This morning, I submitted a new short story to market. The idea for it came to me while getting dressed the other day, and I wrote the whole first draft in an hour. Becky read it for me last night and suggested some minor changes, which I made on the spot. I’m planning to write another short story this afternoon, then it’s back to work on the novel.

My ebook experiment is featured on SF Signal:

www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/11/wanna-buy-gareth-powells-the-last-reef-name-your-price/

I have a number of reference books on the art of writing. Some are better than others, and some I dip into almost every day.

Take The Elements Of Style for example.  So far I’d have to say it’s been the most useful book I’ve found in terms of day-to-day writing.

First published in 1935 and since revised and updated, this handy pocket-sized book is a first rate field guide to punctuation, grammar, and sentence construction.

It has been criticised in some areas for its championing of the active voice over the passive, but this is a minor quibble, and I’ve personally found it an excellent reference for basic things, such as the correct punctuation of dialogue and the difference between commonly confused words, such as “alternate” and “alternative”.

If you want to find out why this little book has been praised and recommended by generations of authors and professional copywriters, you can pick it up relatively cheaply on Amazon.

For a while now, I’ve had two Facebook pages. I’ve had a personal profile and a fan page. Now, I was never quite comfortable with this whole “fan page” thing, but it seemed other writers were doing it, so I thought I’d give it a shot. However in practice, it turned out to be more work than it was worth. Most of the fans on the page also became friends on my personal profile, which meant I was duplicating content and filling their news feeds up with twice as many updates as needs be. So in order to remedy the situation, I’ve deleted my Facebook fan page. I’ve decided to keep things personal. So, if you want to connect with me on Facebook, check out my personal profile: www.facebook.com/glpowell

Is there such a thing as a native European, or are we all aliens here?

Consider this: now that winter’s approaching, how many of you fancy sleeping outside? How about sleeping outside naked?

The simple fact is, the human animal is not suited to surviving a Northern European winter. Without technologies such as hunting, fire and agriculture, our ancestors would have died out centuries ago.

Continue reading “You Are An Alien”