Contemporary Authors

• The Feed - 2018 Harper, NYC

• IMDb - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2465403/

  Nick Clark Windo
  Actor | Producer | Writer
  Nick Clark Windo is an actor and producer, known for El Greco (2007), Dead in a Week: Or Your Money Back (2018) and Blooded (2011).

  Filmography
  Jump to: Actor | Producer | Writer | Self | Archive footage
  Hide Hide Actor (8 credits)
  2012 Atrox Iter (Short)
  The Voice (voice)
  2012 Is This a Joke? (Short)
  Scotsman
  2012 The Black Scholes Conspiracy (Short)
  Sam Walziak
  2012 Bella Fleace Gave a Party (Short)
  Archie
  2011 Rahab (Short)
  Sergeant
  2011 Blooded
  Lucas Bell
  2010 Godforsaken
  The Angel
  2007 El Greco
  El Greco (as Nick Ashdon)
  Hide Hide Producer (5 credits)
  2018 Dead in a Week: Or Your Money Back (producer) (completed)
  2012 Is This a Joke? (Short) (co-producer)
  2012 Bella Fleace Gave a Party (Short) (producer)
  2011 The North London Book of the Dead (Short) (executive producer)
  2011 Blooded (producer)
  Hide Hide Writer (2 credits)
  2019 The Feed (TV Series) (novel) (pre-production)
  2011 Blooded (story)
  Hide Hide Self (1 credit)
  2008 Chasing Churchill: In Search of My Grandfather (TV Series documentary)
  Young Winston
  - Wanted Dead or Alive (2008) ... Young Winston (voice)
  Hide Hide Archive footage (1 credit)
  2009 23 premios Goya (TV Special)
  El Greco (uncredited)

  Personal Details
  Alternate Names: Nick Ashdon
  Height: 6' (1.83 m)
  Edit
  Did You Know?
  Trivia: Graduated from RADA in 2006.

• Paste - https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/nick-clark-windo-the-feed.html

  The Feed Author Nick Clark Windo Writes That Technology Is Changing Humanity
  By Nick Clark Windo | March 13, 2018 | 3:57pm
  Author photo by James Eckersle
  Books Features technology
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  The Feed Author Nick Clark Windo Writes That Technology Is Changing Humanity

  Nick Clark Windo is the author of The Feed, a novel in which information is directly linked to every character’s brain. But when the titular Feed collapses, so does modern society. The Feed was released today by William Morrow, and you can check it out here.

  Screen Shot 2015-10-26 at 4.07.05 PM.png

  Technology’s rapid development is fantastic. Vaccines have improved our quality of life, planes have revolutionized travel, and the Internet has made knowledge instantly accessible. But at the same time, we don’t seem to debate technological advancement these days because whoosh they’ve already happened.

  In Ancient Greece, citizens were obliged to attend plays and debate the issues dramatized therein; this then fed into the decision-making of the Powers That Were. Now our population is so big that—even with wonderful social platforms allowing anyone and everyone to speak—it’s difficult to facilitate mass debates that have meaning.

  Of course, technology had less of an impact back in the day, even though Socrates worried that writing would produce forgetfulness. Our technological reach is greater now; our lives are meshed together in a tangle of global influence. And technological advancement isn’t truly a public issue: it’s a commercial one. That question of “Should we?” is usually answered by a projection of share value rather than cultural impact. The UK government, for example, recently decided to have no regulation of AI development, leaving it in the hands of corporate ethics and interests instead.

  The reality is that the technology we use is profoundly affecting us, often without our knowledge. This is the backdrop for The Feed.

  So, the Feed! Like the iPhone, it’s pretty damn successful and rapidly near ubiquitous. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s brilliant: unlimited knowledge and instant, unfettered communication at the speed of thought, direct to your brain. Think you’d be in trouble if you lost your phone, though? Try losing the technology that’s given you access to everything you know, that has allowed you to upload your memories and communicate your emotions to people without having to bother with words.

  When the Feed collapses, some of the characters begin to believe that one of humanity’s most useful tools has actually started to control it.

  Of course, a concept isn’t a story. Drama happens as we see the human impact of something—the rest is set dressing. And the tech is set dressing for what happens to protagonists Tom and Kate during the search for their abducted daughter.

  While I was subconsciously hoarding the nuggets that eventually evolved into this novel, I saw the philosopher A.C. Grayling speak about technology. He quipped that the brain will soon be seen as the original “wetware.” He spoke about how we train brains at school to memorize information, but, he said, it’s a waste of time because who needs to remember things when Google exists? In the future, we should be training kids’ brains to filter real information from fake information.

  Without the Feed, Tom and Kate discover they can’t remember anything. They can’t read body language anymore, so it’s difficult to know who to trust. Their brains have become rewired because of the Feed, and it’s through this disconnected miasma of withdrawal symptoms and a chronic lack of functionality that they have to find their child.

  There’s great nonfiction writing about how technology affects us—Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, for example, looks at how tech changes the physical make-up of our brains—and fiction’s job is to look at how we live and question it. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead—these sagas look at what happens to humanity when it’s under pressure. And happy endings aren’t a foregone conclusion now. Maybe that has to do with the low-level concern most people have; there are many options for what could usher us into a post-apocalyptic world these days.

  And technology is one of them.

  The effects of technology aren’t merely conceptual or political; they steadily alter our patterns of perception without much resistance. Maybe Socrates was right. I can’t concentrate for as long as I used to, my long-term memory is poor, I’m irritable after a day looking at my laptop screen. These things impact my life.

  Many of the younger people I coach actively avoid face-to-face conversations with their colleagues, preferring to text or email because they’re scared of a live, “uncontrollable” conversation. Political interactions now hinge on 280-character bursts, and I started writing The Feed because an over-active Twitter habit changed the speed of my dreams.

  Tech isn’t just a tool, lying passive when we’re not using it. It’s rapidly become our medium for thought, and that’s not necessarily bad. Not necessarily. But it’d be constructive to debate it more.

• Unbound Worlds - http://www.unboundworlds.com/2018/03/feed-author-nick-clark-windo-social-media-alters-brain/

  The Feed Author Nick Clark Windo: Social Media Alters Your Brain
  By Matt Staggs
  March 21, 2018

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  Photo © James Eckersley

  In the not so distant future of author Nick Clark Windo’s The Feed, society falls apart after a neural network hardwired into the brain of every human being unexpectedly collapses. Without instant access to the world’s accumulated knowledge, the survivors are thrust into a new, dangerous world in which they must survive on their own.

  We spoke with Windo about the novel and what it says about our evolving relationship with technology.

  Unbound Worlds: Science fiction has long functioned as a critical mirror on technology and society as a whole. You seemed to have had the internet in your sights when you wrote The Feed. Am I correct? What are your thoughts on the internet and how we use it? Social media? Are these things a necessary evil for you as a modern creative?

  Nick Clark Windo: Hi Matt, thanks for having me here. So, I’m not really sure whether I had my sights on the internet, or whether the internet has its sights on me…or us, these days. And that’s definitely a core part of the novel. Technology is merely a tool, but it’s a tool that changes us — not just socially (though we’re living in very interesting times at the moment there) but physically too. Using social media, for example, actually changes the physical make-up of the brain: it changes how we process information and that, in turn, changes the sort of information we look for. Not necessarily in an evil way but, yes, having given myself Twitter-induced insomnia I’m worried that it’s all going a bit unchecked at the moment…

  UW: There’s a sort of horror/suspense element to the novel that I wanted to explore. Characters have to worry about their loved ones being taken over by some kind of evil entity as they sleep. While I don’t want to push the idea of The Feed as a criticism of the net too hard, I see some parallels between being taken over in this way and being radicalized by online content. Thoughts?

  NCW: That’s really interesting, and I can see those parallels too. And there is an element of radicalization in the novel (thank you for not spoiling!), but I was always determined to present an ambivalent view of technology; rather, to flag up its positives as well as its negatives. Because I’d not only be a luddite if I said tech was bad, I’d be patently wrong. It’s amazing. It’s a huge social leveler, it allows us to share so much knowledge and creativity — it’s great! But there is the question of whether we control it or it controls us. I think you guys in the States invented the phrase “wag the dog”?

  In terms of the horror-suspense element of the novel, I think that comes from all the genre novels and films and TV I’ve consumed over the years. Because entertainment’s there to, well, entertain isn’t it? No matter what other concerns a novel might have if it’s not gripping, surprising and dramatic…well it’s not doing its job. If there aren’t characters who you relate to, others you think you can trust and plots twists you just don’t see coming, it’s just not fun. So that thriller aspect is there to, I hope, give the novel drive so some of the other things we’re talking about can come along for the ride.

  UW: In your book, people are fused with technology: Their brains are hardwired for the Feed from a very young age. When I look at how closely most of us keep our smart phones, I have to wonder if we’re that far away from something similar. Are we?

