Another shot in the pods (plus book news)

Been a while, usual reasons. In this case the endgame of Children of Time 2 (Arachnid Boogaloo) is very mind-consuming, as indeed are some of the things contained therein. So: I'm moved to do a brief post about podcasts, as it's been a long old while. I'm particularly moved to this because a number of podcasts I've been listening […]

That was the 2017 that was.

2017 has been a good year for me, which goes rather against the tide of crap stuff happening globally. The BFS Holdstock award for The Tiger and the Wolf was particularly nice, and I've got three books out somehow — The Bear and the Serpent, Ironclads, and Dogs of War, which has just made the Guardian "best recent SF" list, […]

A Year in Comics: 2017

I don't think I've done one of these before, but I've got through a lot of graphic novels this year, and so I might as well round off the round ups by flagging some up that I've particularly enjoyed. In fact, as this is the medium I probably re-read the most, I'll make it a game of two halves. […]

A Year in Film: 2017

I keep doing this, apparently. I'd thought I hadn't watched much this year, but apparently I saw quite a few movies despite all the other shenanigans I got up to, and I am going to inflict my meagre opinions on you. Firstly: yes, (and spoiler-free) I have seen The Last Jedi. I am of the camp that liked it (and divisive films has been […]

A year in books: 2017

We are marching towards the end of a year of tumult and turbulence, and I am going to retreat from it and instead talk books at you. Specifically, I have read a metric crapton of books this year, and mostly I have blogged about them previous to this, so I will let those posts speak to me, vis: So here I extol the virtues of […]

Catch up and yet more reading recs

November's various duties have been put behind me — thanks to everyone who turned up at the WS events. Also a huge thank you to the organisers of Novacon, where I was treated royally. It's a great convention (longest running local con I think) and there was some excellent programming, including a fascinating lecture on exoplanets that came at a useful […]

November Events

Just a quick note for some upcoming events next month: 1st November 2017 — Waterstones bookshop Leeds — 18.30 — Dogs of War release event including me being interviewed by David Tallerman. 10–12th November 2017 Novacon at the Park Inn Hotel, Nottingham, including a variety of convention standards, at which I'll be Guest of Honour. 14th November 2017 […]

Reading Recs and the New Epics

A long-overdue bit of bloggery for one reason or another, but time to run down on some more good stuff I've read, starting with Sequels Corner. Recommending sequels is always a bit of an oddity. Did you like [Book 1]? In which case you'll probably like this one approximately more or less as much. However, there […]

Hold(stock) the Press!

So: not the planned reading recs post, which has been shoved into the future like a dyspeptic time traveller. Instead, lord alive, The Tiger and the Wolf won the Robert Holdstock Award for best fantasy novel at the British Fantasy Awards, which somewhat blindsided me (as anyone listening to my cobbled-together speech probably gathered). Holdstock is one […]

Thunkpiece: Bringing a Sword to a Gunfight

I caught the edge of a discussion (I think sparked from an Edge Lit panel, though I’m not 100% sure) about whether you can justify using swords in a setting that also has ready access to guns. Most of what I caught seemed to suggest that the consensus was “no”, but the mills of my mind have since […]