Some novels are born in a lightning bolt. Needle’s Edge was forged in sediment: years of observations, contradictions, and lived experience settling into something that could no longer be ignored.
The video is intentionally, if not mercifully, short for all parties considered; it comes in under five minutes.
From the description:
Needle’s Edge is Ridley Park’s latest novel-in-progress, a raw, unvarnished work of literary realism with grit under its nails and philosophy in its bloodstream.
In this first episode of a new series on my writing process, I unpack the origins of Needle’s Edge: from life between the vantage point of an anthropologist and the poetry of Bukowski, to lived experience inside the worlds of sex work, addiction, and the quiet economies of trust and betrayal.
I reflect on the shift from speculative fiction to a tethered, reality-bound narrative, a story that rejects morality tales, subverts tropes, and meets its protagonist, Sarah, in the middle of her life before looping back to her beginnings. Along the way, he weaves in themes from Simone de Beauvoir, explores personae and code-switching, and interrogates the myths of middle-class respectability.
This is not a documentary – twenty years of lived history are compressed into five – but it’s true in its bones. Join me as he begins peeling back the layers of Needle’s Edge and the philosophy that drives it.
Ridley Park 