Justin Lee Anderson

Do this. Reviewing made me the barely employable, insufferable know-a-bit that I have become today.

Seriously. It's fun.

Thanks!

We help authors find reviewers for self-published and indie Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror books - Bookmatch We help authors find reviewers for self-published and indie Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror books

Delighted to say we’ve already got over 120 reviewers signed up to the BookMatch community, including bloggers, podcasters, bookstagrammers and booktubers. Calling all #bookreviewers of #fantasy #sciencefiction or #horror - come join us! #bookstagram

BookMatch.co.uk

I just joined #BookMatch and I think it is a brilliant idea. If you are an indie author or a book reviewer, this is something that I believe is extremely helpful for the entire book community as a whole. I'm really excited for this to begin in earnest and I hope that more decide to participate!

Thanks, Nick! :)

a group of people walking down a street with the words " we 're going to the pub " on the bottom Alt: a group of people walking down a street with the words " we 're going to the pub " on the bottom

Right, I have actually booked my flights and hotel for my first ever @easterconuk.bsky.social!

Who else is going?

“Furthermore…”

Ayyyyyyyyy, don’t be so hard on yourself.

Not-here.

Things I’ve clocked as signs of AI writing:

“This isn’t just xxxx, this is (massive overblown hyperbole).”

All the hyphens. Where they have no-right being.

Use of elaborately inappropriate words (“cadence” instead of “schedule”, for example.)

It’s just pish.

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

OpenAI ”acknowledged in its own research that LLMs will always produce hallucinations due to fundamental mathematical constraints that cannot be solved through better engineering, marking a significant admission from one of the AI industry’s leading companies.”

You can’t trust chatbots.

I meant in a ‘creative’ aspect. I am, for example, all for AI being used as a tool to help with medical diagnoses. I understand it is very good at catching early signs of breast cancer. I am not anti-AI in all its forms. To borrow a phrase, I want it to do the dishes while we make art.

Art is about humans sharing experiences. It’s a conversation between souls. The minute software enters that equation, it’s no longer art, it’s just commerce. I’m not interested in what software thinks the best next words might be. I want to know what an author has lived.

That “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Generative AI is built on stolen work. Authors rightly complaining about having our work stolen to feed AI that’s then trying to compete with us can’t turn around and use it to generate art based on work stolen from artists in exactly the same position. We’re all in this together.

Even the covers. Solidarity with all artists. 🤜🏻 🤛🏻

An image of two planets in space featuring the logo for BookMatch, and text reading “The spark to set your book on fire”. The web address BookMatch.co.uk appears in the corner.

In light of the current #AI conversation, just to say that BookMatch will have a zero tolerance policy for AI. Any book found to have been created with AI, including the use of AI covers, will be removed from the site without refund. We’re only interested in books someone could be bothered to write.

Thank you. Financially, we’re OK for now!

Absolutely. It’s hard accepting your body has limits.

So, in short, 2025 was awful. Bear with me. I have always known how this series ends. I just need the time, health and energy to get it all down and do it justice. Thanks for waiting. I’ll try to make it worth it. Slainte Justin

Over Christmas, I caught the third bug I’d had since the end of November, and also managed to fall and break a bone in my hand. In January, drugs I’d been given for the chronic pain disorder flared up my chronic sinusitis and led to a sinus infection. Last week, I had a lip biopsy as part of confirming the autoimmune diagnosis and on Thursday I woke up with the wound extremely painful, swollen and infected. That was the point where I finally accepted I needed to take some time off sick to let my body recover (along with a course of antibiotics). Today, I finally woke up without the sharp, throbbing pain in my face.

Again, none of this is to say “woe is me”. People live with worse. But if you don’t live with chronic illness or don’t know someone who does, you might not be aware of how much we just “keep going” and “push through” against pain, fatigue and illness before we finally stop and rest, because we have to. I know a lot of authors do - there is an unusually high incidence of both chronic illness and neurodiversity amongst authors - certainly in the SFFH genres.

