Simon Kurt Unsworth’s Blog

Still waiting.

It’s been another of those ‘nothing doing’ weeks. I still haven’t done any writing, but am going to start again this coming week. After last weeks ‘I cain’t do no writin’ ‘cos I’m a-stalled’ blog, I got lots of nice messages reassuring me that it’ll pass, that it’s normal and not to worry – thanks everyone! I’m happy to report that the urge to write is building again, and that I have train journeys this week and a story in my head that I want to get on with – another Sherlock Holmes horror story – so I think my little sabbatical is over (whether my writing mojo likes it or not). I honestly think it’s been good to have a break, as I’m thinking now that whatever stories are still poking me to be written are the ones to go with. I have a few on the burner (old hotels haunted by claustrophobic art, houses that appear only when it rains and their child-stealing inhabitants, the morning commute to work and what happens when it changes, a story told entirely in letters in which none of the letter tell the reader what happened ), so there’s lots to be getting on with. I have a life of trains and hotels coming up for a few months because of a busy spell at work, so some of these should see the light of day soon. Here’s hoping…

I still haven’t heard back about the novel, or about any of the outstanding submissions, so I’m trying to ignore them. I heard from Barbara Roden that she’s now starting to edit the collection, so I’m waiting (that damn word again!) to see what comments she makes about the stories and what changes she recommends/requires. Similarly, Jason van Hollander is on with the cover, so Lost Places is coming together nicely now. I still haven’t made any decisions about my second collection – I don’t have enough stories for a collection yet but I’m not far off, so I need to think about who to pitch it to and how to pitch it. Some of the stories in it are a little less ‘concrete’ than the ones in Lost Places, so pitching it will be a slightly tougher sell I think. I think my plan is to wait until Lost Places is out and generating some interest (and some positive reviews, with luck) and then maybe use that as a springboard to sell the second. We’ll see…

My only other writing related news is that I went to the launch of Rob Shearman’s new book, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. Rob read a story and then answered questions, and if the story he read is anything to go by, then Love Songs… is going to be even better than his first, World Fantasy Award-winning, collection Tiny Deaths. Buy it now, lads and lasses! Big Finish, the company publishing the book, laid on a good do, with much free wine and food (and, incidentally, I drank far too much wine and would like to apologise now for any drunken stupidity and slurring that I engaged in – sorry!!) and I met some fine people. Some of them may even still be speaking to me…

Okay, that’s about it for the week. More next week, Lords and Ladies.

I’ve hit a bit of a full stop.

Over the past two years, I’ve pretty much written solidly, producing story after story either for specific anthologies, to plug ‘gaps’ in the collection or just because I felt like writing them, but now all that’s stopped. I’ve not had any inclination to write recently, even when I’ve had the perfect opportunity to (on trains to and from work). It’s not that I’ve gone off writing at all (I’ve not – if anything it’s more important to me now than it ever was), or that I’m running out  of ideas (I’m not – my ‘to do/to complete’ list of stories is vast, and I had a really good idea for my next Sherlock Holmes horror story the other day for Charles Prepolec and Jeff Campbell’s next anthology), so I had to wonder why I’ve been so lazy. I’ve come up with two main reasons, which feel like they explain it (to me at least):

The first is that I think my brain needs a recharge. As well as the ‘real’ work I’ve had to do, there hasn’t been a point in the previous 24 months when I’ve not had at least one story on the go – even on holiday, when I wrote The Animal Game longhand. I’m wondering if this slow period is my brain’s way of consolidating everything I’ve learned, getting itself some breathing space, etc. I know it’s only short term – my excitement about writing the Sherlock story when I’ve worked out the details has reassured me about that - so at the moment I’m happy to let my head have a rest. My mojo will return soon, I’m sure of it.

The second reason is more difficult to be so chilled about - I think I’ve let some of the waiting get on top of me . I still haven’t heard back from Gollancz about the novel chapters I sent them, I’m waiting for responses to two anthology submissions, I’m in the middle of discussions about my cover and am waiting for the edits to the stories in the Ash Tree collection, etc – it’s not that any of these is a problem, because they’re not. Quite the opposite in fact – I’ve loved talking to Jason van Hollander about the cover and hearing how my stories have made him think, and can’t wait to hear Barbara and Chris’ thoughts on what work my stories may need. Even the waiting for responses to my  submissions is oddy exciting, because at the moment the stories are like Shroedinger’s Cat – in all possible states and therefore accepted! Once the rejection emails come, then those other states collapse, but for now there’s hope… It’s just that I’m not very good at eaiting! Before anyone starts, by the way, I do know that this is part of the author’s life, but the truth is I’ve only recently started to think of myself as an author (as opposed to simply someone who writes a bit). I simply need to find a way of dealing with the weight of these things (or at least, the waiting for them) so that it doesn’t affect the writing. I’m still learning, so bear with me. For now, I’ll let my brain chill and I’ll wait…

