That Scary Book Cover

The original photograph is by Derek R Audette, a talented chap with a portfolio of freaky looking guys. The original black and white shot was so good that it only took me a couple of hours to adjust it on Paint.net, a free photo editing software available from filehippo.com. It’s not PhotoShop, but still manages […]

Publication!!!

Its happened! The Changeling King has been published through Smashwords and is now downloadable as an ebook in various formats. Don’t worry if you don’t have a smartphone or an ebook enabled device, you can read it on your computer. If you’ve got a Kindle, a Nook or an iPad, it will soon be coming […]

Seven Earths

Remember Seven Earths? eJournal of fantasy, sf and horror? Stop laughing. After issue 1 received good feedback, issue two experienced failure to launch. Why? The submissions were thin on the ground and the few we received weren’t good enough. We can’t just print everything. That defeats the point. So I sent the Brothers Anwar an […]

Marathon

No I’m not talking about the original UK version of the Snickers bar! I’m talking about a three movie stint I had at Reading Oracle’s VUE cinema. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Fast Five and Thor, over a day and a half. If X-Men First Class had come out a day […]

Review: Robert Jordan’s The Fires of Heaven

The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan My rating: 4 of 5 stars The fifth book in the Wheel of Time series continues the story of Rand al’Thor, The Dragon Reborn and his childhood friend, Mat Cauthon. In the previous book Rand was named the One Who Comes with Dawn, the chief of chiefs by […]

Reader Focus Group Session: 19th May 2011

As a part of my writing process I like to get some test readers to give me their views on what they think about a story, so I asked Janine Maclean, Head of Media Studies at Marsden Heights Community College to recruit a number of her students to help me out. They were given the […]

The Ebook Conspiracy

There is an ebook conspiracy going on out there, I’m sure of it. Engineered by Apple and Amazon (notice that both company names start with A?), they have been quietly kidnapping publishers and brain-washing them before releasing them in front of alarmist journalists to squeal, ‘10% of our sales this year have been ebooks’ or […]

Review: Philip Reeve’s Predator’s Gold

Predator’s Gold by Philip Reeve My rating: 4 of 5 stars Predator’s Gold is the sequel to Philip Reeve’s brilliant sf/fantasy adventure, Mortal Engines. Its set in a post-apocalyptic world in which tractionism has evolved cities into huge mobile polities that prey on smaller towns and villages; quite literally survival of the fittest. In Predator’s […]

Review: Robert Jordan’s Shadow Rising

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Shadow Rising, the fourth book in the Wheel of Time saga, continues the story of the kids from Emond’s Feild, of the Two Rivers. Rand’al Thor has raised Calandor in his hands and thereby announced to the world that he is the […]

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 […]