  NCW: Well, I’ve never worked out whether I’m an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist. Either way, it feels like we’re close to that doesn’t it? And that we haven’t discussed as a society how that would change things. I mean, it feels like we’re playing around with the nature of what it means to be human and once that’s done it can’t be undone. So the novel is definitely aiming to be part of that conversation. It could be really exciting. And, of course, it could be terrifying; that’s the world of The Feed. You know there’s an “Alternative History’”literary genre? I’m really hoping this is an “Alternative Future” one!

  UW: I do most of my work online, and without an internet connection, I don’t have a job. I’m wondering to what extent do you think we’re defined or made whole by our technology? Is it shaping us in ways we don’t quite understand yet?

  NCW: Absolutely it is. We’re seeing a lot of things play out in terms of technology and politics at the moment, of course. But The Feed is focused more on what tech means on a physiological and neurological level. I’m like you: I thrive on an internet connection. But I’ve also started to notice how being wired in for too long makes me feel, how it makes me interact with people, how it’s starting to erode my capacity to think deep … and I don’t think I’m alone here. Just to be clear, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing per se, but you hit the nail on the head there: what interests me is that it’s affecting us in ways we don’t quite understand yet. That’s an interesting world to explore.

  UW: You might not be able to talk about this much, but I understand that there’s a television program based on The Feed somewhere on the horizon. What can you tell us about it?

  NCW: There is indeed, and it’s about to start shooting very soon. It’s a co-production between Amazon, All 3 Media, and Liberty Global, and its show-runner is Channing Powell, one of the Writer/Execs on “The Walking Dead”. To say I am excited is an understatement of epic proportions! The first series is based on the first 15 pages of the book. Obviously something big happens at the end of page 15, for people who haven’t read it yet; but before that there’s a very big world that’s being explored over 10 episodes…the rest of the novel, hopefully, to follow in future series. It’s a long shoot, though, so there’s plenty of time for people to read and enjoy the novel first!

• Fantastic Fiction - https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/nick-clark-windo/

  Nick Clark Windo was a student on the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. He studied English Literature at Cambridge and acting at RADA, and he now works as a film producer and communications coach. Inspired by his realisation that people are becoming increasingly disconnected from one another, and questions about identity and memory, The Feed is his first thriller. He lives in London with his wife.

• MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape - https://mylifemybooksmyescape.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/author-interview-nick-clark-windo/

  QUOTED: "It’s about two parents who are searching for their abducted daughter in an era when technology has collapsed. The Feed is the Internet directly to the brain: all knowledge, instant unfettered communication at the speed of thought. It’s great! Unfortunately, when it goes down, people find that they’re unable to make their own memories any more, or read body language, or communicate properly. Think you’d be in trouble if you lost your phone? Well this is worse. So it’s in this world that Tom and Kate fight to find their child."

  Mar 09 2018
  2 Comments
  Interview
  Author Interview: Nick Clark Windo
  E32E9622-E340-45A8-8C16-5A418B2B5F7D

  Photo © James Eckersley
  Today I am interviewing Nick Clark Windo, author of the new science-fiction novel, The Feed.

  ◊ ◊ ◊
  DJ: Hi Nick! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!
  For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

  Nick Clark Windo: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me here!
  …sure. The Feed is my first published novel, though there are a few unpublished ones hanging around at home and plotting their freedom amongst themselves. I wrote one at school, another at University (where I studied English literature), another at RADA (where I trained to be an actor) and then another as I was working as an actor and starting to produce films, which is what I do as well as writing. I coach people on communication skills too. I don’t sleep much!
  DJ: What is The Feed about?

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  Nick: It’s about two parents who are searching for their abducted daughter in an era when technology has collapsed. The Feed is the Internet directly to the brain: all knowledge, instant unfettered communication at the speed of thought. It’s great! Unfortunately, when it goes down, people find that they’re unable to make their own memories any more, or read body language, or communicate properly. Think you’d be in trouble if you lost your phone? Well this is worse. So it’s in this world that Tom and Kate fight to find their child.
  DJ: What were some of your influences for The Feed?

  Nick: Ah. Loads! I have quite a magpie brain, so books, films, TV shows, music, the news, they all set thoughts a-whirring. You’ll see some echoes of 28 Weeks Later in there, The Road, Station Eleven and just what’s happening in the world: the way people interact. Put on some Godspeed You! Black Emperor and some Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds while you’re reading and you’ll have a nice soundtrack. I’d love to hope that readers of David Mitchell might see some points of reference; certainly, his cross-genre boldness has been a big inspiration over the years.
  DJ: Could you briefly tell us a little about your main characters? Do they have any cool quirks or habits, or any reason why readers with sympathize with them?

  Nick: Well I hope that readers will recognise some of themselves in Kate and Tom. We first meet them in a crowded restaurant where they’ve agreed to have a date night ‘off Feed’. So everyone else is there, living in this digitally enhanced augmented reality and not really paying attention to the real people in the restaurant with them, and Tom and Kate are chewing the walls with withdrawal symptoms. More prosaically they can’t order any food as the menu is online and the waiter, dependent as he is on the Feed for communication, can’t really understand what they’re saying in ‘the real’.
  DJ: What is the world and setting of The Feed like?

  Nick: It’s a recognisable future. No hover cars or killer AIs. It’s all an extrapolation of how we live now – in fact, a lot of it is about how we’re living now is affecting how people will live in a few years. Then the Feed goes down and…well, the world is a pretty dangerous place. Essentially lobotomised, lots of people bite the dust quickly – they don’t know how to communicate, let alone forage for food or fix things. But for those who survive there’s a lot of hope, and a lot of natural beauty to the world. There’s also something taking people over in their sleep, which is causing a slow-burn terror amongst the survivors. On balance, I wouldn’t want to live there.
  DJ: What was your favorite part about writing The Feed?

  Nick: I love the physical act of writing. I love getting lost in an imaginary world while at the same time describing that place with a pen and ink on paper. It’s wonderful.
  DJ: What do you think readers will be talking about most once they finish it?
  Nick: Well…there are a couple of twists, and something that has been kept off the blurb and out of the publicity on purpose. So – those things!

  DJ: Did you have a particular goal when you began writing The Feed? Was there a particular message or meaning you are hoping to get across when readers finish it? Or is there perhaps a certain theme to the story?

  Nick: There certainly are themes, and there’s a lot that I’m interested by and worried about. I believe that technology is affecting us in very fundamental ways that we’re sort of aware of, but hiding from. And in a few decades the damage will have been done. But at the same time, the novel’s not a polemic: it’s a thriller. So what I hope the readers get is absorbing entertainment. There are some big worlds in there, so their imaginations should get a work out, and some big things happen to the people in it…so emotions will hopefully be stretched. And there are twists. And, yeah, if it gets people thinking a bit about some of the things we’re taking for granted…that’d be good, too.
  DJ: When I read, I love to collect quotes – whether it be because they’re funny, foodie, or have a personal meaning to me. Do you have any favorite quotes from The Feed that you can share with us?

  Nick: Oh gosh. I do, but it feels kind of awkward pointing them out – like showing you my favourite pants. (NB as a Brit, that means underwear rather than trousers; I probably wouldn’t mind showing you my trousers.) To be honest, I’ve found that a fair bit of the writing process is about smoothing those sorts of lines a bit more unobtrusively into the rest of the text. Having said that, I’d obviously love it if any of your readers have some choice quotations. Please Tweet me with them if you do!
  DJ: Now that The Feed is released, what is next for you?

  Nick: The next book! Which isn’t to do with The Feed (although there might be one of those cooking, too). It’s pretty early stages but I know the world, the main characters. And I know how it’s going to end. That works as a compass point – I can get lost with the characters then, knowing where we need to get to. And The Feed is being adapted for TV. The show-runner is one of the writer/execs from The Walking Dead, so it’s all pretty big and very exciting. It’s due to start shooting very soon.


  DJ: Where can readers find out more about you?

  Twitter: @nickhdclark
  DJ: Before we go, what is that one thing you’d like readers to know about The Feed that we haven’t talked about yet?

  Nick: There’s some feel-good stuff in there! You know? It’s really easy to pitch the book as bleak post-apocalyptic stuff, but there are some people in there doing some emotional things…and there’s hope…and there’s bravery, and heartfelt resolution. Not to mention the landscape: man, it’s pretty in the future when we’ve stopped polluting the place!
  

  DJ: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to answer my questions!

  Nick: Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

  ◊ ◊ ◊
  *** The Feed is published by William Morrow and is available TODAY!!! ***
  Buy the Book:
  Amazon | Barnes & Nobel | Goodreads | Kobo

  ◊ ◊ ◊
  82FFCF87-7DFF-4FDE-8AD3-D010A54A168CAbout the Book:

  “Think The Road intricately wrapped around Station Eleven with a dash of Oryx and Crake…Windo pushes all the right buttons in this post-apocalyptic mashup.” — Kirkus

  Set in a post-apocalyptic world as unique and vividly imagined as those of Mad Max and The Girl with All the Gifts, a startling and timely debut that explores what it is to be human and what it truly means to be connected in the digital age.

