Writers all over the world talk about Imposter Syndrome*, that feeling your success is undeserved and that one day the world will collectively blink, take a good long look at you and realise you are some kind of fraud. It’s … Continue reading →
Last summer I spent a week with some friends on Mull, a large and beautiful island off the west coast of Scotland. You reach it by ferry from Oban, home of one of my favourite whiskeys. From Mull you can then … Continue reading →
No, not a novel about embryos (hmm, makes quick note), but here’s my 0.02 draft of a new SF novel. As usual this consists of a whole lot of little bits of paper laid out in rows according to Acts, … Continue reading →
So this time around I signed with an agent. It was interesting to look back at previous submissions and think about what I did differently. Apart from one thing, it wasn’t that easy to see exactly what that was. My … Continue reading →
I came across this Zen Koan recently and thought it would make a good story prompt – perhaps along SF-nal themes of consciousness and perception. I believe it is attributed to (or about) Hui neng, the sixth and last Patriarch … Continue reading →
Last Thursday I went to the funeral of fellow-writer Mark McCann. I wasn’t a close friend, I only knew him through our mutual membership of our writing group (London genre group, the T Party). He was intelligent and well-educated man, … Continue reading →
I have this joke in my author bio that my first girlfriend was a mermaid. It’s true in a way, she was Marina from Gerry Anderson’s Stingray, and I was seven years old. She was rescued from slavery in Triton’s … Continue reading →
The last few years have been terrific ones for the T Party, the London writing group I’ve belonged to since I can’t remember when (about 15 years – I think). Web sites always need more work, so I decided a … Continue reading →
For the past couple of years there has been a fascination with world-building in genre fiction, with many discussions on forums, blog posts, and panels at conventions. Its become the Need-to-Know thing about writing SF and Fantasy, with half the … Continue reading →
It might feel like that, and there’s always something else to talk about, but all these musings of mine are supposed to be a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Reading books and articles on writing can … Continue reading →
