Tales from the Garret

Further to last week’s announcements, I’m letting the world know that my good friend Sue M – Hugo-award winning artist, purple hippy and all round bad grrrl – will soon be taking a turn at being, rather than producing, art. She’ll be up on a certain plinth in a certain Square next Thursday the 3rd […]

Department of Positive News: I’ve discovered that the mass-market paperback of Principles of Angels will be getting another print run. This should make the first editions, with their data-rich cover-copy, valuable collectors’ items … (!)  Department of Proper Education: Liz Williams, author of some damn fine SF, as well as the spiffing Inspector Chen series, […]

As I’ve said before (with apologies to Peter Cook) I coulda been an ‘ard SF writer, but I never ‘ad the maths. I love a good analogy, but equations just seem to slide off my brain. How much of this tendency is down to my mild dyscalculia (if the condition can be said to apply […]

Well firstly I’m bad because I did no writing whatsoever over the weekend. Instead I went to a beach-themed BBQ, took part in a medieval re-enactment show, attended a party and wandered round the local zoo in the sunshine. Actually I did sort of do some work at the zoo, as while we were trying […]

I admit I’ve been sidling up to my editor’s requested rewrites on Guardians of Paradise. It’s not that I don’t want to do the work, as I am that rare beast, a writer who enjoys rewrites. It’s just taking me a while to get back into work mode. Plus, going on past performance there will […]

I’ve survived my festival summer. It was good, if occasionally damp: I’ve heard some great bands, met some interesting people, drunk far too much cider and generally had fun. Nearly everything I own got muddy at some point. On the last day of the last festival I also met up with my editor for tea. […]

Even when I’m not gallivanting around the country attending festivals I can be tardy in my responses to other people’s blogs. By the time I read this post from Karen Mahoney she, and her responders, had pretty much covered the topic. But it got me thinking, albeit at a slight tangent. (Warning – this is […]

We’re now into festival season and I’m finding the prospect of a month of four day working weeks curiously liberating. The timing helps – I wouldn’t be so sanguine about being prised out of my garret if I had a book delivery date looming. But now I’m into the post-delivery wait it’s actually good to […]

… in a while. Unfortunately I brought back an unexpected guest from last week’s event, in the form of an impressive and unpleasant flu virus (not the piggy sort, fortunately). As a result this week’s main achievement has been catching up on some reading, as I’ve not been good for much else. I’m just glad […]

Actually I don’t find maths hot. I find it, truth be told, somewhat intimidating. My equation-phobia was the only minor concern I had about the ‘Physics for Fiction’ seminar held on Monday and Tuesday of this week at Imperial College, but I needn’t have worried; the level of this largely astronomy-based set of talks and […]