I’ve spent the last 19-odd years doing what I love as a career. Writing, playing video games, drinking, for just shy of two decades these things have been how I earn a crust.

I’m incredibly lucky to be able to say that. Unbelievably fortunate, in a way 99.9-something percent of people just never get to be.

If you’ll forgive me a little for whining about my life from an incredibly privileged position though, I gotta tell you it has its downsides too.

Mark Twain once said “find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The trick there is that he was Mark Twain. A writer so famous, so impactful that Val Kilmer one day toured America portraying him. So you know he’s a big deal. For various reasons* Val Kilmer will never portray me, and my writing isn’t nearly as sought after as Mr Clemens’.

And that means that my writing doesn’t always pay the bills. Or when it does, it only barely does. Which means staying afloat is challenging. I’m (again) very fortunate to have a loving and supportive wife in that respect.

So I have a second job. I’m a bartender, like many a writer, and I pull beers for one of the best breweries in Australia. I’m (again) incredibly fortunate to be able to do this, because it’s easy. The beers are phenomenal and the punters are usually great, and my biggest concern is that on some days I wash so many glasses that my hand reacts to the cleaning solution in a way that makes life unpleasant. And for my troubles, I get everything a writer could want out of a job. Access to my favourite beers, a steady stream of colourful characters, an opportunity to flex my creative thinking whenever someone asks me what hops are in a beer (I have no idea).

And most importantly, a sense of community. Both the little team we have working behind the bar (and the scenes) at the brewery, and also with the broader craft beer enthusiast group.

Writing can be unbelievably lonely work at times. Even when you’re collaborating with your editor, or chatting with beta readers, there is still a disconnect that can be difficult to overcome. And writing groups help, but the moment-to-moment work of writing is done alone. It’s you and your keyboard, or your typewriter, or your pen if you’re a maniac.

It’s really nice to be a part of something else while working.

But even that job has downsides. Not all the patrons are great. That rash on my hands makes contact with water extremely painful, but we don’t have enough staff to cover my absence—I’m the guy covering absences. And working nine hour shifts is tiring stuff, even when you are enjoying yourself.

That’s when I remind myself that sometimes work is work.

Which, I mean, holy fuck, imagine being lucky enough to have to remind yourself of that fact. Imagine being so used to your jobs being some variant of enjoyable that you have to check yourself in that manner. Imagine admitting that.

I guess I don’t have to imagine anymore.

But it’s true. Writing fiction is work. When you tell people you’re a writer or an author or whatever, they are generally envious in an outspoken way. “So you just sit around playing games all day? That’s the best job in the world!” is a phrase I’ve heard many, many times.

Only once did I try to correct someone, to explain that playing games is a fraction of what being a games writer entails. That thinking up cool stories barely scrapes the surface of writing fiction. Because even if just 1% of your job involves stuff like that, it’s still better than digging a ditch. Still better than mopping floors, or peeing in bottles while you try to meet your delivery targets.

There is work involved though. And it can be hard work. Not physically, not like sledging in star pickets after 7 hours of digging holes (which I have done before and wouldn’t like to do again), but mental fatigue is a real thing.

So sometimes work is work. But as a mantra it’s more than just a staggering testament to my immense privilege. It’s also a reminder of how even fun jobs are real jobs. How just because you like what you do doesn’t invalidate it. Whether it’s pouring beers for people you’ve come to consider mates or writing a short story that won’t ever get published, if it’s done in the pursuit of your career it’s work.

Anyway, this all reads like a LinkedIn post and I hate it a little bit, but I couldn’t write the thing I wanted to blog about this month. I wrote a few paragraphs about my father, who passed a little while ago. Today, the 30th of July, is his birthday. He and I had a complicated relationship, I guess, but that’s so meaningless a statement. What relationship isn’t complicated?

I had intended on exploring why that relationship was complicated, but I guess I’m still not ready. So I wrote the other thing. I will say this about my dad—in my book Till The Heavens Burst, I added a little easter egg for him.

The primary characters are all named for my siblings and I, after a fashion. They bear no resemblance beyond the names. Towards the end, when one of them acquires a new name, the name I picked was a variation of my dad’s. The conversation around the name is one I pulled from real life.

On the one hand, I was very pleased to get his name in there. I think he might have hated the book, to be honest, because his religious faith was very important to him in his later years and TTHB offers a dim view of religion, but I think he might have been chuffed at the nod.

On the other hand, the way the name is chosen worried me a lot when I was sending the book out wide, because I could see how people might read it as being disrespectful. It’s hard to discuss this without talking about specifics.

Anyway, I loved my dad, and I wish I’d gotten to tell him more often. As I said, it’s his birthday today, so make this one a happy one. Tell someone you love them. Your partner, your brother, your sister, your child, a good mate. Yourself.

Anyway sorry for the LinkedIn post, here’s a work update!

I am going to miss my deadline for Final Final Girl. Lol. I just wasn’t happy with how it was structured relative to what is supposed to come after it, and rejigging it is taking more work that I anticipated. I don’t want to write the second book and skeleton out the third first because I worry that will create a domino chain that will result in never releasing another book, but I’d rather write the story the correct way than have to go back and fix it later.

I feel like I should read how showrunners on TV shows do it or something, I need some tips on how to write a self-contained story with links to a larger narrative. If you’ve got any, I’m all ears. Hit me up on bluesky or at my email address, or in the comments below. I’ve structured the larger narrative entirely, and I’ve got links between stories. What I have done so far is write Final Final Girl draft one and the skeleton for the second book, and what I’m getting stuck on is how FFG hamstrings the second story. It’s not a ‘filler episode’, and it’s a good story, but I feel like after an explosive premiere (pilot?) it’s a step back.

I don’t want to neuter FFG for the second book and I don’t want to amp up book two and set unrealistic expectations for the series. Maybe I’m just overthinking things.

But anyway those are my excuses and I’m sticking to them. I sincerely hope I have something better to share with you nex ttime.

Over in video games land, I played and reviewed Death Stranding 2. I did it like a Chooseable Path Adventure, which is what we call those books where you make different decisions. You can read it here. There’s effectively three different reviews in there, and a bunch more stuff if you can find it all. I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Of books I’ve read, I am back into Joe Abercrombie’s books again. I do sometimes wish they were a little more condensed, but I accept that that’s how Fantasy is written. I have been thinking about Peter Watts Blindsight again, one of the more complicated books I’ve read.

And on the screen I watched Dangerous Animals the other day and adored it. I love the idea of a film using sharks as its primary threat without demonising the fish itself. And eventually I was able to ignore the fact that you can’t go cage diving with sharks on the Gold Coast.

*No disrespect to the Iceman intended, RIP to one of my all time favs.