Will Wiles

@willwiles.bsky.social

1966 Followers 847 Following

"The Dead Man's Empire", sequel to the award-winning "The Last Blade Priest", is out now from Angry Robot. Author of several novels, and the short story collection "The Anechoic Chamber & other weird tales" (Salt). He/him.

Anonymised screengrab of 4-star Goodreads review that reads, in its entirety, "I would eat elfcap"
Screenshot of part of AI author scam email. It reads: "I recently discovered The Dead Man's Empire, and what stayed with me most was its exploration of Bureaucratic satire, post-mortem spatial management, and the dark architecture of corporate governance., particularly Investigating how the dry, structural layout of administrative record-keeping can be subverted to manage a expanding empire of the deceased."
A map of ITV regions
Fritz Hoger's Chilehaus in Hamburg, a massive office building in dark brick with green copper roof, which culminates in an acute angle like the prow of a ship
I am Pope Leo XIV, according to this dumb quiz
Headline from the Independent: "Gary Numan says way he attracted his wife might be illegal now". I didn't read the article.
A pile of Ray Newman books on my back step.
Poster for George C Scott's "Day of the Dolphin"
Stan Kelly's iconic "Sickos" drawing of a man leering through a window, perversely enjoying what he's seeing, with the same image reflected beneath him and tinted algae green
Hazel on the Fourth Plinth
Hazel and I, newly wed, walking down a street in Marylebone
A nice Bluesky feed congruence between visually similar pictures of a Gemini space capsule and "Noseybonk", a terrifying character from 1980s kids' TV
From "The Inner Life of the Royal Academy" by GD Leslie (1914): "Hook was very fond of babies. I remember his saying once that a house was not worth going into that had not got a baby and a barrel of beer on tap in it."
A portrait painting of the author JG Ballard, by Brigid Marlin
A flag that resembles a hot dog, with two pale brown horizontal outer bands representing the bun, and a sausage-coloured middle band. A thin wavy yellow band down the middle represents mustard. I saved it to my desktop from Bsky or Tumblr some months ago and made no note of the the artist, I'm sorry about that.
Thumbnail image of the cover of the April 2026 edition of American SFF magazine Locus.
Steve Bell's version of Cecil Parkinson, a sort of varnished and vain figure in a pinstripe suit, overstuffed like a Chesterfield sofa,with staring eyes, exuding beams of alleged "charisma" like the ark of the covenant
A crow on a fence, turned away from the viewer
Phone photo of a crow taking flight from a wooden planter. The crow is a blur of sudden movement, wings outstretched, feathers splayed and resembling brush strokes
The cover of "Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks" Brian Eno, which makes abundant use of the pedal steel guitar
"Studio 3E, for religious services" says the caption on a photograph of a deeply weird room that looks like a 1930s telephone exchange that has been converted into a cult's headquarters. There are slim green columns, pared-down art deco exedra, stars and alpha-omega devices, it's a lot.
Lego Ghostbusters on a bookshelf
A different angle of the bookshelf partially pictured earlier
Phone snap of art credits from the Space Wars book, which is a real who's-who of the great SFF artists of the era
Phone snap of my hand holding open the Space Wars book to the spread showing the Whelan painting. Angle is very cramped as it is at floor level with other large format and irregular books.
Cropped picture Pimlico poisoner Adelaide Bartlett from the quote-posted thread, who is smoking hot
A beautiful black and white drawing of Duna, protagonist of my novel "The Dead Man's Empire", a haunted young woman with short blond hair, dressed in the gambeson of a soldier. Behind her is the blade-priest Elecy, a tall and intimidating young woman with a shaved head, and carrying a ferocious curved sickle. The drawing is by garin.bsky.social who is available for your commissions.
A ceramic oven dish filled with a baked golden-brown layer of yogurt over meat. It looks delicious, take my word for it.
A screen grab of the Guardian's reporting of JP Morgan's proposed new tower in Canary Wharf which is ALLEGEDLY very tall. But the picture only shows the bottom six or seven storeys.
