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!

RSD with free beer

Managed out to Glasgow’s excellent Love Music for a couple of hours to celebrate Record Store Day 2013. Bought some CDs, stayed in store to watch Fake Major and Woodenbox, bought some more CDs, and came away with some beer too. The beer is quite interesting. As a RSD experiment music blogger, Song By Toad, […]

Record Store Day 2013

Just a quick, now annual, reminder that tomorrow is international Record Store (Shop!) Day. The annual jamboree where the pasty faced and terminally wired consumer of tunes gets his arse out of the house and goes music shopping old school style. Everyone has fun, there are in-store performances by excellent local bands, special releases for […]

Young Man’s Game?

Over on his blog, Keith Brooke has been considering the announcement of the annual Granta Best Young Novelists under 40 and, prompted by a Twitter conversation on the subject, asking: what’s the big deal with 40 anyway? And it’s a decent enough question. Why should all the attention be given to the kind of novelist […]

Making the words into a thing

This novel business is a piece of cake, eh? At Eastercon I had a number of conversations with Ian Whates about how Newcon Press are going to present The Moon King. There’s lots to talk about, and I’m lucky to have a super-enthusiastic publisher who takes the time to consult and explain all this stuff […]

Monthly : March

Reading long Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus) In SF they tell you that one of the great cliches is the Adam-and-Eve-on-a-new-planet story. You just don’t do it. Ever. Chris Beckett has, however, done exactly that, and Dark Eden is a simple, beautiful triumph of a book. His Adam and Eve are several generations dead, and […]

SWC talk

The excellent Gareth Vile, has kindly plugged my talk on music and writing for the Scottish Writers Centre which takes place at the CCA in Glasgow next Tuesday, 9th April. The talk will encompass short story writing and song writing, the rhythm of prose and writing to music, musical theatre, cabaret, stories about music and […]

Chilled con

That was what they dubbed this year’s Eastercon, on account of the freezing temperatures and residual snow and ice in Bradford. There was nothing the organisers could have done about the weather, or about the fact that the main bar area was right next to the hotel doors which invited in an icy blast every […]