The Moon King

I’m overjoyed to announce that my first novel, The Moon King, has been sold by my agent, John Jarrold to Ian Whates of the excellent Newcon Press. The book will be published in hardback, paperback and ebook formats in April 2014. I’m proud of this book. It’s my first attempt at a novel and it’s taken a […]

Monthly : February

Reading long Eyepennies by Mike O’Driscoll (TTA Press) Not that long a read, actually (in fact I read this novella pretty much in one sitting). I’m a long standing O’Driscoll fan and having taken out a subscription to TTA’s new novella series, I was gantin’ for this to arrive, and when it did I wasn’t by […]

Cowboy Saints

Really, really, REALLY delighted to hear that good old Brain In A Jar books have released a new short story collection by Phil Raines and Harvey Welles: The Cowboy Saints & Other Lost Wonders. Phil and Harvey stories were pretty much my favourite critiques in my early years at GSFWC. The Olivia Reunion Party (along […]

Monthly : January

Reading long Crandolin by Anna Tambour (Chomu Press). Crandolin is an enchanting and playful novel, packed full of idiosyncratic characters, lyrical flourishes and sly humour, while ruminating on two of my very favourite subjects – food and music. The characters include a master confectioner, a bladder pipe (bagpipe?) player and a trio of Russian train-workers, […]

Turning back to black

Yet another maundering on horror fiction, this time occasioned by my finishing the first horror novel in years that I’d say, on balance, I both enjoyed and found mostly successful. The book in question was Adam Nevill’s award-winning, The Ritual, and…yeah, interesting. I’m not going to go into a whole of detail here, but will touch […]

October reading or at least such as I remember it

Okay, so the thing is I know I read a whole bunch of short fiction in October, but the awesomeness of Canada has all but wiped the whole lot from my memory. Seriously, I can’t even remember the authors or titles let alone whether I liked them or not. Here’s what remains. The novel I […]

Utter sweetness

In my last reading report I was talking about how much I loved Amal El-Mohtar’s “The Honey Month” (it really was the most imaginatively conceived and beautifully written book I’d read in ages). The version I read was the e-book edition (from Cheeky Frawg), but I loved it enough that when I discovered it was also […]

Narrative junky

My name is Neil. I’m a recovered narrative junky, but occasionally I fall off the wagon. You know how it is with a story. Once you’ve started you just have to follow it to the end. No matter what. But sometimes that no matter what, you know? It’s…testing. I used to consume entire fantasy trilogies on […]

July Reading

Beginning to catch up on the reading front a little, although I’m still busy with too many other things to make much headway on the novel pile (and, to be frank, August is not looking promising on that front either. Ah, well). Anyway – for a bit of light relief I went with Terry Pratchett’s […]

The recent reading

So I’ve been busy, so I missed the May reading update. Not that there was a *heck of a lot* to report. Anyway, June has now slipped by as well, so I may as well roll it all up in one post. I managed two novels over the last couple of months, and both were […]