cropped screengrab of the header of an email from Change dot org, which reads "we found out our wolves were dead from a Google Notification"
A photo of "The Dead Man's Empire" standing on a sideboard with "The Last Blade Priest" visible behind it
Screenshot of part of the news headlines shown on the Microsoft "start" menu on 17 March, showing headline for Mirror newspaper that says "Brits with meningitis symptoms told to do one urgent thing as outbreak ki..." (headline clipped at that point)
Crude drawing by me with four steps: 1. Wind; 2. "Magic towers" (which somewhat resemble wind turbines); 3. Oil!; 4. Electricity etc
An image of a hessian sack with the iconic "Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures" album cover by Peter Saville crudely edited onto it by me. It took three minutes and it shows.
2023 photo of me standing proudly by a bird house I had just installed in the garden.
Two pictures of the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa wearing dark glasses like a boss. In the first he is smiling, and there is a subtitle saying "Sensei is in an excellent mood. It won't last." In the second picture he is not smiling.
A picture of my copy of "The Dead Man's Empire", with a copy of "The Last Blade Priest" just behind it, resting against a badly decayed Chinese screen.
Thomson and Thompson from Herge's "Tintin" comics. How many difference can YOU count?
Consecutive posts on my feed, the first about 2000-year old footprints, the second showing a marble foot from a Roman statue
Karolina Wydra as depicting Zosia (and also all of the human hivemind) in "Pluribus"
A snapshot taken by me of a promotional chess set made by a property developer with their buildings as piece. My hand is holding Centre Point, the black queen.
A cropped screengrab of the Goodreads summary for "The Dead Man's Empire", which shows it has a whopping two reviews, both five stars
The Sailor Moon meme of Tuxedo Mask, a mysterious caped gentleman, saying "My job here is done." Sailor Moon replies "But you didn't do anything." Tuxedo Mask exits without replying. Curiously enough this scene never actually occurs in the show, it's derived from a different scene to mirror the very similar gag featuring Leonard Nimoy and Barney Gumble from the Monorail episode of the Simpsons. Isn't human communication amazing?
Photo of line in book reading "Walter White, Librarian of the Royal Society, visited Stone on 26 May, and found him at work on the copies." The book is "William Powell Frith, A Painter and His World" by Christopher Wood
Scene from "The Simpsons" of montage of subliminally sexual shots: train going into tunnel, rocket blasting off, hot dogs on conveyor belt. It emerges that Bart and Lisa are watching stock footage in the cinema.
A snapshot of two copies of "The Anechoic Chamber", one of which is inserted halfway into a very ordinary blue-green ribbed sock
Hungry winter squirrel posts by Jeff Vandermeer and Sarah Andersen side by side on the timeline
Quick rough pencil sketch of dog pictured in above post.
Screenshot of Guardian article with headline "Amid Japan’s surge in bear attacks, a torrent of AI-generated videos is adding to anxiety".
A promotional graphic for the event with author photos, book thumbnails etc. The only info here that isn't in the main post is the event start time, which is six PM.
Part of the famous "God is dead" quote from philosopher Friedrich Nietszche: "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
The Anakin and Padme meme format. Anakin: "The government is very unpopular so we're reviving a flagship New Labour policy." Padme: "It's Sure Start, right?" Anakin: (ominous silence) Padme (nervously): "It's Sure Start, right?"
Rik Mayall as Richie in "Bottom" saying "Look, this isn't some kind of joke, you know"
Arthur C Clarke pictured in 1965.
A graphic giving details of the promotion - the important thing is that using code "PREORDER25" at checkout gets you 25% off, but the sale ends today
Front cover of weirdo "European Conservative" magazine with illustration of white family besieged in their home by angry LGBT activist and Muslim. That's all, there's no cover line or subtext, it's just a crude appeal to fear and hatred.