on social media will ultimately have any real impact. It is ephemeral, distorted by algorithms and not what it used to be. For now, I will save my energy for long form prose, podcasting, and the things I can achieve in the real world.

In fact, here’s a brilliant example of why doing stuff in the real world is important, and why I will always choose to amplify the people doing great things.

One of the amazing people I interviewed while researching the Imagining Tomorrow episode about young people was Destiny Boka-Batesa, one of the co-founders of the Choked Up Campaign, which campaigns for cleaner air in London. She is a remarkable young woman and my interview with her was one of my favourites. You can watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/MzGezpzf7Go

I thought of her again today because a report has just been published by the Greater London Authority about the impact of ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) and this paragraph made my heart leap for joy:

“London’s more deprived communities are seeing greater benefits from the ULEZ; for some of the most deprived communities living near London’s busiest roads, there’s been an estimated 80 per cent reduction in people exposed to illegal levels of pollution”

This is exactly why the Choked Up campaign was founded. Destiny and her friends did fantastic work in engaging with the candidates up for election for mayor, and their work, along with other campaign groups, has achieved this. Their campaigning is very much rooted in real world action, rather than social media, and it worked.

People like Destiny keep me hopeful.

Right, I need to go nurse my broken ankle* so I can get back to writing my current work in progress. That book won’t change the world, but hopefully it will take someone out of this one for a few hours. And sometimes, that rest is just what’s needed to rekindle a little bit of energy to face these times. Hope is so hard to hold onto. Hold fast, my loves, hold fast.

*I wish I could tell you that I broke it doing something really adventurous, but alas, no. I was walking. On a flat pavement. While wearing trainers and sober. I still have no idea how it happened. Oh wait, I do. I'm clumsy as hell. Yup.

If you’re reading this in your inbox, hi! It’s been a while. I was about to say ‘I hope you are well’ but given the state of… everything, I will instead say ‘I hope your support system is strong’, because these are the times we live in. If you’ve landed here on my website from elsewhere, welcome! 

Over the past few months I’ve been giving a lot of thought to online life. I’m still figuring things out, but one of the things I remembered in this fallow, reflective period was the fact that I used to blog to help myself work things out. 

Somewhere along the line I stopped doing that. Now I am making a commitment to rediscover that process in the hope that I can reclaim what social media took from me. 

Before I get into this, for those of you who subscribe for news, The Vengeance is out in early May, I’ll share pre-order links when all formats are available for pre-order, as it's only the paperback right now. 

It may be rather dramatic to say that social media ‘took’ anything, but hear me out. I remember when we all used to blog (and lo, there is the GIF of old man Simpson shouting at clouds playing in my head) and people used to comment on each other’s blogs and then you’d follow the link to their blog from their comment and read their stuff. (Before you say ‘But people are still blogging!’ let me finish.) Back then, you’d actively encourage people to go to other places, because you liked them. No algorithms were involved!

Back then, I used to get up in the morning and be excited about seeing whether anyone had commented on my latest post or piece of flash fiction! I used to feel like I was walking down a virtual street and saying ‘good morning’ to people when I saw familiar names in the comments and replied to them. It feels like another lifetime. Another world. Now I fire up my computer like someone checking on a strange noise coming from downstairs. It will probably all be fine, but sometimes, there's someone horrible right there. And even when there aren't, there are horrible people screaming through the windows while I chuckle at wholesome Star Trek: TNG memes.

At the risk of being an old nostalgic gen Xer, the internet was enjoyable for me back then. And then… then we started posting the links to our blogs on Twitter and Facebook. And for a time, it was good. We had that ‘virtual water-cooler’ thing going on. New people found our blogs. We found new blogs too.

Then, the Fire Nation attacked.

No, no, what I meant to say is, then the algorithm wars began. We didn’t even know a war had been started, because it was one of those quiet invasions and the battle was for not only our attention, but everything that was good about being online. The Oatmeal did a great comic about this. It sums up that period of time when we all got sucked into using ‘hubs’ like Facebook to reach more people, then when they’d corralled everyone into their space, they closed the gates behind us.

"I think we lost something in the rush towards ease and speed and convenience."

It’s the oldest game in the book. Tempt everyone in, because it's so easy and so convenient, wait until the competition has atrophied, buy out or cut off the remaining competition, then make it worse for all the people trapped in your ecosystem. So much worse. Now these platforms decide what we see, in whatever order maximises their profits, regardless of whether we want it or not. Feeds are full of AI slop. We’re being deliberately shown stuff designed to make us angry and upset to increase ‘engagement’. So many people are desperately trying to find connection, and it’s getting harder and harder to do so. Many of us are addicted to scrolling these awful feeds, desperately seeking the feeling we used to get, left with nothing but a lingering sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction.

And you know what I’m ashamed of? That I just… let it happen. I wasn’t one of the people who kept up their blog, even though I had a site that could handle that. I shifted into newsletters, but even then I just… stopped… sending them. 

