Has this ever happened to you? That moment when a character feels way too familiar…
Hey everyone! Andrew here.
This week my wife handed me a copy of Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and said: read this, then tell me what you think. She’d already finished it before me and her verdict was in and she didn’t mind sharing it with me. Mine is… still in progress. More on that below.
Also: I have been doing some reading about where indie publishing actually stands heading into the second half of 2026, and the numbers surprised me. Some of them in a good way. Some of them in a “well, that’s a lot to think about” way. I’ll share what I found here as well.
Klara and the Sun: is it actually a good novel?
So… Klara and the Sun. Ishiguro’s Booker Prize winner, about Klara — an Artificial Friend, essentially a robot companion — who is acquired by a chronically ill girl named Josie, and who worships the sun in a sincere and (I think) obsessive way.
Spoiler alert: my wife didn’t like the novel.
[Sidebar, Your Honor. I want to talk about literary fiction. I’m a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I love great prose. I love it when I read great prose (see anything by Susana Clarke, Guy Gavriel Kay or Connie Willis for where I draw my line at what great prose is). I love it when the stars align and I write something that I feel is good enough to share with you (let’s call it good-enough prose) but I cannot… just cannot find it within me to enjoy literary fiction. I don’t know what it is about it. If it’s something inherently pretentious or perhaps — and I’m going to get into the heart of the issue here with Klara right now — perhaps it’s the way the readership reacts to it that puts me off. Take Klara and the Sun for example. It’s a decent read. It has characters. They are not particularly memorable. Some are little more than cardboard cutouts being waved around on flimsy sticks, but they’re there. It even has a plot (kind of). But it’s so slow and so focused on the relationships and so obviously designed to be a discussion about what it means to have “table stakes” when it comes to being included in human relationships, that it feels almost on the nose. Ok, so I’m a writer who struggles to enjoy literature. Cough. Continue!]
Back to Klara. My wife did not enjoy it. She hated the ending, calling it a non-ending. She’s right. I knew this going in (because she told me) but I read it anyway. And where I ended up is this: it’s a novel about love, sacrifice, and what it means to be “real.” It has what I would call functional prose. It’s not lyrical or beautiful, but it also isn’t sparse. There’s also an interesting structure, and it does something clever with the concept of selfless devotion and one-sided relationships. Let’s call them unrequited relationships. Klara gives and gives and gives, and never really stops. After way too much thought about this, I landed here: that the novel asks whether love is still really love when only one party fully exists (in the sense of being “at the table” for inclusion in the relationship equation. I have a kind of relationship with my toaster for example, but if my toaster professed its undying love to me, I’d find it very hard to reciprocate. Please don’t judge me badly for that!)
The less interesting part is that the whole thing is just too neat. Every symbol connects to every other symbol like a Swiss watch. Sun, gift, sacrifice, transformation, memory. Everything locks together. Ishiguro knows how good he is and it comes through. It left me feeling empty at the end rather than full, if you get what I mean.
Great themes can make a book feel important without making it good. The question I keep asking myself is whether those are the same thing. I don’t think they are.
So is Klara and the Sun a good novel, or just a very well-made one? Have you read it? What do you think of these high-brow prize winning novels? Do you read them? Do you enjoy them? If so, why? Tell me I’m a fool and I’m missing out. I’m ready.
The state of indie publishing in 2026
I have also been reading some publishing data lately and I want to share a few numbers that stuck with me.
Median indie author income: $13,500 a year. Median for traditionally published authors: $6,000 to $8,000. That gap has held for three years running. Of course there are the standouts making a lot more than that, but most of us make very little off our books. It’s a labor of love as they say.
More striking: over half of authors under 45 say they are not planning to pursue traditional publishing for their next book. That is a historic shift. For most of publishing history, indie was the door you knocked on when the other doors were closed. In 2026, for a lot of writers, it’s the first door they try. It’s not a surprise to me though. It was the same choice I made. I much prefer self-publishing. I just wish there was less junk out there to take up the air space… but the good books will rise to the top. At least, we hope so.
