September’s Reads

September was a little disappointing reading-wise. Struggled most of the month on one novel, and other activities (including having an unpublished novel for critique) have nibbled away my reading time lately. Not expecting this situation to improve much in October either, but c’est la vie. The Phantoms Of Breslau by Majek Krajewski (Quercus). Picked this […]

Cabaret, Cabaret

I might have once or twice mentioned the forthcoming Glasgow Cabaret Festival. It didn’t make its crowd source funding target, but the organizers have managed to find a way to put it on regardless. The complete Festival Programme is now up on the website, and you can keep up to date with what’s on on a […]

Fcon 2011

Every convention is memorable for its own reasons. Some may have great programming, excellent meals out or just wonderful conversations. Some may be ruinously expensive or terrible breakfasts. FCon 2011, held in Brighton, will be remembered in years to come as The Scorcher. It also had good programming and wonderful company (you simply never run […]

There will be burlesque

This weekend I’ll be making my usual trek down to FantasyCon. It’s in Brighton this year which is good and bad. On one hand I’m going to miss Nottingham. For all their faults I’d got kinda used to the hotel and the town centre, but most importantly I’m going to miss my annual pilgrimage to […]

Glasgow Cabaret Festival – Seven Great Reasons To Get Involved

Okay, here’s the thing. Last month I wrote a post about crowd source funding that led very smoothly into mention of an ongoing funding for a project that is very very dear to my heart: the Glasgow Cabaret Festival. Perhaps I was a little too subtle. Perhaps most people switched off at the mention of crowd […]

Bitter birds and Glitter flies

Tomorrow’s a bit of a red letter day. After a considerable length of time (in which between us we managed to produce two weddings, a baby, half a house, a cabaret act and three books), wur band, Murnie, has decided to release some new music. Yay, for us. Now, yes, there was supposed to be […]

Setting ones balls in order

I’m a bit of a juggler. At least I attempt to be. I’m always writing something and I’m always doing something with music, usually multiple things. I tell myself that I can keep all of these balls in the air at the same time, but usually I end up concentrating primarily on one and the […]

Author v Reader

When you’re a musician you learn very quickly to listen differently. You break a track down, listen to individual instruments, how they’re balanced, how they’re played, what production techniques have been used. The song? It has to be really strong to allow you to glimpse it at others hear it, a complete entity instead of […]

August’s books

Fully expected this month’s reading to be curtailed by other activities, but as it turns out I managed a couple of enjoyable (albeit with a slightly higher than usual incidence of author/reader nark) novels and the usual interesting array of shorts. Rule 34 by Charles Stross (Orbit) You know you’ve read a good thriller […]

The sights these eyes have seen

It’s August, which means the Edinburgh Fringe. Which means I’m knackered. de Saw and Finkle have been taking Planet Fringe a little more seriously this year, getting involved with the really wonderful cabaret culture now so prevalent amidst the thousands of options for bewildered, footsore punters in need of a damned good show but unable […]