Interesting stuff that I read in January

So this new year I had but one resolution – to read more stuff. Last year was a seriously shoddy effort in terms of picking up a book/magazine/e-reader and enjoying all the good fiction at my disposal. So, in an effort to …make a decent effort… I’m going to attempt to post a monthly update […]

Songs in the key of…M

Continuing the occasional dip into my alphabetical trawl through the MP3 archives. Mary Ann – Ray Charles Maybe – Harry Nilsson Mean Ol’ Misery – Aberfeldy Medal Around Your Neck – Sparrow And The Workshop Meet The Elements – They Might Be Giants Memphis – Cry, Cry, Cry Men, Beasts or Houses – Fol Chen […]

Locus

First day of the month = new issue of Locus. Fresh off the epub press and into my android phone. I’d already browsed a fair amount of it by the time I arrived at work, which is great. Yay, for modern things! I’ve got a soft spot for Locus. It has a certain style of […]

Pirate Musical Redux!

Since Arrhythmia has been accumulating a certain amount of attention lately, I thought it might be a good time to remind those who like that sort of thing about my first musical-story (storical? musy?), the swashbuckling (up to a point) pirate adventure entitled: “The Last Note Of The Song”. The idea for this story came […]

Songs in the Key of…B

Thought it might be nice to revisit the thing I did a couple of years ago where, instead of having my mp3s on shuffle as is my usual practice, I let the player just trawl through the list alphabetically and see what it throws up. It’s a nice way to get a snapshot of what […]

Isolationism, and a resolution

I don’t often talk about the writing here. It only really surfaces when there’s something to tell people about. A milestone, a publication, a nomination. And when you’re working on something long, it can be a long time until you’ve got something to report. Monday’s news made me realize that Arrhythmia was the only piece […]

BSFA Award Shortlist

I’m both gobsmacked and absolutely delighted to learn that my my story, ‘Arrhythmia’ (from Mutation Press’s Music For Another World anthology) has been shortlisted for the 2010 BSFA Award for Short Fiction. How cool is that?! The award will be presented at Eastercon on April 23rd, and between now and then members of the BSFA […]

Infinity Plus e-books

Good news for those of you who are right into your e-books (especially if, like me, you enjoy short stories). Infinity Plus have just released their first titles as an e-book publisher. The first tranche of titles include a selection of collections of short fiction by Infinity Plus founder Keith Brooke, plus a little gem from […]

The long road to musical greatness

Hugely enjoyed tonight’s trip to Edinburgh to take part in the launch for Mutation Press‘s “Music For Another World”, an anthology of stories involving music. Unfortunately, thanks to sitting in an M8 traffic jam, I was disappointed to arrive too late to hear Jim Steel and Sean Martin read from their contributions, but I was […]

Filling in the pieces of nostalgia

We can’t be that far away, can we, from the time when pretty much everything we are nostalgic about is available to view again on the net? Sure there will always be shows from the early days that were taped over or ended up in landfill, but as time passes, so much of our television […]