2024 Writing Recap and 2025 Announcements
A long-belated return with some of what's come out and some of what's coming
Hi Everyone,
Sorry to be away so long! I’ve been working a good deal behind the scenes, but am excited to return to this space more consistently in 2025 — I’ve been thrilled to see the Substack world grow in many directions in recent years, and plan to invest more in reading and exploring its further reaches next year.
For now, my main release in 2024 was the novel The Berlin Wall, a phantasmagoria of revisionist recent history in which the Wall became a living entity which, when broken down in ‘89, walked off and spent the next decades trying to regroup. The book takes place in 2020 and focuses on several clashing extremist groups vying for control of the Wall’s body and spirit.
Here are some reviews, podcasts, and interviews about the book:
https://www.full-stop.net/2024/08/30/reviews/theodoresovinski/the-berlin-wall-david-leo-rice/
https://xraylitmag.com/torn-between-the-past-and-the-future-unsure-if-any-tangible-present-exists-an-interview-with-david-leo-rice/fiction/
https://denniscooperblog.com/please-welcome-to-the-world-thomas-kendall-presents-david-leo-rice-the-berlin-wall-whiskey-tit/
And many more are up on my redesigned website: www.raviddice.com
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Other than that, I published two stories from what will become the sequel to 2022’s novel The New House. This one’s called The Chapel of Humiliation:
https://www.alwayscrashing.com/current/2024/12/17/david-leo-rice-jakob-as-nazi-hunter
https://www.alwayscrashing.com/current/2024/1/15/david-leo-rice-jakob-at-mass-moca
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Lastly, I’ll be starting as a columnist at the Southwest Review in 2025. This magazine is awesome, and has been publishing my work throughout the 2020s. This year they published my essay about David Lynch and The Wizard of Oz and, in 2025, my main book will be a collection entitled The Squimbop Condition, featuring all the stories of the Brothers Squimbop, many of which also first appeared in SWR. Here are a couple:
https://southwestreview.com/volume-106-number-4/the-brothers-squimbop-in-kansas/
https://southwestreview.com/volume-107-number-1/the-brothers-squimbop-in-dodge-city/
That’s all for now — Happy New Year and I hope to be back here more often in the coming year,
David.
PS:
Favorite books read in 2024:
Underworld
Creation: On Art & Unbecoming
Fulgentius
My Worst Ideas
Inland
Septology
The Devil’s Chessboard
So Beautiful and Elastic
Burn You the Fuck Alive
All Fours
An Artist of the Floating World
Mevlido’s Dream
The Inquisitor’s Manual
All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers
Layman’s Report
Trickster Makes this world
Houellebecq’s Annihilation
The Wolves of Eternity
(I’m reading The Fifth Head of Cerberus right now and loving it — definitely going to read more Gene Wolfe in ‘25.)
Favorite films (not a great year for me, viewing-wise):
The Brutalist
I Saw the TV Glow
Anatomy of a Fall
The Zone of Interest
The Long Day Closes
The Silent Partner
We Own the Night
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
No Bears
The Music Room
An Autumn Afternoon
Suddenly, Last Summer
Longlegs
About Dry Grasses
Terrifier 3
La Chimera
Oddity
Monkey Man
Ordet
The Substance
Red Rooms
The Sweet East
The Green Ray
Infested
Another 2025 project is to finally finish and public Spine & Arp. You can read the beginning here:
https://spineandarp.substack.com/