So there I was, hunched over a Bluetooth keyboard. 🐺
27 July 2026
(Last chance to vote for Kill Your Boss in the Better Reading Top 100!)
I was at a cafe in Westfield Belconnen, with only an hour left before my doctor's appointment, and I was determined to finish my 200 Minutes of Survival story in that time.
There's something a bit surreal about editing a Minutes Of... story to such a tight deadline. I felt like I wasn't just working on the book—I was trapped inside it. And yet could feel the first few dangerous tickles of distraction, creeping up my brain stem towards my vulnerable hippocampus. (Is the hippocampus near the brain stem? I don't know, and I refuse to look it up. Curiosity leads to distraction.)
'I know,' I thought. 'I'll do a writing sprint!' For the uninitiated, writers sometimes compete to see who can produce the most words in a limited amount of time, typically between 15 and 25 minutes. This friendly competition is called a "sprint". It doesn't really matter who wins; the point is to keep us focused and motivated. (We are a notoriously scatterbrained bunch.)
I peered around the cafe for folks to sprint with, but didn't see anyone I knew. There were a couple of people who looked like they might have been writers, but it was also possible that they were homeless (and the two aren't mutually exclusive.) No matter; I opened the Novlr Discord, where there are always a few writers hanging out and ready to sprint.
When I logged on, though, the first thing I saw was someone asking how they could publish their book on Novlr, and someone else telling them they couldn't.
I frowned. Sure, Novlr wasn't designed as a self-publishing platform, but that didn't make it impossible.
I opened one of my WIPs (Works-In-Progress), and checked if I could create a public link to it. Yes, I could! Was there a way to add cover art? I downloaded a photo from Unsplash, uploaded it to Canva, made a book cover, and then attached that to my manuscript. Yep, that worked, too!
I went back to Discord to show the others what I'd done, then hesitated. It might not be the best idea to share my unfinished manuscript with complete strangers online. Could I use a book I'd already published, instead? No, that would be even worse. I'd sold the exclusive rights to that text. My publisher could sue me for sharing it.
Aha! Didn't I self-publish a book back in 2013? Yes, I did—it was a sci-fi novella called Ink, Inc. I owned all the rights to that, and had no prospect of selling them to anybody. I could share that if I wanted.
I trawled through my emails from 2013 to find a copy of the finished manuscript and the cover art, then uploaded it to Novlr and shared the link on Discord.
Ta-da! I thought, before immediately seeing some text that was out of date. The manuscript referred to my old website, and also had some funny formatting. Plus, hadn't there been a sentence somewhere in the middle that, in retrospect, might have been a bit racist? I scrolled through. No, that bit was okay, actually. In fact, the whole book was better than I remembered. What should I do with it? Not just share it with strangers on the other side of the world to prove a point, surely?
To cut a long story slightly less long, I was late for my doctor's appointment, and the Minutes Of... book still isn't done. But there is a fancy new edition of Ink, Inc. Subscribe to my newsletter to get it for free:
The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Mark Mupotsa-Russell sat on my bedside table for almost a year, unopened.
The author sent me a free copy, but he didn't ask for an endorsement or anything—I think he was just being nice? Anyway, that meant other, more-urgent books kept getting put on top of it, books written by authors who had asked for endorsements (or books I needed to read while researching Choppy Water). Occasionally the pile fell over, exposing The Wolf Who Cried Boy—but still I hesitated. I was pretty sure it would be brilliant (MMR's first book was brilliant) but I also suspected it would be harrowing, and I wasn't in the mood to be harrowed.
I was right on both counts. It was brilliant, and it was harrowing. But it was also action-packed, and funny. I'm typically quite a slow reader, but I positively blitzed through it last weekend.
I went in cold, as always.^ But if that's not your style, here's the pitch: Henry is six years old, and his mother is the queen of a distant star. The two of them are stranded on Earth, using spells to hide themselves from a race of shape-shifting wolves.
At least, that's what Henry thinks is happening. But his mother's actual predicament is all too real—she abducted Henry to protect him from his violent father, and they've been living in the bush ever since. She's told Henry an expanding fairy-tale version of their lives to keep them both sane. And it works, sort of... until they have to travel interstate, and Henry starts seeing and hearing things which fracture his worldview, and therefore his trust in his mum.
I've seen reviews which compare The Wolf Who Cried Boy to Emma Donoghue's Room, and the comparison is fair (if a bit obvious). Both novels are narrated by a boy too young to comprehend the highly-gendered violence his mother has endured. But while the subject matter may be similar, the tone is different. Room is a quiet, thoughtful novel, except for one absolute nail-biter of a scene half-way through, in which the boy's mother instructs him to play dead long enough to fool his evil father (a Josef Fritzl type) into removing his "body" from their home-made prison. The Wolf Who Cried Boy takes the high-stakes energy of that scene and sustains it for an entire book. Every chapter brings some fresh new danger, pulling the reader closer to the edge of their seat.
The reviews also praise Henry's voice, which is indeed wonderful, but I was more impressed by Henry's mother, Lex. Her ingenuity and determination makes her an incredibly sympathetic character. Like I said, MMR didn't ask for my endorsement, but he gets one anyway. Highly, highly recommended.
^ I never read blurbs unless A: I've already finished the book, or B: I'm halfway through and thinking about giving up on it. Is that just me?
As always, I had heaps more to tell you... but I have to get back to work on 200 Minutes of Survival. I'm determined to finish it before I go to the Kimberley Writers Festival on Thursday.
Quick reminder that you can pre-order my next two books: Bullet Train (for kids) and Choppy Water (not for kids).
I'll also be at the following events if you want to say hi:
August 29, ACT/NSW: Interviewing Joanna Jenkins at Queanbeyan Library
September 9 to 13, NSW/VIC: Write Around the Murray Festival
October 21, SA: Love, Crime and Wine
October 29 to 30, SA: Once Upon a Festival
That's all, folks! Stay rad. 😎
Best wishes,
Jack 🖋️