Latest Twitter Threads by @TimClarePoet on Thread Reader App

Oct 23 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

I'm not sure I'm ever surprised by something's not being a success, because in all media, luck plays such a huge role. It's not that quality isn't a big help, it's just that luck & structural advantages are such force multipliers that raw quality alone can't overcome them.

https://twitter.com/TPDimps/status/1849061005499757015

THAT SAID I am surprised to the point of being a bit pissed off that more people don't celebrate Joraku, especially the deluxe reprint. It's superb. I worked with a friend learning how to do video just to do a video on it:
boardgamegeek.com/video/455581/j…

Apr 3 • 30 tweets • 8 min read

Something that's been consuming me for the past few days is: if you put 100 humans on a desert island with their memories wiped, how long would it be before they invented Ludo? It's #AutismAcceptanceMonth so you actually have to hear me out on this. Ok:

So in evolution there's the concept of a phylogenetic tree where you can trace various evolutionary lineages & how through successive mutations different life forms split & branch out. Game historians often trace the development of games in a similar way.

Nov 9, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read

Should writers use social media for self promotion? I don't have enough thoughts on this for a whole podcast (though I've spoken to publicists on the show) but I do have enough for a thread. 🧵 If you consider TikTok, YouTube & Instagram it's clear there are some authors who literally would not have a book deal without their social media presence. Maybe they do regular cooking posts or MH ones or whatever, they've found an audience & a book makes sense as merch. Cool.

May 1, 2022 • 29 tweets • 6 min read

3 years ago, I was so anxious I could barely function. I was having punishing panic attacks every week, sometimes several times a day for 2-3 days. They would put me on the floor, screaming for help. I felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was going mad. It was... not ideal. 🧵 I had also just released my latest book, THE ICE HOUSE, so I needed to find something to write about. I was a bit burnt out on fiction, so I tried to think of a nonfiction subject I legitimately had some expertise in. 'Being mentally ill' was all I came up with. 🤷

Apr 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

Amazing that Neil Parish's wife comes out with 'it takes two to tango - someone must have posed for it', implying... what? Sex workers should share 50% of the blame for an adult MP's decision to watch porn in the House of Commons? They lured him into it? Incredible. I don't understand this tragic infantilisation of men who on the one hand expect to be taken seriously as politicians & business leaders & on the other hand have no agency whatsoever & expect women to mother them & blame everyone else for their lack of impulse control.

Apr 29, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

I have a nonfiction book coming out next Thursday, & gosh, it is *interesting* seeing which parts different interviewers ask about, & the slant different media outlets put on the same material. There's no overt misrepresentation - just these notable shifts in emphasis. Of course, if your entire book can be easily summed up in a short article or interview, it was too long. Different bits of media are for different audiences. But it fascinates me what parts of the book certain outlets want me to talk about, & what parts they ignore.

Nov 19, 2021 • 22 tweets • 9 min read

Christmas is fast approaching, & for some, it's the only time each year they play boardgames. It would be a colossal tragedy if, during this age of unprecedented variety & quality, you were stuck playing games that were a bit crap. Here is a recommendations thread: 'My family are always ganging up on each other!'
Try NOT ALONE, a simple card-based version of Murder In The Dark where a bunch of you play astronauts who've crashlanded on a weird planet, & the other player is the sinister hivemind hunting you down. It's quick, atmospheric & fun

Nov 18, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

For years I've been having a weekly repeated dream about not having revised for my exams. Next year, I want to enter some game tournaments, & instead of just showing up with no prep, I want to properly train for them. What (tabletop) game should I aim for? [criteria below] It has to have legit tournaments at at least the national level. Not necessarily in the UK, but somewhere. It can't be too skill-based if it's also popular - I'm not dumb as a rock but I'm never going to get good enough at chess to compete.

Mar 28, 2021 • 15 tweets • 3 min read

Cults are a critique of society. We ogle & mock folks who fall for them, but the classic profile of people who join is someone who is lost, traumatised, struggling for identity. Nothing in the emptiness of late capitalism speaks to them. Cults thrive because we're bad at meaning. 'Wow, how could so many people put their faith in such an obvious con artist?' Well, maybe because they were pretending to offer a bunch of stuff contemporary society utterly fails to provide. Direct confrontation with our fears. Validation. Deep purpose. Community.

Mar 28, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read

I'd be really interested to see a breakdown of the top 2 or 3 best avenues for book promo by genre. We talk about promoting 'books' like they're a monolith, but I suspect the way Kindle crime readers find new reads is different to how nonfiction pop psych readers find theirs. I'm sure there are *some* common channels across all types of book, but there must be some that only exist for, say, indie Romance authors, or SFF authors, or litfic authors, or authors writing sports biography or whatever. I'd love to get a sense of those different networks.

Mar 28, 2021 • 12 tweets • 5 min read

Not to clog up the TL with too many saucy pics, but here is my non-exhaustive 'sizzle reel' of games acquired during lockdown which have seen little to no IRL play. I'm looking for partners, when safe & legal. First, adorable tessellating kitty-stacking mini dex game KITTIN.

