The Mumford Experiment

It happened like this. I discovered the Brit Awards were being presented the other night via a disagreement on a friend’s Facebook. Simon was strongly expressing his dissatisfaction with Mumford & Sons (their award as best something or other, and just in general I think) and in turn an acquaintance of his was claiming they […]

Solaris Rising 2

Mentioned this in passing a little while ago, but since the publisher has now posted about it, I guess it’s a good time to properly fanfare that I have a story forthcoming in Solaris Rising 2. This science fiction anthology, published by Solaris Books and edited by Ian Whates, has a really superb line-up of […]

New eggs

With the Murnie ep projects progressing nicely, I’ve quietly been getting back into songwriting. When we started Murnie up we had a rule that it was going to be fun, which meant no down songs, no songs in minor keys, so songs about breakups or any of that nonsense. We’ve pretty much stuck to that, […]

Enigmatic noodlers

A wee interview has just gone live with Murnie on the Last Year’s Girl blog. Lisa-Marie, who runs the blog, has wide and eclectic tastes, and the whole blog is well worth sticking on your feed reader. She calls us “enigmatic noodlers”. Yes, hands up, we noodle. And the enigmatic bit probably comes from the fact […]

Talking about writing, talking about music

I’m very pleased to have been asked to present a talk for the Scottish Writers’ Centre (scroll down) in April. The evening will be called Writing And Song, and I’ll be talking about my approaches to writing fiction and song lyrics, about how I think these art forms art different and about how I think they’re […]

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, […]

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 […]