At some point, I became a lurker in my own online life. 

I deleted my Twitter account a few months ago after moth-balling it when that awful man bought it, and moved to Bluesky and Mastodon. The latter I barely use now. I never post on Instagram, I just scroll. I do share stuff on Bluesky occasionally, but I don’t hang out there like I used to on Twitter, probably because I am fully expecting it to turn into something awful at some point.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped really taking part, but I didn’t stop scrolling.

For a while, I thought it was because I was just too damn jaded. I’m in my late forties. I’ve seen this cycle of enshittification so many times now, I just don’t have the energy to go through it all over again. The brilliant Cat Valente wrote a stellar post about this.

After Zuckerberg’s recent declaration of fealty (I’d say it was like a bloody Scooby-Doo villain unmasking, but I can’t bring myself to find even a fatalistic mirth in any of this), the need to remove myself from his places shifted from a vague desire to free my brain from addictive behaviour to a suddenly urgent need to stop my attention making him richer. But then I realised how deep the claws had sunk in. Some of my people are only on Facebook. If I delete my account, I will lose touch with them. How will I know what’s going on in my LARP circles? How will I learn stuff from the niche interest groups I’m part of?

But then a new question floated up. Am I really connecting with those people? I want to! But is reading sporadic updates and rarely commenting really being in each other’s lives? I’ve been mistaking addiction to a terrible social media platform for connection, and it has to stop. 

But I’m worrying about what I’ll lose by deleting social media accounts, even when they do not nourish my life. It feels like I’ve been doing the digital equivalent of just eating at one junk food chain, because I’m too tired to cook, only to suddenly realise that there are no other food outlets in town. They all went out of business, because everyone was at the junk food place. I feel like crap because I’ve only been eating crap and what I need to do is actually learn how to cook and invite people over to dinner again, to strain the metaphor.

Well I know who I’d like to go out of business now. I’m still tired, and not used to writing blog posts (this is probably too long, damn it) and I’m not really feeling safe online anymore but I have to do something.

It starts with this blog post. I feel like I am waking up from being in a state of numb passivity. We can take back what they took from us. I need to put the effort in again, and take responsibility for letting myself get sucked into all that rubbish. It’s going to take work, to restore this ecosystem, but we need to do it.  

If you’re a subscriber, you’ll hear from me a bit more often (but probably only once a month or so as I have a LOT of stuff going on) as I plan to send out these blog posts as my newsletters. I’m hoping they will be a bit more enjoyable than just me popping up twice a year to throw a bunch of news at you and then run off into the sunset! 

How are you feeling about your online life? Does what I've said resonate with you? Or have you managed to keep your own oasis in this sad desert I've been stumbling through? Let me know, and tell me about your blog if you have one.

As for whether you're debating whether to subscribe, I plan to write about all sorts of things, just like I used to. There will be stuff about writing, and all the nerdy stuff I love and blimey, so much more! And it will be here, not in a thread on someone else's site. Let’s make the internet what we need it to be again.

Well, I know it's the week before a convention because a) I have been fighting brain weasels about public appearances and b) I've just finished a new batch of planet pendants for the art show!

This year, my much beloved local convention, Bristolcon, is going to be on both the Saturday and Sunday for the first time ever! You can still buy a membership on the door, so here is the website with all of the details: https://www.bristolcon.org/

Here's what I'll be doing alongside exhibiting in the art show*:

Saturday
10.50 - First ever reading from my new book 'The Vengeance'!
11.00 - Panel: 'Interactions' "Conventions like Bristolcon are a great place to meet and chat with people you might previously have only been fans of, but sometimes that can be nerve-racking. Our panellists are here to convince you that writers are (often shy) people too, and we're all fans of somebody!"
15.00 - Panel: 'Writing Historical Fantasy' "If you want to write historical fantasy, you need to do a lot of research, and it can seem daunting. Where do you start, and when can you deviate into the realms of alternate history? What do you gain from basing your fantasy story in the real-world past?"
17.00 - Workshop 'How to overcome the fear and finish writing a book' "When you are struggling to write a book, whether it's your first or your fiftieth, the advice to 'just sit down and write' is woefully inadequate. This practical workshop is all about how to overcome the mental obstacles to getting a book finished, even if you haven't started it yet." Please bring a pen and piece of paper to this!

Sunday
15.00 - Panel: 'Apocalypses - How Many Ways Can We Destroy The Planet?' "As life becomes ever more interdependent and science gets the fuzzy end of the lollypop, can we scare ourselves sensible by showing how many ways we can go down or shall we sanitise with the absurd?"

If you are going, please do say hello!

*Regarding the art show, I will have paintings, sculptures and planet pendants on show, all of which will be available for sale. Please note that I do not have a card machine! Cash / PayPal / Bank transfer will be the only options. Thanks!

