Michael Walters

Welcome!

This is my little word garden on the internet—Michael Walters, author (it’s true!). I have a speculative fiction novel, THE COMPLEX, out with Salt Publishing, and I’m deep in the writing of a follow-up. I would love it if you gave it a try.

I use Bluesky to connect with people, Letterboxd to track films, and StoryGraph to track books. Follow me and say hello in all those places.

And if you want more of my thoughts on writing in particular, you can subscribe to my posts on PATREON. There’s a Weird and Wonderful tier if you want to support me with a donation, and that now includes notes on the novels I’m reading, but I post regularly to all patrons.

Instead of posting negative reviews on books I don’t like, I’ve decided to take a few notes about what didn’t work for me, put the book down and move on to the next one. I’ve talked before about books I’m not enjoying creating reader’s block, because part of me wants to finish even bad books to get that sense of completion and to justify adding them to my reading stats for the year, but then I stop reading completely because reading bad books isn’t fun. It’s ridiculous. Trying to read a certain number of books a year is also a ridiculous. I’m going to sidestep that trap from now on.

Having a DNF (Did Not Finish) pile feels revolutionary in that context. Instead of being miserable ploughing hopelessly through a book I hate, I choose another book. I mean, OF COURSE. I’m fifty-two years old. What am I doing to myself with these insane must-finish-the-book rules? So, here are the three books I didn’t finish this month, and why they weren’t for me.

Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld (2023). I wasn’t interested in the details of how the Saturday Night Live show works. Everything was told without enough showing, and there wasn’t much subtext, so it was a dull read. I didn’t care about the central relationship.

The Final Girls Support Group, Grady Hendrix (2021). The conceit of a someone picking off a therapy group of survivors from slasher-style killings is brilliant, but the voice of the central character was deliberately manic and paranoid and left me cold. Also, I didn’t get pulled into the mystery—police reports and interviews are not for me.

Reprieve, James Han Mattson (2021). Instead of the literary horror novel promised on the back cover, this opens with an extended chapter on a teenagers relationships at a high school, so it’s more of a Young Adult thriller, and what little we learn about the reality show their involved with didn’t grab me.

My wife loved Romantic Comedy, and the horror podcast I listen to loved The Final Girls Support Group, so these things I don’t like are my personal taste. I probably won’t post about my DNF pile again, but I wanted to note the change in my behaviour and the benefits in case someone else is caught in the always-finish trap.

31DaysofBlackXmas2024 DarioArgento SeenRead 31DaysofHorror2023 DavidLynch 31DaysofHorror2021

I’m going through an uncomfortable phase. My creative projects feel stale. It’s an effort not to check the news. My YouTube algorithm has been infected with news influencers. The people I follow on Bluesky are understandably incensed by what’s happening in the world, so the news cycle plays out there too. I need to take some time away from being online.

It sounds pretentious, but I sense there’s something useful for me in the ideas of Carl Jung mixed with Zen philosophy. Both address the work of living from different perspectives. Jung believed in individuation, becoming whole through the work of interpreting dreams, assimilating the Shadow, confronting the Anima, and encountering the Wise Old Man. Zen Buddhism is about accepting all thing-events as equal, developing a still mind, compassion for all living things, and moving in simple, direct ways to do what is right in each moment.

Things are as peaceful in my life as a whole as they’ve ever been. I’m healthy, my family is thriving, we’re secure in our home and jobs. Something is bothering me I can’t pinpoint. There’s movement under the surface of my mind towards change. I’ll slow things down, do some reading, and observe.

Director: Christian Petzold

Release year: 2023

Writer Leon travels with his friend Felix to a remote house to finish his book. Felix’s cousin, Nadja, unexpectedly joins them, as well as local lifeguard Devid, and Leon’s obsession with his work over all else becomes a source of humour and friction. When Leon’s publisher arrives, forest fires are threatening the house, and Leon has to face reality.

