Following on from yesterday’s post, I can now reveal that I have sold my short story “The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns” to 2020 VISIONS, a near-future science fiction  anthology published through Christopher Fletcher’s M-Brane SF imprint and edited by Rick Novy.

Yesterday, I received word that I’d sold not one but two short stories, to different anthologies on the same day. I can’t tell you yet which anthologies they are, but I can tell you a little something about the stories:

1. ‘Entropic Angel’ is a quasi-supernatural Western set in Somerset in the near future, featuring angels, wind farms, crossbows and hair scrunchies – sort of like Pale Rider meets The Wicker Man.

2. ‘The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns’ is probably best described as a fantasy love story with an Elvis soundtrack. The day after I wrote it, I read the first draft aloud to a room full of students at Bath Spa University, as part of a lecture on creative writing. It  charts the course of the doomed affair between a disillusioned London photographer named Ed and Natalie, the smalltown diner waitress he meets on his way to visit a UFO crash site near the Welsh border.

Futher details of the books will follow as soon as the publishers give me the all-clear to announce them.

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.

My three-quarter page, 1600 word article “The Future Is Now” appears in the arts section of today’s Irish Times, arguing that fans of smart contemporary literature should be reading British and Irish science fiction.

Here are the two main quotes:

“While there are still those who patrol and defend both sides of the divide between genre fiction and the mainstream, taking pot shots at anyone daring to cross over, the signs are that the boundaries are becoming increasingly porous, and that smart, critically-acclaimed contemporary genre fiction is being produced by a new generation of unapologetically science fictional writers.”

And;

“If you refuse to read a book simply on the grounds that it might contain some speculative or fantastical elements, you could find yourself missing out on some of our most inventive and excitingly contemporary literature.”

This is my first professional article in a national newspaper, and goes some way towards realising my teenage ambition to be a journalist.

You can read the full article in today’s edition of the paper, or on its website here: The Future Is Now

On Dark Fiction Review, Sharon Ring has published an article that asks authors how they handle negative reviews of their work. My own responses are quoted below:

How do you feel about negative reviews of your work?
Negative reviews are always disappointing. Of course they are. If you’ve poured your heart and soul and time into a piece of writing, you want people to connect with it, and if they don’t, you’re bound to feel frustrated. Personally, I tend to mope around the house for a few hours, feeling sorry for myself. But at the end of the day, you have to take it in good humour. It’s all part of the game, and if you can’t take the odd negative review, you shouldn’t be a writer.

Continue reading “Negative Reviews”

The following articles have attracted a lot of traffic. It seems they’ve proven useful to a lot of people. In case you missed them first time around, here’s a convenient list of links:

• The Role of Science Fiction
• 5 Useful Writing Tips
• 3 Ways To Increase Your Writing Time
• How To Write Press Releases
• What I Learned From My First Book Launch
• The Difference Between SF and Fantasy

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?

I first encountered steampunk through Bryan Talbot’s seminal comic series The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. It appeals to me in the same way as the adventures of Indiana Jones, or the Biggles books I read as a child: it’s all good clean, escapist fun. But is it science fiction, or is it a retreat from the future? Is it symptomatic of a general loss of nerve among science fiction writers, as they turn away from a difficult and challenging future?

Continue reading “The Trouble With Steampunk, Or: Why SF Matters Now More Than Ever”

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.