That strange engine of creation

With the bidey-in working away for a few weeks, I have a rare, extended period of solitude at home and had hoped to use the swathes of uninterrupted time to storm ahead on editing the novel. And I am doing so; it’s knitting together better this time round, but progress is slow. Partly this is […]

Resolution, it’s a mug’s game

At the beginning of the last couple of years I’ve done a sort of “creative goals” post, and the one thing I’ve learned from the exercise is that, for the self-propelled creative type at least, planning is largely futile. Too often opportunities come your way that you couldn’t have foreseen and, if you have neither […]

Read like a reader

I’ve been thinking for quite a while now about the difference in reading experience between readers and writers. To my mind, readers engage with a story in a pure way that eschews awareness of the mechanisms by which it is told and enables the imagination to properly bring the characters to life, to ride-shotgun on their […]

Ten fragments

Been trying to piece together my memories of WFC into something coherent that I can remember, but it’s impossible. Too many fragments. So, I’m tossing them down here anyway. A jumble of pieces, most of them good. Make of them what you will. Lynda Rucker’s wonderful story, Ashmouth, read in its native Georgia accent. My […]

WFC: the shopping experience

The dealer’s room at this year’s WFC was one of the best I’ve seen in years. A VAST room, filled with books. The range of wares on offer from the pro and indy publishers, from the secondhand paperback sellers and the high-end collectibles dealers, was awesome. And for someone like me who for reasons of […]

Ten minutes

Writing this at Gatwick Airport with ten minutes of free wifi left, which is apt because ten minutes was, I reckon, the average amount of time I manage to spend in conversation with any one person on any one (of a million) important, personal, silly subjects at WFC in Brighton. Some conventions are relaxed affairs. […]

All Hallows

So Hallowe’en is supposed to be fun? Fun? Really? Over on Facebook, a friend was asking about Hallowe’en traditions, having seen an English newspaper report expressing concern that the UK had irrevocably now imported the American customs of Hallowe’en – from fancy dress to carving pumpkins to trick-or-treating. And my friend’s point was (quite correctly): “Wait […]

WFC shopping list

One of the benefits of the awards reading stint was that I inadvertently didn’t buy any new books for several months. I know! Imagine! This of course must be rectified, and it so happens that the imminent World Fantasy Convention will be the epicentre for a conflagration of book launches. In addition to the two […]

Last Exit…

Had the pleasure this week of a sneak preview of Chris Kelso‘s new novella, Last Exit To Interzone. It is most excellent bizarro fun. In what amounts pretty much to a love letter to the beat writers of the 50s and 60s – an admiration evident down to the punctuation – Kelso weaves a gonzo […]

Ready to launch

There’s two and a bit weeks to go before this year’s World Fantasy Convention down in lovely Brighton. I’m not doing terribly much at it, so you’ll mostly find me in the bar, but what will be happening at the con is the launch of a couple of anthologies which I’ve mentioned before here on account of […]