Petzold’s last film, Undine, made my favourites-of-the-year list in 2022, and the lead actress in that, Paula Beer, plays Nadja here. Leon’s pretentious, self-absorbed manner initially shocks the sensitive Felix, but Felix knows the power of intuition and connection, and he thrives when he escapes Leon’s baleful eye and brings Devid and Nadja into his holiday—whereas Leon just wants to be alone. Leon is so heavy with ambition he can’t write anything good, but Felix’s light touch brings a grace to his photography that Leon refuses to see. Leon’s envy and fear of failure is crushing.

Felix finds love with Devid, but Leon is too afraid of vulnerability to be a friend to Nadja. Nadja persists in trying to open Leon up to what’s going on around him—he is comically unlikeable right up to the final scenes. The fear of actual death (rather than of not being successful) seems to finally break through his armour of unpleasantness and brings a small redemption. Life comes before art, kids.

Author: J.G. Ballard

First published: 2000

It’s 392 pages long, which at 34 lines/page, 10 words/line, is around 133,000 words. There are 42 chapters, each around 3,000 words, it’s in two parts. I needed to know!

The point of view is first person. The protagonist, Paul Sinclair, is an aircraft pilot, ex-RAF, recovering from both legs being broken in a flying accident. He’s newly married to Jane, who’s much younger, a paediatrician, starting a six-month secondment at Eden-Olympia, a giant business park above Cannes. She’s taking the place of David Greenwood, a doctor she knew from London, who killed ten people with a rifle before being killed by security staff.

I wanted to read this now because it’s a book I’ve told myself I love for years, but I couldn’t say why, and I remember it was also frustrating, and again, I couldn’t say why. The idea of an outsider going to a campus where something is terribly wrong is part of my work-in-progress. I was looking for prose style ideas and also to see how Ballard moved his story through time (because I’m not good at that). What timeframe does the story unfold over? How many characters are there? What made it so readable? Why did it stick with me?

The first chapter sets up the dynamics of the Sinclairs’ marriage and packs a lot of inciting incident information. Paul observes Jane: reading the details of Greenwood’s death in Paris Match, driving the Jaguar aggressively, changing spark plugs, being protective of Paul’s legs which are in braces from his accident, and being doubtful about her decision to take the new job. He describes his relationship with his parents, his business as an aviation publisher, and it becomes clear they are both impulsive adventurers egging each other on. It’s a chapter to set everything up.

From here, each chapter is a scene, more or less, between Paul and one of the characters working at Eden-Olympia. While Jane loses herself in Eden-Olympia’s relentless work ethic, Paul is bored and easily led by the psychiatrist Dr Wilder Penrose into an investigation of Greenwood’s crimes. At each turn he’s met with a new clue and more details of the criminal underbelly beneath the world of extravagantly paid CEOs and scientists. It’s propulsive, lyrical, intelligent, full of philosophically playful ideas about work, capitalism, corporations and what it means to be human, and it’s sexy in a cold, disturbing way.

Towards the halfway point, it begins to feel dull. Every character outside of Paul and Jane’s marriage is unpleasant. It’s exciting to find the next piece of the plot’s puzzle, and the descriptions are often wondrous, but the coldness and nihilism, which is the part of the point of the novel, sucks away much of the fun. Everyone involved in Eden-Olympia is a workaholic zombie, except for Dr Penrose, who is joyfully running his violent experiments.

Ballard thankfully changes gear to give the story a new lease of life, first via the emotional reactions of security head Frank Halder, then with the sexual manipulations of Frances Baring, and finally the philosophical reveals of psychopath Penrose to set up the final act.

What I found frustrating: it’s 150 pages too long; he has lyrical motifs that can grate; it’s rigid, repetitive, and too emotionally cold for my taste.

What I want to take with me: the way a character can give the world a personality through details; sweet, seedy dialogue; how characters have memories and fantasies; being daring with ideas.

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Release year: 2025

George works for a British intelligence agency in London and is tipped off someone in the service is trying to sell a deadly secret. Known for his tenacity, he quickly assembles a list of suspects and begins to unpick their various motivations, but his wife, Kathryn, is also on the list.

