Date Logged: 11 July 2025
Origin: Neural Uplink / Inner Core
Signal Status: Stable
“The signal is faint. My thoughts, however, are not.”
Sun’s trying to break through, though most days it’s as indecisive as my knees on a staircase.
Lately, I’ve been riding a current of edits on Pejorative. Eight chapters to go. The manuscript is plotting rebellions of its own, like it’s seeking sovereignty from its creator, which feels pretty on-brand for a novel about a country teetering on the edge of fracture.
It’s a bizarre sensation, writing fiction that seems to be chasing real headlines. Alberta’s premier is talking separation again, throwing percentages around like lit matches. Tariffs are tangling trade routes while grocery store shelves speak silent truths about empty lower racks of Canadian apples and rows of imported ones sitting untouched above. It’s all starting to feel like I’m transcribing a future news broadcast that hasn’t quite aired yet.
Some days, the words blaze out of me at 4 a.m. Other days, I’m up at 5 a.m. and get precisely zero words, lost in coffee steam and the existential meltdown of deciding whether “rollout” is one word or two.
In between edits, there’s the strange duality of my life, researching counterinsurgency doctrine that reads like bureaucratic poetry, dense, precise, and utterly terrifying, while also debating whether Gander Social, the Newfoundland dating app (just kidding) , will ever become the hot new social platform for polite swipes and Timmies dates.
My body has started filing its own grievances. My knee’s plotting a coup, my cartilage’s writing manifestos, and coffee’s the only thing keeping the rebellion from becoming a full-scale war. Gen X, sound off, who else is limping toward their weekend draft?
Then there’s the weight of the world bleeding through the pages. Texas floods and the lives washed away make it feel obscene to post about algorithms or marketing plans. And yet we do, because what else is there but to keep speaking, writing, connecting, trying to record the signal through all the noise?
Meanwhile, my inner voice is screaming that Pejorative might be movie material. I’m not even joking anymore. The stakes in this story are huge, sovereignty, propaganda, memory, the quiet erasure of dissent, and the world outside keeps proving me right. Whether that’s comforting or horrifying, I’m still deciding.
But here’s the thing: even on days where the coffee runs dry and the news cycle is pure entropy, I still believe in finishing the work. I still believe in the power of telling the story, especially the ones governments might prefer we skip.
Transmission holding. I’ll report back when the next chapter surrenders.
—J.B.
P.S. I set up a brand-new Instagram – @jgbutterfieldwrites – to replace the old one. Long story. Digital knives were involved. Anyway, fresh start. If you’re over there, drop by. I’ll be posting coffee shots, manuscript skirmishes, and whatever else survives the edit wars.
A gripping sci-fi war story of sacrifice, rebellion, and love, Disunity explores the boundaries between man and machine, duty and defiance
Purchase it directly from me at https://www.books.by/jason-butterfield