What I realised over Christmas was that I have to cut back on what I do. I cannot do a full time job, write and manage just about anything else. So I’ve ended my active participation in the Scottish Green party, and I’m retiring from mentoring other authors because I just don’t have the spoons for it. I’ve started actively avoiding making plans with friends except for special occasions. I’m trying to pare my life down to work/rest/write - with the exception of one long-term project that’s been ongoing for over a year and is just coming to fruition - and I’m trying other things to improve my health and wellbeing too.

All of this is to say - the final book is coming. I promise. It’s late, but it’s late for good reasons, which I have had to accept and come to terms with over the last year, and particularly the last few months. I’m actively working on my health and making space for more writing in my life. I will finish it this year, hopefully sooner rather than later. I’m very happy to say that my editor at Orbit, Bradley, has been nothing but an absolute support - I’m very, very lucky to work with him.

So the world’s on fire and everything sucks. Anyone else really tired of living through interesting times? During a time when everything is so fucking awful, it’s hard to write about how shitty and difficult my own life has been because, well, I wasn’t bombed out of my home, kidnapped or murdered in the street, so everything sort of pales, right? But in the interest of transparency, I wanted to share something to give context to why I haven’t finished writing the last Eidyn book yet. Even saying that, I feel like “who fucking cares, man? The world is falling apart.” And I think the reason it’s taken me so long to get around to writing this - other than what will become obvious - is that exact notion that it’s all so unimportant in the grand scheme.

But if you’re interested in personal context, here’s where my last 18 months or so have gone. In late 2024, for different reasons, my wife and I both found ourselves suddenly with no income. Over the next ten months, a combination of the benefits system, freelancing anything I could, cutting our outgoings to the bone and eventually picking up a living wage job somehow allowed us to keep the house until we got back on our feet. I’m still genuinely unsure how we didn’t lose the house, and I’m very grateful for the Scottish systems in place to catch people when they fall. It was a deeply, deeply stressful and worrying year.

On top of that, you may or may not know my health has been crappy most of my adult life. In the last year, I have finally been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, a chronic pain disorder (possibly caused by the autoimmune disease), and early symptoms of arthritis, and I’m under investigation for the cause of a second chronic pain issue causing migraines (which there might actually be something they can do about, and that alone would be life-changing). Oh, and I’ve been on a waiting list for an official ADHD assessment for over a year (at least).

None of this is to say “woe is me” - people live with a lot worse than chronic underlying pain and fatigue, and a regular complete inability to focus. Unfortunately a side effect of the autoimmune disease is that I have a barely functioning immune system, meaning I also catch every bug going and I usually get it worse than most. A bug that might last a few days in other people can lay me out for two weeks. And I’ve had even more of them since Covid - like a lot of people.

A bit of news:

Joining us at Writing the Occult: Love & Death on 14 February, with their OPINIONS and reflections on Wuthering Heights, are gothic and fantasy author @rflong.bsky.social , editor and author @justinleeanderson.com, and horror writer and token Yorkshire panelist @corinnepwriter.bsky.social

🧵⬇️

Mark Kermode reviews Melania YouTube video by Kermode and Mayo's Take

Take ten minutes and watch Mark Kermode absolutely eviscerate ‘Melania’. It will cheer you up.

I have drugs and rest. But it bloody stings, I can tell you!

In case you’ve ever wondered, having a biopsy of minor saliva glands taken out of your lip is really quite bloody unpleasant, painful and, it seems, prone to infection. :/

Haven’t seen it yet. Cannot wait.

I was today years old. Well.

🖤And a special panel discussion about Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, featuring @rflong.bsky.social, @justinleeanderson.com & @corinnepwriter.bsky.social.

It's going to be one big day of gothic delights. Can we add your name to our dance card?

🧵⬇️

The more things change…