It’s great to see a highly-skilled, middle-aged couple in a spy film, helped no end by the fact they are both supremely sexy in their own ways. George is relentless and loyal with a knack for spotting liars. Kathryn is an ambitious department head who used to be a computer hacker. Setting out to find the traitor, George gathers the suspects for a memorable dinner party that involves a drug-laced curry, and the resulting emotional chaos is a wonder to behold. At heart, it’s a portrait of a marriage, but one within a profession that requires everyone to be liars.

It’s a simple film in some ways, a mix of spy film and whodunit, but it feels sophisticated in Soderbergh’s hands, with a layer of luxury that comes with having Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in the lead roles. The whole cast is top-notch, and the script smartly allows some wonderful dry humour to sneak in when you don’t expect it. It’s a brilliant little film. Simple things done with great skill are good for the soul.

Director: Bong Joon Ho

Release year: 2025

Mickey Barnes owes money to sadistic loan shark Darius Blank. To avoid a tortuous death, Micky enrols on a colonising mission to a new planet as an ‘expendable’, a person digitally copied so they can be endlessly recreated after kamikaze scientific tasks. But Mickey 17 doesn’t die before Mickey 18 is created, which makes them both question everything.

The trailer gave strong cartoonish comedy vibes, and that’s true of the film as a whole, but it’s also dark and icky with a twist of philosophy and a relentless anti-capitalism message. The lack of subtlety is deliberate. The monstrously narcissistic mission head, Kenneth Marshall, has the mannerisms of Donald Trump mixed with the space-conquering seed-spreading racism of Elon Musk. The mission is filled with MAGA surrogates. In the script, this must have been a roll of the dice that Trump would lose, but it feels despairing in our current reality, and more like a helpless fantasy.

Nasha is a great character, full of life, a mixture of dark and light, and a vibrant mirror for Mickeys 17 and 18. All the actors bring something unique and cartoonish to their roles, which makes the grim universe they’re inhabiting more bearable to be in for two plus hours—but they all treat Mickey as expendable. I enjoyed much of it, and the central foursome of Mickey 17/18, Nasha and Kai keep things emotionally interesting, but it goes on too long saying the same thing.

I have a pitch to myself. I want to get better at speaking in public. I also want to be more actively engaged in the research I’m doing for my next book. I love doing #31DaysofHorror, where I reflect on films I’ve watched, but the pace is not sustainable. Instead, I could drop the goal aspect, add books to the mix, post some thoughts in the same format (three to four paragraphs) and at the end of the month make a short video about them for Patreon.

I saw Mulholland Drive last week in the cinema, and it was a feast for the senses. Instead of writing about it, I tried making a video. I floundered. If I were in the pub talking to a mate about a film, there would be bustle around us, body language, questions, encouragement, and I’d adjust what I was saying according to the feedback. Instead, alone in my room, I obsessed over lighting, microphone placement, the blemishes on my face, the size of my ears, the state of my clothes, and my voice was a drone of clichés and dull details. Talking to a camera is unnatural. It’s hard!

In contrast, I wrote a piece about Mulholland Drive a few years ago with none of this drama. Writing to help think something through feels completely natural to me. I think differently while walking—talking out loud doesn’t add anything, and the walk-thinking is more expansive, more associative. I can drift and easily lose track.

On camera, my talk-thinking was a disaster. I tried pretending there was a person in the room, but it didn’t help. In a conversation, the other person solidifies what’s being said. The podcasts I love are conversations, not monologues. Solo vloggers on YouTube are more like TV presenters, and most have scripts, or at minimum a list of talking points.

So, back to my pitch to myself. Write more posts about films and books, and add a video summary to Patreon each month. It’s a proposal for a bit more structure to what I already do. The vlog part is an audio-video version of the “seen, read” I already post for patrons. It’s not a big deal.

Am I convinced? I woke up the other day with the words ‘art funnel’ in my head. Look, in dreams, you get what you’re given. Freud would love an art funnel. A sexy art funnel. Now there’s something to ponder.

