I travelled all the way from rural Dorset to Newcastle to attend a reading by Chris Kraus, the author of the cult novel I Love Dick, at Newcastle University, organised by English writer Shaun Wilson.

I was invited to the event by CK herself after reaching out to her and starting a correspondence that resulted in her reading and blurbing my novella Dissolve.

Newcastle is a ten-hour train journey from my hometown, but I wanted to meet CK as well as thank her in person, so I booked a hotel for one night and embarked on the two longest train journeys of my life, back to back.

Before the talk, I was lucky enough to introduce myself to CK, who was impossibly accommodating. We went and sat at a table on our own and had a long discussion about her books, Semiotext(e), Nate Lippens, Henry Miller and Dennis Cooper.

It is hard to accurately convey how encouraging CK was about my book and my writing in general. I was quite taken aback by her enthusiasm, having only shared my writing with a handful of close (and mostly now ex-) friends. She said things and gave me advice that I will never forget. She is also the reason I have thrown myself into writing as recklessly as I have.

Before the reading, Shaun Wilson introduced CK in his down-to-earth, everyman way. Though he himself is far from an everyman, he completed a work placement at CK’s historically important independent press Semiotext(e), and is the author of the experimental autofiction novel Malc’s Boy, published by Conduit Books, a meditation on new and old masculinity.

CK’s talk was fantastic: she spoke so eloquently and openly about her own work and the nature of autofiction itself, though she told the audience she much prefers and relates more to the term New Narrative, the theoretical movement associated with Robert Glück and closely linked with Semiotext(e) itself. It reminded me of how bands rejected the label ‘emo’ in the early 2000s, preferring the term post-hardcore.

CK spoke about and read from her new book The Four Spent the Day Together, which I enjoyed, particularly the beginning, where she writes about her adolescence. She really dove into the case the latter half of the book is based on deeply, corresponding with some of the people involved in it while they were in prison. Her passion for true crime literature really came across, referencing Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood multiple times.

At the end there were audience questions; there were a lot of younger students in the crowd, so I decided to raise my hand and ask a question. Due to my debilitating stage fright, my hands and voice were shaking as I held the microphone in the giant auditorium full of people.

I asked CK if, when writing the novel, she was at all concerned with the book’s tonal shift, which starts as heart-warming coming-of-age adolescence and then ends with a crystal meth murder. I asked this because part of me just wanted more of CK’s adolescence and childhood, and genuinely wondered if, when structuring the book, she had considered whether the parts were suited to each other.

I got my answer in blunt terms: “no.” CK told me and the crowd that the book was conceived as an interpretation of the crystal meth murder, and that she had built it around her own adolescence, combining a fictionalised version of a real crime with a fictionalised version of her youth. The structure was deliberate, and any tonal shifts were intentional.

I think I was possibly transferring insecurities I would have had about writing such a novel onto a historically significant writer with a distinct, singular voice.

After the talk, Shaun invited me to join him, CK, and their friends at a local bar for drinks. CK and I were also hungry, and he said that we should have dinner at the bar.

As well as sitting and speaking to CK, hearing her talk, and asking her a question, I was now going to have dinner with her.

We sat in a quiet corner. CK ordered some kind of pie; I ordered a burger. I found this funny: the American ordering a typically English food and the Englishman ordering a typically American one.

We spoke further about her life in LA and my time singing in bands, as well as art and music. I have met and hobnobbed with a few people successful in their fields, but none of them has been as down-to-earth and generous in spirit as CK. If you ever get the chance to see her talk, I cannot recommend it enough.

After dinner I said my goodbyes and thanked CK and Shaun, then headed back to my hotel.

When I got back to the hotel I was exhausted and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. It was another ten-hour train journey the next day.

The day after I got back home from Newcastle, there was a mass stabbing on the same train I had been on for twenty hours.

While the train was moving and the passengers had no means of escape, the assailant moved from carriage to carriage, attacking people with a machete. Ten people were taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries.

One survivor of the attack said he heard the assailant say, “the devil is not going to win,” between attacks.

When the train stopped and armed police apprehended the assailant, a witness reported that he screamed “kill me” three times before being tasered and restrained.

The following day, the police held a press conference to announce that it was not a terrorist attack.

I travelled all the way from rural Dorset to London to attend the Jack Skelley reading at Beasy Cocktail Bar in Soho, as part of the Deleted Scenes reading series.

It was a boiling hot bank holiday weekend, so once I checked into my hotel, I decided to take an afternoon siesta.

I slept from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. and woke feeling great.

Once I got to the venue, I grabbed an alcohol-free Peroni and headed down to the basement, where the reading was to be held. As people began to fill in, I realised I was sitting right next to the reading area, so I moved to a seat much further back, as I was a sweaty mess and didn’t want to be in all the photos.

I told the guy I was now sitting next to all this, and he laughed. It turned out he was a fellow Semiotext(e) superfan, and we spoke enthusiastically about Chris Kraus, Nate Lippens and Derek McCormack.