From the same makers, TINDERBLOX. Take it in turns building a little wooden campfire with coloured blocks & tweezers. Like reverse Jenga. Played with my daughter this morning - it's ruddy hard! Very quick, tricky filler. Maybe good as a tie-breaker / turn-order-decider.

Mar 27, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

I get like 3 or 4 weird or inappropriate emails a year from (presumably) listeners of the podcast. Mostly they're lovely. But I bet I'd have to deal with a bunch more if I weren't a chap/white. Extra condescension, creepiness, presumptions & outright abuse. An emotional tax. I know most folks are only too aware of this. I just, in my own slow, knuckleheaded way was like 'huh, harassing or weird messages are kind of rare for me!' even though I get a lot of emails. Then I realised some people probably have to continually actively filter.

Mar 27, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read

Somehow I've managed to acquire 4 new boardgames in the last week. I'm starting to feel under seige. Really need cups of tea, components in ramekins & some patient company to try them all out! I *think* I'd like to write a book about games, but as always the challenge is thinking of a way that would be rewarding for the reader & for me. I mean, I really enjoy peanut butter & jam sandwiches but I don't think I could spin that out into a book.

Mar 27, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read

The openings of THE HOBBIT by JRR Tolkien & THE 39 STEPS by Richard Hannay. Very tonally distinct, despite their being essentially the same story: grumpy recluse is forced into embarking on a big game of hide & seek, at the end of which, war breaks out.

I don't know why I said THE 39 STEPS was by Richard Hannay. It's John Buchan, obviously. Richard Hannay is his protagonist! Although it's *told* by Hannay, just as THE HOBBIT is, nominally, based on the record as written by Bilbo Baggins.

Mar 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

The opening of Nancy Mitford's THE PURSUIT OF LOVE. I love this paragraph so much. It doesn't introduce plot, just voice & characters. Your hook needn't be a pistol pressed to the protag's head. Uncle Matthew is one of my favourite comic characters.

Uncle Matthew, we're told, has a tendency to write the name of whoever he's angry with on a scrap of paper & put it in a drawer somewhere, apparently in the belief that doing so will hasten their death. The drawers round the house are full of pieces of paper with various names on

Jan 3, 2021 • 24 tweets • 5 min read

Yesterday my apprentice (9) was wounded & I was studying a grimoire so I said over my shoulder 'summon Bifrons, bind him to your will & demand healing'. He said 'How?' like all students when they want YOU to do it, so I said: 'Use a seal.' He brought me the seal: 'Use it how?' 'With an incantation!' I said, incredulous. He brought me the Tome of the Tongueless Voice & we both stared at it. I realised I'd never taught him to use it. I felt like a hidebound poltroon. What kind of demonbinder doesn't teach his apprentice to wield seals?

Jan 1, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read

I'm not sure why I feel uncomfortable with the framing of this report. Maybe it's the language: 'antidepressant use soars' rather than 'more patients seek & receive treatment for anxiety & low mood'. The stock photo of a hand holding a pill.
theguardian.com/society/2021/j… Maybe it's the companion piece which describes anxious & low people being 'led on to... drugs' during the pandemic like going to your GP & seeking help is some moral fucking failure instead of one of the hardest things you'll ever do: theguardian.com/society/2021/j…

Feb 15, 2019 • 29 tweets • 5 min read

'Genre is best understood not as an inherent quality of the story, but as a set of filters we apply to it as readers/viewers in order to wring the most value out of it.' - Being A Thread of Largely Unsupported Assertions By T. Clare *ahem* Stories can hint through at the most fruitful filters one might apply to them (through, for example, commonly recognised symbols like dragons, spaceships, sexually-frustrated suburban middle-classes), but genre is ultimately something the audience does, not something a text is.

Jan 3, 2019 • 26 tweets • 5 min read

Today would have been JRR Tolkien's 127th birthday. He obviously has a huge legacy for Fantasy authors like me, & successive movements in Fantasy have largely sought to define themselves by how they're not Tolkien. New Weird, Grimdark, whatever we're doing now. I have thoughts! There's no doubt there are lots of ways Fantasy can be Not Tolkien & very, very good. The success of the movies & the upcoming series show they're certainly the dominant lens through which the Western world views Fantasy. So I'm not saying his work is sacrosanct & above critique.

Oct 2, 2018 • 203 tweets • >60 min read

Ok, ok. 1 Like = 1 interesting magic system / cost for casting magic. I don't guarantee that all of these will be original as this is pretty well-trodden territory, but they'll certainly be made up on the spot by me. 1. Spellcasting feeds on ambient heat. Magic users leave trails of frost, ice crystals glinting in their hair. Strongest wizards operate in equatorial regions - deserts, tropical rainforests home to key mage colleges.

Aug 22, 2018 • 10 tweets • 2 min read

New Weird, we were assured, was a real & vibrant motive force in Fantasy. But really the only connection I see between many of the authors lumped under that banner was that in interviews they'd say that Tolkien was shit. Grimdark made a few more promises about mood, plot & ideology. 'Welcome reader, to a world without love, where the strong prey upon the frail. Dare you read this tale in which:
a man is STABBED by his FRIEND?
SEX happens?
someone has a WINE?
the quest ends in an AMBIVALENT DRAW?'

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