No reviews as such this week, but a comment: those of you who’ve read my previous blogs will know of the trouble I had with Ghostwriter Publications. Since leaving them, I’ve kept an eye on GWP, partly to see if my fears about it were real (they are) and partly because I’m still in touch with a number of the authors and I’d like to know what’s going on with/for them. This week, yet another of the GWP authors contacted me to ask me about my dealings with Neil, as he had not recieved payment for his story in Creature Feature. Even more worrying, he had not received his contributor copy of the book. Another of the authors told me that although he’d had a contributor copy, he’d not had any royalties, and both are no longer prepared to deal with Neil. A little bit of internet searching brought up the additional fact that people are so irritated with GWP that there’s even a comment about the company in Guy N Smith’s Wikipedia entry (in the Biography) section. I think the shame of this continues to be that if Neil and GWP did the job properly, it’s be a really good little venture, but at the moment it’s little more than a badly run pipe dream that appears to be turning sour. I’d still love it to turn around, in part because I’d love to read some of the novels that Neil advertised over a year ago and also because I’d like to see my friends’ work get the exposure it deserves. Oh well…

Right, that’s your lot. More next week, Lords and Ladies!

A quiet week.

I was going to do some writing on the train this week on my journey to and from London for my real job, but I was too tired so I didn’t. I did, however, have a nice conversation with two ladies who saw me proofreading Gary McMahon’s Different Skins and wanted to know was I doing it for a job, or because I was a pedant! It’s not work, replies I, it’s a pleasure – and I am a pedant, but that’s not why I’m doing it… I spend a good journey essentially trying to convert them to being fans and trying to persuade them to go and buy some of my stuff, or the stuff written by my friends. Dunno what the outcome will be – the two ladies (who I think were in a relationship with ech other, lest you start to accuse me of some underhand chattery-uppery - I’m a married man, you know!) were going to London to see one of their dads getting an OBE, so they had other things on their mind besides listening to a fat horror author engaging in the hard sell…

Not much else to tell – Jason vH has said I may see some very draft cover ideas soon, and Chris Roden is proofing Lost Places at the moment, so I may see the galley soon. Can’t wait, on both counts… It looks increasingly likely that there’s going to be a big launch/signing event at World Horror Convention 2010, with six Ash Tree Press authors present, which should be excellent. I’ve bought a new shirt in readiness…

Reviews: This week, I watched the remake of The Fog. Oh, John Carpenter, how could you let them? The scriptwriter and director seem to have completely missed what made the original Fog such a good movie: we don’t want to see the backstory played out in front of us, and we certainly don’t want a heroine (the drippy Maggie Grace) who has some bizarre psychic link to the doomed lepers. Apart from one or two nice images, this was an entirely expected disappointment. I shall no more about it except this: Selma Blair, you are a good actress but your voice is about 1/100th as sexy as Adrienne Barbeau’s, and she shall forever be Stevie Wayne for me. Accept no imitations!

Also read two Brian Keene novels, Ghost Walk and Castaways. Entirely brainless, not particularly well written, mostly cliched but still a fun way to spend a couple of hours. Don’t buy them, but maybe borrow them if you can be bothered…

Right, that’s your lot. Later, Lords and Ladies!

A good week.

A bit of history first: when it was clear that the Ghostwriter thing wasn’t happening for the many and varied reasons I have blogged about already(incidentally, fact fans, Ghostwriter have pretty much said that they’re concentrating on Chapbooks as opposed to proper books now – go figure. I wonder how those authors whose novels GWP have been saying they’re going to release for over a year now feel about that?) and I moved over to Ash Tree Press, I started to think about what to do next. It’s always seemed to me that I came at this whole writing thing ass-backwards in some way – my first story was published in a high-end anthology, nominated for a World Fantasy Award and taken for reprinting in both the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and the Very Best of Best New Horror, my second story was in another high quality anthology, my third is in Ellen Datlow’s latest, and so on. It’s odd, but I began to worry that I’d not put enough time in at the coalface, as it were – it might not make much sense from the outside, but I began to think that I needed to go back and plug a gap or two, the main one being that I’d never had a story published in a magazine. Rejections from magazines, yeah, loads of them - but no acceptances. Consequently, my main aim became to have a magazine publication, and I started to think about what to send, and where to send it. My first submission was a story called The Knitted Child which I sent to Black Static. This week, I heard back from Andy Cox, the editor, and guess what? He likes it and has accepted it for publication!

Yay me!

Of course, with that aim dealt with, I have to decide what to do next. I’m still enjoying writing the short stories, and may well have enough new stuff to think about a second collection soon, although I have no ideas about who to pitch it to or who might want it. The novel is still in limbo – I’m not writing any more on it until I hear back as to whether the publisher actually wants it or not because I don’t want to commit to a big project without a solid reason. I’m convinced that the novel is a good one (good central idea and story, lots of action and horror), so I’m hoping it’ll be received favourably and that it’ll find a home soon, but until then, it can stay in limbo and percolate.

The other writing-related news from this week is that I spent a pleasant 45 minutes talking the Jason Van Hollander about my cover. It was another of those moments that make me feel like a fake and that at any moment someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder and say, Okay Unsworth, the game’s up… I mean, here’s a world fantasy award-winning artist with hundreds of excellent books covers under his belt, and he’s talking to me about my cover and apparently listening to my responses! What? Eh? How has that happened? How has no one noticed that the world has gone madly out of kilter? However, until they do, I’m just going to roll with it and keep my head down… Jason outlined some of his ideas for the cover, all of which I loved (but which I’m not going to tell you – you can just buy the book when it comes out!), so now I simply have to wait and see what comes out of Jason’s pen. The suspense is killing me!

Beyond that, I’ve done very little this week. With it being Halloween, I did hope that the TV stations might make an effort, but no. We get a repeat of Halloween (and before you start, it’s a marvellous film and my joint first favourite slasher flick along with Black Christmas, it’s just uninspired programming) and The Host (which is good but I’ve seen). However, it was fun to see my friend Stephen Volk on television on Tuesday talking about his seminal TV ghost story Ghostwatch, and more fun to see clips of the various great TV ghost stories – it reminds me of why I like supernatural stories so much in the first place, and gives me high targets to aim for. Onwards and upwards, friends…

Reviews: Rogue is a killer crocodile movie by Greg Maclean, who directed Wolf Creek. It was made a couple of years ago but has only recently come out on DVD in the UK, and it’s great fun. It’s not as good as Alligator (the benchmark against which all crocodile/alligator movies must be judged), but it’s certainly better than the other killer croc releases recently (Black Water et al, all of which I suspect were cheap rip-offs made to cash in on Rogue and which made it out faster than it did). Rogue is smart, fast, jumpy and tense, and despite a silly ending, it’s well worth watching. The special effects are good, the acting good and it manages to catch the humid atmosphere of the outback excellently. Recommended.

The Scream by John Skipp and Craig Spector is about 21 years old now, and it shows. I remember reading this at the time it came out and liking it, but now it seems too loud and in-yer-face. The story concerns the battle betrween good and evil (embodied by a literally demonic rock band and groups of extreme Christians) and the people that get caught between them and although it’s got some powerful bits, it’s a disappointing reread. Partly it’s becaue books and stories about rock music never capture the primal power of music (and always write really bad lyrics for their rock songs!), but it’s also because Skipp and Spector’s rather casual, matey style of writing (clearly iunfluenced by Stephen King) simply grates after a while. The story itself seems disjointed and although the characters are drawn with depth, there’s often too much time spent on their backstories rather than moving the action along. It’s not bad, exactly, but it isn’t the rush I remember it being at 14… At some point I’ll reread The Light at the End, but I bet that hasn’t aged well either. Oh well…

The Changeling: Great late 70s ghost story starring George C Scott, made at a time when heroes of films were allowed to be sedentary, fat and wear cardigans without any apparent sense of irony, this is a chilly, tight movie that everyone should hunt out and watch. There are lots of genuinely spooky moments, some real depth of emotion in the acting and the best sceance put onto film. Recommended with bells, and still available on DVD.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Got a polite rejection, wrote another story, drank too much, slept not enough. Typical week.

More next week, assuming something happens worth talking about.

A quiet, contemplative week.

