Stephen Walker – Opinionated Ad Man, Writer and Author
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It has been a day…
I’m not usually one to write about these days. But I see and know how difficult they can be for everyone. The grass is not always green. We don’t all come home to the white picket fence. It’s not always sunny in Philadelphia. All I want to do is let you know that my inbox…
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Ch ch ch ah ah ah, indeed.
We need to have a talk. Not the kind of talk where I’m mad. Though honestly, maybe mad would be easier. Mad burns hot and fast like a shot of cheap whiskey. Mad gets things off your chest and moves on. No, this is worse than mad. I’m just disappointed. The kind of bone deep,…
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Do something you love
It’s hard to do the things you love when life kicks you in the face. But here’s a quick little permission slip to do the things you have put aside. Tonight, just 5 minutes from my place I’m heading to a little gallery where a friend of mine. Rob, will be exhibiting his work for…
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This is the writers prayer.
Repeat after me. I am a writer. I am the fury and the fire. I will finish the damn thing I started. No pity parties. No snot nosed tantrums. No “oh, the words aren’t coming today” melodrama. That shit’s for amateurs. My resolve is forged from titanium. These pants? They’re adult pants. The diapers of…
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Show me your kitties
I’m a creature of habit. And as always. Whenever I’m out and about, I follow my regular route. On this regular route I always see two cats. At a quick glance they’re identical. Mother and kitten. Now if you’ve ever seen The Matrix (1999) you’ll remember the scene where Neo sees a black cat meow,…
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Create your own rules
And live by them. We give up whatever type of power we have over our own lives by giving people full control and access to us when they don’t deserve it. I mean if you’ve been paying any attention to the clusterfuck of the world in the last 12 months. You’ll know how bad it…
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This post will find you if you’re feeling really stuck
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” Which is a rough quote and an attribution to famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. I went deep on Russian literature for year and yes. With everything going on in the world via Russia and Ukraine. Anyone who…
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A philosophy for success
“Find something you love and let it kill you.” That quote is famously said to have been written by Charles Bukowski. Bukowski was genius in his own right and it was disputed for decades that he didn’t write it. Although it does align with his overall philosophy and style. You can’t do any wrong by…
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How being selfish may actually save you
So there’s this thing about human nature that productivity gurus will never tell you in their $497 courses about “optimizing your potential” and it’s this… We’re fundamentally hedonistic creatures pretending to be rational ones. Stick with me here. This isn’t going where you think it’s going. Last Tuesday, I was having one of those days.…
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On burnout
Bear with me. I’ve ended my day with a few Espresso Martini-zzz cause this week has been a rollercoaster. There has been some epic wins and some epic losses. Like I always say… There is balance in all things. Now you’ll know I am the one person who will honestly say that they are far…
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The wasteland that is alpha male twitter
So picture this nightmare… King couldn’t write a better horror novel tbh. You’re innocently scrolling through Twitter. Sorry, “X” cause apparently we’re all living in Elon’s mid life crisis now. Christ knows how the algorithm works its magic but all of a sudden. Right in front of my eyeballs, are literal pages of Alpha Male…
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B rated greateness
I’m off to go watch Final Destination Bloodlines again. Yeah yeah I know. I’m a nerd. Even though the majority of horror films are considered B rated garbage. I have always been a fan of horror because of how versatile the genre can be. I wrote a massive post about this years ago about how…
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The vibe check nobody asked for but everyone needs
Pull up a chair. The slightly wobbly one that makes you wonder if it’s gonna collapse into a million pieces if you lean back too far. I’m not going to blow sunshine up your ass about how everything’s brilliant and we’re all crushing it in 2025. Cause let’s be honest, are we? Really? You know…
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The dirty little secret about getting good at anything
So here’s the thing nobody wants to tell you about mastery, and especially nobody wants to sell you a course about it… It’s boring as hell. Sitting here this morning, coffee getting cold while I bash out my thousandth email about whatever’s rattling around in my brain, and it hit me. This daily grind of…
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Hell hath no fury
Like a parrot scorned… Now you know the parrot that so happily runs my life has on a few occasions made a cameo in my emails… And he is a little shyt. Albeit a cute one. (When he wants to be though) So today as I waited for my favourite amazon delivery driver to drop…
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When you come back and everything is still exactly the same
