The Origins of Fantasy?

Last weekend, I was driving through the Pennine Moors and switched the radio on to fend off boredom. It was set to Radio 4, because it helps me keep my speed down and I find it intellectually more stimulating than the lame attempts at slapstick by the Radio 1 DJs. A lady was talking about […]

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Split-Personality

Writing whilst trying to hold down a full-time job is a lot harder than most give credit to. I speak to a lot of people who think I spend my time in artistic pursuits and faffing around being ‘creative’, composing light and airy prose and dreaming up fantastic concepts. Actually, most of my day is […]

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Keeping up Appearances

Whilst going through my short story folder, I realised that I haven’t really been pushing much or writing much new stuff. I’ve been so focused on working on my novels that I haven’t given much thought to shorter fiction. Now I recall that David Farland mentioned in a recent post that a writer needs to […]

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The Eye of the World

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Eye of the World is the first book in Robert Jordan’s international bestselling Wheel of Time series. I’ve been eyeing this series up for a long time, but have been put off by the prohibitive length of each installment and […]

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2011 – The Future?

First off, the chocolate keyboard doesn’t have much of anything to do with today’s blog. It’s a nebulas link bringing together writing (blog and the wider sense) and a common new years resolution of stop eating chocolate. In fact dieting is the number one resolution for most people. The second being to write a book. […]

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Fight for Your Library

Last Friday, I spent two hours at Burnley Central Library as a Living Library Book. I was titled, Muslim Author. Most of the two hours were spent talking to Ben Kenyon from the Burnley Express and then to Mary, one of the librarians. The sub-zero temperatures and icy roads had kept away most of the […]

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