Affirmation

I’m fluctuating somewhere between ‘well, I must be some sort of author if I’m on an author page‘ and ‘don’t be so needy, Stevens’. I am however looking forward to the book coming out, and to ‘The Boulevardier’ and his bad French seeing the light of day.

Long listed

My alter-ego Lloyd Connor is very pleased that his story, Some Corner of a Dorset Field that is Forever Arabia, appears in the long list of recommended horror stories of 2014 from Ellen Datlow. I eagerly await her yearly anthology of horrible goodies, so it is a big massive thrill for me to make that long […]

Best Horror of the Year

Years ago I was helping a junior staff member who was having some difficulties. Ours can be an arduous profession, with long hours, lots of conflict, and difficult policy decisions which have to be defended. She was talking about some of the difficulties she was facing, particularly as a woman of a different background in […]

Dracula is dead

Christopher Lee is dead, and no one is going to bring him back by dripping the blood of a virgin on his ashes in a deconsecrated London church (I walked past many such buildings last Christmas, I didn’t notice any jaded covenists hanging around waiting for dark, they all seemed to have been converted to […]

Who do you think you are, George Orwell?

(Having published five short stories (one of them twice!) its fairly important that I make an arse of myself by drawing a comparison between George Orwell and, well, moi.) I purchased a copy of a slim George Orwell volume, ‘Why I write’, part of the Penguin Great Ideas series, last (European) summer when I was in […]

My Gregory gush

If you are already planning on reading ‘Pandemonium’ by Daryl Gregory, don’t read any further. There are no more spoilers here than on the back cover blurb, but … I went on a Daryl Gregory binge last weekend. I’d had ‘Raising Stony Mayhall’ on my wishlist at The Book Depository for some time, and received […]

Bio? The letter ‘C’

Submissions require an author bio. I struggle with this. I look to others for inspiration. Some people include a half page of whimsy, at which I cringe, and have no publication credits, because they have not published anything. Others have a stream of credits, and of course, I can’t emulate that. Some list all the […]

Good Boy

My story ‘Good Boy’ has been published by Pseudopod. Here is a link, it is about 19 minutes in. I wrote many things over many years. I have boxes of notes and drafts. Occasionally I’d submit stories and collect rejection slips. Life, laziness, children, career, fear, all got in the way of taking things further. […]