World Horror : Membership For Sale

I’ve got a membership going a-begging that I can no longer use for the World Horror Convention this year. It’s being held in Brighton, UK over 25th-28th March. I understand there are only a handful of places left at this con, so if anyone misses out they can have mine at cost (£60). Leave me […]

San Jose

You know, I find that I don’t have a terrible lot to say on the subject of World Fantasy Convention 2009. I mean, I had a fantastic time, but I didn’t really do much that would make really interesting reading. Sure, I went to one or two programme items – of which the highlight was […]

Hinterland – The Plan

[Sort of] SO. I’ve done the Myspace trawl and found a lot of good new stuff. Which – when you add new finds together with old favourites and acts-I’ve-wanted-to-see-for-ages – makes Hinterland an exciting, if boggling, prospect. At the moment, my key plan looks to be like hanging round the Arches/Classic Grand end where I […]

Before Hinterland

Around this time a year ago, I heard about the Hinterland Festival – basically an inner city music festival that takes place over 2 nights, with tons of bands in 15 odd venues across the centre of Glasgow. I thought it sounded interesting, but didn’t get to go, and regretted it. So, this year I’m […]

Easter, here and gone

This being the obligatory post-Eastercon post, although to be honest it all passed in more of a blur than usual. The convention was well run, with a lot of thought and work clearly going into filling Bradford’s Cedar Court hotel with as much to do as possible. I got to bang on about Delia Derbyshire […]

Would some pow’r the gift to gie us

Had an interesting experience this week of watching an “as live” review of The Ephemera taking shape as it was being read. The reviewer was the very kind and legendary DF Lewis, and the review appeared story-by-story over a four day period. When you assemble a collection of short stories there are many considerations that […]

Blog etiquette

I’m wondering if there is some unwritten rule in blog etiquette that readers don’t point out really ridiculous typos to the author? Sort of like pointing out when your boss has tomato soup on his tie or the convention speaker’s flies are down. Everyone just gets a little bit embarrassed and looks the other way. […]

I love Paris in the Springtime…vicariously

After a long trip down and back to London yesterday, I was cheered up by my young paramour’s stories of her visit to Paris over the weekend. It wasn’t the same as being there, but she painted an exciting picture (including documentary proof). The consolation patisserie helped too.

Circle Of Life

Over at Notes From The Geek Show, Hal’s been holding forth on the subject of the Glasgow SF Writers’ Circle. I’m not going to add anything here to what Hal’s written, but only as a slight caveat will add that at this week’s meeting we had one of those moments when you realise why we […]

Catching up on culture

Just some cultural notes worthy of note: – “Subtle Edens” is out now from Elastic Press. This is an anthology of new slipstream stories. Slipstream (I’ve never been comfortable with the term, but that’s part of the point I suppose) was an early influence on my writing as I discovered the British small press scene […]