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Fantasycon by the Sea
Firstly, apologies for leaving a whole load of posts pending that should have been approved. Let me know if there were any I missed. Thank you to everyone for all the congratulations. I have also just...
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Many Recommendations of the Season
So I am the bear who walks into a bar, which is to say, apologies for the long pause. Mostly I have been finishing off the first draft of the Hyena and the Hawk*, book 3 of Echoes of the Fall (book 2...
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Silver Screen 2016 edition
Well crap, I did not get to see many films this year, owing to authorial and familial commitments, and so this is of a necessity a bit of a shotgun review. I did get to see a couple of Marvel films,...
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Brave New World, 2017 edition
Coming out of a year that was something of a personal triumph and a global disaster it’s hard to know how to summarise. Books were perpetrated, and both Spiderlight and The Tiger and the Wolf have...
View ArticleUpcoming releases and Eastercon 2017 schedule in brief
I have been writing my little socks off over the last couple of months, with relatively little respite in sight to be honest. I’ve just finished a novella for Rebellion and a novel for Solaris, both of...
View ArticleEastercon 2017 that was
And back from four days of a superb convention, in which I also got a load of editing done, so win-win all round there. “Innominate” was, as I understand it, a late submission brought into being Easter...
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Long-delayed Book recommendation Post Title Here!
The problem with putting off a post recommending good books is that you keep reading more good books and it all gets on top of you. I have, therefore, absolutely let some cracking books slip me mind,...
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The Sound of Spiders (and free audiobook competition!)
I am delighted to announce that the audiobook of Children of Time is right now available from Audible. You can find it here read by the very able Mel Hudson. I am also informed that Audiobooks of The...
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Clarke Award Shortlist 2017 Part 1 : Faith in the Future
This year I’m breaking the review up into three parts, because the shortlist, in my idiosyncratic perspective, seems to form some loose pairs, so first I give you: A Closed and Common Orbit – Becky...
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Clarke Award Shortlist 2017 Part 2 : The Evil That Men Do
Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead After Atlas – Emma Newman (1) So what about books that have a rather less optimistic take on the world? As it turns out, the shortlist has those too, and these...
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Clarke Award Shortlist 2017 Part 3 : Sufficiently Advanced Mathematics
Occupy Me – Tricia Sullivan Ninefox Gambit – Yoon Ha Lee Sufficiently advanced mathematics being, of course, indistinguishable from magic, and that’s the thread I’m using to link these two books – very...
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The New of the New: upcoming cons and projects
Long pause since I last blogged, which was on the Clarkes shortlist, the suspense of which will be resolved at Foyles in London this 27th July, where I will have the honour of handing out this year’s...
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Recommended Reading
First of all, out of a very strong field (see posts passim), Colson Whitehead took this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for his Underground Railway, which is a thought-provoking and powerful read....
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The Shape of Things to Come: Fantasycon and Upcoming Releases
At the end of this month I will indeed be at Fantasycon in Peterborough, doing the following hijinks: Friday 7.30 Writing fighting panel Friday 8.30 Dungeons and Disorderly (er… some kind of crowd-run...
View ArticleThunkpiece: Bringing a Sword to a Gunfight
I caught the edge of a discussion (I think sparked from an Edge Lit panel, though I’m not 100% sure) about whether you can justify using swords in a setting that also has ready access to guns. Most of...
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Hold(stock) the Press!
So: not the planned reading recs post, which has been shoved into the future like a dyspeptic time traveller. Instead, lord alive, The Tiger and the Wolf won the Robert Holdstock Award for best fantasy...
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Reading Recs and the New Epics
A long-overdue bit of bloggery for one reason or another, but time to run down on some more good stuff I’ve read, starting with Sequels Corner. Recommending sequels is always a bit of an oddity. Did...
View ArticleNovember Events
Just a quick note for some upcoming events next month: 1st November 2017 – Waterstones bookshop Leeds – 18.30 – Dogs of War release event including me being interviewed by David Tallerman. 10-12th...
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Catch up and yet more reading recs
November’s various duties have been put behind me – thanks to everyone who turned up at the WS events. Also a huge thank you to the organisers of Novacon, where I was treated royally. It’s a great...
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A year in books: 2017
We are marching towards the end of a year of tumult and turbulence, and I am going to retreat from it and instead talk books at you. Specifically, I have read a metric crapton of books this year, and...
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