by Nate Crowley
Quite a towering achievement from one small seed. And so after Buzzfeed features and live performances and award nominations Nate was offered a book deal. A new seed. An opportunity to exercise his great love of ocean horrors and try his hand at a rollicking undead cyber-fantasy thriller. An opportunity to take some of the superscaled world-building and crypto-zoological buccaneering of The Birthday into a more sustained and considered piece of story-telling. And the end result is this assemblage of pulped tree bits that you’ve been holding in your hands or propping up on a surface. Every page is a testament to Nate’s brilliant mind, except the few which I have taken up here to indulge in a little affectionate gratitude. I hope you’re as grateful as I am to have spent some time strolling through the arboretum of Nate’s imagination.
Daniel Barker
April 2017
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THIS BOOK STARTED life as two novellas, each with their own sets of acknowledgements, and so the below is a sort of gratitude mash-up to everyone who helped me get in a position to make the whole project happen. Here goes:
Daniel, who is one of the kindest souls I know, to the extent where he let me launch a career in fiction by depicting him as an inhuman galactic tyrant. Mate, I owe you big time. Ashleigh, who makes my life a proper pleasure to live, always has patience to spare for me, and convinced me to put in the lizardmen. Mum, who always believed I could write, even if TSHAC didn’t end up being quite her cup of tea. Dad, who continues to inspire me even though he isn’t around any more. Words are hard. Josh, Chris and Anna for being superb test readers, and Dave at Abaddon for being a far nicer man to work with than he has any duty to be. Mark, for being a complete SF ideas machine, and letting me nick a concept or two. Lydia, for kicking off the unlikely process of publishing me in the first place. Jamie for agreeing to take on the fell burden of representing me. Dave M for being a hell of a support, as ever. Ewa, for helping me feel less daunted by publishing in general. Nikki and Dean for plugging my work way more than I deserved. Joy for her tremendous penwork. Guy, Cat, and all my other mates who keep me from losing the plot. A huge cohort of people off twitter, who were not only kind enough to read my work, but in many cases contributed to it with their expertise (particular thanks to Emma for helping me make up a word). Finally, the absolute bucketload of authors, living and dead, who I’ve borrowed from both consciously and unconsciously in my work.
Thanks to you for reading, and see you all in High Sarawak!
ABOUT
NATE
CROWLEY
Nate Crowley lives in Walsall, near the big IKEA, with his partner Ashleigh and a cat he insists on calling Turkey Boy. His writing career began on twitter where, as @frogcroakley, he authored Daniel Barker’s Birthday, a dystopian space opera in 700 installments. Nate is currently writing The 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed), a fictional history of gaming, with art from games studio Rebellion Developments, as well as working on a new novel. He is also writing a text adventure game about a haunted sales training manual called Big Mike Lunchtime’s Business Training ’95, and the second series of animated show Realms of Fightinge. Nate loves contemplating unusual animals, cooking stews, playing complicated games and being in wild places. He is represented by Jamie Cowen at the Ampersand agency.