  IT MAKES US. IT DESTROYS US. NOW WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT IT.

  The Feed is accessible everywhere, by everyone, at any time. It instantaneously links us to all information and global events as they break. Every interaction, every emotion, every image can be shared through it; it is the essential tool everyone relies on to know and understand the thoughts and feelings of partners, parents, friends, children, colleagues, bosses, employees . . . in fact, of anyone and everyone else in the world.

  Tom and Kate use the Feed, but Tom has resisted its addiction, which makes him suspect to his family. After all, his father created it. But that opposition to constant connection serves Tom and Kate well when the Feed collapses after a horrific tragedy shatters the world as they know it.

  The Feed’s collapse, taking modern society with it, leaves people scavenging to survive. Finding food is truly a matter of life and death. Minor ailments, previously treatable, now kill. And while the collapse has demolished the trappings of the modern world, it has also eroded trust. In a world where survival of the fittest is a way of life, there is no one to depend upon except yourself . . . and maybe even that is no longer true.

  Tom and Kate have managed to protect themselves and their family. But then their six-year-old daughter, Bea, goes missing. Who has taken her? How do you begin to look for someone in a world without technology? And what happens when you can no longer even be certain that the people you love are really who they claim to be
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  Photo © James Eckersley
  About the Author:

  Nick Clark Windo was a student in the Faber Academy “Writing a Novel” course. He studied English literature at Cambridge and acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and he now works as a film producer and communications coach. The Feed, his first thriller, was inspired by his realization that people are becoming increasingly disconnected from one another, as well as by philosophical questions about identity and memory. He lives in London with his wife.

• Riff Raff - https://www.the-riffraff.com/single-post/-First-Timewith-Nick-Clark-Windo

  QUOTED: "A lot of ideas for The Feed had been cooking for a long time, but there was a specific moment when things coalesced. I’d got into a bad habit of checking Twitter up until the moment before I went to sleep and one night I barely slept."
  "To be more specific, I did sleep, but ‘refreshed’ my dreams every few seconds throughout the night: a thumb would swipe down in my field of vision and wham there was another dream. It was exhausting. It also made me wonder, upon waking, what will happen to our thought processes when we’re directly connected to machines. Cue The Feed."

  My First Time...with Nick Clark Windo

  March 26, 2018

  |

  The Riff Raff

  Nick Clark Windo originally studied English Literature before training to be an actor. Now, as well as writing, he works as a communications coach and film producer. He lives in London with his wife and daughter where is he is currently beavering away on the next novel and is Executive Producing on a TV adaptation of The Feed which is due to start shooting very soon.

  Nick will be reading and chatting at The Riff Raff on Thursday 12th April. Snap up your tickets before they're all gone >>

  Here's the blurb for The Feed...

  'Your knowledge. Your memories. Your dreams. If all you are is on the Feed, what will you become when the Feed goes down?

  For Tom and Kate, in the six years since the world collapsed, every day has been a fight for survival. And when their daughter, Bea, goes missing, they will question whether they can even trust each other anymore. The threat is closer than they realise... '

  Read more My First Time interviews >>

  Describe the exact moment you decided to write your book?

  A lot of ideas for The Feed had been cooking for a long time, but there was a specific moment when things coalesced. I’d got into a bad habit of checking Twitter up until the moment before I went to sleep and one night I barely slept.

  To be more specific, I did sleep, but ‘refreshed’ my dreams every few seconds throughout the night: a thumb would swipe down in my field of vision and wham there was another dream. It was exhausting. It also made me wonder, upon waking, what will happen to our thought processes when we’re directly connected to machines. Cue The Feed…

  What’s the one thing you wish you’d known before starting?

  Well The Feed isn’t my first. I wrote that when I was at school, and if I could say something to myself back in time about it, it would be, ‘I know you enjoy doing this, but take it seriously, too’.

  In terms of The Feed I wish I’d known some of the structural solutions before starting to write. It would have saved a lot of drafts…but then I probably needed to go through all those drafts to find the solutions.

  What’s your go-to procrastination method?

  Making tea and checking the news. I don’t count walking or having baths as procrastination – they’re essential parts of the writing process.

  What was the biggest tantrum you had while writing it?

  Good question. I never thought of doing this! I’ll come good on this with book two. For The Feed, I was pretty relaxed throughout. That’s not to say it wasn’t hard work, or that it didn’t take a long time or a lot of head-scratching – it took years and over 20 re-drafts – but I knew where the book was going, I knew when it wasn’t working, I knew it would take time to get it right and I just kept at it. I enjoyed it.

  Best thing about writing your book?

  Oh actually writing. Going for a walk, letting the mind wander around a scene, getting back to the desk (or – better, an outside table in the spring or summer) and then living through the pen.

  It’s that wonderful and rare thing when, if there are no other calls on your time (rare), you can lose yourself: time stops mattering. It’s exhausting and nurturing at the same time.

  And the worst?

  It’s not nice when people don’t like it. Is that stating the obvious? At any stage, really, whether it’s early readers, industry folk or paying customers, it can hurt – and it’s worrying, because belief is fragile and you have to believe to write.

  At the same time, that criticism is absolutely essential in shaping a novel: I believe criticism helps you sharpen, shape and harden your own opinions about the novel you want to write. (To be clear – that’s not saying that your opinion is always right. Always question your opinion off the back of a criticism, but if you think it is right after that process, then back yourself.)

  It’s easy to take criticism personally but that’s not very useful – it means you stop seeing the novel, which is what really matters.

  Go-to writing snacks?

  Tea, nuts and water. The tea and water have the additional benefit of making me go to the loo quite a lot. There’s nothing like a leg stretch to unlock a stuck scene.

  Who or what inspires you to write?

  All the books I’ve ever read and all the people who’ve written them! And films and TV and music and conversations I overhear – all of these things get into my head and merge and morph.

  Some things inspire a character, or something a character might do; others inspire a bit of the world. A lot gets forgotten, of course, or just goes missing. Hopefully none of the good stuff. But there’s inspiration all around if you’re looking for it – where else do ideas come from?

  The book that changed you?

  I find this question so difficult! I’ve been reading voraciously since I was very young and I think most of the books have changed me. You learn about life by reading.

  You get to live lives you’d never otherwise know. Furthermore, by reading you’re constantly honing your awareness of what effective writing is so it actually doesn't matter whether you’re reading ‘good’ writing or ‘bad’ writing; in fact, read it all. Is this a cop-out answer? I hope not. I think the reading process changes the way we think and see the world…

  Your pump up song?

  Oh god...maybe if I had one I’d be able to fuel a tantrum! But I do listen to music while writing. Usually it’s classical or jazz: something with an appropriate atmosphere rather than with lyrics, which tend to snag my attention.

  Having said that, I listened to the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album 'Push The Sky Away' about 1,000 times while writing this novel. That was an atmosphere thing but also due to a lot of weird coincidences in the lyrics. I was on draft 10 or so of The Feed when I first listened to it and there were a lot of weird coincidences.

  If you could share a bottle of wine with one writer dead or alive, who would it be?

  I mean, Hemmingway knew what he was doing, didn’t he. And he was fairly reticent about talking about writing, so that would be quite an opportunity. I think we’d need more than a bottle of wine though.

  One piece of advice you’d give first time writers hoping to get published?

  Take your time. Take your time to get the novel right because people will usually only read it once. Take you time to stagger who you send it out to and then take your time to think about any notes they give you and to change the novel accordingly before you send it out again (for the same reason).

QUOTED: "Sf fans pondering the next step in consumer tracking should enjoy debut author Windo's 'what if?' dystopian scenario."

The Feed
Lucy Lockley
Booklist. 114.13 (Mar. 1, 2018): p31.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Feed. By Nick Clark Windo. Mar. 2018.336p. Harper, $26.99 (9780062651853).

The Feed knows what people think and personalizes every product to meet individual needs. Then, suddenly that interconnectivity is gone, and civilization is thrown into chaos. Despite being the son of its founder, Tom Hatfield had resisted the Feed and encouraged his wife, Kate, to fight its addictive thrall. At the time of the collapse, Kate was pregnant, and Tom's resistance helped them escape the chaos to join a small group in the mountains. Seven years later, they still face a continual struggle to raise their daughter, Bea, and rediscover basic survival skills such as farming, generating electricity, even how to write. They have also learned to keep a strict eye on each other and those around them. The Feed left a lurking mental invasion that can "take" sleeping people, usually leading to wanton violence. When Bea is kidnapped, Tom abandons their haven determined to do whatever he must to find his daughter, but he can never know whom to trust. Sf fans pondering the next step in consumer tracking should enjoy debut author Windo's "what if?" dystopian scenario.--Lucy Lockley

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lockley, Lucy. "The Feed." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 31. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532250881/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7a4214dd. Accessed 21 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A532250881

QUOTED: "There's a smart and provocative story in here somewhere, but Clark Windo's pedestrian prose and overdone narrative tricks smother it."

