Category Archives: Writing

In arguably the most famous episode of the 1970s sitcom Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, the two titular lads, Terry and Bob, are trying to make it home to watch the highlights of the FA Cup Final on Match of the Day. However, they must run the gauntlet of Newcastle city centre, where the resultContinue reading “Spoiling For A Scrap”

It’s been quite some time since I posted anything here. If the twelve months of the year can be thought of as the twelve rounds of a boxing match, then in the latter half of 2017 hit me with a handful of suckerpunches and knocked me right onto my keister. Redundancy, illness and the delayedContinue reading “Hope and Dreams for 2018”

The other day I put something up about having the confidence and balls to stick with your own personal writing ambitions in the face of wide ranging critiques offering highly different suggestions for improvement. On a broader note, I came across this quote from Roberto Balaño’s bleak, sprawling 2004 epic, 2666, which encapsulated the mood I was feelingContinue reading “YAWB: Ambition in Science Fiction”

I’ve not posted for some time, partly because of the dastardly construct that is RL, and partly because my latest novel, The Hole In The Sky (let’s call it HITS for short, yes?), had been plaguing me with a sore plot point that didn’t quite make sense, and had caused progress to grind to aContinue reading “The Lack of Pen is Mightier Than The Pen”

Recently I had a debate with another writer on the topic of cultural appropriation that was too mild to be labelled as ‘heated’, yet interesting enough to warrant further investigation. Coincidentally, around the same time earlier this month Lionel Shriver appear on Mark Steyn’s ill-fated The Mark Steyn Show, primarily to discuss her now infamous “SombreroContinue reading “Diversity of Thought”

After posting my previous blog on getting out of the house, one or two people mentioned to me that it’s not always that easy and that not everyone is as outgoing as, well, me, I suppose. It’s very easy to espouse a certain behaviour when it comes relatively easily to oneself. This difficulty of presenting oneselfContinue reading “The Worshipful Company of Writers”

Over the last few weeks things have going very nicely over at Jones Towers, with a few little opportunities and meetings here and there happening that give me quite confidence that I’m slowly but surely moving in the right direction in my writing career. Baby steps, perhaps, but once aggregated they feel more significant. AndContinue reading “Get Out Of The Bloody House”

I’m currently re-reading Bryan Wigmore’s wonderful debut The Goddess Project (my review of it is here), and a passage in Chapter 11 struck me with its lyrical, majestic prose. It’s a passage related by the main character Orc in the second person singular. Here’s a taste. “When your famished body had been eaten and shed as tears byContinue reading “The Expendability of Electronica”