PJ, the host of the evening, took the mic and welcomed us all. He was wearing a Tom of Finland T-shirt under a Hawaiian shirt and was funny, and immediately put the audience at ease.

The first reader was Lotte Latham, who read an incredible piece about hotels and her various exploits in them. She was wearing pink velour tracksuit bottoms with ‘Babygirl’ on them and a pink bikini top, and was the perfect reader for a Jack Skelley reading. Her work was printed out on a scroll that the closest audience members had to hold as she unfurled it, adding to the hilarity and joy of the words she read.

The second reader was Mary Morgan, who confidently read a piece about her love of breakfast being interrupted by an archetypal dizzy blonde. Her prose was heightened and colourful and highly engaging, with a great Thelma & Louise style ending. She could read the ingredients of a pack of Pop-Tarts and still have the audience hooked.

There was a break where I chatted to my new friend, and we carried on talking about how frequently London changes, John Waters films, Dennis Cooper, Anthony Burgess, and David Bowie’s absurdly large art collection, which I saw at the exhibition in Berlin shortly after his death and which my new friend saw later, once it made its way to auction houses.

PJ announced the reading would continue and that the third reader was Brodie Crellin, who was the most traditionally literary reader of the evening in a fairly unhinged and bombastic line-up. She read from her novel, A Sense of Occasion, a beautiful reminiscence of lesbian lovemaking and the associated power dynamics. The liberal use of the word ‘cunt’ in her delicate and measured prose was delightful. Her reading had a more sober earnestness, though no less sexual feel.

Then came the man himself, Jack Skelley. Jack Skelley is the author of a historically important book called Fear of Kathy Acker, which was an underground, samizdat work, published in parts in journals for years before being published in full by Semiotext(e) in 2023. He also recently wrote an incredible piece which was published on Hobart Pulp with art by Lydia Sviatoslavsky. Jack Skelley’s sex-crazed punk-rooted anti-literary writing is impossibly fun, as is he.

He started off reading a chapter from Fear of Kathy Acker on exactly that: fun, how life needs to be fun. I knew it well because I had reread it on the train in anticipation (it’s a breezy book and easily read in a single sitting), and hearing his enthusiasm as he read it was intoxicating. After that, he read a new piece which he told us would most likely be in his next novel. It involved Miley Cyrus and Marxist theorist Frederic Jameson whom Skelley renamed “Octopus of Totality”, and was his interpretation of a bad mushroom trip she had in a famous LA hotel. It was so wild, and everyone was laughing out loud, mostly due to Jack’s perfect comic timing.

At one point, Lotte Latham was rolling her eyes and sticking her tongue out to do ‘Ahegao’ faces; it was like a sexy fever dream, which was exactly what a Jack Skelley reading should feel like.

After the reading, my new friend and I got our books signed, and chatted to Jack. I mentioned I was a huge Danielle Chelosky and Cletus Crow fan to him, and we chatted about both of them. We said our goodbyes, then my new friend walked me partway back to my hotel and we bid farewell.

Back at the hotel, I lay down on my bed and was in a good mood. I left the aircon on the whole time and it was like an icebox. I checked my emails and had one from Elizabeth Ellen in reply to a poem I sent her.

I wrote the poem in response to the photos of herself she posts on Instagram and Substack, as well as the cover of her story collection Her Lesser Work. She had replied in kind, calling my poem ‘PATHETIC BULLSHIT’, with a row of angry and smiling devil emojis.

I immediately opened PornHub on my phone and began searching for dominatrix BDSM videos, but no combination of search terms brought up any results featuring women who looked like Elizabeth Ellen. I settled on a pegging compilation and finished myself to completion before falling asleep.

As I slept, I dreamt that I was Elizabeth Ellen’s personal assistant and ran around after her, performing tasks and making sure she was happy. In the dream, I wore a pin badge that said ‘Pleasing You Pleases Me’.

I write a lot of things that aren’t suitable to be sent to literary magazines. The plan is to post the pieces fit for human consumption here.

I have plans to finish two “scene reports” from my last two readings (Chris Kraus, and Jack Skelley), if you ever wanted to read a socially awkward forty-one-year-old man’s solo adventures to literary readings, then you’re in the right place.

I am also taking three months off of editing my literary journal/magazine Plague Circus Press at the end of the year, and am planning to use those months to work on my novel every day. I plan to possibly write a little bit about that also, what elements of it I will write about, I am unsure. I just know I want this blog to serve as a companion piece because I am struggling with some of it.

Every big work you write you work out a significant amount about yourself, I want that bit to be documented more than it was with my first two books. I want to do this whether it is of any interest to others or not. Everything I do is primarily for me these days. Though I appreciate anyone who gains anything, or finds value in anything I do.

My old Substack has long been co-opted as the Plague Circus Press newsletter tool, as well as the resting ground for some of my old reviews. I plan for this one to be altogether more personal.

I also need to better learn to edit quicker or less, and to “let go” of writing and publish it. I am hoping this blog will allow me to do that, rather than the cycle of infinite rumination I currently find myself in.

Knowing me, posts will be brief, and certainly never more than 1,000 words.