Why does the English language…

… have no word for mot juste?** In her thought-provoking and highly entertaining journal, Canadian author Holly Phillips has been talking this week about the frustration of having to choose when to employ the extent of your vocabulary. Whether it’s in fiction or conversation, the fact is that there are occasions when using exactly the […]

New Wexler

One writer who never seems to publish enough is Robert Freeman Wexler. His subtley side-swiped realities never fail to entertain. Well, now, hot on the heels of his excellent collection Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed, we can look forward to a surfeit of new Wexler in the near future. Not only have PS […]

Book Learning

So, after a somewhat intense last few weeks, I finally finished the rewrite of TMK. It’s been a long and much-interrupted process, and one which I’ve found massively frustrating, but from the point of view at least of professional development, it’s been pretty useful. Actually, scratch that: it’s been kinda fucking necessary on account of […]

Interzone

Silver lining following on from the day’s more depressing news is that Interzone 220 is now out and available. Stories by Jason Stoddard, Eugie Foster, Rudy Rucker, Leah Bobet, Gareth L Powell and me. Book reviews wrangled by Jim Steel and featuring Michael Cobley and Paul F Cockburn as well as an interview with Jeffrey […]

Sad news about Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror

Gavin Grant made an annoucement today to the effect that this year’s YBF&H won’t be published. It seems possible that the series will be revived at some point, but for the moment that’s the end of what I’ve always thought of as the best annual collection of fantastical stories out there. I eulogise at length, […]

New books

Just arrived this morning: Tales Of The Ten Lost Tribes by Tamar Yellin The Engine’s Child by Holly Phillips Fast Ships, Black Sails by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer I’ve been looking forward to all three of these for *ages*. So much so that I forgot to actually order them until last week. All I need […]

Endings and Beginnings

So, we’ve slipped seamlessly from the end of 2008 to 2009. On Hogmanay, filling in the End Of The Year Club catharsis sheet, it struck me with some force how frickin frustrating last year was for me. On many levels, but mostly creatively. When I got to the section which asked about resolutions (which I […]

Not seasonal

If you’re into your Germanic retro electro, you might enjoy these (courtesy of Random Jane). This one should get you in the seasonal mood. And this one is getting me in the mood for tonight’s fives night out. The bit where the band take on the shop dummies in Sweden strips. That’s pretty much us.

Interzone and me

So, yes, officially, my story Spy Vs Spy will be appearing in the next issue of Interzone. I talk about Interzone quite a lot on this blog: a/ because it’s personally important to me and fundamentally linked to my development as a writer and b/ because it remains a damned good read. And it has […]

Various Variety

Being, in the main, a round-up of random stuff from the last week. It’s been one of those weeks. Life is so a Cabaret – spent the weekend in London watching various varieties of cabaret performance. Most especially lovely to see Miss Leggy Pee taking her unique brand of charming on the road to such […]