Delighted to find out last night that my short story 'Change of Address' has been selected to appear in the 'Girl at the End of the World' anthology, to be published by Fox Spirit early next year.
Apparently, there were so many excellent offerings that the decision was made to split the anthology into two volumes!
I'm delighted to have been included in such an awesome project. Be prepared for a storm of marketing messages when the luanch dates and covers are announced.
25/10/2013
21/10/2013
I am now officially Foxy
No, seriouslly. I am.
I can now reveal to the world+dog that Fox Spirit will be publishing my YA Urban Fantasy novel 'Warrior Stone:Underland'. Excited doesn't cover it. My tail twitcheth with delight (which is annoying the cats).
No firm publication date, but some time in 2014.
Lovely bunch of people to work with. They have even given me my own author page and I am now sharing space with personal heroes like Alasdair Stuart (presenter of Pseudopod, amongst other things) and Colin F Brown
News, cover reveals, and firmer dates all to follow in due course.
(Is there a happy fox dance?)
I can now reveal to the world+dog that Fox Spirit will be publishing my YA Urban Fantasy novel 'Warrior Stone:Underland'. Excited doesn't cover it. My tail twitcheth with delight (which is annoying the cats).
No firm publication date, but some time in 2014.
Lovely bunch of people to work with. They have even given me my own author page and I am now sharing space with personal heroes like Alasdair Stuart (presenter of Pseudopod, amongst other things) and Colin F Brown
News, cover reveals, and firmer dates all to follow in due course.
(Is there a happy fox dance?)
03/09/2013
Blog tour: Mark Iles
Mark and I have had the fortune (misfortune?) to have appeared in a number of anthologies together, so I was delighted to hear his debut novel had just come out. Today I hand Harkess Hall over to him to shamelessly flaunt his wares :)
A Pride of Lions – Blurb When Selena Dillon is caught in an assassination attempt on her planets ruler, she finds herself sentenced to 25 years servitude in mankind’s most feared military force, the Penal Regiments. Much to her surprise she enjoys the harsh military life and is quickly selected for officer training. But something’s wrong, worlds are falling silent. There’s no cry for help and no warning, just a sudden eerie silence. When a flotilla of ships is despatched to investigate they exit hyperspace to find themselves facing a massive alien armada. Outnumbered and outgunned the flotilla fight a rearguard action, allowing one of their number to slip away and warn mankind. As worlds fall in battle, and man’s fleets are decimated, Selena is selected to lead a team of the Penal Regiments most battle-hardened veterans, in a last ditch attempt to destroy the aliens’ home world. If she fails then mankind is doomed. But little does Selena know what fate has in store for her, that one of her crew is a psychopathic killer and a second the husband of one of his victims. Can she hold her team together, get them to their target and succeed in the attack? Selena knows that if she fails then there will be nothing at all left to go home to.
Mark works for Southampton University, and also as a freelance writer. His short stories have been published in Back Brain Recluse, Dream, New Moon, Auguries, Haunts, Kalkion, Screaming Dreams, and the anthologies Right To Fight, Escape Velocity and Monk Punk. With an 8th Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo he’s also written non-fiction for Combat, Taekwondo & Korean Martial Arts, Fighters, Junk, Martial Arts Illustrated, profwritingacademy.com and calmzone.net.
Bio
His first full length work was ‘Kwak’s Competition Taekwondo’, and he also has a short story collection entitled ‘Distant Shores’. ‘A Pride of Lions’ is the first in ‘The Darkening Stars’ series. Having written features and fiction for over 30 years Mark applied to do an MA in Professional Writing. ‘Pride’ had been bouncing around in his head for some time, and he seized the opportunity of the MA to produce this first novel as part of the course. Mark says it’s without doubt the best choice he’s ever made, as it really focused him, and that getting this novel accepted is the perfect conclusion to a wonderful experience. He’s now focusing on the second book in this series, ‘The Cull of Lions’.
Links
Books:
Distant Shores: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Distant-Shores-ebook/dp/B008SD4KOS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347182066&sr=1-1
Kwaks Competition Taekwondo: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kwak%60s-Competition-Taekwondo-Mark-Iles/dp/B000FTHGFI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325614714&sr=1-1
25/08/2013
Review: The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett
In a nutshell, The Troupe is about a young man, George, with a preternatural ability on the piano, who gets into a vaudeville theater so as he can spot when a certain troupe comes through; the one run by his father.
Only they aren't an ordinary troupe of performers. They sing, and seek out, fragments of the First Song, the song sung by the Creator to bring forth the universe. They are chased by the Wolves, who seek to destroy the world by stilling the music, and who are out to destroy the song as well.
I haven't had a difficult to put down book on my bedside cabinet for some time, but The Troupe certainly qualified as such. Bennett creates a plausible, smooth universe and populates it with incredibly dense characters. The plot is never sedentary, and snaps around a couple of twists sharp enough to give you whiplash.
