Notes from the peninsula
I’m Michael Walters, author of The Complex, my debut novel with Salt Publishing. You can also find me on Bluesky, Patreon, Letterboxd and Storygraph.
February 26 2026, 21:08
Scanners
I’m learning acoustic versions of pop songs on guitar. I asked my teacher to help me get better at picking out chords and keys and rhythmic patterns. Music has my attention. [more...]
January 31 2026, 20:17
Winter refresh
I’m juggling projects and I’m enjoying myself. Over the Christmas break I decided to give in to my nature and do what I want when I want (creatively speaking). I can only do this when I’m relaxed. In the past, trying to live this way, the snake of anxiety always reared its head. [more...]
December 31 2025, 19:10
2025: Best films, books and music
I have never pretended to be cool, or to try and keep up with the latest this or that. But, astonishingly, I saw sixty-one films in the cinema in 2025, by far the most ever in my life. [more...]
December 30 2025, 16:54
Books of Blood, Vol IV
I’ve owned these stories in compendium form since I was a teenager in the late eighties, but only read a handful then, and I haven’t read any of them since. My memory is that, compared with Stephen King, and even James Herbert... [more...]
December 30 2025, 11:03
Velvet Buzzsaw
This is a story of greedy art world snobs getting their comeuppance. Art gallery receptionist Josephina steals paintings from the room of a dead artist who wanted them all destroyed. But the paintings are cursed, and those who profit from them begin to die in gruesome art-related ways. [more...]
December 29 2025, 15:07
2025: Life projects review
I can’t believe it’s been a year already since the last one of these. There’s been less family drama, more culture, and some not-unexpected symbolic shifts. My focus in the first half of the year was physiotherapy and gradually strengthening the muscles around my hips. Then in the summer, things became more varied and interesting. [more...]
December 27 2025, 21:25
Death Walks at Midnight
On the surface, this had everything I love in a film. It’s a mystery set in a European city, in the world of fashion, nightclubs, parties, with artists as lovers, eccentric minor characters galore, murder with a weirdly brutal weapon... it could be perfect. None of this matters if the pacing is off, the dialogue is dull, and there’s no character development. [more...]
December 26 2025, 21:43
Anaconda
I was trying to find a film the whole family would enjoy at the cinema on Boxing Day, and when I saw Anaconda, certificate 12A, with Jack Black and Paul Rudd, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. The twist is that neither child wanted to come, so the jackpot was all mine. [more...]
December 21 2025, 18:58
Mermaid Legend
On the Japanese coast, a newly married couple bicker on their fishing boat. Migiwa dives for shellfish, and Saeki minds the rope to pull her up. One night, Saeki sees a fellow fisherman killed on the water by a passing speedboat, and when he takes Migiwa to investigate, he is harpooned in the chest. Migiwa survives and goes into hiding, but as she begins to understand what’s going on in the village, she is driven to revenge. [more...]
December 19 2025, 16:00
Reflection in a Dead Diamond
Yikes, the plot of this one... John Diman is an old man staying at an expensive hotel on the French Riviera, but he was once a secret agent for a clandestine government organisation. He spent years trying to catch a leather-clad female assassin called Serpentik, but she evaded him to the end. Memories and reality merge as he walks the hotel grounds and wonders if Serpentik has at last come for him. [more...]
December 14 2025, 10:59
Lucio’s Confession
I bought this while visiting 'the oldest bookshop in the world', Livraria Bertrand in the Chiado district of Lisbon, at which the staff stamp the inside cover in a cute proof that it was bought there. [more...]
December 13 2025, 14:42
Warning Sign
At a remote agricultural biochemical facility, a group of scientists are celebrating a discovery, but while taking a photograph a vial is accidentally broken and the whole building is immediately shut down. Government forces arrive to manage the incident, confusing the people of the town who don’t know the facility’s true purpose. Sheriff Cal Morse knows his wife is trapped inside and decides he has to try to get her out. [more...]
December 08 2025, 22:07
The Shrouds
Karsh Relikh part-owns GraveTech, a company that wraps up dead bodies in a material that allows the living to view it in its grave. His wife, Becca, died of cancer, but five years on, through the technology, he notices mysterious growths on her decomposing body. Soon after, the graveyard is seriously damaged, the technology of the graves hacked, and Karsh’s business hangs in the balance. [more...]
December 06 2025, 20:50
Cloud
Ryōsuke Yoshii buys and sells things on the internet. He has a knack for sensing what’s valuable to the market, then buying cheap and coldly selling for enormous profits. He escapes Tokyo with girlfriend Akiko to find more space for his wares, cutting off his boss and other business associates to do it, but his insensitivity makes him enemies, and a group of them track him down for revenge. [more...]
December 01 2025, 20:07
Demons
Music student Cheryl accepts tickets to a film event at an old cinema from a man in a demon mask. She takes her friend Hannah, and they hook up with two boys to watch the start of a horror movie. In it, two similarly dressed couples disturb the grave of Nostradamus and uncover a demon mask. [more...]
November 30 2025, 15:12
Cursed Bunny
There’s a transition that happens if you read the stories in order. It starts with what feels like horrific folk tales, where women are fighting their bodies, families and the cultural norms of South Korea. [more...]
November 07 2025, 15:29
November mood
I’m between a couple of unusual (for me) adventures and recovering from a cold. We flew to Lisbon for three nights with our daughter—she’s into marine conservation, and the Oceanário de Lisboa is the second-biggest aquarium in the world. It’s a beautiful city. [more...]
October 21 2025, 17:42
Moderation
The blurb and jacket description (and opening third, tbf) make you think it’s a techno thriller, but it pivots around the halfway point into clear literary romance territory, which I wasn’t expecting. [more...]
October 06 2025, 20:35
The Men
On a camping trip in the North Californian mountains with her husband and son, Jane Pearson experiences 'an intense nothing' and is suddenly alone. Across the world, all males have simultaneously disappeared—men, children and babies. [more...]
September 22 2025, 20:24
Universality
The novel is in four acts, each from different points of view. It opens with a long magazine article about a young man, Jake, who had disappeared after using a solid gold bar to knock out a squatter on a deserted Yorkshire farm. [more...]
September 13 2025, 14:46
A Spy in the House of Love
Sabina is in a long-term relationship with Alan, a father figure, while having affairs with other men. She is an actress and, when she disappears for days and weeks at a time, she tells Alan it is to perform in plays across the country... [more...]
September 06 2025, 13:46
we had to remove this post
Kayleigh has received several emails from Mr Stitic, a lawyer at a firm bringing a civil action against Hexa, the company Kayleigh used to work for. She was in a team that moderated social media posts, taking them off the site if they broke the rules. [more...]
August 30 2025, 11:25
The Sleepwalkers
A newly married couple, Evelyn and Richard, are gifted a honeymoon by the groom’s mother at Villa Rosa, an exclusive hotel on a Greek island. We know this because Evelyn tells us in a letter she has written to Richard, which takes up the first third of the novel. [more...]