Phoenix, by SF Said, with illustrations by Dave McKean, is a science-fiction adventure of galactic scale. When I was a kid, more decades ago now than I care to remember, science fiction made up a significant proportion of my reading. Eleanor Cameron’s The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet was my comfort re-read – I read… Read More
Talk of the Toun, by Helen MacKinven, is a raw, dark, hilarious coming-of-age tale set in 1980s Falkirk. Disclosure: I know Helen through our publisher Cranachan. This hasn’t affected the review in any way – if I hadn’t liked the book, I’d wouldn’t have reviewed it! If you’ve been reading my reviews over the past years, you’ll… Read More
They always say that Shakespeare, despite being from four centuries ago, is still relevant, and To Wee or Not to Wee by Pamela Butchart is the book that proves it – in hilarious style. Sitting in the same series as My Headteacher is a Vampire Rat and Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies, To Wee or… Read More
The Case of the Missing Moonstone, by Jordan Stratford, is the first case for the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, the detectives of which are Mary Godwin and Ada Byron – better known to posterity as Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Byron, mathematical genius, and the world’s first computer programmer…. Read More
On the 25th of March, 2015, it was announced at a ceremony in Dundee that my book, The Wreck of the Argyll, had won the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize, and would be published by Cargo in September of that year. A year and a day later, on the 26th of March, 2016, it… Read More
I’ve been sitting on this news for a wee while, so it’s really nice to get it out in the open. I’m delighted to announce that I’ve agreed a deal with Cranachan Publishing for my next book, The Beast on the Broch. My book will form part of their Yesteryear series of historical children’s fiction,… Read More
The end of the world is a common theme in books, films, and TV. Zombie outbreaks. Alien invasions. Meteor strikes. Virus epidemics. Nuclear war. But in The Great Chocoplot, Chris Callaghan has come up with the most chilling apocalypse yet: the end of chocolate. Jelly (real name Jennifer, but if your name’s Jennifer Wellington you’re… Read More
Issue 3 of Shoreline of Infinity magazine is out now – and this issue contains Time for Tea, a short story by me, under the cunning pseudonym of J.K Fulton. (I decided to use a slightly different name for this story – J.K Fulton is the sci-fi short story writer, John K. Fulton is the… Read More
Hell’s Belles is the sequel to The D’Evil Diaries, which I reviewed last year and thoroughly enjoyed. Fans of the original will be glad to know that Hell’s Belles is more of the same, with an extra twist – this time, the main character is Tommy, the only human child in the underworld, and Jinx’s… Read More
Superheroes are most definitely “in” right now. You just have to look at the schedule for Marvel films over the next few years, the forthcoming Justice League films starting with Batman v Superman, the succession of TV series from Gotham to Flash to Agent Carter… Yep, superheroes are popular. It’s not just films and TV (taking… Read More