Spring Forwards
‘Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer. I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring, don’t you? ‘Course you do!’ -Tom…
Good Times, Bad Times
Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to staying alive in ‘twenty five. Other than surviving until 31st December, my aim for this year is to finish the first draft of my…
NaNoWriNO
As you may have noticed, it’s now November, the time of year many writers have traditionally referred to as National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge in which…
The Shortest Way to Sweet: Part II
Or, How Writing Short Can Help You Write Good. In my first blog post about short stories, I explored how I overcame my own reservations and learned to love short…
The Shortest Way to Sweet: Part I
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love short fiction. I woke up this Sunday morning to the news that my short story ‘Our Lady of the Void’ (a…
Putting the Darkness into Dark Academia
As summer starts turning to autumn and students start heading back to school, it seems like a good time to think about the appeal of dark academia... I recently read…
Two Years On, Ten Years Gone
In which I reflect on my personal writer’s scorecard and what lessons I have learned. My writer’s scorecard: Years since first publication: 2 Number of accepted/published stories: 6 Number of…
The Rise of the Robot Writer
This piece of writing is certified 100% the product of an organic human mind, free of any aid from artificial intelligence. You can tell because it was supposed to be…
2023 will be… the year I care for me
Happy new year everyone! I'm wishing everyone a nice, boring, uneventful twelve months. May we all live in less interesting times. This is, of course, the time of year when…
The Protagonist Problem
I'm in the process of starting to write a new novel. Which is exciting, and also nerve-wracking, because I haven't written a new novel in several years. After my previous…