If you follow the link below and click on over to Dolly Garland’s blog, you’ll see that I’ve answered a few questions for her about the books that have meant a lot to me over the years.

Link.

Where do you stand on the issue of advertising in books? See my second post of the week for Futurismic:

Click here to read ‘Advertising In Books’

I’m currently working on three books – two futher novels and a second short story collection.

Here are the blurbs:

Novel #2:

In modern-day London a small-time criminal falls in love with his brother’s wife. When a mysterious portal opens on a London Underground escalator, he finds he has to put aside his personal feelings in order to rescue the one man standing in the way of his happiness.

Meanwhile, four hundred years in the future, a disgraced daughter has one last chance to redeem herself in the eyes of her family. She must to travel to a remote planet and secure a cargo of precious pharmaceuticals — and the only thing standing in her way is her former lover, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm.

Novel #3:

In a world where nuclear-powered Zeppelins encircle the globe and electronic ghosts stalk the living, a King lies dying and a half-brained stick fighter struggles to solve a deadly riddle in order to regain her stolen soul.

Short story collection #2:

From the radioactive wastes of Southern England to the vampire-haunted streets of Amsterdam; from the malls of West London to the blasted desolation of a ruined alien city; from a street protest in Paris to the final moments of the human race – these tales put a wicked spin on the world we think we know.

To find out more about any of these books, drop me a line.

Last week John DeNardo, the editor of SF Signal, asked me to write about the books that changed my life. The resulting article is now available to read on the website..

Click here to read ‘Five Books That Changed My World’.

I was pleased to be invited to take part in this week’s Mind Meld discussion over at SF Signal. The question was: which books are at the top of your “to be read” pile? To find out the panel’s answers, follow this link: Mind Meld

I have a lot of books I need to catch up with, so one of my New Year’s resolutions will be to work my way through the following list:

• JG Ballard – The Complete Short Stories
• Bruce Sterling – Ascendancies
• Cordwainer Smith – The Rediscovery Of Man
• Harlan Ellison – The Essential Ellison
• Arthur C Clarke – The Collected Stories
• Philip K Dick – Human Is?
• Vernor Vinge – The Collected Stories

Which books are you planning to read next year?

Tonight I passed the ten thousand word mark on the new novel. This is a tenth of the way to my target of a hundred thousand words, and something of a personal milestone, as it means this work-in-progress is now longer than any individual story I have ever written, aside from my first novel, Silversands, which I expect it to soon overtake.

I went down to the old Bookbarn warehouse in Bristol this afternoon to scavenge some free books, following this report on the BBC website:

People in Bristol have been invited to help themselves to free books at a warehouse which were left behind when the owners left the site. Bookbarn’s lease on the premises in Arnos Vale recently expired and when the firm moved out it left behind thousands of books. Managers of the Paintworks site have invited people to help themselves.

Continue reading “Free Book Frenzy”

Andy Bigwood’s cover art for the forthcoming Future Bristol short story anthology is now online at his site: http://www.deviantart.com/print/4885642/.

The anthology will be published in April by Swimming Kangaroo books, and features the following stories and writers:

> Isambard’s Kingdom by Liz Williams
> The Guerilla Infrastructure HOWTO by John Hawkes-Reed
> After The Change by Stephanie Burgis
> A Tale of Two Cities by Christina Lake
> Trespassers by Nick Walters
> Pirates of the Cumberland Basin by Joanne Hall
> Thermoclines by Colin Harvey
> What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done? By Gareth L Powell
> The Sun In The Bone House by Jim Mortimore

Since turning freelance, I’ve been reading a lot of books about the business and craft of professional copywriting, and below (in no particular order) are the ones I’ve personally found most useful, interesting and inspiring:

• How to Set Up a Freelance Writing Business by Jason Deign
• Gabay’s Copywriter’s Compendium by J.Jonathan Gabay
• Write To Sell by Andy Maslen
• The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert W. Bly
• How to Write Sales Letters That Sell by Drayton Bird
• The IDM Marketing Guide Edited by Robin Fairlie
• Success… And How to Avoid It by Matt Coward

Plus, the following DVD is pretty good. I’ve seen Andy live several times and he has a series of online articles that will be of interest to anyone in the advertising or direct marketing industy.

• How To Write Copy That Really Sells (DVD) by Andy Owen

Do you have a favourite reference book that you always keep by the keyboard? Share it with us by leaving a comment.