'Isola Bella & Messina' - Interview In Escape Magazine
On April 16th I appeared in the Sunday Telegraph’s Escape supplement, giving a special shoutout to Sicily's stunning Isola Bella, the wild migrators in the Strait of Messina and my new book Cold Water funding right now on the award-winning Unbound platform…
The introduction, written by Jenny Hewett, reads: ‘Cold-water swimming is hot. UK-born, Bondi-based ocean swimmer and author Jack Hudson shares his most memorable immersions.’
‘He grew up in the north of England, living near the Lake District before moving to Sydney six months ago with his partner to be closer to Bondi Icebergs.’
‘He’s now marketing manager of SwimTrek, a tour operator offering swimming adventures all over the world, and also the author of Swim Wild in which he and his brothers, Calum and Robbie, share their tales and tips…’
“The best beach I’ve ever been to is Isola Bella in Sicily. You might remember it from the most recent season of The White Lotus. You can swim around the island and see Mount Etna in the distance.”
Hardbacks, Paperbacks, eBooks Out Now! (The Machine)
The final wave of The Machine Hardbacks has just gone out, which means all our Kickstarter backers will soon be delivered their copies of Jack’s Fiction debut…
The final wave of The Machine Hardbacks has just gone out, which means all our Kickstarter backers will soon be delivered their copies of Jack’s Fiction debut - 10 years in the making! To celebrate, Build a Rocket Books have launched pre-release eBook, Paperback and Hardback copies on the Lulu bookstore. Follow the links below to order your copies today.
Please email us directly if you would like signed Hardback copies or Alternate Artwork Hardbacks and we can arrange this too for a fee of £30 per book. Thanks again for making this adventure a reality and don’t forget to leave us a review and share your thought.
The Machine is an ambitious new dystopian adventure and Jack’s Fiction debut. First draft was finished in April, 2021. The book was fully funded on Kickstarter in less than three days.
New Alternate Cover Art! (The Machine)
Great news! Our final Kickstarter rewards have now been finished by my brother, Robbie - anyone whose pledge included Digital 'The Seven' Portrait artwork will be able to pick from one of 6 A4 original works once our campaign ends. I've included 3 examples of these below for you to check out. Each one depicts characters from the book and has been carefully rendered using a selection of descriptive excerpts.
Above you'll also see another exciting last-minute addition to our rewards list: Alternate Hardback Cover Art in graffiti-style, using Robbie's adapted works. There are 15 of these exciting new rewards available now with just a few weeks to go until our campaign ends!
Siegfried
The Sentinels
V.4 Salvador
I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported this campaign so far! Surveys to follow in the next 2 weeks to arrange your deliveries… :)
Support the Campaign
Kickstarter Launch Day!
And we’re off! The Machine is LIVE and funding right now on Kickstarter. From here on, it’s just me and you…
Who am I?
My name is Jack Hudson - I’m a previously represented author published by Hodder and Stoughton imprint, Yellow Kite Books. I was raised in the rural outback of northern England, close to the Lake District. My first book was a travelogue (Swim Wild) about world-first swimming expeditions with my two older brothers – the ‘Wild Swimming Brothers’. We were the first people to swim across two maelstroms, in Norway: the Saltstraumen and Moskstraumen. We also swam the 90-mile length of a river in the English countryside, fuelled by being equally at odds with their urban nine-to-fives.
What is The Machine?
After ten years in the ether, I’m bringing you my Fiction debut. In short, this is something totally different to my first book. Since uni’ second year up in Newcastle, I’ve been hammering away at this little dystopian epic – an unflinching dive into a nightmarish near-future, populated by colossal walking oil drills and an omniscient android, bound to a low-orbit satellite.
The Machine has cinematic roots, inspired by the punk style of filmmaking we’ve seen from writer/directors like Neil Blomkamp (Elysium) and Alex Garland (Sunshine). I also fed off books from authors like John Lanchester (The Wall), Stanislaw Lem (Solaris) and Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). It’s gritty, but still suited for older teens, with themes that would appeal broadly to lovers of the outdoors and adventure.
The book is also part environmental epitaph, and could be described as a travelogue of sorts, tracing interwoven narratives into Earth’s last habitable century. Actually, many scenes and characters are derived from my own personal experiences in wild and unforgettable places around the world, like India, Indonesia and Iceland.
Pledges available from our Kickstarter launch day (August 25) are:
£3 // Shoutout + First Chapter (Audio)
£5 // eBook + Digital Artwork
£15 // Get the book - Paperback!
£20 // Get the book - Hardback!
£30 // Signed Hardbacks
£35 // Hardback + Limited Edition Portrait
£60 // Book Two Character, Portrait + Hardback
£100 // Special Mention in Acknowledgements
I hope you enjoy this adventure! We’re running an exciting Kickstarter campaign with a whole lot of digital goodies and artwork thrown into the mix too. Pledge now for your chance to receive some of our awesome limited rewards and to also pick up your Paperback, Hardback or eBook copies, which will be distributed by Lulu Press as soon as the 60 day funding period is up in late October.
Huge thanks for joining me on this journey!
Love you all,
Jack
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Let's See If This Machine Can Fly
“The shuttle slowed and banked towards the Argus Station. René leaned back and turned to his porthole. He peered outside as a wave of sunlight broke against the glass. For the first time he saw the station at a close distance, framed by the deep, cold void…”
Welcome!
This creepy character up top is the reason I’ve started blogging again. Meet Argus - a hyper-intelligent android, built to run a satellite swarm hooked up to a global network of unmanned weaponry. Argus floats strapped to the low-orbit Argus Station. He dangles over Earth, like a mechanical Christ, forced to spend his powerspan as the architect of global security and the enforced surveyor of a warful species, rooted to a dying planet…
The Machine is my second book, currently doing the rounds among publishers and agents (mostly London-based). Right now, there’s that usual pressure of marketing and sharing your idea with the world. It’s never an easy ride! You feel like you’re tucked into a rocket of your own design, blasting up towards the glorious ether, awaiting either the breach of stormy clouds, or the equally likely explosion of scattered wingnuts, debris and dreams.
There’s always hope though. And this particular book has seen a few incarnations and taken ten years to finally get it to this point. I’m proud of what I’ve got here. One thing I can say for sure is it is totally different to my first book (a travelogue called Swim Wild - released on paperback back in April, 2020).
The question is: how will it fare out there? Well, I’m prepared for the common avalanche of rejections and the grit required to thrust your hand up through the chalky rubble, again - to paw your way out for another attempt at the ascent. This book will be printed in some form or other (within a couple of years)! So, watch this space. Please do get in touch if you have any questions about this project, or anything to share yourself - I might be able to help with some promotion/a second opinion.
You can sign up to my mailing list for news, blogs, book updates and exclusive videos. Remember, you can also follow the mechanical journey of #TheMachine as it unfolds on Twitter too!
Thanks for reading :)
More news soon…
Jack