I sincerely regret those choices I made and the ignorance not to realize the effect that those choices had. It was wrong of me to contribute to an atmosphere that made people unsafe. It was wrong of me not to consider the feelings and needs of those around me. Through my words and actions, I have made spaces that should be welcoming for all feel unsafe. I would like to apologize for the harm I have caused through my vulgar and sexual words, my poor judgment and my lack of respect for my colleagues. Something about them was real good to me.Īnd I hope they’re good to you, too. But something about these books, these books about broken people who keep fucking up and keep trying despite it, about healing from wounds in a way that isn’t pretty, about the physical vices we take up to escape our emotional vices… It wasn’t all them–I’ve been in therapy for a few years now and it’s helped a lot. It was a grievous place to be, mentally–a place where I couldn’t pursue a definition of success that was my own and couldn’t satisfy a definition I’d created that was impossible.

I was keen to do things that I thought a writer like me should be doing, things that I thought looked like what I thought success should be, whether I wanted to or not. It’s easy to start thinking that success looks only one way, that you need to be doing the things that make it look that way, that if you aren’t doing those things, you need to be worried.īecause it was me. Social media means you’ll never be unaware of how other people are doing–their successes, their reach, the ways they decide to portray their lives–and you’ll never be able to not compare yourself. I think it’s easy for a lot of writers to develop a belief about what they think success should look like. I’ve been writing for awhile now (you might have read some of my other books) and in all that time, I’ve had an issue I didn’t know about.

These books are special to me because they represent something important I discovered about myself. It’s the book that comes after the second, Ten Arrows Of Iron.Īnd that book came after the very first book, Seven Blades In Black. It’s been tough on a lot of people–I hope you’re coming out of it okay. Many years before that, it started thinking about it. Two years ago, the world started falling apart. How have you been doing, by the way? It’s 2022, but only just.

Here is the book having a nice drink with its friend, the knife.

Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes