Hand-Me-Downs

Absolutely beside myself to announce that my new short story collection, Hand-Me-Downs, will be published very soon. In the past, the contents of my collections have been a mixed bag of genres and styles selected from everything I’d published in the previous decade or so, but Hand-Me-Downs is different in a couple of ways. It’s […]

Extinction Event

If you’ve been following along here for a while you’ll know that I occasionally interrupt the book chat with a my annual music nonsense. Well, that time has come again. Behold the Disappointed Skeptics Club album for 2026: Extinction Event. As always, the songs were written and recorded during February Album Writing month and then […]

BSFA Award for Best Collection

Last night Blood In The Bricks won the British Science Fiction Association award for best collection. Given the calibre of works on the shortlist I was absolutely dumbfounded, and still am this morning. If you love short fiction, go check out those wonderful books, you’re in for a treat. I’m so grateful to everyone who […]

The Packet launching at Eastercon

In two weeks’ time I’ll be heading down to Birmingham for the annual Eastercon convention. As always I’m looking forward to four days of hanging about and nerding out. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be on a couple of panels on the Saturday: Industrial Landscapes in SF and Fantasy in the morning, followed by […]

2025 ROUNDUP

It’s that time again: December with a vengeance, and time to take stock my creative year. On the surface it feels like it was a quieter year compared to 2024, but that’s no bad thing. Fiction-wise, in 2025 I published three new short stories. At the start of the year, Her Little Ray Of Sunshine […]

Pictcon

Off the back of the glorious mayhem that was the World Fantasy Convention down there in windy Brighton, I spent this weekend at an event that was both much cosier and closer to home, spiritually as well as geographically. Pictcon is a brand new convention, celebrating the multi-faceted Scottish genre community. Not just the writers […]

World Fantasy Convention 2025

World Fantasy 2025 is coming. If you’re looking for me, this is where I’ll be…

Absolute Zero

If you’re suffering from the summer swelter, you might like me be slightly guiltily looking forward to the winter. Well, I have good news. Absolute Zero, a new anthology of cold-themed horror fiction is just around the corner, and I have grim little story in there called The Cold Case. The Cold Case is set […]

My Authentic Shelf

New music alert! The sparkling new Disappointed Skeptics Club album is live on Bandcamp today! As ever, it was written and recorded during February Album Writing Month and then locked away in a drawer until the summer. I love doing that. Returning to it fresh not only allows me to make clear descisions about song […]

Blood In The Bricks

A little over a year ago I approached Ian Whates of NewCon Press about an idea I had for an anthology. Like many horror readers I’d been wholeheartedly enjoying the folk horror boom, but I’d started to notice diminishing returns in terms of the originality in the stories I was reading. At the same time, […]