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Antony Johnston

@antonyjohnston.bsky.social

Atomic Blonde, Can You Solve the Murder, The Dog Sitter Detective, The Exphoria Code, The Organised Writer, Resident Evil Village, etc. I write all the things. Reps: http://antonyjohnston.com/contact

1728 Posts6409 Follower247 Folgt
Jon Courtenay Grimwood@joncg.bsky.social · yesterday

Think the problem is that people who don't write find it hard to believe that anyone would put in that many grindingly thankless and poorly paid hours on something that might not work anyway, and think there must be a magic short cut and we're just keeping it a secret ...

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2d ago

Seeing complaints online that authors 'gatekeep' information…! Absolute nonsense. There is no industry or craft in the world which is so comprehensively written about, studied, and discussed as fiction writing, and every author I know welcomes new writers who are serious about giving it a go.

Patrick Samphire 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿@patricksamphire.bsky.social · 2d ago

When people say this, what they're really saying is, "I think there's a secret that would make this all easy without me having to do any work and no one will tell me what it is." The secret is the work.

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2d ago

Seeing complaints online that authors 'gatekeep' information…! Absolute nonsense. There is no industry or craft in the world which is so comprehensively written about, studied, and discussed as fiction writing, and every author I know welcomes new writers who are serious about giving it a go.

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2d ago

Seeing complaints online that authors 'gatekeep' information…! Absolute nonsense. There is no industry or craft in the world which is so comprehensively written about, studied, and discussed as fiction writing, and every author I know welcomes new writers who are serious about giving it a go.

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2d ago

Currently writing Can You Solve the Murder? book 3 and I’m about to tackle what is, I’m pretty sure, the most complex interactive scene I’ve ever written…! 🤯🔍🔀 (Text redacted for obvious reasons, sorry)

A complex section of the flowchart for Can You Solve the Murder? book 3, showing a scene that consists of 23 different nodes with choice paths that criss-cross and overlap
CE (Catie) Murphy@cemurphy.bsky.social · 5d ago

New Patreon post / Free Book! :) With @matthewdowsmith.bsky.social's invaluable assistance as a cover artist, I've made an ebook of the writeups for our pulpy two-year #MasksOfNyarlathotep campaign that recently ended. It is very, *very* funny, sometimes poignant, & a great adventure. 🥰

Masks of Nyarlathotep - general link | CE Murphy

Today's post is nearly an echo of yesterday's, but this one is the general/non-paying-Patreon one. :) The JACKSON'S FIVE: A MASKS OF NYARLAT

patreon.com

Glenn Fleishman@glennf.com · 6d ago

My 2026–Eisner-award–losing book *How Comics Are Made* is available at bookstores worldwide! Walk in or check out these links to etailers. howcomicsaremade.ink You can order a copy directly from me if you’d like it signed and inscribed— aperiodical.net/products/how...

How Comics Are Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page

How Comics Are Made: a visual history of newspaper comics from the 1890s to the 2020s, from the drawing hand to the printed page. By Glenn Fleishman; foreword by Michael Chabon. 2026 Eisner Award nomi...

howcomicsaremade.ink

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · last wk.

This morning's randomised desktop background: Carl McCoy's brief role as the Zone Tripper in Richard Stanley's cult classic sci-fi film HARDWARE. A great inspiration to me, as anyone who's read WASTELAND will probably have guessed…

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Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · last wk.

At Harrogate this past weekend many people asked how on earth I write the Can You Solve the Murder? books. The truth is, once I'm past the (admittedly complex) planning stage it's much like any other book: writing every day, getting the words down and slowly making progress 👍

A screengrab of the Scrivener progress tracker for the third book in the Can You Solve the Murder? series. It shows 2.0003 words written this session, totalling 25,183 so far with a final target of 75,000 words.
Cabel Sasser@cabel.panic.com · last wk.

the temu app will be studied for generations. i opened the app. here’s my unedited, nearly two-minute launch sequence. i was just searching for a bookshelf

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · last wk.

Had a fab time as usual at the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival in Harrogate this year – also as usual, I hardly remembered to take any photos at all, so most of these are nicked from friends 😅 I swear we did do other things besides eat and drink…

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · last wk.

