For the last month I’ve been getting increasing numbers of machine-generated spammy slop purporting to be email from admiring readers and/or bookclub organisers just aching to help me spotlight My Title (most recently She Is Here, but also a surprising number focused on So Lucky) and get me in front of their readers. The prose is supposed to be lyrical, a swooning paean to my genius. What the machine actually extrudes is the kind of prose that a snotty, spotty, swotty little high school student might use in a book report, to demonstrate their superior though superficial understanding of the text.

In honour of the spammers, I’m changing my profile avatar to one of my Early Medieval-style zoomorphics. This one is loosely-based on the , or Luke’s incipit page. Imagine a cat that’s eaten a whole skein of wool and shows no remorse…

For those who follow me on social media, you may have noticed I’ve been using zoomorphics as avatars for a month or so, changing them as the mood takes me. So far we’ve had my Pictish heron and Book of Kells meatloaf cat. Right now we have my kiss-my-arse Lindycat.

For those we enjoy that sort of thing, I’ll try to remember to set up a page to update whenever I update my social media profiles. Feel free to remind me. Or just, y’know, go follow me on Bluesky or Instagram or Mastodon or whatever.