This is my tenth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Ten years of writing these updates! I do sometimes wonder why I bother when there’s so little to report (and when these posts get readers in single figures), but it… Read More
Author: John
My short story, “Call of the Void”, is now available in the Severed Souls anthology from Space Cat Press. Here’s the anthology synopsis: From fragile identities to monstered invasions, from migration to metamorphosis, twenty writers explore the ‘Aliens and Otherness’ theme. In stories, poems and weird flash fiction, they expose tensions between Self and Them…. Read More
It’s been a while since I was on speaking terms with the muse. Over the past few years I’ve kept myself busy with the occasional short story (some of which I’m quite pleased with) but the fact of the matter is that I completed my last children’s novel manuscript, Pax Caledonia, at the end of… Read More
This is my ninth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. In January my supernatural lighthouse short story, “Keeper of the Light”, was published in the Dark Scotland anthology from Darkstroke Books. This year I wrote a sci-fi short story “Call of… Read More
This is my eighth year of writing up the status of my writing – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. In February, two of my science fiction short stories, “Scattered Across the Stars” and “Always Carry a Spare”, which I had submitted in late 2019 to new Leicester publisher Space Cat Press, were… Read More
On 25th September 2015, five years ago today, my first novel The Wreck of the Argyll was released. I thought I’d take the opportunity of the book’s birthday to look over its lifespan, which is far more complicated than I would have thought possible, involving three different publishers over the years… I wrote the manuscript… Read More
I’m delighted that two of my sci-fi short stories are now available in the Uncharted Constellations anthology from Space Cat Press. Here’s a description of the anthology: In this space-themed anthology, twenty writers take the last Space Race as a launch pad to propel us far into the future. Uncharted Constellations crosses genres from dark science-fiction to… Read More
This is my seventh year of writing up the status of my books – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. After my retirement from writing children’s books last year, this was (not unexpectedly) a quiet year. In August, my short story “The Whisperer” was included in the Best of British Science Fiction 2018, which… Read More
This is my sixth year of writing up the status of my books – see 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. In February, my first novel, the WWI spy adventure The Wreck of the Argyll, was re-released by Cranachan, who’d previously published my Pictish adventure The Beast on the Broch. In June, my sci-fi short story “The Whisperer”… Read More
Yesterday I attended the Historical Novel Society Conference in Cumbernauld to talk about children’s historical fiction. My fellow Cranachan author Barbara Henderson shared the session with me, and it was great to hear about her experience and advice for writing historical novels for children. We decided we’d give a short presentation on how we wrote… Read More