![]() ![]() Twenty years ago, I scribbled the name Luda as a potential title for a potential psycho-sci-fi sex novel. ![]() I tried to write a novel or make a comic entitled MYSTERY CITY but while the central image seemed potent, the story possibilities threatened to veer towards Neil Gaiman contemporary fantasy or Peter Ackroyd/Iain Sinclair literary flaneur territory and I had no desire to face the apex lions in either arena!Įlements of this idea, one that’s clearly been nagging at the back of my mind for decades, show up also in the depiction of the bleeding map of Glasgow on the dissecting table in the psycho-geographical comic Bible John : A Forensic Meditation by me and Danny Vallely. Raised on immaterial foundations, made secure with bricks and tiles of pure intangible thought, these absent alleyways and fountains have managed to outlive their counterparts in the perishable, solid world, finding new purpose, continued progress and what, for a phantom psychetropolis conjured up by sparking neurons, seems an enviable persistence. I’m aware that my personal interior city and environs is, in part, comprised of early memories all Burroughsian cut-up infant perceptions of iron bridges, vast train terminals and intriguing bookstores long since demolished, mixed with illustrations or TV scenes, and completely fantastical original creations, whole constituencies propagated from a single architectural seed. I’ve tried over the years to assemble maps of my concept city as seen for the only time in that one dream in its full splendour – familiar landmarks and districts, absent from the real world, reappear reliably and always in the same geographical location – but the task yielded only fragments, collages, sketches of shopping mall cathedrals and Art Deco cinemas on a high plateau in the Gorbals, a desert west of Govan with the haunting ruins of half-finished motorway flyovers, a warren of mysterious bookstores, repair shops, windows with moving model railways and RV helicopter kits where utilitarian Buchanan Street bus station stands in the territory of the Real. It depicted, in fact the entirety of an alternative Glasgow I’ve been visiting in dreams my whole life and bore at its base a simple plaque which read ‘MYSTERY CITY’. This spectacular Ordnance Survey extravagance displayed in scaled down high fidelity the streets and rivers and parkland of a much grander, more expanded, geographically unfolded and marvelous version of my hometown Glasgow. The roots of Luda stretch back to what may have been the late ‘80s/early ‘90s and a powerful dream which involved finding a secret subterranean police station, dominated by an enormous, numinous wall map. So here I am on my wingéd throne where sweet Nikki Grahame once raged.Īnd we’re on Substack, so it seemed appropriate to create this exclusive delve into Luda ’s glittering genesis in the style of my Substack annotations posts… ![]() If you have already preordered the book, or should you order anytime between now and midnight on the 5th September you’ll be eligible for bonus content here including a letter and exclusive wallpapers: LUDA is available to preorder from Random House or other retailers via this link, other editions including the ebook and audiobook are also here. Right up front here are the links to the preorder on the Random House website, plus they have devised a bonus extra tasty ingredient where you can download wallpaper and even more intrusive chatter from moi ! Hola! Now comes your chance to be a go-getting early adopter and pre-order Luda, my first published novel without pictures! ![]()
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