As I currently have no deadlines to aim for and not commitments to fill, my writing recently has been entirely for pleasure. Sort of. This week, I took Traffic Stream to my writer’s group and their feedback, along with the feedback from others in my critical circle, helped me to sort out the 3rd and final edit of it (bar tweaks or sudden flashes of inspiration!).  I have absolutely no idea what to do with it, where to send it or even whether to bother sending it out at all, but it’s been fun writing it. I hope it’ll find a home one day…

I also took the plunge and risked reading The Thirteen again, which I’d been avoiding doing. It’s odd, but every time I thought about this particularly story (short novella, really) it popped up in my head as needing lots and lots and lots of work, so every time I thought about opening the file, I’d find an excuse not to…. I couldn’t put it off any longer, however, so this week I risked having a look, fully expecting to have to  spend ages reworking, adding, deleting and generally buggering about with stuff, but you know what? It wasn’t that bad! I don’t know why it had taken on such a flawed view in my mind – I think it’s something to do with just how long the story’s been hanging around waiting to be finished, and it’s length (there’s more room for error in 14000 words than there is in 3000!). It’s by no means perfect, but most of my fears were, I’m glad to say, not proved real – The Thirteen is not too bad. I pulled together a second draft (third, really, after the initial ‘finished it, oh no just had another idea for it’ moment a couple of weeks ago) which I’m surprisingly happy with. It’s being sent out to those people who have the time/inclination to read something that long and comment, and then I’ll see what I can do with it.

So, what’s next? Well, I need to try to get some feedback about the novel chapters I sent in, to see if it’s worth carrying on with, so I’m going to chase that soon. In the meantime, however, it’s another story: something about a house that appears and disappears in the rain, I think…

Holding my contributor copies of Lovecraft Unbound. Note At The Mountains of Madness hoodie...

News and Reviews:

Lovecraft Unbound is picking up lots of positive reviews! In fact, I haven’t read a negative comment about it yet, so I’d suggest that those of you who are Lovecraft fans might want to consider picking it up… Of course, the fact that none of the reviews have picked out my story for comment is a bit disappointing, but at least they’ve not been saying things like “…only let down by Simon Kurt Unsworth…” or “…the weakest tale in the collection is by Simon Kurt Unsworth…” so thank heavens for small mercies! The november issue of Dead Reckoning magazine calls it “…a sterling Lovecraftian anthology that surely ranks with the best in the field” and Kelly Shaw, in her blog review, calls it “…very well rounded collection [that] offers a wide range of stories”

Other stuff: my friend, the excellent poet Norman Hadley (www.normanhadley.com) launches his new collection, Stinging the Sepia on Saturday, 07 November 2009 15:00 at Corner Bookshop, St Thomas’ Weind, Garstang. I can highly recommend Norman’s work, so I urge you (as well as picking up Lovecraft Unbound to get this or any of Norman’s other work. Trust me on this.

Okay, that’s pretty much it. I do have novel and movie reviews to write up, so when they’re done, I’ll post them here. Coming soon, I’ll pass comment on an Ellen Datlow anthology about cats, a Skipp and Spector novel from about 1989, the enormous crocodile movie Rogue and (possibly) the aforementioned Lovecraft Unbound. Until then, Lords and Ladies, so long!

A quiet week.

I’m in a lacunae (I’m such a writer!) at the moment where the writing’s concerned. This week I managed to write the first draft of a short, odd story called Traffic Stream which I’m pleased with but I know needs some work. I don’t have a place in mind for it, so I’ll see when it’s finished where I feel like sending it. Assuming I decide it’s any good, of course. This week, my plan is to sort out final drafts of The Thirteen and Traffic Stream, so that the decks are cleared for whatever comes next. I also heard about two anthologies that I may be able to submit to, one of which will need me to write something new I think. The other I can send an existing story to which will save some time. Wish me luck…

Lovecraft Unbound

The only other thing that happened this week was the arrival of my two contributor copies of Lovecraft Unbound! Very exciting! I haven’t managed to actually read any of it yet, but it’s a good looking book, and the table of contents contains some excellent authors. I mean, who’d imagine that I’d end up in a book with Michael Chabon? Or Joyce Carol Oats? Not me! I’ll let you know what I think of it when I read it, and hope to post up a picture of me holding the books (not because I’m vain enough to think people will want to see me and the book, before you ask, but because Ellen Datlow, the editor, has asking that we do it if we can, and who am I to refuse?).

Right, that’s your lot. Told you not much had happened. More next week, and some reviews. Promise. Probably.

Later, Lords and Ladies.