Had a fab time as usual at the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival in Harrogate this year – also as usual, I hardly remembered to take any photos at all, so most of these are nicked from friends 😅 I swear we did do other things besides eat and drink…

Steven Sheil@scsheil.bsky.social · 2w ago

Taking the opportunity to repost this story (from John Boorman’s book) about how shooting the last shot of Zardoz caused Sean Connery to fall into so fierce a rage it led to a man changing his identity

Zed eventually destroys the Vortex, giving the Immortals the gift of death. He survives with Charlotte Rampling and they have a child together. The final sequence is done in a single shot with a fixed camera. Sean and Charlotte are sitting side by side in a cave with the baby. The baby becomes a child, the child becomes a youth, gets up and leaves them without looking back; they get older, then become ancient, and finally just their skeletons remain, which eventually crumble to dust. Only then does the camera move. It tracks in to a handprint on the wall of the empty cave, like the cave painting of primitive man in Lescaux, suggesting that this future world could have been in the past, and that as that civilisation ended, ours began. This shot took an entire day to shoot. The actors had to be removed and make-up applied incrementally to add the years. Sean has a delicate skin and hates make-up. He had to endure it all day. He became more and more irascible. This was the last day of shooting. We had the wrap party that night. Sean had a golf tournament to go to the next day. I had to hold him until the morning for the laboratory report. The call came at 6 a.m. There was a fault in the film stock. It would have to be redone. Sean was apoplectic. He stormed and raged, but it had to be done. We reassembled with our hangovers and started again. A long day, hours of make-up, Sean smarting from his suffering skin. Finally it was done. The clapper-loader took the magazine from the camera to prepare1973: ZARDOZ it for the lab. A few minutes later he came to me, trembling and ashen-faced. He looked so devastated, I thought someone had been killed or that the Third World War had started. I was almost relieved when he admitted that he had opened the can by mistake and exposed the film to daylight. Sean would not believe me. "Is this your idea of a joke?' he fumed. Finally convinced he would have to do it for a third time, he erupted. It was a terrifying sight. He roared, he ran amok. He went after the clapper-loader. He tried to kill him. It took four strong men to subdue him. Twenty years later I was drinking coffee in Starbucks in Venice, California, when I was approached by a man with a familiar face. I couldn't place it. He reminded me that he was the clapper-loader who had exposed the film. He had fled the country immediately after this catastrophe, changed his identity, and was now a cameraman shooting commercials in LA. As we parted, he said, with an ironic smile, but also with a trace of fear, "Sean's not in town, is he?'
Reactor Magazine@reactorsff.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you've seen Zardoz, you already know it's a wild ride; it you haven't seen Zardoz, strap in: it's time to talk about the highs and lows of John Boorman's film, featuring false gods and failed utopias, and Sean Connery in thigh-high boots

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2w ago

Aspiring authors, for the love of dog please believe me (and every other author who'll tell you the same): courses about improving your craft, or finding your voice, can be worthwhile ✅ Courses promising guaranteed success or 'secret' methods are straight-up bullshit ❌ Run away and DO NOT pay them!

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Brad@bradwhipple.bsky.social · 2w ago

mass layoffs at Pixar despite Toy Story 5 about to cross $1 billion at the box office. there is simply no amount of money that will make corporations happy enough to not upend people’s lives.

Pixar Bears Brunt of Disney Studio Layoffs as Company Axes Several Hundred Staffers

Pixar Animation Studios, despite riding high on the success of summer blockbuster "Toy Story 5," was hit particularly hard in a wave of corporatewide layoffs at Disney.

variety.com

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2w ago

The first Nap Comix collection was so good I bought one for my new-first-time-mother neighbour. Looking forward to backing the second:

Rachael Smith@rachaelsmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

Pssst! Plans for the new graphic novel collection of 'Nap Comix' strips are AFOOT! Click here for info and a first look at the cover: www.kickstarter.com/projects/fli... And please please please click the 'Notify me on Launch' button 🙏💗 that would help me out a lot!

Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2w ago

I know scammers send thousands of these at a time using AI, and don't care beyond whether or not it fools you into giving them money… but if you're going to hinge your bullshit on a line from the book, maybe it should actually be a line that appears in the book? Crazy idea, I know!

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Antony Johnston@antonyjohnston.bsky.social · 2w ago

We've had tadpoles in our tiny garden pond for a couple of months, patiently watching, occasionally feeding, waiting for them to grow… then yesterday we found this little froglet sitting on the escape plank, and as I was taking the photo a second started climbing up the pond wall 🐸😍

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