Wednesday 22nd January, 2020

On behalf of Finn, he ain’tent dead yet.

In fact, this week has been pretty good and the weekend just gone involved his first walk in about a fortnight. He made it to the nearest patch of grass with a few lie-downs along the way. Gazed at the mud longingly and then got forced to walk back (with more lie-downs). He’s still picky – I would go so far to say faddy – with food and having to be hand fed otherwise he doesn’t eat at all, which kind of nixes the anti-inflammatory part of his painkiller egime. So. Hand fed – and what he doesn’t like ends up with me or the other two depending on whether it’s intended to be eaten by humans or not.

ASIDE: I feel I should make it clear, again, that I am not eating dog food. Just the quiche, cocktail sausages, cheese, sausage rolls, pasta sauce, whatever, that Finn turns his nose up at.

We have also moved on from paracetemol tablets (half a 500mg tablet is one dose) because it makes him suspicious of all later food. He’s now on “paracetemol in suspension” (i.e. Calpol), getting up to 250mg in a dose. He does not approve of the strawberry flavour but at least it doesn’t make him distrust the food I give him.

In other news, I have booked Satellite 7 (more info here: [External Link]) and a hotel room in the nearby Premier Inn, so it looks like I shall be going to Glasgow in May. Possibly see you there.

I think I mentioned at the beginning of the year that Mab Morris [External Link] did some substantive editing of City of Dreams for me. I understand she has some openings for more substantive editing in the not too distant future, so I urge anyone who’s got a manuscript they’re a little stuck with and not sure how to make it work better – or even at all – to get in touch with her. Her rates are on her website (the last link) but she generally prefers talking on Facebook, so here’s that page as well: [External Link]

Thursday 10th May, 2018

As usual, your correspondent is abysmal at this corresponding thing. However, we have things to correspond about!

While not having much to tell you, I got around to posting two short stories that I never rehomed and have been meaning to put up for a while. So you can now find the 4,500 word (ish) science fiction story The Bugs’ War and the similar length science fiction story Spore under my Online Fiction category.

And there has since been actual news in that Other Side books has gone paperback with The Second Book of Christmas Ghosts and The Knight’s Daughter. The Amazon links on their respective pages have been updated. The knight’s Daughter briefly broke into their top 1000 fairy tales. More of that, please!

Finally, we are not far from Satellite 6, so I better mention that I shall be doing a sword-y thing for writers on the Saturday evening. Please come along and see me!

Monday 30th May, 2016

I missed a couple of weeks. I’m not entirely sure how that happened. Did I mislay them? Are they really just hidden under the sofa or something?

Anyway, I am returned from Satellite 5 [External Link]. This time around, I’m apparently patient zero for everyone else’s con crud (I started showing cold symptoms on Friday evening. Sorry.) and I continue my spotless record of not killing or drawing blood from any of my co-presenters for a “HEMA for writers”-type demonstration. So, thanks to the Satellite 5 team – and to my co-presenters Cameron Johnston [External Link] and Rob Adams [External Link]. Our sibling-in-ink, Ruth EJ Booth [External Link] captured some photographic evidence and you can see a piece of it here:

My quick round-up wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the rather impressively omnipresent Neil Williamson [External Link], who seemed to be everywhere, and Jaine Fenn [External Link], the Guest of Honour who was spotted almost as often as Neil. Thanks both for the conversation. Oh, and Neil has a competition on his blog to win a copy of his new collection of stories.

As Satellite 5 was in Glasgow, I also came back with a couple of bottles of whisky. They weren’t both for me but I did have help selecting them from yet more Satellite 5 attendees, Brian M Milton [External Link] and Sharon Dennett. Munchkin (yes, we really call him that) has just had a story published in this weekend’s KZine [External Link] and you can have some of that as it’s free on Kindle and I’m not sharing the alcohol!

Sunday 3rd April, 2016

Continuing the theme of being an unreliable narrator (but not in TV Tropes / standard sense: [External Link]), I’ve managed to lose a few weeks to emptying out the old house. In theory, I shouldn’t lose any more weekends to this real life task as the house is basically empty now.

