A piece of the moon

Something on the horizon that I’m really chuffed to be involved with is a new short fiction initiative from NewCon Press called Moon Shots. The stories, commissioned from a really interesting bunch of writers, will be published as both an e-book and audiobook via the truly excellent Spacewitch indie genre fiction shop. You can pay […]

Partly political

I’m not, by nature, a political person. I’ve got views and I vote accordingly but I don’t get all worked about it. However, like many people up here, I find myself getting increasingly engaged politically right now. Because there’s a vote coming up in September and a decision to be made. A poll last year […]

What’s that coming over the hill…?

Suddenly it’s February and where, not so long ago there seemed a glacial ice age to wait until The Moon King was published, now it’s within actual sight. On the horizon. And it’s coming my way. The words we’re all going to die!!! are constant prisoners behind my clenched teeth. Because this is the point when the […]

the difference between self promotion and canvassing

As the annual SF awards nominations season rolls around, there’s yet again been a bit of a stooshie. Writers split into two camps. One side says: “we have to post lists of what stories of ours are eligible for awards this year, otherwise we’ll be overlooked and voters will just go with the same-old same […]

Annihilation Time

Pretty excited that the first book in Jeff Vandermeer’s new series of novels is published in February (4th in the US, 27th here). All three of the Southern Reach trilogy, as it’s known, will be published during 2014, which makes it perfect for readers for whom there’s nothing worse than getting sucked into a great […]

BSFA awards 2014

Over the last few years, in the interests both of keeping up to date with what’s new and good and being a responsible voter, I’ve attempted to read all the fiction nominees for the BSFA awards. I’ve had varying degrees of success. Sometimes I’ve read some of the novels already, other years I’ve got five […]

That strange engine of creation

With the bidey-in working away for a few weeks, I have a rare, extended period of solitude at home and had hoped to use the swathes of uninterrupted time to storm ahead on editing the novel. And I am doing so; it’s knitting together better this time round, but progress is slow. Partly this is […]

Resolution, it’s a mug’s game

At the beginning of the last couple of years I’ve done a sort of “creative goals” post, and the one thing I’ve learned from the exercise is that, for the self-propelled creative type at least, planning is largely futile. Too often opportunities come your way that you couldn’t have foreseen and, if you have neither […]

Read like a reader

I’ve been thinking for quite a while now about the difference in reading experience between readers and writers. To my mind, readers engage with a story in a pure way that eschews awareness of the mechanisms by which it is told and enables the imagination to properly bring the characters to life, to ride-shotgun on their […]

Ten fragments

Been trying to piece together my memories of WFC into something coherent that I can remember, but it’s impossible. Too many fragments. So, I’m tossing them down here anyway. A jumble of pieces, most of them good. Make of them what you will. Lynda Rucker’s wonderful story, Ashmouth, read in its native Georgia accent. My […]