Israphel’s Book: Second Chance To See

If you’ve been paying attention you might remember that we premiered our first long de Saw/Finkle show at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was called Israphel’s Book, and it involves everything you expect from those two: singing, sawing and stitched together stories. Well, thanks to the 2012 Glasgow Cabaret Festival and Glasgay, we’re bringing the show […]

The Fcon Cometh

All of a sudden it’s Fantasycon time. I’m looking forward as always to flying down to Rio Brighton (which will be nowhere near as sunny as Rio, or even as Brighton was this time last year, ah well). I have one piece of official involvement this year. If anyone fancies popping along to hear some […]

Cooking equipment meme

Leading light and evangelist for the International League of Science Fiction Writing Cooks, Aliette de Bodard, posted her response to the following blog meme about all the cookery gadgets people tend to accumulate these days. Given the amount of cooking Aliette does (check out the cooking section of her site) I was impressed by her restraint. […]

Writer’s Holiday

Everyone knows that writers don’t take holidays. Their brains just aren’t wired that way. They’re always switched on, receptive to ideas and chewing them into the building blocks of stories. The problem for many writers, in fact, is having enough time in their lives to get those stories written down, in words, on screens, and […]

Utter sweetness

In my last reading report I was talking about how much I loved Amal El-Mohtar’s “The Honey Month” (it really was the most imaginatively conceived and beautifully written book I’d read in ages). The version I read was the e-book edition (from Cheeky Frawg), but I loved it enough that when I discovered it was also […]

Narrative junky

My name is Neil. I’m a recovered narrative junky, but occasionally I fall off the wagon. You know how it is with a story. Once you’ve started you just have to follow it to the end. No matter what. But sometimes that no matter what, you know? It’s…testing. I used to consume entire fantasy trilogies on […]

Working music

There are two types of writer: those who find it difficult to write with music on, and those who find it difficult to write without it. From the former group, the most common complaint is that music is a distraction: that it disrupts their ability to concentrate on the rhythm of the prose, that they need […]

Dead Darlings

When I began the project I’m editing at the moment, there was one scene that for me summed up perfectly what I wanted the story to be about. It was the heart and the touchstone. It was the workings of the whole thing in microcosm. And it was literally the first thing I wrote when […]

Conventional Travel

In a little over two weeks this year’s Fantasycon will be underway, once again in Brighton. I’ll be there from Friday morning until Sunday evening and, as always, I’m looking forward to it. In terms of “doing stuff” I’m forgoing a reading this year (although willing to provide a service for insomniacs, contact me privately […]

Turn, and look again

One of the best pieces of writing advice I know is to give yourself perspective on anything you write. Once it is finished, stick it away in a box for a week, a month, however long, and then go back and read it again with new eyes; as a reader would. This is wonderful advice […]