BSFA Shortlist

Over the last few years I’ve got into the habit of looking out for the BSFA awards shortlist announcement and resolving to read all the nominees before voting. The year before last I succeeded. Last year I ended up short by one novel, and looking at the way things is stacking up for the first […]

Challenge #2

Hot on the heels of the great Sales v Williamson 2013 Short Story Challenge, I’ve been challenged again, this time by Gio Clairval. Rather than complicate things, I’m keeping the two challenges separate. So, summary of the rules: 1/Timeframe Jan1 – Dec 31 2013 2/ New story submitted for the first time = 1pt. 3/ […]

The Sales v Williamson 2013 Short Story Challenge

So, in the comments of a recent post writer and friend, Ian Sales, challenged me to “friendly” race of sorts. The reasoning is to get both of us writing more short fiction this year. The rules: 1/ Contest runs between January 1 and December 31 2013. 2/ Each writer gets one point for a story […]

Talking saw

Last October Markee and Bert were invited to take part in GreenerVisuals’ Creativity interview series. Alison and the crew filmed our Glasgow Cabaret performance of Israphel’s Book, and interviewed us about the show, ourselves and cabaret in general. It was rather good fun, and aside from being ample demonstration of why Bert doesn’t get to […]

Score card 2012

Okay, so it’s January, which means, as I sorta promised last year, it’s time to see how I got on with my rather ambitious goals for 2012. In summary I hoped to: Novels: Finish Queen Of Clouds and have started The Poisoner’s Road Shorts: Write and publish 10 short stories Band: Release 2 or 3 […]

Crackle and buzz

So the other day Murnie released our new ep, Crackle. We’re a wee band, and just like thousands of other wee bands out there it’s both inexpensive and easy for us to record our music and make it available to (theoretically) anyone who wants to hear it. What’s difficult sometimes though is getting feedback. Any […]

Crackle

It’s the end of the year, but there’s just enough time to squeeze in a brand new Murnie ep. Our second release of the year has taken a bit longer than expected to come to fruition because…life. Anyway we hope you enjoy it. And for those who like these sorts of things, here’s a few […]

Feeding the song book

On Hogmanay, wur band releases its second ep of the year and its third in a little over 15 months. As has become my tradition, I’ll blog about the songs on Crackle on release day, but what’s interesting (to me at least) is that this leaves us with only four songs left from the original […]

Christmas Quintet

Really pleased to announce that my punky musical story, Arrhythmia, has been reprinted in Infinity Plus’s new Quintet anthology. Yeah, so Arrhythmia was nominated for the BSFA award and it’s one of the stories I’m proudest of, but what’s really cool is that it sits snugly in amongst stories by four writers whose work I absolutely adore. For me, […]

By the scruffs

Over on his blog Hal Duncan has been adding to the oeuvre of his wonderful Scruffians stories with a series of Scruffians rhymes. I have to be honest and say that I probably love the Scruffians stories, featuring a cast of incorrigible, immortal urchins, most out of all of the things that Hal does. He’s […]