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 […]

Free samples

Since someone just asked, if anyone coming here wants to sample my fictiony stuff, there’s a secret page (cunningly hidden inside another one) that lists my Published Stories. The free-to-read online ones have links. This has been an aberrant moment of self-promotion. Normal irrelevance will be resumed in the next post. (ps If you actually […]

Ignoring the music

Even when he has one big, must-be-done thing to concentrate on, the writer’s brain always seems to find time work away quietly at any number of various other ideas. Which is fine until it has an unexpected and ill-timed eureka moment. Mine happened at 5.31 this morning, and concerns my Musical stories. Long term readers (are […]

September reading

Decent haul on the reading front this month. The novel for September was one Ian R McLeod’s Wake Up And Dream, a book I’d bought almost a year ago, read (and loved) part of and then had to put down for non-reading reasons. I then waited for a suitable period of quietness that’d allow me […]

August reading

August was Fringe month, which meant that next to no writing got done, and any reading was going to be…bitty. Having said that I did manage a fair amount, and much of it was good. Some of it was better than good, though. Way better. A while back I enjoyed Amal El Mohtar’s short story, […]

Couple of new stories out in the wild

Some new publications out in the wild for your eager consumption: Killing Me Softly has just been published in issue 3 of Ian Hunter’s Unspoken Water magazine. If karaoke terrifies you, then this will be right up your alley. Also includes swearing in Polish. And the Wee Fictions blog have been having a Fringe Month celebration of […]

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 […]

April -reading

Again, a month’s readings interrupted by other things. Which is not a complaint, just a bit of scene setting. In April I’d intended to go ahead and read the other BSFA nominees that I didn’t managed during March (The Islanders and By Light Alone), but by the time my reading schedule had cleared I wasn’t […]

March reading

Concentrated on novels during March to give myself a chance of making a properly informed vote before the BSFA awards.* Embassytown by China Mieville (Pan Macmillan): for 100 pages or so I thought this was going to be it, the-Mieville-that-I-loved, but it ended up being the-Mieville-that-I-was-initially-intellectually-stimulated-by, moved on to the-Mieville-that-started-to-outstay-its-welcome, and lastly the-Mieville-that-bored-me-so-much-I-had-to-skim-the-last-bit-just-to-call-it-done-even-though-admittedly-that-last-bit-actually-had-some-action. As usual […]

February Reads

This update is both late because of megabusyness** and slight because once again I spent the month mainly reading an unpublished novel again, but I did get through a few shorts in recent issues of Interzone, Black Static, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed. None of the pieces I took in from Clarkesworld really stood out for me […]