2007 was the year my story – “Ack-Ack Macaque” – appeared in Interzone.

It also saw the following publications:

• Distant Galaxies Colliding – Infinity Plus
• Six Lights off Green Scar – Infinity Plus
• Pod Dreams of Tuckertown – Byzarium
• The Redoubt – Aphelion
• The Last Reef – Best SF
• Thai Curry – Efimero
• A Necklace of Ivy – Fiction Magazine

Plus, I:

• Attended my first SF&F convention
• Was interviewed by Pink Raygun and SciFi Uk Review
• Had a short story featured on American radio
• Appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme.
• Set foot in Spain for the first time.

In July, I started writing flash fiction. The idea started out as an exercise to keep my writing muscles toned up, by forcing me to produce 100-1000 words of fiction each and every week. It was just a bit of fun, really, and I didn’t expect anyone else to take much notice – but within a few weeks the idea had spread and there were seven other writers doing the same thing – The Friday Flash Fictioneers:

• Shaun C. Green
• Neil Beynon
• Gareth D. Jones
• Martin McGrath
• Dan Pawley
• Justin Pickard
• Paul Raven

Of the stories that I personally contributed, my favourites were:

• The Point Furthest From The Sun
• The Long Walk Aft
• Thai Curry
• Stranded In Time
• Snowball
• Providence
• Paper Moon
• My New Eyes
• Driving To The Moon
• Dead Twin

I also published my second collection of poetry – Los Muertos & Other Poems – five of which were included in the October issue of the BSFA’s Focus magazine:

And last but not least, 2007 saw the announcements that:

1. My short story collection “The Last Reef” will be published in October 2008 by Elastic Press
2. My novel “Silversands” will be published in 2009 by Pendragon Press.
3. The short story I co-wrote with Robert Starr will appear in his latest collection – due from Stonegarden in January.

“Ack-Ack Macaque” gets another mention in Colin Harvey’s review of Interzone 213 on Suite101.com.

In his review of Interzone 212, Blue Tyson calls “Ack-Ack Macaque” a “high point” of the issue and sums the plot up in one succinct sentence:

“Everybody loves the monkey until it goes a bit Skynet.”

In his review of Interzone 212, Neale Monks writes:

Next up is the delightfully-named ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ by Gareth Lyn Powell. The author plays with the idea of what happens when the Fourth Wall between the protagonists of the tale and their fictional creation collapses. The mechanism chosen for this catastrophe is clever enough to be plausible without too much technobabble being required and Powell manages to pull the thing off remarkably well in what is basically a humorous, lightweight tale. There’s also a very British (ie gloomy) love story going on in the background, as well as some decent satirical swipes at what happens to characters in comic novels when Hollywood decides to turn them into cash-cows. All in all, a fun story and one of the best in this particular issue of ‘Interzone’.

From: http://interzone.blogdrive.com/

Começa com “Feelings of the flesh” de Douglas Elliott Cohen mas confesso que gostei mais da short story de Gareth Lyn Powell com o titulo “Ack-Ack Macaque”. Em apenas quatro paginas este conto descreve-nos a historia de Tori e seus namorados Andy e Josh, em que numa animação por computador criada por Tori e postriormente transformada num jogo on-line pela empresa de Josh, sai fora de controlo e tras o caos e o apocalipse perante a impotência e desespero deles.

My short story “Ack-Ack Macaque” receives two mentions in the December issue of Locus magazine – the professional journal of science fiction and fantasy publishing. Nick Gevers and Rich Horton both mention it in their review columns. In particular, Rich Horton writes:

“Ack-Ack Macaque” is a weird, sad story about a man’s relationship with a woman who writes a web-based anime series about a monkey airship pilot, named, of course, Ack-Ack Macaque. She leaves him for a guy who wants to promote the comic – and he tries to commit suicide. And Ack-Ack Macaque begins to change too – or perhaps come to life. The tone is best here – the protagonist’s flaky despair is beautifully caught.

Rich Horton picks out “Ack-Ack Macaque” as one of his favourite Interzone stories of 2007:

My favorite Interzone short story was “Heartstrung”, by Rachel Swirsky (June), with its powerful central metaphor of girls removing their hearts and sewing them to their sleeves as part of their passage to adulthood. I also liked Beth Bernobich’s “A Handful of Pearls” (October), a dark story about a scientist investigating an isolated island who has a troubled history — only too disturbingly replicated when his team discovers a girl from a humanlike species on the island. Another good one is Gareth Lyn Powell’s “Ack-Ack Macaque” (October), about a man’s failed relationship with a woman who writes a successful anime about a monkey airship pilot. (One does wonder, between this story and the Blaschke story and David Mole’s “Finisterra” in F&SF, if some stories aimed at the delightful anthology of a couple of years ago, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (co-edited by Moles, actually), didn’t get finished in time for that book and are now appearing.) And I enjoyed Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Molly and the Red Hat” (December), a neat tale about a very young girl and her magical hat and how it saved her brother. M. John Harrison’s “The Good Detective” (April), about missing persons — people lost to the pressures or the existential stress of contemporary life. It’s quite beautifully written. Other good stories came from Jay Lake, Stephen Francis Murphy, Aliette de Bodard, Tim Akers, and Ahmed A. Khan.

In a review of Interzone 212, SF Signal says:

“…212 is chock full of stories. The standouts being: ‘Feelings of the Flesh’ by Douglas Elliot Cohen (a unique story with creature who can steal a person’s senses), ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ by Gareth Lyn Powell (about an underground comic character that becomes very powerful), and ‘The Algorithm’ by Tim Akers (a clockpunk story where God is of the machine, the best of the issue).”

SFRevu calls the stories in Interzone 212 “edgy but good” and conclues that Interzone is still “the best science fiction magazine on the market.”