Windo, Nick Clark: THE FEED
Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Windo, Nick Clark THE FEED Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $26.99 3, 13 ISBN: 978-0-06-265185-3

Think The Road intricately wrapped around Station 11 with a dash of Oryx and Crake.

First-time British novelist Clark Windo pushes all the right buttons in this post-apocalyptic mashup. Imagine a world in which everyone has the Feed implanted in their brains. The internet and all it offers is yours in seconds. No need to read, no need to even talk; people can even access other's thoughts. Tom Hatfield, a psychotherapist, and his pregnant wife, Kate, a teacher, are eating in a restaurant in, maybe, England. Tom's father had something to do with creating the Feed. Tech-speak abounds: "emotis," "adrenalspike," "ent." Suddenly, there are "gasps and a gabble of confused words actually vocalized out in the real." Everyone is bombarded with the news, something about an Arctic-South war; President Taylor is assassinated. The Collapse has occurred. Smoke pours in, there are distant detonations, "birds...sprayed upwards...machines hurtled from the sky" and then, "under the booms," there is the "approaching sound of silence." The Feed vanishes. Jump ahead six years. Something has killed millions of people. Tom, Kate, 6-year-old Bea, and a few others are living in huts in a grim, desolate camp. The time frame is uncertain; seasons pass. They have to forage for food. They have to watch each other sleep, otherwise they're "taken over."(Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) If that does happen, they'll need to be killed. Tom had to kill his brother. People have to relearn everything in order to survive, even language, and talk to each other. Bea is abducted. They head out to find her. Something's wrong with Kate. The twisty, slowly unwinding tale is laid out in tiny bits and pieces of information. The characters aren't very well-developed. Windo demands quite a bit from the reader, and some might give up on this trip.

There's a smart and provocative story in here somewhere, but Clark Windo's pedestrian prose and overdone narrative tricks smother it.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Windo, Nick Clark: THE FEED." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735842/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d39b35a6. Accessed 21 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735842

QUOTED: "Perhaps ironically, readers will struggle to connect with this novel."

The Feed
Publishers Weekly. 265.3 (Jan. 15, 2018): p44.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Feed

Nick Clark Windo. Morrow, $26.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-265185-3

This heavily speculative postapocalyptic thriller complicates a basic what-if question--what if the internet were connected directly to people's brains?--with somewhat ad hoc plot developments. When the brain-linking global network called the Feed collapsed, it took society with it. Six years later, Tom and Kate, a couple with a history of going "slow" (disconnecting from the Feed), struggle to get a viable survivor community going, and partial memories and rare hard-copy texts are their only sources of vital information. When their daughter, Bea, is kidnapped by outlaws who drive a horse-drawn, spike-covered minivan, Tom and Kate must quest through the new wilderness of abandoned suburbs and wreck-jammed highways, dealing with other suspicious survivors and settlements run by people whose original identities were overwritten through their Feed implants while they slept. Debut novelist Windo makes the loss of modern society very personal, with close portraits of how his characters are worn down by the basic work of premodern life. Unfortunately, his tendency to layer in greater and greater revelations breaks the sense of intimacy that comes from focusing on his forsaken internet addicts. Perhaps ironically, readers will struggle to connect with this novel. Agent: Sasha Raskin, United Talent Agency. (Mar.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Feed." Publishers Weekly, 15 Jan. 2018, p. 44. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A523888903/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b7a6108e. Accessed 21 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A523888903

Lockley, Lucy. "The Feed." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 31. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532250881/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7a4214dd. Accessed 21 May 2018. "Windo, Nick Clark: THE FEED." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735842/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d39b35a6. Accessed 21 May 2018. "The Feed." Publishers Weekly, 15 Jan. 2018, p. 44. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A523888903/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b7a6108e. Accessed 21 May 2018.

• Verge
  https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/25/17152418/nick-clark-windo-the-feed-facebook-social-media-questioning-everything
  Word count: 897

  Nick Clark Windo’s The Feed is highly relevant after the Cambridge Analytica fiasco
  4 comments
  Certainly it tells us something about social media and how we’re just all too reliant on it
  By Shannon Liao@Shannon_Liao Mar 25, 2018, 9:00am EDT
  Share

  Mild spoilers ahead for The Feed.

  Following last week’s Cambridge Analytica revelations, Facebook is now imploding before our eyes, leading to increased fears of data-sharing and data mining by third-party apps, numerous lawsuits, and calls for investigation from Congress. Most importantly, users are considering whether they can or should cut off social media giants for good. With that in mind, Nick Clark Windo’s debut novel, The Feed, which came out on March 9th, feels particularly relevant, when we as a society are re-evaluating our relationship with some of the most pervasive technology products of our time.

  The Feed takes place in the near future, somewhere in England we’re led to assume, when most people have social media embedded in their brains, allowing them to communicate with each other via telepathy, or what Windo terms “spraying.” It’s still possible to turn off the Feed, as the product is referred to. But with nearly everyone online, and hardly anyone actually verbalizing words to each other in real life, this form of social media has become the primary means of communication. Like most modern forecasts of digital life, it feels like a Black Mirror episode, somewhere between season one’s meditation on screen-obsessed gamification featuring Daniel Kaluuya and the following episode, “The Entire History of You,” in which brain implants let people replay memories or mirror the visual signal to any screen in the vicinity.

  In The Feed, we are introduced to a loving couple, Kate and Tom who, while on their dinner date at a restaurant, sit in absolute silence as everyone around them speaks to each other via spraying. Tom is a bit of a Luddite, even though (or maybe because) his father invented the Feed and changed their world irrevocably by doing so. He convinces Kate to log off for their dinner date, but she can’t resist the lure of opening up public polls and messaging her mom and sister.

  This is all we get of the future world in The Feed while the core product remains active, with it positioned as a life-altering and addictive layer over reality that’s impossible to extract yourself from. The situation changes dramatically when bad actors assassinate the president and crash the the Feed’s systems. Tom and Kate’s world is ripped in two, as they’re thrust into a dark age of sorts where fresh food is hard to come by, a basic scrape can kill if it’s not disinfected, and where nefarious internet users “hack” people’s minds while they’re asleep via the Feed’s implants. The latter threat, in Windo’s world, leads to complete and total personality override as people’s digital consciousnesses can be forcibly placed in other people’s bodies in an Altered Carbon-style twist.
  "Humanity can’t really live with or without social media"

  Windo makes the point in The Feed that humanity can’t really live with or without technological advancements like social media — and his argument is compelling. Without the Feed and its access to all communication and information, the world collapses. People forgot basic science like the composition of soil for growing food or even why the sky is blue. Memories of other people fade without the Feed’s automated reminders. It’s impossible to find others without GPS locators and law enforcement is rendered useless, as Kate finds out when her child is kidnapped.

  The Feed also stresses how social media can be a deadly distraction, as it can create false illusions of wellness and progress in the world while the environment degenerates and climate change runs rampant. Windo argues that once power and user data are in the hands of a small slice of wealthy individuals, those people can and will make decisions at the expense of humanity with too few consequences for their actions. It’s hard not to see the character President Taylor, who makes business deals while the world rots, as a conglomeration of the worst of Washington DC and Silicon Valley.

  Windo isn’t entirely pessimistic. He doesn’t seem to be saying society as it is today is irrevocably enthralled by social media, as if it’s a necessity for living. Instead, The Feed offers a multifaceted look at the downsides of social media and how it’s become intertwined with daily life, taken of course to an extreme. We’re not yet at the point where we’re eating in public in total silence with live streamed video feeds blasting directly into our brains. But we’re seeing now with the Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal shows that technology can often manifest with little to no regard for how it will be used or misused in the future. As is the case with many dystopian novels, The Feed is a cautionary tale — and it is perhaps worth mentioning here that Facebook is working on brain-computer interfaces? The future may be a lot closer than we think.

• Criminal Element
  https://www.criminalelement.com/review-the-feed-by-nick-clark-windo/
  Word count: 1102

  QUOTED: "The Feed is a wild, entertaining read that brings together science fiction, adventure, literary fiction, and horror (the mutated dogs that appear throughout the book are an excellent, horrific touch that horror fans will undoubtedly enjoy). Also, Windo possesses great rhythm and picks up speed in every action passage, which makes every fight, Bea’s abduction, and even the finale a true pleasure to read."

  Review: The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  By Gabino Iglesias
  March 8, 2018

  The Feed by Nick Clark Windo is set in a unique and vividly imagined post-apocalyptic world—a startling and timely debut that explores what it is to be human and what it truly means to be connected in the digital age (available March 13, 2018).