Right, so I did something mental a few weeks/months back. Deleted all the apps. Cold turkey. Not because I’ve become some internet based monk who’s discovered the ancient art of mindfulness. Just because I was tired of feeling like my brain was being slowly liquidised by an endless stream of… well, nothing, really. 12 weeks.…
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The absolute madman of horror
Today I’ve had a lazy one. Beer in hand. Out in whatever sun we’ve had… (It’s England. We don’t get much sun, especially up north haha) Ripping through Stephen King’s new book and figuring how this guy basically stripmines his own fucked up past to create the insane legacy he has so far. I mean…
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The internet’s on fire and you’re holding the matches
We need to talk. (ooof I know hearing that sucks if you’re in a relationship) You know that feeling when you open your phone and suddenly three hours have evaporated like spilled vodka on hot concrete? Yeah. That one. The one where you started checking “just one thing” and ended up doom scrolling through seventeen…
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Going wide and not deep
Now I’ve had a lot of micro conversations about A.I. Some of them good and some of them bad. Like I’ve said in the past. I’m not strictly against it. There’s a use case for it and it’s good for crunching data, especially if the people using it have a specialist knowledge in the topic.…
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Everyone’s a little tired
I had a few replies over the last few emails, especially the last one with the audio and where I just asked how everyone is. Like some internet vibe check or whatever you want to call it. Surprisingly. Everyone’s a little tired. Tired of the uncertainty with all of these grifters peddling A.I. Tired with…
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Not now babe. I new audio tape just dropped…
So it’s been a while since done one of these audio rants. And well I thought it’d be a nice little break from the ol’ schedule of daily emails. So if you want to tune in and listen to a micro rant and ramble of appreciation. go here: https://stphnwlkr.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/voicetape2.mp3 If not. That’s totally cool. Hope…
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The galaxy brain take on piracy double standards
I just read this article and my brain is currently doing that thing where it tries to crawl out through my nose. I posted about it on FB but I thought eh, you love a bit of my rant-y type posts, but let me re-write it cause why not? “Nick Clegg: Artists’ demands over copyright…
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I just about fell out of my chair when I read this
I’m sure you know my feels on this whole A.I. thing. (and you know I’m not 100% against A.I. / LLMs / Tools) If you use them ethically and within the bounds of our own human sanity that’s cool… Most of us don’t wanna spend hours going through data and spreadsheets and all of that…
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Why 80s B Horror Flicks Will Make You a Copywriting God
There’s always some magical sauce to create magnetic copy and when you want to access is it. Some clown with a $27 micro course will be trying to shill it to you. But after a pretty chilled Friday while lazily watching some 80s trash. I thought eh, why not write something that’ll give the newer…
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29,855 doll hairs in 5 hours
587 backers and the cult like card game I wrote about a few months ago has hit its funding level. That is absolutely bonkers… What makes it even more insane is that the community is tiny in comparison to a lot of these massive kickstarter projects. Hell, there’s even been AAA studio level game developers…
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Shots, Sentences, and the Sweet Sound of Prose
Years ago when I was living in London. Every Friday we’d have what we like to call a Drink and Draw. Very long story short. We’d go to the local Wetherspoons (back when it wasn’t completely ass) cause we knew the owner. When the time came to kick everyone else out. A bunch of us…
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Big NPC energy
I’ve taken a pretty decent break from Twitter. A lot of my writer-ly friends hang there and hidden in the trenches of #WritingCommunity and various other self pub hashtags and crying about being an indie writer, the common thing that comes up is: “I haven’t sold any books!” or some variation of writing service they…
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Sat down with the man himself
I was lucky to sit down have a consultation with the man himself, Ben Settle. Ben is like marmite as they say here in the UK. You either love it or your hate it and the same goes for him. His ways are deliberate and they all make sense. So there’s no secret that I…
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You, Me, and the never ending content carnival
I gave myself a little talking to today. “Sit down. Wipe the Cheeto dust off your fingers if you must. We gotta talk.” Me to my 18yo self basically. As much as I could go back to my younger self and instil whatever wisdom I have painfully obtained over the years. It still leads me…
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Writers block is a lying liar that lies. This kicks it to the curb…
You know the drill. You’re sitting there, staring at the blinking cursor. The coffee’s cold, your brain feels like a sad lump of potato salad left out at a barbecue, and the only thing you’re creating is a growing sense of dread. Then it happens. Your body betrays you. You blink. Maybe just a little…