Here’s the stat that really caught my attention though: AI narration now accounts for 23% of new audiobook releases.
I have complicated feelings about that number. On one hand, it makes audiobooks accessible to authors who couldn’t otherwise afford production. I also checked the box on Amazon to turn on the audio feature because why not? But there’s no way ZZ can afford to hire an actual voice actor no matter how much we would love to hire one.
Writing update
The Bone Singer is still moving. 150,000+ words and climbing. I keep thinking I’m close to the end. I am not close to the end. My brain is mildly broken by this fact. No, it’s fried at this point, but I refuse to accept defeat.
That’s it for this week. Please do check out the poll below — I’m curious what you think!
All the best,
Andrew (ZZ)
Zero-Point Awakening – The Complete Series Books 1-8
It’s Got It All. Super spies. Super soldiers. Super hungry for a good kebab. Turtles! This series has it all.
– Amazon 5 Star Review
Promos
Check out these bargain and discounted reads from our fellow speculative fiction authors!
Hunted and betrayed, Devon and Jadsia flee in a dying warship. On the ashes of Krylon IV, they uncover a lost archive—and a devastating truth.
In a monster-filled world, bounty hunters rule. Benzan, a veteran of the top crew, has had enough of their cruelty—and their leader, Marteus.
Ian Hadrian dreamed of the stars. Now a young battlecruiser captain, he’s stuck commanding the Belisarius at the edge of space, guarding a world left behind after the Great War.
At Galactic Bites Café, even dessert can kill. Sent to a ghost ship in Saturn’s rings, Marcy Mayhem faces murder, a rogue android, and a crisis that could doom Mars.
Have you ever seen yourself in a character while reading? Yes—scarily accurate Yes, a little Not really Never
Survey Result
And now, let’s take a look at last week’s poll results. We asked, “If you met your past self, would you warn them… or leave things alone?“
Here are the results:
- I’d talk to them –> 33%
- I’d warn them about everything –> 31%
- Nope—I’m not messing with time –> 29%
- I’d stay quiet –> 5%
Andrew: What a spread! The cautious time-travelers are basically tied with the “burn it all down, tell past-me everything” crowd. Thirty-three percent of you would talk to yourselves, 31% would warn yourselves about everything, and 29% are wisely keeping their hands off the timeline entirely. Only 5% would stay completely quiet .
Your Thoughts
And thank you, as always, to everyone who reads, votes, replies, and generally keeps this thing going. The responses that came in from the last newsletter were amazing. I want to share a couple.
David wrote in to say:
“Time is like sand quickly draining through the upper portion of an hourglass. When the last grain passes down, our borrowed time which God has graciously given us will be up. We won’t get an option to simply flip it over to start again. The person I am today was 100% forged by Christ through it all. Changing anything would’ve created a totally new and different person.”
Changing the past doesn’t fix you. In a way, it erases you. You are the sum of every difficult thing you’ve been through. Thanks David for your thoughts. [Separate aside: David also introduced me to the term autonoetic drift, which you could say is a kind of time travel and the only kind we know is real. We’re all moving forward at one second per second. Thanks David!
Kathy emailed in with a great point about the Butterfly Effect ripple.
“Knowing you have to do something but not knowing if you will actually make things worse is the most difficult path for the character, and difficult paths make heroes.”
Exactly right. Spot on the money. This also explains why time travel stories work when they do. The appeal could be in the uncertainty. You have to act. You have to choose. And you really don’t know if you’re saving the world or causing it to end or change beyond all recognition. “Difficult paths make heroes”.
As always — thank you to everyone who wrote in. These responses are the best part of putting this newsletter together.
**Please note: All links in this newsletter are affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
ZZ ADAMS
Meguro-Ku Kakinokizaka 2-10-8, Tokyo
Japan
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