Chilling right down

Last night of a week’s holiday on the shores of Lake of Menteith with the bidey-in. Which has mostly consisted of morning forest walking, ducks, afternoon Wimbledon, raptors, good cheese, great beer, ducks, steam boats, evening catch-up movies (more of them later), red squirrels (aw!), geocaching and ducks. Weather’s been typically variable for a Scottish […]

Balance

Friday, 6pm, Munros on Great Western Road. Trying to balance the fizzing fatigue of stopping after a long period of intense work with sunshine and cold, sour half of Redwillow’s Wreckless pale ale. And, at the same time, straining at the leash. Most writers are not full time writers. We work to live and we scribble […]

2013 T Challenge

So, I’m going to be festivalling again this year with the return of Finkle and de Saw to the Cabaret Tent at T In The Park. Yay! I say “yay”, but I have mixed feelings. I love playing to new audiences and I love the idea of more music than you can possibly consume being […]

Fox in your pocket

Got something interesting in the post this week – the first in Fox Spirit Books’ new series of pocket anthologies. I’ve always been a sucker for pocket sized books, and this one comes in at exactly the right size, not only for slipping into a bag or a coat, but I reckon would fit into your […]

Spirit : Iain Banks

Yesterday the news broke of the death of Iain Banks. The day was a procession of obituaries, the evening dedicated to malts and memories. The bidie-in and I sat side by side with a glass each of Talisker and shared both our own personal stories and those scrolling up our Twitter feeds. And that was […]

Written in the stars

Very pleased to announce that my story, Deep Draw, will appear in a new anthology called Astrologica : Stories of the Zodiac. The anthology is edited by Allen Ashley and will be published by The Alchemy Press in November, with a launch event during the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton. This story…well, it’s a bit of a […]

Stag and Dagger 2013: the breadcrumbs edition

Boom. And another exhaustive (and exhausting) episode of Stag & Dagger comes and goes. This year, the replacement of Broadcast for The Captain’s Rest and the limiting of Stereo to the afters club had a couple of effects – first that the festival felt a little smaller (a feeling compounded by the impression that there […]

Stag & Dagger time again

So, yay! For various reasons my eye’s been somewhat off the ball, so Stag & Dagger‘s kind of snuck up on me this year. Still, I’ve managed to plug myself into Spotify for research purposes and, with the release of the stage times today, have formulated a plan. It’s going to be a cracking day. […]

Errata

Fabulous to hear from Hal Duncan that he has a new book out. Errata is a collection of four novellas set in the landscape of his Book Of All Hours novels. They were originally published in a variety of locations, so Errata presents the first opportunity to read them all together. There’s even a rumour that […]

British Fantasy Awards

I’m honoured to have been asked to serve as a juror for the 2013 British Fantasy Awards. My future holds a ton of great reading. Onward!