So, the weekend before last was Easter weekend and also my birthday weekend. I got sent home from work with the Birthday Bear for the weekend and Mousie got a postcard out of it.

Sometime last week, I was also contacted by people behind the scenes at Satellite 5 [External Link]. I’ve had a membership since some time last year (but only just put up an event link here) and put my name forward to be involved in content. So, it looks like I’ve managed to talk my way into doing another HEMA-for-writers presentation!

Just to round out the post and because I haven’t pointed you in that general direction for a while, don’t forget that I have some free short stories available on site. And Fox Spirit Books, my esteemed publisher, also has too: [External Link]

Sunday 1st November, 2015

I have been a particularly bad correspondent of late. Think about how difficult a mouse would find it tapping out words on a keyboard. Now you have that mental image, ignore the fact that I’m actually a human who just ran out of time and energy.

Perhaps the first thing I should mention is my current giveaway. You have just under a week to enter to win a set of 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf & A Pack Of Lies and / or a copy of European Monsters. There are a number of entries so far but all you have to do is comment! (With the proviso that I’ll not be posting them outside of the EU / EEA – and Switzerland – due to postage. You can live somewhere else buy the address I post to needs to be “local”.)

So, I’m in the process of relocating – in work and in habitation. I’m about to embark on my last week with FCC Environment and I start my new job the week after. I may have just about secured a place to rent that will except three dogs (although, due to paperwork, it’ll be sometime this week before the letting agents give me the final “yea” or “nay”). I still have a house to get on the market (once the dogs aren’t there so people can view it in peace) and tidy up a bit at weekends. Thankfully, the Rugby (Union) World Cup is now over – grats to New Zealand – and I have one less thing to distract me while I get things sorted.

Last weekend, I attended FantasyCon in Nottingham [External Link] (around house viewings in North Yorkshire and Lancashire, as well as handing in paperwork). I met up with some lovely people – for name dropping purposes, have a gander at Steven Poore [External Link] – who just launched his epic fantasy, but there’s a tonne of blogging about people’s impressions linked from a BFS round-up post here: [External Link].

Apparently I did okay in my panel where I shared space with, amongst others, Juliet McKenna [External Link]. However, I’m not in a position to commit to anything next year until I have moving sorted and a house sold. Until then, I have to pay for two households, so it’s unlikely I shall have spare monies for con-attending. Wel, aside form the already having got a membership to Satellite 5 [External Link] (Glasgow, 28th-29th May, 2016), which I am currently determined to make.

Other things currently up in the air include my current WIP (Feathers), which I’m about two thirds of the way through – at least in first draft. I hope to get it sorted soon but I may detour into redrafting the last Elkie piece as that’s on a deadline for next year. I’m still working on the African Monsters anthology with Margrét Helgadóttir [External Link] with the intention of publishing it this year but the official launch will be in February next year.

Advance warning but I will be committing further bloggage at The Finishing School [External Link] this week – it’s the first Wednesday of the month, after all. If you have any HEMA-related things you want me to post about at the TFS, please let me know but I’m not sure how things will fit in with the time left over from the house-related responsibilities. Fingers crossed that I can manage a December post!

There may end up being a slight hiatus on the Otherworld Gazetteer [External Link] posts and site diary posts here for much the same reason. I should, however, be back next week to let you know a bit more about how things are working out.

Sunday 6th January, 2013

Perhaps a fitting mood to be in for the start of the year, but my news is currently full of “maybe”s – which means there’s not much point in me telling you about what I’m up to in case none of them get off the ground.

On the positive side (in the sense of things organised) I have committed to:

  • Purchasing more wasters from The Knight Shop [External Link]. There will be a blog post on the new additions to the kit bag (and I’m buying a new one of those, too) when they turn up and I’ve had a play.
  • I am booked in for the 2014 EasterCon / Satellite 4 [External Link]. I say booked in but what that means is I’ve bought membership. As there are plenty of things that can go wrong between now and April 2014, I make no further promises.

I am idly thinking about buying membership to EasterCon 2013 [External Link], as it’s not too far away in Bradford, but I suspect I shall chicken out of that. I shall, however, be making some sort of appearance at SWASH 2013 in early March, if anyone fancies some fencing.