Alt.Fiction and Other Stories

So, last weekend saw me back in my old stomping ground of Derby at Alt.Fiction after a year or so absence, and what a great weekend it was too.

Granted, a lot of my time was spent in the QUAD’s fantastic café-bar drinking and chatting, and not going to enough of the panels, but made some wonderful new friends in the process, as well as shooting the breeze with some old ‘uns too.

During the course of the weekend I managed to catch up and chat with many friends and colleagues, so I’d like to give a big shout out to Gav Thorpe, Dan Abnett, Juliet E. McKenna, Paul Finch, Graham McNeill, Jay Eales, Mike Shevdon, Simon Clark, Gary McMahon, Guy Haley, David Thomas Moore, Ian Whates, Lee Harris, Emma Jane Davies, Del & Kim Lakin-Smith, Vincent Holland-Keen, Paul Cornell, Adam Christopher, Christopher Barker and Ian McKenna - all of whom imparted much wisdom, talked much rubbish (fluently) and made the two days fly by.

In writing news;

I’m currently working on a horror comic book script for a comic book anthology to be published in paperback later this year by Stacey Whittle, one half of the fantastic Small Press Big Mouth. The anthology will feature a collection of eerie stories inspired by folklore and fairytales from some very exciting writers and artists. My story will be titled The Madness From The Sea with artwork by the enormously talented Lee Grice. I will give you more information and link to all details as soon as I have them.


As the Faction Paradox anthology A Romance in Twelve Parts has been out for a month now, reviews are starting to spring up all over the interweb. All of them except one (which we’ll come to in a minute) have been very kind and enthusiastic about the book - one reviewer even cited it as “my favourite book so far this year”. However, Emily Carter (who is none other than Lawrence Miles’ agent) didn't like the book at all, saying all the stories were ‘boring’ - all except Phil Purser-Hallard’s A Hundred Words From A Civil War, which we all contributed a drabble to (mine is Drabble No. XXXV, for all those with a copy of the book), which Emily loved!

I first became aware of Emily’s ‘review’ when I unexpectedly bumped into fellow contributor Jay Eales at Alt.Fiction who showed me the review on his phone. We then spent the better part of 20 minutes scratching our heads and hooting with laughter. Phil recently put the link to the review (which seems to be on a forum) on his blog - so here’s the link if you’d like to read it, it’s very, very funny! (FYI, the character in my story doesn’t get ‘disembowelled’ just stabbed a number of times.)

http://nitcentral.philfarrand.com/discus/messages/1135/29446.html?1307896374

To round things up, work on my Steampunk novel ‘Dark Engine’ continues while fitting in a number of short stories, novellas and editing work.

My latest editing project is a Steampunk anthology which looks to classic works of fiction as it’s inspiration. The book will contain sixteen short stories from writers including Brian Herbert, Tanith Lee and myself, and will be released by Snowbooks in 2012.

Review - http://factionparadox.yuku.com/reply/7927/Crappy-70s-paperbacks--airbrushed-spaceships--cover-reviews#reply-7927

Small Press Big Mouth's site - http://smallpressbigmouth.blogspot.com/