  The one thing science fiction is dealing with better than any other genre right now is technological advances. The genre has always “lived” in the future, and now that the future is here, authors are pushing things further, exploring new possibilities, and walking a fine line between pure imagination and plausibility. Nick Clark Windo’s The Feed mixes the internet’s ubiquity with a post-apocalyptic scenario and a lot of emotion to create a hybrid novel that walks the line between an adventure narrative, a horror story, and a classic science fiction tale.

  The Feed used to be accessible everywhere and at any time. It was inside the brain of most people and thus almost inescapable. The instant access to everything was addicting, and people started using it for everything. Every conversation, every memory, every moment at work, and every second dedicated to leisure was intricately tied to the Feed. Tom—whose father created the Feed—and Kate were no different, although Tom fought against the addiction and liked to have moments unplugged from it.

  One day, their lives—along with those left alive after the end of everything they used to know—change forever when the Feed collapses, throwing everything into chaos and pushing the world into a new age of pure survival, hunger, and violence. With society a mere memory, people are forced to scavenge to survive and live ferreted away, miles from the remnants of cities. To make things even worse, now there is something happening to them in their sleep, something so strange and hideous that it’s hard to believe and forces them to watch over the sleep of their companions. Trust, already eroded, becomes even thinner and adds a layer of tension to an already hard existence.

  While the couple has managed to protect themselves and their family, their luck ends when their six-year-old daughter, Bea, is abducted. What follows is a brutal narrative about two parents looking for their lost child in a world utterly devoid of comfort as things change around them and reality shifts from a bad place into one where the present collides with the history of how humanity came to an end.

  The main premise of The Feed works well, and Windo is a talented author with a knack for anxiety and dialogue. The first act is set up in a way that helps readers become immersed in the post-apocalyptic world while getting familiarized with the characters, their backstory, and their current struggles. It also succeeds at showing how the world that used to be is remembered as survivors try to recapture some of what they had before the Feed was part of civilization:

  Graham reminds them of the use of some words. He quivers between seriousness and glee as he describes how mem is to remember and how mundles are memories. Emotis are emotions. How to talk is to talk and not stream, which is a small river, like a brook.

  Dealing with the collapse of civilization isn’t easy, but Windo handles it very well. The past is always there, the present is a nuance that must be survived, and the future is a big question mark that demands answers and a lot of work in order to be better than the present. Furthermore, the past here is one that bifurcates before the end of the book as readers learn of what brought about the end of the Feed. Here, again, Windo excels at creating an alternate reality and explaining what happened without bogging down the narrative. Throughout all of it, we are reminded of the current state of the world in a way that makes The Feed earn a place among great post-apocalyptic narratives:

  Wind in their hair, touched by the faint smell of smoke. The village looks deserted. An ivy-choked sign asks them to drive carefully. A digital display telling them their speed stays blank. Advertising billboards line the road, naked now that there’s nothing to make the quickcodes anything but the reality of what they are: ink on weather-streaked paper, the augmented veil pulled away. The first house has been smashed. A curtain is sucked between window shards, in and out, like that for years. Dirt smears. There are haphazard cars in the streets. Tires flat. Windows crazed. Doors pulled from their hinges. There are old bones beside the hedgerows.

  Despite everything it does well, there are some flaws in this novel that can’t be ignored. The first is the overuse of exclamation points, which is a problem in the first third of the book but disappears in the second and third parts. The second is a lack of clarity that comes from the multiple layers of the story. Without giving anything away, the story of those behind what happened is not explained as deeply and richly as everything else in the novel, which makes it pale in comparison to the rest of the elements that surround it. Lastly, while the descriptions are rich, they eventually become too much, giving the impression that the narrative would have worked just as well if it had been edited to come in at 250 pages instead of the 336 it currently has.

  Despite those minor flaws, The Feed is a wild, entertaining read that brings together science fiction, adventure, literary fiction, and horror (the mutated dogs that appear throughout the book are an excellent, horrific touch that horror fans will undoubtedly enjoy). Also, Windo possesses great rhythm and picks up speed in every action passage, which makes every fight, Bea’s abduction, and even the finale a true pleasure to read. Ultimately, this is a novel for those who know what’s coming next but are curious about what comes after.

• Financial TImes
  https://www.ft.com/content/d4f4a210-ebc2-11e7-b4d1-b2f78612cc4a
  Word count: 195

  QUOTED: "The novel succeeds as a sober, semi-satirical commentary on our connectivity-obsessed times."

  Short review: The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  An intenet-like technology goes down for good in this commentary on our connectivity-obsessed times

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  James Lovegrove January 5, 2018
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  That itch you feel when you haven’t looked at your phone for a while. That urge to check social media the moment you wake up.

  Nick Clark Windo’s admirable debut taps into these modern-day anxieties. In it, a world universally connected by uber-internet The Feed lapses into chaos when the technology fails. Some people become lethal psychopaths. You cannot tell friend from potential killer.

  Following the adventures of a band of survivors six years after the disaster, The Feed lacks the propulsive energy of similar offerings such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Stephen King’s Cell; still, the novel succeeds as a sober, semi-satirical commentary on our connectivity-obsessed times.

• Observer
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/30/thriller-reviews-woman-in-the-window-child-finder-the-feed
  Word count: 851

  QUOTED: "In a world with more than its fair share of post-apocalyptic thrillers, Nick Clark Windo’s debut, The Feed, stands out for the nature of its disaster."

  Thriller reviews: The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn; The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld; The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  A chiller set in a post-apocalyptic world, a hunt for a missing child and a New York mystery – three page-turning thrillers
  Alison Flood

  Alison Flood

  Tue 30 Jan 2018 03.00 EST
  Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 19.48 EDT

  Anna Fox, the lead character in AJ Finn’s The Woman in the Window, never leaves her Harlem brownstone.
  Anna Fox, the lead character in AJ Finn’s The Woman in the Window, never leaves her Harlem brownstone. Photograph: Photographer is my life./Getty Images

  AJ Finn’s debut novel, The Woman in the Window, is the latest addition to the Before I Go to Sleep/The Girl on the Train subgenre of psychological thrillers: woman whose brain is addled for whatever reason (booze; amnesia; medication) witnesses a crime. Or does she? Finn’s particular addled woman is Dr Anna Fox, a child psychologist who has become severely agoraphobic after a traumatic experience, terrified by “the vast skies, the endless horizon, the sheer exposure, the crushing pressure of the outdoors”. She lives alone in a Harlem brownstone she never leaves, taking photos of her neighbours and spying on their lives, talking to her estranged husband and daughter on the phone, playing chess and chatting on forums online. Desperately miserable and unwisely mixing rivers of merlot with the serious medication she’s been given, Anna is particularly fascinated by the family who live across the park, the Russells. When she hears a bloodcurdling scream from their house, then sees what she believes to be a murder, the police don’t believe her. Confused and frightened, Anna begins to wonder if she hallucinated the attack: “I feel as though I’m falling through my own mind.” It’s a nifty premise from Finn, the pseudonym of US books editor Daniel Mallory, pulled off classily; with book deals struck in 38 territories, and film rights sold to Fox 2000, it is already No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
  Rene Denfeld’s The Child Finder is ‘a compelling blast of cold air from the wintry woods’
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  Rene Denfeld’s The Child Finder is ‘a compelling blast of cold air from the wintry woods’. Photograph: Gary Norman

  In Rene Denfeld’s The Child Finder, Naomi Cottle is the investigator of the title, earning her keep by tracking down missing children for their distraught parents. This time, she’s on the trail of Madison Culver, who vanished in the snowy Oregon forests three years earlier, when she was five. Madison’s mother is convinced that she was “taken”; Naomi, who has a dark past of her own she is trying to come to terms with (“Each child she found was a molecule, a part of herself still remaining in the scary world she had left behind”), begins investigating. Denfeld, a death penalty investigator as well as an author, intersperses Naomi’s hunt with snippets from the life of the missing girl. A compelling blast of cold air from the wintry woods, with elements of a dark fairytale.
  Nick Clark Windo’s debut, The Feed, ‘stands out for the nature of its disaster’
  Facebook Twitter Pinterest
  Nick Clark Windo’s debut, The Feed, ‘stands out for the nature of its disaster’.

  In a world with more than its fair share of post-apocalyptic thrillers, Nick Clark Windo’s debut, The Feed, stands out for the nature of its disaster. It opens in a world where billions live their lives through the addictive Feed, a technology implanted in the brain in which memories and skills such as reading are stored, and which allows the user almost instantaneous access to news, “ents”, each other’s “emotis” and “mundles” (memory bundles).

  Tom and Kate, who is pregnant, are eating in a silent restaurant, trying to “go slow” and turn off the Feed for a few hours while around them everyone communicates online. When appalled gasps break the silence, they rejoin the Feed to discover the president has been assassinated. Clark Windo then jumps the action six years into the future, where Tom and Kate and their daughter Bea are struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape; most of humanity, it seems, was wiped out when the Feed was turned off. “It took them many months to die, in differing states of lobotomy, lying in the roads, but die they mostly did … Their systems shunted and shorted out due to the fused elements of their brains. They could barely function.” And there’s an added danger: people’s brains can be taken over by an unknown evil while they sleep, so those who remain have to keep watch over one another in order to rest. Terrifyingly, brilliantly plausible.