I noticed this week that my Bluesky spring was going dry. It took a couple of days, but I caught myself being—what’s the best word, inane, clichéd, boring?—and so I did what I always do, I started deleting the chaff from my feed. I don’t know why it matters to me in such a transitory medium what my last month’s posts look like. I suppose I’m thinking about how I come across to potential new readers. It’s also because I’m a natural-born (word killer) editor.

I’m playing with YouTube-style videos at the moment (ffs). Patreon has added the option to host videos and also create a podcast feed from the audio. I am a tech moth to a flame. Talking to a camera alone is hard. My favourite podcasters come in pairs, in conversation about things they love, sparking and connecting off each other, but my attempts to talk about a film, Mulholland Drive, alone, felt lifeless.

YouTubers seem able to turn on the charm, possibly because they can see themselves on camera. Often they have someone else filming. I was suddenly sympathetic with all the actors recording auditions on their phones in hotel rooms (all of them!). It’s an imagined audience. It requires structure, even if that’s just a list of things to cover. The flow can easily dry up without another to prompt you. It feels silly, slipping into a persona when nobody is with you, for a future audience. And I’m still not used to how I look and sound to other people. I’m not a natural performer.

Writing is different. I have to write alone. I can rewrite to my heart’s content. I can be another person more naturally in words.

I posted a short story to Patreon this week. That’s real content. I’ve been ambivalent about doing that for years, but fuck it, I’m ready to start experimenting with new approaches. I want to create good work and lots more of it. Getting it into the world is energising.

I’m not going to second guess what other people want anymore. The true path is to say what I want to say, even if nobody’s interested, and to be myself, to become myself as fully as I’m able, even when that pushes people away.

Tomorrow’s the end of February. Mum died eleven years ago. This month has involved a last minute writing retreat, two replaced bathrooms, ongoing physio rehab, my sister and family coming to visit, unexpected and unrealistic work deadlines, and the news showing the United States government turning Chaotic Evil. On Bluesky, I continue to stick to my schtick of noticing daily details that are true to me, sometimes amusing and offbeat, and give a little hope. It helps me at least.

The bathrooms are almost complete. The tiles look fantastic. The installers are a Polish father and son, so sweet together, and sometimes the father takes a call and I can hear children’s voices, possibly grandchildren. The son listens to a Polish radio station playing quietly while he works. As lovely as they are, it’s hard to relax, especially working from home. We’re close to getting our house back. Perhaps Tuesday next week.

The book continues to percolate and grow in my mind. I’m reading about estrangement. That’s one of the themes. I’ve started several books this month, but only finished one. The rest are hanging, a dozen or so pages in, waiting for their moment. I have decisions to make about style, voice, form, characters, the whole shebang, but I’ll continue to go at the pace I can manage. I’m more inclined to practice guitar and sing in the evenings as a respite from words and screens. That’s true play.

Life feels tough this month. There’s a lot going on at work, I’m doing physio rehab, there are tradesmen in the house making a mess, the world seems to be in an awful place and getting worse, and I’m too tired in the evenings to read or write. I am grateful for all I have, but my body and brain is at full capacity.

I’ve been back two weeks from a five-day Arvon-run writing retreat. Eleven writers, two tutors, one massive house in rural Shropshire. It was creatively invigorating. I wrote a synopsis of my next novel, edited what I already had, and started some new chapters. The theme of the week was using other arts as part of writing practice, like music, dance, and drama. We did workshops in the morning and had afternoons free for writing, reading, walking, and tutorials.

By the last day I was wrung out and ready to come home. It was wonderful but intense. On the last evening, we all read aloud something we’d written during the week.

Returning home was a relief, but the unique atmosphere of being away with other writers in a literature-centric space is impossible to replicate at home when you have a day job and a family. It did show how hard it is, legitimately hard, to maintain focus on writing projects in ordinary life. It isn’t that I’m lazy or distracted, it‘s that I’m using most of my energy getting through the days. I’ve chosen an intense profession for my nine-to-five.

That’s helpful to recognise. It gives me something to work with. If I want to be more engaged with my literary ambitions I need to change something.