No more heroes

So, I finished a book today. It’s called Queen of Clouds*. Those of you who’ve been paying attention will be all like: Oh, good job, son, well done, but didn’t you just have a book out? In addition to the one that came out this time last year? And don’t forget that anthology last autumn […]

Memoirist launch

The official release date for The Memoirist is this coming Monday, March 20th. You’ll be order it online and from your local bookshop from then. But if you live in the Glasgow area, why not consider coming to our wee, toaty launch event. It’s on Monday, April 3rd, at the Saramago bar in the CCA […]

Introducing…The Memoirist

What’s a “memoirist”, I hear you cry? Well, in my new book, it’s a woman called Fizz who assembles memoirs out of online data. It’s set in our near future, when a combination of surveillance culture, the degradation of privacy laws and social media ubiquity have made people obsessed with the face they present to […]

2016 Roundup

So, it’s December again. A time when people traditionally look back on the year, but considering what 2016 has dealt us…in general terms at least, let’s not. More specifically, December is the time when many authors look back on their year’s output, and actually, by any standards, mine has been pretty successful. June saw the […]

Archaeology

A few months ago, during an attempt to tame the depths of the Big Cupboard In The Hall, I unearthed a box of last century media – floppies, minidisks, zip drives. And on one of the zip drives I was chuffed as ninepence to find a dump of files from one of my old PCs, […]

Thirty Years of Rain

Last night I sat for a couple of hours in a small room with 17 other people taking turns critiquing a piece fiction. The chat was good, the vibe lighthearted, the critique uniformly honest and forensically accurate and the author stoic. And then we went to the pub.A regular night at the Glasgow SF Writers’ […]

Myriad Lands

Just received contributor copies of a wonderful new two-volume anthology from Guardbridge Books. Myriad Lands‘ remit was to collect stories set in non-traditional settings, and Volume 2 features a story set in the world of The Moon King. It’s based around a deleted scene from the book which features a cabaret club that happens somewhere […]

In celebration of the indies

Just got back from a trip to London where many of the great and the good of British genre publishing gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of powerhouse indie publisher, NewCon Press. NewCon’s owner/publisher/editor, Ian Whates has done a lot for me personally in publishing both The Moon King and Secret Language, and I owe […]

Albedo One

Really pleased last week to receive a copy of this book. Albedo One is an Irish institution and many years ago they published one of my earliest stories, The Bone Farmer. It was my first sale to an overseas magazine, and I was thrilled to be published in those venerable pages. This anthology, the first […]

Papertrail Podcast

A couple of months back I was invited to take part in an excellent new thing, the Papertrail Podcast. Host Alex Blott got in touch and explained that the premise was to have a conversation with writers about the books that have left an impression on them. So, I went away and thought about it […]