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, […]

Caledonia Dreamin’

Word from Hal Duncan that he and Chris Kelso are editing an anthology of strange fiction inspired by Scots words. I love the idea. Because to me Scots is more than a provincial dialect or a style of 18th century poetry that’s trotted out with the tartan and the haggis on Burns’ night. Scots is […]

New ideas

So, I’ve been up since 5am this morning (one of us had a redeye to catch), and since I finished the rework job last night I’ve been planning what to do next. The next important thing is to go back to Queen Of Clouds and assess exactly what needs done to finish that too, but […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Horror, Eureka!

Earlier this year I was moaning about my dissatisfaction with contemporary horror fiction. It was a bit of an inarticulate thrash around the subject to be honest. I just wasn’t able to put my finger on why I rarely found horror fiction never to be satisfying. Thank goodness, then, for Nina Allen. Over on her […]