Category Archives: publication announcements

publication announcements

Carus & Mitch cover reveal

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<Cue drum roll, or whatever sound you feel conjures up anticipation>

I’m very pleased to reveal the cover for Carus & Mitch, which will be published by Omnium Gatherum on 23rd February!

CMFullCover011415 croppedPretty flipping creepy, right? Here’s the back-cover blurb:

Carus is only fifteen but since their mum disappeared, looking after her little sister Mitch is her job. There’s nobody else. Not in their house and not outside, either. There’s something out there, scratching and scraping at the windows.

The barricades will hold.

They have to.

Also, Carus & Mitch now has its own page on Goodreads. Just one step closer to it being a real, actual thing…

publication announcements, short stories

Short story: Like Clockwork

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SQ Mag Edition 18, featuring my story, ‘Like Clockwork’, is now available for free on the SQ Mag website. ‘Like Clockwork’ took second prize in the Story Quest ‘Punkin’ the Train’ contest at the start of December 2014.

cover-sq-mag-18

It’s the first of my Mars stories (featuring sand-sculpted dwellings, roaming bases and ‘aye-aye’ AI robots) to be published, though it’s one of the most recent I’ve written. More to come, I hope.

publication announcements, writing updates

My writing in 2014

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Novels written in 2014

  • The House-sitter (74,000 words) – SF time-travel mystery

Short stories written in 2014

  • A Crest of a Wave (2300 words) – SF, Mars
  • Like Clockwork (3000 words) – SF, Mars
  • Cast In The Same Mould (4200 words) – SF, Mars
  • Finding Waltzer-Three (1400 words) – SF
  • An Empty Vessel (3000 words) – horror
  • What Are We Going To Do With You? (5900 words) – YA horror

Flash fiction written in 2014

  • For a Tooth (850 words) – humorous SF
  • Kraken Mare (250 words) – SF
  • Corvus Cornix (250 words) – horror
  • All I Can See Are Sad Eyes (850 words) – horror

Fiction sales in 2014

I wrote about 124,000 (new) words in 2014. That’s less than last year, but that figure doesn’t reflect the huge amount of time editing and reworking ‘The House-sitter’. Also, I’ve often been exhausted due to my son’s sleep patterns, so this is still a higher word count than I’d anticipated.

To date, my fiction word count total is now something in the region of 448,000 words. I’d hope to reach the half-million mark at some point in early 2015.

First million words ometer 45

publication announcements, short stories

SQ Mag contest win

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SQMag bannerI’ve just been told that my story, ‘Like Clockwork’ has won second place in SQ Mag’s current Story Quest contest. The theme of the contest was ‘Punkin’ the Train’ – though my story isn’t specifically steampunk or dieselpunk etc and I’m not sure which classification might include a Martian sand-sculpted steam train… This nostalgic version of Mars features in several of my stories, but this is the first that’ll be published. I’ve always liked the idea of threading a story/world across several publications, so fingers crossed for that. I don’t yet know which issue of SQ Mag will include ‘Like Clockwork’.

So that’s good news, and offsets a rejection email (for another story) that came through at around the same time. Despite the harshness, I’m very much in favour of this kind of blunt feedback: “The high quality of the writing camouflages that this is a very dull story.  It’s very dry, slow and neither inspires fear or wonder.”

Swings and roundabouts.

publication announcements, short stories

‘Finding Waltzer-Three’ Interzone illustration

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The Interzone team have revealed the illustration for my story, ‘Finding Waltzer-Three’, which appears in issue 255. It’s by Wayne Haag, the same artist who created the terrific cover.

747_largeI love it. It’s the first time that any of my stories has been illustrated. I couldn’t be prouder.

17 Nov 2014 update: And Interzone #255 is available in print now! Click here and scroll all the way to the bottom.

publication announcements

Announcement: Carus and Mitch

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So here’s a thing.

My novella, ‘Carus and Mitch’, will be published by Omnium Gatherum Books in February next year. You can read the announcement on the OG site here.

OG logoAs you can imagine, I’m feeling pretty pleased about it! Omnium Gatherum seems a great home for the story – I discovered the company due to previous titles being nominated for the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards. I haven’t read any of the other OG authors’ work yet, but you can be sure that I will.

I’m really looking forward to the sequence of editing, proofreading, cover design, and all the other aspects of getting a book to publication. Kate Jonez, who runs Omnium Gatherum, has been wonderful in our email chats so far – I think working with her is going to be fun. I’m also very grateful for her decision to take a punt on a story that’s tricky to classify and, at 17k words, isn’t exactly lengthy… Here’s hoping that readers feel the same, come February!

More ‘Carus and Mitch’ news to follow in due course, no doubt.

publication announcements, short stories

Short story: Read/Write Head

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Garbled logo

This morning saw the new issue refresh of the Garbled Transmissions website. It features my short story, Read/Write Head.

Read/Write Head was based on a one-sentence premise that I discovered in an old notebook (“How would it feel to defragment your mind?”) and was then written much faster than my other stories. The word associations were generally those that occurred to me first; the main character has my name as a reflection of the many personal links.

Read the full story here.