Tales from the Garret

My brain came up with the pithy (or pretentious) assertion below when it was meant to be working out a knotty plot point. This is absolutely not a mission statement (pah!) but it does summarise what I like in the fiction I read, and what I try to aim for in the fiction I write: […]

Pleased with myself for having finished the first draft of ‘Consorts of Heaven’  ahead of schedule, my plan for the rest of the year had been to catch up on some neglected short story admin, then devote a bit of time to non-writing related stuff (like cleaning the house). In the week up to Christmas […]

I’m feeling a sense of accomplishment, having this weekend completed the first draft of ‘Consorts of Heaven’, the sequel to ‘Principles of Angels’. It took just under five months, writing about thirty hours a week. Obviously, being a first draft, revision will be required. I already have ten pages of notes for the re-write, some […]

One of the joys of writing, especially writing SF, is that it gives me the excuse to find stuff out. Even though I’m nine-tenths of the way through the first draft of ‘Consorts of Heaven’, I’m still doing research. Admittedly my enquiries have been superficial, as I don’t want to let myself use research as […]

I’ve got an infestation of spiders in my garret. Though I’m something of an arachnophobe, these are money-spiders, and hence insy-winsy enough not to trigger my urge to jump onto the furniture and squeal like a stalked teenager. They are irritating though, as their favourite place to practice spinning webs seems to be the frame […]

I think I may have developed consumption. All right, so it probably isn’t the real thing (and yes, technically my garret is a loft conversation), but I have still got a pretty impressive cough. In the absence of laudanum I’m drinking an awful lot of tea.

I’m somewhat ambivalent about Bonfire Night. Though there are a few people who I wouldn’t mind seeing burnt in effigy, Guy Fawkes isn’t one of them. At college, I had a poster on my wall saying’ Guy Fawkes: the only man to enter Parliament with honest intentions.’ Most modern northern European festivals hark back to […]

I’ve just found an exploded comet. Well, I didn’t find it as such, but I’ve managed to locate the romantically named Comet 17P/Holmes in the night sky. It’s not hard, as this thing is the size of Jupiter. It didn’t used to be, but it’s just exploded. This news will probably (hopefully) get picked up […]

For some reason most of the important things that have happened to me occur in the autumn (the book deal with Gollancz this May being a notable exception). This time two years ago I went off on the Big Trip (of which much more below, if you can be bothered to page down far enough). […]

Forgive me, but I’m going to rant. If you live in the U.K. and you read SF, you probably know what, or should I say who, has got me so worked up.  If not, then as I don’t  want to get in trouble, I’ll just refer to Ms X. Ms X is a ‘literary’ writer […]