One rejection, one honourable mention and one personal victory.

Let’s start with the rejection: I heard this week that a story I submitted for consideration for an anthology called Cthulhu 2012 was rejected. It’s a shame, but it’s not all bad news – the editor said that the story was well written and unique, but didn’t contain enough of an apocolyptical theme specifically linked to 2012 for him to accept it. h well. The story is one that I think may be submittable elsewhere, so we’ll see what comes about with in it. In the meanwhile, onwards and upwards…

…to the Honourable Mention (technically, Honourable Mention (Longlist)). Ellen Datlow has posted the list of honourable mentions from her first Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. Now, I’m not in the book itself, but my story Old Man’s Pantry (from the Ash Tree Press anthology Shades of Darkness) was given an HM on the publisher’s website – along with another 530 excellent stories (I haven’t read them all – I’m trusting Ellen on this one that they’re excellent!). It’s nice to know that OMP didn’t vanish completely without trace…

…unlike my story The Thirteen nearly did. The Thirteen was first conceived and started almost 5 years ago, and the first part was written at the time, but then it stalled. At irregular intervals, I’ve revisited it, trying to work out a story block in the middle – I’ve always had a beginning and an ending, but bridging the gap between the two has proved problematic. For a long time, I thought this was a dead story, and that I’d never get past the issue of how I got my hero from the initial encroaching of the supernatural to the dramatic climax in his office, but recently, and couple of new things occurred to me and it started to feel more like a living thing again. Over the past two weeks, The Thirteen has revived itself and has finally been finished, with the final word typed late on Friday night. And then a funny thing happened…the story changed. All these years, I’ve been treating it as a fairly simple (although hopefully scary!) ghost story, and about fifteen minutes after I finished it, an idea occurred to me that changed it a lot. I spent a frantic few hours on saturday rewriting and adding, and have now finished the first (very, very rough) draft. It’s got a much bleaker tone, I think, than the original version, but I like this one much more. It’s also far longer than I expected, with the first draft checking in at just shy of 14,000 words. I’m sure it’ll trim in the edits, but I’m enormously pleased that it’s finally done. It’s always felt like a story I wanted to finish, I’ve just always been missing a critical piece of it until recently. Plus, now it’s done, it’s one less thing off my Work In Progress list (currently standing at an unmentionable amount of stories). So, now it’s on with another story. Something about vehicles, I think…

Later, Lords and Ladies.

Aaah, FantasyCon!

Last weekend, I attended my second British Fantasy Convention (FCon to those of us who are confortable with the parlance of the knowing, oh yes), and I had a whale of a time. At last year’s FCon, I was involved in the signing for the Mammoth Book of best New Horror 19, but seeing as I didn’t make the cut for Mammoth 20, and seeing as the launch of my Ghostwriter Publications collection fell through, this year I wasn’t involved in any ‘work’  so I was able to just enjoy myself.  And boy, was it fun!

Me and Ramsey Campbell get writer's cramp for the sake of our art!

Highlights of the weekend included going for a curry on the Friday night with Mark Morris (who really, really needed to go to bed and get some sleep!), Stephen Volk, Tim Lebbon, Rob Shearman and 14 other horror luminaries. Both the food and company were great, and the beer flowed… On Saturday, I ended up doing some real work, signing 250 sheets for the forthcoming limited edition of the Very Best of  Best New Horror (sitting next to Ramsey Campbell in the main bar). As well as writer’s cramp (I thought it’d take about 10 minutes but it took me almost an hour!), Steve Jones bought me a drink and Ian Watson, the Master of Ceremonies, brought me a glass of sparkling wine. Not bad for a Saturday lunchtime. Shortly after, I did a reading of my stories The Knitted Child  and The Baking of Cakes, which seemed to go down well. By this time, Steve Duffy had turned up so I finally got to meet the great man, which was excellent (and reassuring – it’s always slightly worrying meeting someone you’re friends with online in case they’re a dick in real life, which Steve most assuredly isn’t). I also managed to see Gary McMahon and John L Probert’s joint reading – Gary’s farting ghost story was moving, funny and disgusting and John’s story (performed with gusto and relish) was another of his superb, blackly hysterical tales. I went to the signings of the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 and the BFS 2009 yearbook (getting personalised signatures in my books at both of them – nerd? yep.)

Saturday night, and it was more curry, this time with the mob from the Ramsey Campbell message board (again, about 19 of us!) and then it was back for the BFS awards where we watched Allyson Bird win for best collections (hurrah!) and the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 win for Best

Would you buy a used horror novel from this man? Jospeh D'Lacey drinks his cocktail with clear signs of enjoyment.