• Speculative Herald
  http://www.speculativeherald.com/2018/01/25/review-the-feed-by-nick-clark-windo/
  Word count: 1352

  QUOTED: "This was a good read. If you enjoy post apocalyptic stories that contain an element of surprise this could be just what you’re looking for."

  Review: The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  January 25, 2018
  Review: The Feed by Nick Clark WindoThe Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  Published by Headline on January 25th 2018
  Genres: Science Fiction
  Pages: 368
  Format: eARC
  Source: Publisher

  Thanks to Headline for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

  LibraryThing button-amazon book-depository-button audible-button

  four-stars

  For a debut novel Nick Clark Windo has come up with an impressive and thought provoking story with a post-apocalyptic world that comes scarily close to believable. Set in a possible near future Windo brings to us a world where people are so obsessed with their ‘feeds’ that they’re practically incapable of functioning when everything comes crashing down.

  Many of us live our lives pretty much glued to the internet with mobile phones becoming an absolute necessity. You pretty much can’t leave home without your phone, it has maps, the internet, books, twitter, facebook, goodness knows how many apps and even your camera and ability to pay for goods, oh, and I almost forgot – sometimes people try to call or text you. Now take this information and instead of carrying a phone around all day implant a chip directly into the human brain and provide people with a constant stream of information. Your family can message you directly, send emotions and memories, information about anything can be relayed immediately to your brain, the need to study or read has become defunct and even the way you perceive others can be altered. To be honest, it doesn’t read as a huge leap of imagination does it? We’re never really more than a couple of steps away from all sorts of information and this concept just takes one step further in the natural progression of an ever developing world.

  Now, imagine all that information coming to a fairly abrupt end. Most of us stamp around like children if our wifi suffers a momentary blip. Just imagine how we’d feel if we lived in a world where information was relayed into our brains the minute we thought of the need – then strip that all away and think about the withdrawal symptoms and trauma. Your brain has become a lazy underused place where memory is rarely exercised and problems solve themselves. How would you know how to survive with all this information taken from within your grasp?

  As the story begins we glimpse Tom and Kate, pre collapse, they’ve both disabled their feeds and are experiencing an almost unheard of private conversation. At the same time a series of events, starting with the assassination of the President, are about to change the nature of the world as they both know it.

  We then jump forward. Tom and Kate have survived the apocalypse and are holding things together on a small settlement with a few others. Things aren’t easy and starvation is a very real possibility that keeps them constantly in search of resources to help them farm and grow food. It’s a dangerous world. Many have died but the ones who remain can’t always be trusted. On top of that there is the very real possibility of being ‘taken’ whilst asleep. The story then takes a dramatic change when Tom and Kate’s daughter is abducted from the camp and the two set off to find her.

  What Windo does remarkably well with The Feed is provide a mystery and a final reveal that are incredibly unexpected. The mystery of the ‘taken’ and the discovery of what caused the collapse make for a compelling hook and keep you reading at quite a breakneck pace – even in spite of a fairly slow start. He also manages to create a tense and fear laden atmosphere, exacerbated by the fact that the characters and the reader never truly know whether or not everyone is really who they say they are.

  The world building is well done and I enjoyed the style of writing. I can’t deny that I set off with an almost ambivalent feeling that this would be much the same as other books I’ve read of a simiar nature and so the fact that the author managed to come up with something so unique was a very pleasant surprise indeed. What is familiar is that the world here is one of decay and abandonment. There are some scary critters out there, wild dogs and even wilder humans. There’s also an element of pantomine – not everyone is as scary as they seem. Sometimes scary things are a form of protection or a ‘go away’ signal.

  In terms of criticisms. Well, overall this is an impressive debut with some unique ideas. Of course I could spout off similarities to various other books and films but on the whole this book stands proudly on its own two feet. The only thing that I had a little struggle with was the characters. I confess it’s difficult to really like any of them very much. Part of me thinks that this is how I’m supposed to feel. There’s a strong feeling of fear and mistrust running through the book and this spills out into the way everyone behaves. Always looking sideways at each other, questioning each other at every turn. You start to become equally jumpy and it makes it difficult to latch onto anyone that you really want to see pull through. That being said, and even though I’m always banging on about good characterisation being fundamental to my enjoyment of a book I didn’t ever feel the desire to put this down. I needed to know what was going on here and eventually the characters, or one in particularly grew on me. I think this was an intentional but risky way of writing. Also, as mentioned that has a fairly slow start in terms of action, I’d say the first 30% is all about laying down the foundations for a good read. My final niggle relates to the ending – I really liked the ending in one respect but I also struggled with another element (which, I won’t go into for the sake of spoilers).

  The conclusion of this story leaves me with many thoughts. A slight feeling of horror that this could ever happen and a determination to not be too reliant on the wonders of technology (she says with laptop on her knee typing away). More than that though I can’t help feeling a sense of awe at the complexity of what Windo has created. It’s difficult to really expand on it too much without giving away spoilers but there are definite areas of misunderstanding between the people in the world that has collapsed and those that helped to bring that collapse about and these prejudices and ignorances have massively helped to destroy and kill. I can’t really say more than that but it’s an impressive and thought provoking peace, particularly if you take the time to think about it carefully. There’s also an element of complete mind-fuckery going on here – sorry to swear but part of the reveal involves something that just does my head in because it’s such a conundrum. That’s all I can say about that though. I know I have lots of teasers in this review and it makes me feel guilty but I genuinely don’t want to spoil the story for potential readers.

  Overall I think this was a good read. If you enjoy post apocalyptic stories that contain an element of surprise this could be just what you’re looking for.

• Jenniely
  https://jenniely.com/book-review-feed-nick-clark-windo-blog-tour/
  Word count: 714

  January 26, 2018 - Jenniely
  Book Review | The Feed by Nick Clark Windo | Blog Tour
  The Feed Blog Tour

  Hey guys! Second blog tour in a month, and I’m so excited to be a part of this blog tour, I loved this book! Hope you all enjoy.
  ---Synopsis

  Book Review | The Feed by Nick Clark Windo | Blog TourThe Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  Published by Headline on January 25th 2018
  Genres: Science Fiction
  Pages: 368
  Buy on Book Depository
  Goodreads
  four-stars

  THE FEED by Nick Clark Windo is a startling and timely debut which presents a world as unique and vividly imagined as STATION ELEVEN and THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS and explores what it is to be human in the digital age.

  It makes us. It destroys us

  The Feed is everywhere. It can be accessed by anyone, at any time. Every interaction, every emotion, every image can be shared through it.

  Tom and Kate use The Feed, but they have resisted addiction to it. And this will serve them well when The Feed collapses.
  Until their six-year-old daughter, Bea, goes missing.
  Because how do you find someone in a world devoid of technology? And what happens when you can no longer trust that your loved ones are really who they claim to be?

  Overview

  I was sent this book for an honest review.

  Okay this book really made me think about the future and what we’re doing to our planet, seriously guys, we’re really messing the world up! But on to the book. I didn’t read all of the synopsis before I read this – I was drawn into the book from the social media campaign Headline did where they pretended they got hacked! Did you catch it? It was brilliant. Anyway, I didn’t know that Bea went missing until it happened, which was pretty surprising for me as I was wistfully hoping everything was gonna be okay for them.

  The Feed is something that’s in human’s brains (I think) and near enough every human uses it, so much so that normal social interactions are pretty much obsolete. What I really loved as well was the terminology used in the book to describe people’s action on the feed. They ‘sprayed’ thoughts as opposed to Tweet or post. They had ‘pools’, ‘mundles’ which were like memory videos. There are so many I can’t quite remember them all. Things go from bad, to worse, to shitfuck, which kept me gripped all the way through.

  Structure

  The majority of the first half of the book is told from Tom’s point of view, switching to Kate about half way through. It was really well done, and there was even one bit where I (no spoilers so this is hard to describe) had to read back to be sure of something. The language used was precise and clever, read it carefully guys!

  When we’re in the Feed, the formatting of the text changes and it’s an excellent representation. I even loved how ads were represented in this new technology. Everything happens so fast in the Feed, and when they’re disconnected from it life feels slow to them.

  There was a brief moment just after Bea was taken that I almost got bored, almost! For about 5 pages, then it picked right back up again. So if you get to that slump, stick with it! There are so many twists and turns, with revelations and foreshadowing/hints coming at you throughout, often in the form of flashbacks.