As with most page-turners, this is about the people as much as it is about the plot, and Bennett's five characters are fragile, multi-layered, and are as twisted as the story. In many ways, I'm reminded of the HBO series 'Carnivale'.
A definite 'recommended'.
Only they aren't an ordinary troupe of performers. They sing, and seek out, fragments of the First Song, the song sung by the Creator to bring forth the universe. They are chased by the Wolves, who seek to destroy the world by stilling the music, and who are out to destroy the song as well.
I haven't had a difficult to put down book on my bedside cabinet for some time, but The Troupe certainly qualified as such. Bennett creates a plausible, smooth universe and populates it with incredibly dense characters. The plot is never sedentary, and snaps around a couple of twists sharp enough to give you whiplash.
As with most page-turners, this is about the people as much as it is about the plot, and Bennett's five characters are fragile, multi-layered, and are as twisted as the story. In many ways, I'm reminded of the HBO series 'Carnivale'.
A definite 'recommended'.
02/06/2013
Good news for a good friend
I am absolutely delighted to be able (finally) to announce that my goof friend and mentor, Terry Jackman, has landed a book deal for her novel 'Ashamet'
Terry runs the Orbit writers groups, organised by the BSFA, and has been instrumental in getting my writing to the point where it does not look like the output of a gifted four-year-old. I first read her book about four years ago, and thought then it needed to be published.
Well done, Terry :D
Terry runs the Orbit writers groups, organised by the BSFA, and has been instrumental in getting my writing to the point where it does not look like the output of a gifted four-year-old. I first read her book about four years ago, and thought then it needed to be published.
Well done, Terry :D
Matt Smith to Leave Doctor Who
Or so it was announced yesterday by the BBC. Now some will think I am going to be bouncing up and down with glee at this, as I've been a little vocal in my lack of support for the current era, but I'm not. I'm actually disappointed.
See, in my humble (stop laughing) opinion, Matt Smith could have been one of the Great Doctors, but he's been let down by poor choice of companions, poor scripts, and this utterly abysmal thing that's crept in about short, broken up series.
One of the things I really cant get my head around is how Moffat and Gatiss can do such a jaw-droppingly great job on 'Sherlock', yet consistently get it so wrong with Doctor Who. It is almost as though they had too much on and didn't concentrate on it. Wonderful sidekicks have been shockingly ignored - I would love to have seen a spin-off Steampunk-esque series with our favourite Victorian crime-fighting trio :) - and there has been a constant theme of ending through the last series, as well as a very poor choice of companion in Jenna-Louise Coleman.
What I am now afraid of is that we have entered another period of terminal decline (if that makes any sense) in Doctor Who, much as we did with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
I hope not.
See, in my humble (stop laughing) opinion, Matt Smith could have been one of the Great Doctors, but he's been let down by poor choice of companions, poor scripts, and this utterly abysmal thing that's crept in about short, broken up series.
One of the things I really cant get my head around is how Moffat and Gatiss can do such a jaw-droppingly great job on 'Sherlock', yet consistently get it so wrong with Doctor Who. It is almost as though they had too much on and didn't concentrate on it. Wonderful sidekicks have been shockingly ignored - I would love to have seen a spin-off Steampunk-esque series with our favourite Victorian crime-fighting trio :) - and there has been a constant theme of ending through the last series, as well as a very poor choice of companion in Jenna-Louise Coleman.
What I am now afraid of is that we have entered another period of terminal decline (if that makes any sense) in Doctor Who, much as we did with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
I hope not.
13/05/2013
Review: Urban Occult(ed Colin F Barnes)
Horror is not my bag, yet.
I’m still learning. I know enough to realise I don’t like spatter-gore, or
horror that involves detailed explanation of the removal of body parts.
Fortunately – for me - Urban Occult, edited by Colin F Barnes
and published by Anachron Press, has no truck with this type of horror.
Urban Occult is focused very much more on what I call (probably erroneously) psychological horror, or Hitchcockian horror. It’s less blatant,
less in your face, and more situational, suggestive.
I won’t pretend that I
liked every story. I questioned the inclusion of a couple, and simply didn’t
get a couple more, and some I thought were well written, but not particularly
horrific. The majority, though, are snappy, compelling, and thought-provoking.
The anthology covers
everything from creepy golem-children, through a people eating house, to moving
tattoo jigsaw. In fact, Pieces by
Julie Travis, for which the latter is the subject, is one of the outstanding
stories of the collection.
Other specific mentions are hereby awarded to James
Brogden for The Remover of Obstacles and The
Strange Case of Mrs West and the Dead by Sarah Anne Langton
For me, though, Wonderland by K T Davies was the scream
of the crop. Yes – I did mean to just that word. Wonderland skirts the edges of insanity and fantasy, both urban and
classic, and kept me up far too late finishing it off.
Whilst I reviewed this
anthology in return for an e-book copy provided by the editor, my comments are
fair and impartial, Even so, I still recommend this book as a fine read.
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