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
writing
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
I’m delighted to announce that Under the Mountain and Other Stories, my collaboration with artist Anh Diep, is now available from Amazon. This is a collection of eight science fiction and fantasy short stories, including all three of my previously-published stories, along with five never-before-seen tales. Complementing the stories are illustrations by my friend Anh. He’s… Read More
Back in January I entered three of my short stories for the Leicester Writes short story competition. Leicester Writes is a local literature development project; they run workshops, a writing group, competitions, and a literature festival, and are enthusiastic about supporting writers in Leicester and beyond. The competition was open to all writers across the… Read More
It’s the release day for the new edition of my WWI spy thriller The Wreck of the Argyll. This is the book that won the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize in 2015, and was initially published by Cargo, before being fostered by Freight for a year before the rights reverted to me. My lovely publishers… Read More
This is my fifth year of writing up the status of my books – see 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. The Beast on the Broch The Beast on the Broch is still out there. It’s not selling particularly well (sometimes the Amazon sales chart shows two-month gaps between single copies being sold!) but it’s still out… Read More