In the British government’s latest round of throwing policy at the wall to see what sticks, a bill has just cleared parliament that would permanently ban tobacco products (cigarettes, vapes, dip, etc) for anyone currently under the age of 18.

To be clear: this is not just a ban on smoking for under-18s. It’s already illegal to smoke in the UK if you’re a minor. What this bill proposes is that, if you were born on or after January 1, 2009, you would not be allowed to buy or consume any tobacco product ever, in your life.

You may or may not know this about me, but I’m descended from a long line of thieves, smugglers, and enemies of the state. My great-grandfather, Harry Walker, was a runaway Barnardo Home Boy, rum-runner, World War I veteran, and rural policeman. There is considerable overlap between some of those life stages. Apparently, the only reason he wasn’t kicked out of the Alberta Provincial Police for bootlegging is because he appealed to his local member of parliament—incidentally, also one of his customers—who got him transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police instead. The APP was disbanded shortly afterward.

So when I heard about this upcoming ban, every one of my ancestors sat up and recognized it as a foundation for the easiest bootlegging operation of all time.

Think about it! You wouldn’t even have to go through the hassle of smuggling the product over the border. Tobacco would remain legal to import and sell in the UK; everyone born before 2009 would still be allowed to smoke, after all. All you’d need to do is legally buy the product in bulk, then sell it off at a markup to all the pissed off twenty-somethings who missed the boat. And as time went on, your customer base would only get bigger.

Anyway, if the bottom falls out of this whole writing thing, you’ll find me on the streets of Newcastle selling loose cigarettes.

New Novelette: “Moriarty & Moran’s North Yorkshire Crime Spree”

A brutal encounter with the horrors of his own past has left Sebastian Moran unmoored and exhausted — so his partner, Jay Moriarty, takes him out of London and rents a quiet cottage in Yorkshire. As Moran struggles through a storm of conflicting emotions, Moriarty is determined to help. He wants Moran to feel secure. He wants him to feel capable. So Moriarty and Moran are going to steal just about everything in the county that isn’t nailed down.

“Moriarty & Moran’s North Yorkshire Crime Spree” is the eleventh story in my series The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, a modern-day queer take on the iconic Sherlock Holmes villain, his partner Sebastian Moran, and the various crimes they commit together.

This one’s a story about navigating a sexual relationship with someone when their trauma keeps looming over the both of you and you’re not really sure what to do about it. It’s also a story about stealing from the English for fun and profit.

It therefore contains, as my friend Ian described it, “twenty pages of theft and fucking.”

-K

It’s fascinating to me how the cultural object of The Book, defined as a physical stack of paper with words in it, generates so much more excitement than an ebook. Both take arguably the same amount of effort, and yet one “counts” as an achievement in a way that the other doesn’t.

Anyway: The Book.

New Release: The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, Collected Edition

A modern day re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous enemies!

Following his polite ejection from the SAS at the end of a decade-long military career, Captain Sebastian Moran is at loose ends. Between cheating at cards and freelance jobs as a security consultant, he’s just barely managing to keep busy — but when a routine penetration test goes awry, Moran is thrown into the path of a brilliant, short-tempered hacker named Jay Moriarty.

Up until now, Moriarty has worked alone. But Moran is clever, unpredictable, and unlike anyone Moriarty has ever met, and the attraction between them quickly escalates into an intense, confusing relationship.

Together, Moriarty and Moran must face an aerospace executive covering up a deadly secret, a real estate developer who will do anything to climb the social ladder, a famous author funding a hate movement, a holiday resort full of international gangsters, and the treasonous leader of a rogue mercenary company.

Collects the first five installments of Kit Walker’s Casefile of Jay Moriarty series, revised and edited, plus three bonus stories!

Paperbacks are currently only available from Amazon, but will be arriving on DriveThruFiction soon! If you want your copy fast, get the Amazon edition. If you’re willing to wait for higher print quality, stay tuned for a link to the DTF edition.

-K

Conventional publishing wisdom holds that you’re supposed to adopt a buzzy, overexcited tone when announcing the release of a new book, the better to build up hype. I’m not sure that wisdom holds when the book in question is about a very serious, very horrible thing that won’t stop showing up in the news while you’re writing and publishing the book.

New Novella: “A Reckoning in Whitehall”

Jason Collier is on his way up in the world. Wealthy and well-educated, he’s translated a successful business career overseas into a parliament seat at home in Britain. His marriage to one of the world’s most powerful tech executives has made him a key asset to the government. It is, in light of all this success, of little concern to anyone who matters that Collier has left a trail of violated and abused victims behind him.

Jay Moriarty certainly isn’t anyone who matters — but twenty years ago, Jason Collier hurt a boy named Sebastian Moran. For that, Moriarty is going to destroy him.

“A Reckoning in Whitehall” is the tenth story in my series The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, a modern-day queer take on the iconic Sherlock Holmes villain, his partner Sebastian Moran, and the various crimes they commit together.

This one gets pretty heavy. It’s about abuse and sexual violence, and the ways in which they’re enabled by structures of power. I originally hashed out the concept early last year in an attempt to understand what were, back then, current events; I was not expecting it to be even more relevant by the time it came out.

I put a lot of love, anger, and grief into “A Reckoning in Whitehall.” It’s not a nice story, but I did my best to make it an honest one.

-K

A friend of mine, while reading over a draft of the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story, said, “Love how angry you are in this one.” Which is maybe one of the highest compliments I’ve received on my writing.

As I’ve explained to a few people before, I don’t see myself as a cynic or a pessimist. You need expectations to get as pissed off as I do; I’m a perpetually disappointed optimist.

Podcast Appearance: Not If I Reboot You First!

I joined Tanner and Lindsay once again on a very Canadian episode of Not If I Reboot You First! This time, we resurrect the Concerned Children’s Advertisers PSAs and update them for the TikTok era. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Lord Humungus sitting on a throne of Labubus forever.

-K

Last week one of my books hit #1 on Amazon’s Free Transgender Romance bestseller list, which was a great way to find out that Amazon still doesn’t distinguish between works like mine and, uh, forced-feminization fetish erotica:

I don’t have any particular moral opposition to forcefem erotica, but I do think anyone coming to this list for that kind of thing is likely to be disappointed by my book, and vice versa.

Whatever, I’ll take the win.

Preorder: The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, Collected Edition

The first collected anthology of The Casefile of Jay Moriarty comes out on March 16! You can preorder the ebook version now (from those vendors that allow them); preorders for the print version will be available closer to release.

-K