In addition, I:

• Had a story reprinted in Concept SciFi
• Was interviewed by Concept SciFi
• Sold a third story to Interzone (Memory Dust, coming Jan 2009)
• Sold a story to the Future Bristol anthology edited by Colin Harvey (What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done? coming April 2009)
• Co-wrote a short story with Aliette de Bodard (The Church of Accelerated Redemption, finishing touches currently being applied)
• Co-wrote a short story with Rob Starr (The Winding Curve, which appeared in Rob’s collection Sophistry by Degrees, Jan 2008)
• Was interviewed by SF Crowsnest
• Garnered excellent reviews for The Last Reef & Other Stories from The Fix, SF Crowsnest, Morpheus Tales, Interzone, etc
• Wrote another short story, Laptop Jack, that’s ready to go out to market…

In his latest update, Andrew Hook explains the reasons why Elastic Press won’t be releasing any books in 2009:

I’ve increasingly found Elastic is becoming a burden rather than a pleasure. I’ve run it mostly in my spare time over the past six years (and occasionally part-time and full-time), and I’ve decided that I now want to focus on my own writing and spend more time with my family. Not only that, but I feel I’ve taken Elastic as far as it can go. We’ve had some great successes – in terms of reviews, awards, and sales – with, perhaps ironically, 2008 being the best year to date; however I feel I’ve hit a wall in my ability to expand the press further and my enthusiasm is starting to wane. Rather than wait until such time that I start to do a disservice to the authors, it seems better to quit whilst I’m ahead.

I’m personally sad about this for two reasons: 1) Elastic published my short story collection The Last Reef & Other Stories, and I was hoping they’d also publish the sequel, and 2) this drastically cuts down the available markets for short story writers, as so few of the larger publishers are interested in producing short story collections.

You can now listen to a free audio version of my short story The Last Reef on the Transmissions From Beyond website, read by Bob Eccles and illustrated by Vincent Chong. All you need to do is follow this link and press the “play” button:

http://transmissionsfrombeyond.com/2008/12/transmission13/

I’ve written and published 25 pieces of Friday Flash Fiction this year. That’s slightly less than one per fortnight, which isn’t bad going. As we’re approaching the end of 2008, I’ve compiled the following list of my 10 personal favourites from 2008, with links.

1. Roswell
2. Carnival
3. Natalie
4. Mid Life Crisis
5. Fresh Meat
6. God’s Gift
7. Hot Rats
8. Life Goes Wrong
9. Chip Heads
10. Jetsam

This week’s story is a sequel to the full-length story Flotsam, which appeared in my short story collection and was recently featured in issue 3 of the Concept Sci-fi ezine.

JETSAM
By Gareth L Powell

Toby Milan thought he’d drowned. When Odette and Safak pulled him from the sea, his lungs were full of water and he was unconscious and bleeding from a knife wound to the thigh. They pulled him into Safak’s old twin engine Grumman sea plane and flew him to Barcelona, where he spent the next three days on a hotel bed in the Gothic Quarter, his leg wrapped in bandages.

Continue reading “Friday Flash Fiction 48″

Writer Matt FW Curran gives my short story collection The Last Reef a great review on his blog Muskets and Monsters:

…there’s more imagination crammed into these pages than you’ll find in an average sci-fi novel from a mainstream publisher. And it’s not just his imagination either. Powell is a bloody good writer. His prose is lyrical and drips with vivid description, slipped into the text so it never feels like the rhythm of the writing is bogged down. It does mean that prose is economical but evokes more in one sentence of description than I’ve seen in a paragraph from more seasoned writers.

Read the full review here: http://macmillannewwriterpart2.blogspot.com

I’m pleased to announce that my short story Memory Dust will be published in January in issue 220 of Interzone. This is the third of my stories to appear in the magazine.

220 promises to be an excellent issue, as it also features stories by fellow writers Rudy Rucker, Jason Stoddard, Neil Williamson, Leah Bobet, and Eugie Foster.

Full details here: http://ttapress.com/575/interzone-220-goes-to-press/

My short story The Last Reef will be the thirteenth story featured in the TTA Press podcast “Transmissions from Beyond“, available to download free from 22nd December.

I’m fascinated by science but when I write, I write about people. I write about characters reacting to the situations in which they find themselves. In an interesting article on his website, Jeremiah Tolbert pretty much sums up my own attitude to writing the science in science fiction:

(The thing) I take exception to is the notion that you need to be deeply conversant in anything.  I think you just need to do research to the point where what you have to say doesn’t break the suspension of disbelief and I think that’s a long ways from being a polymath. You don’t need to be an expert on anything but people.

Read the full article here: http://tinyurl.com/5k6448

See also my earlier article, Near Future SF *is* Possible

Some exciting news: an audio version of my collection The Last Reef will be available shortly, read by an actor called Philip Rose.