Hello my lovelies,

Well, tomorrow I start driving north to attend Worldcon in Glasgow. It's the first big convention I've done in five years, so I am feeling a heady mix of excited and nervous. In case you missed it, here's a post containing all the information about my schedule, including how to sign up to my Table Talk, and the 'Meet the Artists' session.

Which leads me neatly onto the fact that I will be exhibiting paintings and sculptures at the art show after several intense weeks of preparation. You can see one of the paintings in my gallery entry here. All of the items will be available to buy in the silent auction that runs over the weekend, and I've also made 50 unique pendants which are numbered, signed and available for instant purchase at the 'Print Shop' area of the art show in Hall 4. I made a video showing you the pendants so you can have a look before the show.

The planet pendants that will be on sale at the Worldcon Art Show

In other news, I had my new author pictures done after leaving it far too long, and you can see them here. The photo that is the featured image on this round-up (I hope it's visible for you lovely subscribers!) is one that my Mum found this weekend, showing me serving proper Stranger Things vibes in 1984. It made me so happy to see it because the memories it brought back of getting the Ewok Village for Christmas were intense! It was taken in my maternal grandparents' living room, and truly I have never seen so many horrific brown patterns clashing in one room before! I hope it makes you laugh like it did for me!

Lastly, another episode of my podcast Imagining Tomorrow was released, and it's all about trees! It's available in all the places you can listen to podcasts, and also here.

Right, I need to go and pack! Let me know if you're coming to Worldcon, and if you're a patron, do make sure you check the email I sent out for details of the Patrons Only meet-ups that I'll be doing on Saturday and Sunday at the event. Oh, I have a signing session at Worldcon, so if you have any of my books and would like me to sign them for you, bring them along!

See you on the other side,

Em xx

So, next week I will be travelling up to Glasgow, with a load of art for the art show, to participate in Worldcon 2024. I am both excited and faintly terrified. (It's okay, I always find conventions faintly terrifying, but this is the first really big convention I've done since 2019 so, yeah, I may upgrade that to 'Rather Terrified'.

As you can see in the image, I have a few things to keep me busy, which I love. In addition to those items, I will be taking part in the 'Meet The Artists' session on Friday 3-6pm (I will be there from 3pm and stay as long as my brain allows). If you'd like to go to my Table Talk (formerly called Kaffeklatch) you can find out how to sign up for it here: https://glasgow2024.org/whats-on/programme/tabletalks/

I will also be meeting up with my Patrons, so if you want to be included in that, but aren't yet a Patron, you can fix that here:https://www.patreon.com/emmanewman

If you just want to say hi, and maybe have me sign a book I've written, please do come to the autographing session on the Sunday if you can! I am always worried I will sit there like a lemon for an hour and you could save me from that!

Let me know in the comments if I will see you there!

I hate having my picture taken. And I mean really hate it. Whenever a camera is pointed at me, I just freeze up and end up looking like some weird parody of myself. That's why I put off getting new author pics for so long... nine years, in fact!

Thanks to a couple of wonderful pictures snapped at conventions, I could use some that were more recent than that, but even the most recent of those are six years old and, well, there's no getting away from the fact that I'm looking older now. The past six years have been some of the hardest and most traumatic of my entire life and, to be honest, I think it shows.

I don't want to go to Worldcon and have people be freaked out by how much older I look now if all they've seen of me is old photos, so here is my new official author headshot.

And the photo at the top of the page, that I used for the featured image, is one that I just liked, because it makes me look like the subject of one of those portraits that rich people get painted of themselves, and that amuses me. (I really wish I owned that cane, but it was a prop at the studio!)

This is one of the outfits I'll be wearing at Worldcon in Glasgow, so that will help you to recognise me if you're there too. I am painfully shy, so please do feel free to come and say hello and talk to me about nerdy goodness if you wish. I am always utterly delighted to talk about Star Trek: The Next Generation in particular, and to sign any of my books.

I will be arranging a lovely tea date with my Patrons too (I've just posted a behind-the-scenes picture from the photoshoot for them), I'll be exhibiting art in the art show (that you will be able to buy!) and am feverishly hoping that I'll be blessed with some programming appearances. Once the schedule is released I'll pop anything I'm lucky enough to be taking part in on here.

Let me know if I will see you there!

A couple of weeks ago I took part in an online panel hosted by Ethex as part of London Climate Action Week, and it was all about shifting to a different economic model that is less harmful to the environment and to society. A video of the discussion highlights can be watched below.

Beyond Profit panel discussion

I was invited to participate because of my work on the Imagining Tomorrow podcast, in which I explore possible positive versions of the future based upon things being done in the real world, right now. It's kinda the opposite approach to the Planetfall novels in which I extrapolated the near future based upon all the terrible things happening right now.

Anyway, I recommend watching this whole video as it summarises the Doughnut Economics model and features several interesting and incredibly positive people all striving to make the world better. But if you want to just skip to the bit I'm in because you're curious about what I have to say in spaces that are not SFF genre focused, my bit starts at 5.02. There's a link to the full discussion in the video description (this one is an edited highlights one).

Em x