  Character

  Characters is a tough one as I really want to avoid spoilers. They felt really well developed, their actions justified by their behaviours. It was really interesting to see the different kind of people, those who resisted the feed so were relatively normal in this post-apocalyptic world, then those who were completely addicted and struggled to even remember simple words. Fascinating. Again, the more I want to say on it the more spoilers I’m gonna give.

• Last Word Book Review
  https://thelastwordbookreview.wordpress.com/2018/01/25/the-feed-by-nick-clark-windo/
  Word count: 530

  The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

  Jan 25

  Posted by thelastword1962

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  The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

  It is my great pleasure to host my day on the Blog Tour on publication day for The Feed by Nick Clark Windo.

  An incredible post-apocalyptic debut novel set in in a futuristic world where life as we know it has completely collapsed. So what is The Feed, it is fact Social Network, but this is a Social Network that is everything, everyone’s real life and everything you do and even buy is through this medium. This is not the Social Network as we know it today. It is everything, it drives your every moment. Lives are lived purely by it and through it. But what if you don’t or try to avoid?

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  Fast forward six years and the world has ceased as we knew it then. For the main characters Tom and Kate, they used Social Network but for Tom he was different from everyone else and fought back as he resisted its addictive power. But now everyone eyes him with concern. Why would they not? After all it was his own father that was the creator of the being that was The Feed. So why was Tom so keen to avoid it? Both Tom and Kate have survived The Feed’s collapse and with it the world as a whole. Now ordinary people who lived by The Feed now have to fight like wild animals to survive from one day to the next, not just to feed but to avoid being ill as this now kills. Cures have been lost now and suddenly the fight for survival meant if you were weak you did not survive.

  So now trust comes to the fore and just who can you trust? Tom and Kate have a six-year-old daughter and now Bea has gone missing, she is nowhere to be seen and who is going to help find the precious daughter, with all the modern trapping of the type of technology that could help locate the missing daughter now gone, hope is fading and now they have doubts over even if they trust each other let alone anyone else that is out there.

  The Feed is a dark and intensely satisfying novel that will test your senses and also at the same time will you also doubt the key characters of Tom and Kate? Just how far will technology take us into the future, this was my question to myself after reading The Feed. My answer is one of worry. Technology is a great tool, but in the wrong hands it can destroy are very fabric of society. This is a book that will ask you so many questions. Nick Clark Windo’s writing really captures the time in the future and there is a genuine likeness of the main characters and your pulse rate will be quite high at times as this is fast paced novel brilliantly executed dystopian novel.

  368 Pages.

• Concatenation
  http://www.concatenation.org/frev/windo-feed.html
  Word count: 896

  The Feed

  (2018) Nick Clark Windo, Headline, £12.99, hrdbk, 352pp, ISBN 978-4-722-34190-0

  “What will you do without it? Your knowledge. Your memories. Your dreams. If all that you are is on the Feed, who are you when the Feed goes down?”

  Already the subject of a bidding war in the UK and the USA and other parts of the world, and with the TV rights already snapped up, Nick Clark Windo’s The Feed promises to be a major publication event in early 2018, positing a future where 'The Feed' is everywhere and everyone is connected to it: interactions and emotions can be shared, everyone can experience, everything. You are never alone, and with a back-up facility, your mind/consciousness/soul can never die, while your body is perhaps long buried.

  Tom sees the dangers of The Feed, he has got good reason too, and he is trying to wean his pregnant wife Kate off it, but she is addicted, with two hundred million followers for her last poll. How can she beat that? They go for a meal, a simple thing, but not so simple. They want a real menu, something to hold, they actually want to order food, using that old-time thing called speech. The waiter can hardly believe it, and he can hardly talk anyway. Who talks these days? To the other patrons in the restaurant he looks different from his real self, the one that the off-Feed Tom and Kate can see. He is projecting another physical body through the Feed, like a skin a computer game character might wear, and while they argue and wait for their food something is happening on the Feed, they can tell by the reaction of the other diners and the waiter and they jump back in to see President Taylor being assassinated and then the Government takes over the Feed telling everyone to go home, there is a curfew, go home, there is a curfew, go home, there is…

  Only fifteen pages into the novel, six years have passed since the Collapse and Tom and Guy are on a mission to find something that might make life better for those living back at their camp. As the word “collapse” infers, things have clearly taken a drastic turn for the worst, but they become even darker when it becomes clear that Tom and Guy can’t go to sleep at the same time. One must sleep while the other one stays awake, and not because of some external threat. Something happens to Guy when he is sleeping and Tom has to kill him. This is the new world where sleep can bring possession, by what? No-one is sure, but murder and mayhem follows. Those that had the Feed can barely function, as they were so addicted to it, and those that had the Feed can lose their minds when they sleep and become one of the Taken. The technological world that everyone took for granted has come crashing down and life is a struggle. Tom and Kate and their daughter Bea life in a camp with a few others, but food is scarce and they have hopes they might be able to connect to a turbine and bring power to the camp. Tom sees a future there, Kate thinks it is too precarious and they should move on, but as the camp is raided and Bea is snatched, they have no choice but to leave and try and find her.

  Windo takes the world of social media and extrapolates it into the future where everyone is living in an almost virtual world instead of the real one. There is no need to learn to read, or speak, everything is on a mental plate for you, but suddenly it’s yanked away, and no-one knows how to do anything anymore, which is an interesting idea. Do you know how things work? Could you make them work again? Probably not. But mankind’s reliance on The Feed has left everyone vulnerable to being taken over by…what? Aliens? Demons? Like me, you might think you’ve worked it out, but...

  This is broad-brush science fiction, harking back to what Ray Bradbury said about being more interested in what powers the people rather than what powers the rocket, and we are firmly on the side of Tom and Kate as they struggle to find their daughter in a world where others stalk the landscape, some of them human, some of them humans housing the Taken. I’m sure readers will be reminded of many apocalyptic novels and I couldn’t help think of Adam Nevill’s Lost Girl, and Conrad William’s One. The latter in particular has a killer twist, a simple sentence that changes everything, and Windo has one too – but no spoilers here, simply to say that it certainly ups the ante, and I have to give him full marks for his ability to write a convincing fight scene – either with a ravenous dog or flesh-eating human - in a frenetic, frantic style.

  All in all, despite its bleakness, The Feed is an interesting post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that builds to a climax that embraces the three Hs - haunting, horrific and perhaps, hopeful.

  Ian Hunter

• Bookbag
  http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=The_Feed_by_Nick_Clark_Windo
  Word count: 830

  QUOTED: "This style of gritty future is not new and is actually a little too popular and cliché at this point. Windo has sought to homage the dark menace of a universe like The Road, rather than concentrating on the unique elements of his own story. There is enough here for a true dystopian fan to enjoy, but the idle reader should avoid it as it may turn them to drink."

  The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

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  Buy The Feed by Nick Clark Windo at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
  Category: Dystopian Fiction
  Rating: 3/5
  Reviewer: Sam Tyler
  Reviewed by Sam Tyler
  Summary: Society has become addicted to The Feed, but when it crashes everyone is suddenly left to deal with the real world in this dystopian vision that will leave you feeling a little more depressed than usual, even for this genre.
  Buy? No Borrow? Maybe
  Pages: 368 Date: January 2018
  Publisher: Headline
  ISBN: 9781472241900

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  For some people, we are already part of something bigger than ourselves. I am not talking religion, but about social media. Why have a conversation with the person sat opposite you, when you could be talking to thousands of people online? The highs of receiving a virtual thumbs up is like a mini joy injection that people can be addicted to. If you can ignore the trolls that ruin most of it, the internet and social media is the most fantastic development of the modern age, but what is the future? Will we become so addicted to the point that, if it was removed, we would all suffer?

  The Feed is set in a future in which humans have given themselves fully to the internet, to the point that they have wired their brains to be permanently online. However, when The Feed suddenly breaks down, society begins to crumble. This is a generation of people who never actually bothered to learn anything as it was hardwired into their minds; even the ability to read. Can anyone survive the time after The Feed and will they ever discover why it collapsed in the first place?

  It seems an odd thing to say, but I do like a good Dystopia. The genre is incredibly popular at the moment, probably because many of us feel we are on the precipice of one right now. The genre allows you to explore the issues of today and take them to the nth degree, in this case the proliferation of the internet and how that disconnects people from the world around them. At the start Windo appears to be onto something. An early scene is set in a packed restaurant full of noise and colour, but once our heroes Kate and Tom disconnect they realise that they are in a room in which no one is talking and the decorations are fake.

  This is a very interesting idea, but Windo uses it simply as a prologue. Instead the book is set a few years later after The Feed collapses and humanity scrambles to survive. The book becomes bleak quickly; The Road levels of bleak. Useless people stumbling around a broken planet trying to hunt for old tins as they cannot work out how to fix anything. There are no laughs in Feed and it makes for a difficult read. Windo is able to justify the uselessness of most people by saying their memories are shot since they cannot access The Feed.