Anthology (double hurrah!). Then it was to the bar, and the evening gets hazy…I remember regaling Ray Russell with tales of IVF, and Joseph D’Lacy trying to persuade me to try a weird cocktail (I resisted, dear reader, sticking with the far more sensible option of Jack Daniels and ice). The evening ended up in Sunday morning, with a crosswise stagger back to my hotel and far too little sleep before the last day of FCon arrived.

Sunday was a subdued affair, and a chance to have a last catch-up with friends new and old. I spent some time with Stephen Volk and Allyson Bird and a bunch of other people before taking my goodies and sloping off for the train. FCon 2009 was as much fun as 2008, and once again the thing that made it special was the sheer niceness of everyone I met. I caught up with old friends (Stephen Volk, Mark Morris, Ray Russell, Rob Shearman, Gary McMahon and all the others I forgotten to name, take a bow) and made some excellent new ones (Steve Duffy, Allyson Bird, Joseph D’Lacey, Matthew Riley (who had the good taste to introduce himself to me by saying “I’ve been watching your career with interest”!), Mick and Debbie Curtis, Emily McMahon, all the others who I’ve also missed, it was great to meet you!). I bought some stuff (although not much – I was being restrained), drank some stuff (mostly guinness – and I wasn’t that restrained!) and basically, had a blast. Roll on World Horror 2010 and FCon 2010, I say!

One last thing: although it hasn’t marred my FCon experience, a couple of things have caused some ripples since it finished – the discussion  around the ommission of women writers from the new BFS In Conversation book and some of the online debate around Allyson Bird’s win for best collection. The former was a clear error, but Guy Adam (BFS Preseident)’s apology is, I think, entirely appropriate and should close the matter down. The attitude to Allyson Bird’s win, as expressed on the Vault of Horror board, is less easy to forgive – whilst I didn’t like the way the original post described Bull Running for Girls, it was at least simply an opinion on the book. However, Mark Samuels’ subsequent posts moaning about BRFG’s win being down to pressure from the publishers rather than people simply liking the collection are at best unprofessional (so you lost; grow a skin and deal with it) and at worst offensive and condescending both to the author and to the readers who enjoyed and voted for her collection (who, according to Mark, clearly can’t make their own minds up and have allowed themselves to be forced by external pressure to vote for a book that he clearly believes was less worthy of victory than his own tome). The post FCon world seems to be a bit tense and aggressive – calm down, I say! Life’s too short…

Oh yeah – writing and reviewing? Nope. Not at all. Try again next week.

Well, the Ghostwriter thing is finally sorted, in that my outstanding items arrived – I got back from work to find 26 chapbooks waiting for me. I’ll never get the other things I still believe that I’m owed (and there was no sign of the royalties Neil had mentioned to me), but never mind, at least this way I get to walk away without having any further links or dealings with a company that I have ceased trusting or respecting. And that, my friends, is a result of sorts – it may have ended up as a disappointment in some ways, but it’s taught me valuable lessons about how I should deal with companies and individuals. And besides, who wants extra copies of a book riddled with typos? Not me! It also means I can finally put all my concentration into Lost Places, the forthcoming Ash Tree collection which I guarantee will be a thing of beauty and, of course, will have excellent content!

Not much has happened this week – I’ve been working away from home and my original plan was too do some writing, but when it came down to it, I simply couldn’t be bothered so I gave myself a week off. I did revise the swearing story, which (thanks to the harsh but fair criticisms of my friend Will) has been tightened and improved (I think). I have absolutely no idea what to do with it, but it’s been fun writing it. As for what’s next, I don’t know – there are a few stories bouncing around in my head, so I’ll probably pick one of them and crack on with it. It’s FCon next weekend, and it looks like I’m out for a curry every night, so God only know what I’ll look and smell like by Monday morning – I may be craving greenery and be prepared to eat the shrubbery by then…

Right, that’s your lot for this week. Short but sweet, friends!

Oh, no, wait – one more thing: I now have copies of my two chapbooks Button and Marley’s Haunting (both, I hasten to add, without typos!) to sell. Both stories have received good feedback and there won’t be any more of the chapbooks made, so these are genuine rarities – once these copies are gone, that’s it. If you’d be interested in purchasing a signed copy of either for only £1.75 including postage, email me and we’ll sort it out.