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A Few Brief Bits And Bobs For Your Ears And Eyes

Tom Cox

23 Nov 2024 — 4 min read

It is so amazing and special to be able to look at this photo and realise I actually have a permanent visual record of the first time I set eyes on my new family, just before they kindly took me in and cared for me after I had been orphaned and left for dead on the floor of a barn.

This post is free but if you’d like to support my work, I’m offering 25% off all full annual subscriptions until Monday at 7pm UK time.

Having got a few little jobs out of the way (the most exhausting novel I’ve ever written, posting 3000 books to various destinations all over the planet etc) I am pleased to say I am finally poised to record the audiobooks of Notebook and Villager. With my thoughts turning to that topic, I thought now be as apt a moment as any to let you all know about a few audio versions of my work you might not already be aware of.

My books 21st-Century Yokel, Ring The Hill and Help The Witch are all available to listen to on Audible (and Spotify), with me as the narrator.

The Man On The Rocks is a short, silly story I wrote for Radio 4 in 2021. It was narrated by Kirsty Cox (no relation) and you can listen to it here.

In autumn 2018 I was invited to talk to Clare Balding for her Ramblings show on BBC Radio 4. You can listen to 25 minutes of us chatting while wandering on Dartmoor here

Sorry, I couldn’t find an image of Clare and me from that day, but I did find this one of her hanging out with a cheerful homeless man at around the same time in a similar part of the moor.

Here’s a clip of me reading from - and talking about - Villager a couple of summers ago in Hembury Woods, one of the places which influenced the book’s setting.

Coming up are three little films I have made starring Devonian sheep, all of which were submitted for inclusion at the Sundance Film Festival, sadly unsuccessfully.

I think this final one - especially if you turn the sound on - really demonstrates the natural rapport I have with animals:

Some of my old radio shows are archived here on Mixcloud.

I am now almost totally out of my enormous personal stash of Villager hardbacks but still have around 100 hardbacks of Notebook. If you’re in the UK, and you’d like three of these (they’re short, easy to read, a good intro to my work, and might make good Christmas presents) solely for the price of postage - £5 for the lot - please let me know via the contact form on my website. If you’d like to give me a bit more for the books themselves, that’s really helpful, but no problem if you can’t afford to. (If you have sent a message and are awaiting a reply from me, please check your spam.) You can read some samples from Notebook here and here.

In other news, I’ve decided to open up my archive to free subscribers this weekend, in case any of you would like to catch up on some pieces you might have missed. (It will be closing again at 7am UK time on Monday.)

Here are a few pieces from it you might enjoy:

This Is Not Your Beautiful House

A Great School

Can You Please Stop Telling Me To Live My Best Life Please

At Home With The Actor, Designer And Influencer Philippa Islington-Smythe

Things About The Countryside That Make Me Angry, And Some Photographs I Have Taken Of Them

A Writing Pledge From Me To Me For The Future

Finally, here’s a photo I took of Jim and Charles for the cover of their edgy upcoming electro grime LP.