  The first half of the book becomes a plodding survival drama about a group of people who can just about remember each other's name. However, bubbling beneath the surface is another interesting science fiction idea. Why do they watch each other sleep? It appears that their Feeds may just be open to nefarious interlopers. Around the halfway point an interesting twist occurs that makes the book easier to continue with, but many people would have struggled to get this far as, not being content enough with the grime and human suffering on offer, Windo throws in some kidnapping for added entertainment purposes.

  The Feed is a book with some great science fiction concepts wrapped up in something that feels like an unwashed dog blanket. You have to get the stench of human misery out of your nose before you can smell the sweet high concepts. This style of gritty future is not new and is actually a little too popular and cliché at this point. Windo has sought to homage the dark menace of a universe like The Road, rather than concentrating on the unique elements of his own story. There is enough here for a true dystopian fan to enjoy, but the idle reader should avoid it as it may turn them to drink.

• Jenny in Neverland
  https://jennyinneverland.com/2017/12/06/book-review-the-feed-by-nick-clark-windo/
  Word count: 1024

  6Dec2017
  BOOK REVIEW: The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
  Posted in Reviews, Sci-Fi by jennyinneverland

  Format: ARC, NetGalley
  Links: Amazon UK | Goodreads
  Publisher: Headline
  Publication date: 25th January 2018
  Blurb:It makes us. It destroys us.

  The Feed is everywhere. It can be accessed by anyone, at any time. Every interaction, every emotion, every image can be shared through it.

  Tom and Kate use The Feed, but they have resisted addiction to it. And this will serve them well when The Feed collapses. Until their six-year-old daughter, Bea, goes missing.

  Because how do you find someone in a world devoid of technology? And what happens when you can no longer trust that your loved ones are really who they claim to be?

  Review: The Feed is, to put it simply, an exceptionally elaborate and advanced form of social media. But instead of on an iPhone or a laptop, it’s all ingrained in your head and you can access anything, anyone and everything instantaneously. It’s addictive and life-altering and it’s gone so far that most humans can’t function without it. Then one day, it collapses and everyone is offline. Our main characters, Tom and Kate manage without it and find a way to survive with their daughter, Bea and a camp of others, adapting to the new ways of life that the collapse of The Feed has forced them into. Then one day, Bea goes missing and Tom and Kate head out on a truly treacherous mission to find her amongst a world of no technology, savages and threats far beyond our imagination.

  Okay, just to put it out there, I have a lot of thoughts about this book. Some good but mostly bad / annoying. But bear with me. First of all, I loved the concept. I’m not opposed to a bit of Sci-Fi every now and again and being a bit of a social media addict myself, this concept sounded right up my street and I was instantly drawn in to it by the blurb and the cover. With very little information about what The Feed is at first, you’re going into the book with so many questions that anything is possible.

  The book begins with a look of “Feed talk“. It’s all very rapid and almost like the language was trying to emulate what was going on in someone’s brain whilst using The Feed but I don’t now if it was the formatting of the copy I had on my Kindle but I had a few problems with this section (after this in the normal bulk of the story, the formatting was absolutely fine!). I noticed a few wording mistakes which shouldn’t have been there and on occasion, I felt like I was reading a sentence which was in the wrong part of the book which made no sense to the one that came before or after it. I don’t know if this was intentional but nevertheless, it was weird and kinda annoying.

  Another huge problem I had which made me struggle with this book more than I would have otherwise was that there were no chapters just a few really long sections. No chapters is something I cannot stand. But that’s just a personal preference and something someone else might not be at all affected by.

  But something kept me reading The Feed and I think it was the need to know more about this world they live in. It was very interesting and very unique and original. It had almost a Walking Dead vibe to it, after the collapse and roads were deserted and cars were upturned and houses were ransacked. I did find it very difficult to picture some of the settings, however. I loved the first part where Tom and Kate lived in their camp (an old farm house with land) with a few other people, including their daughter. It was a nice part of the book which, now having finished it, was like the calm before the storm. But everything after that big, the city and the buildings they were in, I found it very hard to imagine. In a way that, if this was turned into a movie, then it would look words apart from how I’m feebly attempting to imagine it in my head.

  Thinking about it now, this book would actually make an amazing film or TV show!

  One more niggle was that Kate was a desperately annoying and two dimensional character. I couldn’t tell you a single trait she had or something she loved (other than her daughter) or anything of substance. In fact, none of the characters I felt were particularly interesting or vibrant. Except Sylene who was intriguing – especially how she came to be in the story. I definitely feel, personally, that the writing was very much focused more on the settings a rather than the characters and the people and for me, I prefer it the other way around.

  Enough moaning, I am very confused about this book because like I said, it kept me reading. I finished the last 15% in one sitting and I wanted to know more and what was going to happen next. Which is obviously what a book should do to the reader. But there were too many “little things” which irked me to give it a higher rating than I have. If the author wrote another book with a similarly interesting and unique idea, would I read it? Yes, probably. If they made this story into a film, would I watch it? Heck yes, definitely! If I could rate on originality and storyline then this wouldh ave got a 4.5 but I have to take everything else into consideration when rating a book. I certainly wouldn’t encourage people not to read it though because it has a lot of potential to be a very popular read next year when its released!

• BiblioSanctum
  https://bibliosanctum.com/2018/03/25/book-review-the-feed-by-nick-clark-windo/
  Word count: 900

  Book Review: The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

  I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

  The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

  Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

  Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia

  Series: Stand Alone

  Publisher: William Morrow (March 13, 2018)

  Length: 336 pages

  Author Information: Website | Twitter

  We’ve all heard the cautionary tales involving social media, about the dangers of being constantly plugged in. Nick Clark Windo’s dark thriller debut takes this idea even further, imagining a future where people are permanently connected via implants so that access to everything is instantaneous as well as continuous. This is “the Feed” that the novel’s title is referring to—a new tech that humans have become so dependent on, and so addicted to, that society can no longer function without it. And so, when the Feed collapses one day, the results are predictably catastrophic. Some of the most basic skills and knowledge are lost to the digital abyss as everyone must now learn how to survive offline and fend for themselves in this Feed-less new world.

  For couple Kate and Tom, the adjustment has not been easy. But they have managed to keep going the past few years, living with a group of survivors as they raised their daughter Bea, who was born post-collapse. But then one day, Bea goes missing, snatched away by raiders, and so Kate and Tom must embark on a treacherous journey to bring her back.

  It’s said that things have to get bad before they can get better, and likewise, some books make you go through some really rough patches before you can get to the good parts of the story. The Feed was a book like that. For most of the first half, I struggled with nearly everything—the characters, the plot, the world-building. From the moment the story opened, my patience was put to the test. I found both protagonists horribly off-putting. Kate was especially annoying, as a heavy user of the Feed before its collapse. She was an attention monger, self-absorbed and totally oblivious. To be fair, she was probably written this way by design, but in this case the author might have overplayed her personality. Tom, on the other hand, struck me as bland and lacking in any spirit or agency. I didn’t feel like I could connect to either of them at all, which made the first part of this book a difficult slog. I also struggled with the world-building and the exaggerated side effects of the Feed. Humans are biologically hard-wired for curiosity, and I found it hard to believe that almost the entire population would simply surrender themselves to the Feed unquestioningly and let themselves become so helpless.

  And then the collapse happened, and subsequently, Bea’s disappearance really turned things around. Not to the point where I suddenly loved the book, mind you, but the story did become immensely more enjoyable once Tom and Kate finally had something to fight for. The second half of The Feed unfolded a lot more like a traditional dystopian novel, following our protagonists as they traversed the post-apocalyptic landscape, encountering violence and suffering. However, there is also a unique element to this world, which comes in the form of a very specialized threat. Even after the collapse, the sinister legacy of the Feed remains as those who possess the biological implants live in fear of being “taken”, a term to describe the process of being hacked and having your consciousness along with your personality and memories wiped clean and replaced. The result is a lot of chaos, mistrust, and panic, along with an “us vs. them” mentality among the survivors. While The Feed is not a zombie story, you can see how the overall tone and some of its themes can sometimes make it feel like one.

  There is also a monumental twist near the end that changed nearly everything, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it simply because it was so out of left field. Did it make this book more interesting? Yes. But in terms of whether it made the story more coherent or feasible, probably not. That said, I’m impressed with how Windo handled the challenges that came about because of this surprising development. Everything could have fallen apart, but ultimately he was able to keep the threads of the story together and saw things through to the end.

  I won’t lie, there were a lot of issues with this novel, particularly with the pacing and balance of the story’s numerous concepts. Still, there were plenty of fascinating ideas in here that I appreciated for their originality, especially once I got past the initial hurdles. There’s an almost sputtering, sporadic feel to the plot; in some ways, it’s like an engine that needs to be primed several times before it catches, but once it starts running, the ride smooths out and becomes a lot more enjoyable. The journey was certainly not boring, and that’s probably the best thing I can say about a novel in a saturated market like the dystopian genre.

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