Accio World

We all know about lightning. That sudden searing flash of light and heat, an instant release of energy that thrills the onlooker in its immediate and glorious destructive display, so quickly over with it needs an accompaniment of drum-roll thunder to keep the audience alert for its reappearance. It’s magnificent at a distance, terrifying when […]

Truth or Consequences

This is probably going to be a pretty unfocussed post. I apologise in advance for that, but it’s a subject that annoys me so much that I get distracted by shield-biting rage every time I try to think my way through it. I’ll just jump in and swim to the far shore. I am fed […]

Here we go…

Just a short update on my current work. I’ve completed my novel The Crow Journal and sent out samples with query letters to a small number of agents in the right genre market (and choosing that was difficult – is a novel set in 1850s London, that involves elements of mystery, magic and teen angst […]

Muse

The pen scratched on the page. The words crawled slowly in the wake of the nib. They were weak and empty things, and there was no life in them. I looked down at what I had written and sighed. “It was a dark and stormy night…” A trite sentence, the latest in a series of […]

Why I Don’t Do NaNo or Check My Speed

NaNoWriMo is a great idea. A community supporting its members in writing 50,000 words of a novel throughout November. It helps deal with one of the big issues about writing, that of the primary task being getting the words on paper (or screen etc) without letting second guessing or procrastination get in the way. A […]

Hither Came Conan

A strange admission for someone of my long tenure in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, but I’d never actually read Robert E Howard’s Conan stories before. I know they’re almost archetypal examples of the genre but for some reason I’d never got round to picking them up. That changed recently, when I bought […]

Beyond the white hand

I The tavern hall was crowded that night, with raucous voices raised in laughter or contention and the thick sweet smell of acrid violets in the air that spoke of intoxicants other than ale and wine. Zaira the singer moved through the press of people, accepting their accolades and compliments for the performance that she […]

Unchainmail

With youth soft skin and eager heart

sin.dex

Asmodeus, a great king, strong and powerful, was supposed to have appeared with three heads (bull, man, ram). It had taken weeks to beg, borrow and steal the ingredients for the incense. It had taken days to obtain candles – real candles – from the undermarket: Unregistered products were forbidden by the Syndic.

Monolith

An exercise in inspiration – having a vaguely Lovecraftian mood on me I decided to just start typing and see where the mood take me. The first couple of lines sprang out of nowhere and I just let the whole thing flow without editing or pausing.