Month: August 2011

The Kindle All Stars short story anthology that I wrote about recently now has seven confirmed stories (including mine) - a guy called Frank Zubek is charting the progress of the anthology, as well as managing its promotion, so check back there to find out the latest. There's also a Facebook group, plus you can… Continue reading Kindle All Stars update

The ever-resourceful Phoenix Sullivan has set up a new site showcasing the novels, short stories and anthologies published by Dare To Dream Press and available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords - including the Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever anthology and my short The Restoration Man. Check out Dare To Dream Press for more. 

I was browsing around the Kindleboards forum the other day when I stumbled across a post in which someone had quoted a poem. "Poetry?" I thought to myself, "Pah." Then I read it, and it knocked my socks off. I loved it. So I contacted the author to say how much I liked it, and… Continue reading Liquid logic

I just found out that my short story Perks Of The Job has been accepted for inclusion in a Harlan Ellison-approved anthology of speculative fiction, the profits for which will go to the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children. The editor, Bernard J. Schaffer, contacted Ellison on setting up the project (codenamed Kindle All… Continue reading Harlan Ellison Specficanth

An interesting post by Diana Estill on being an independent author: http://totallyskewed.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/its-not-easy-being-indie/ My favourite part is how she employed the generally frowned-upon marketing tactic of "not doing anything" and managed to get readers anyway.

As Phoenix Sullivan suggested that I republish my story from the Extinct anthology, I have gone ahead and used Amazon's dtp site to make The Restoration Man available for the Kindle (if you're in the UK you can buy it here, if you're in the US you can buy it here). I was quite pleased… Continue reading Swallowing Amazon

We like an ending, don't we? We all love our stories to end with a classic hero-kills-villain or a girl-gets-boy or a mutant-horse-overthrows-government ending. It's human nature. Even though the lives of the fictional characters don't necessarily end when a book finishes, the implication is that their struggles do. Happily ever after. Life isn't like… Continue reading An end to a means

I have a tendency to overwrite. I know this. My natural tendency has always been to lose myself in the detail and tumble along in a torrent of adverbs, surfacing only at the end of a paragraph to blink, gulp in some air and then dive straight back in. Like I said, I know this.… Continue reading The colour purple