Children of Time vignette 6: Trespassers in Eden

Last little slice before the official release date, and if you were asking, "What's all this human stuff? I thought the book was about aliens!" then this is the most I can possibly say without spoilers. Enjoy! Trespassers in Eden Another Earth. They were working on this place when the bomb went off in Reykjavik, putting the finishing […]

Children of Time vignette 5: Voyage to Nowhere

Meet Vrie Guyen: your life in his hands. Voyage to Nowhere You wake in darkness, enclosed. Something is forcing its way into your mouth, down your throat. Something is clamped about your nose. Things are invading you. You fight; you can’t fight: you are restrained. Then something gives; your arm clutches towards your face but strikes […]

Children of Time vignette 4: Tomb Raiders

Fast forward to a brave new world! Tomb Raiders When the impact came it nearly took Arkin from his feet, for all he was clinging to the airlock handholds. He had his helmet on already, waiting for the alarms to tell him they had a hull breach. Or perhaps they were still intact, but now attached inextricably to […]

Children of Time vignette 3: Home Fires

Part 3, because, as you saw from the previous segment, we really did it, us maniacs; we blew it all up… Home Fires He was a hunter in a harsh season. His name was Rom. His people lived in the lowlands, near the sea, but the fishing had been poor this year, poorer than the last. The fish were […]

Children of Time vignette 2: The Last Martian

Here is the second little slice of time. As you can probably guess, you shouldn't get too attached to any of these characters… The Last Martian One hundred and four days. Jenniver Amartez was impressed, in a way. None of it was supposed to last this long, not in these conditions. But it had struggled gamely on […]

Children of Time — vignette 1: For Love of Humanity

Children of Time hits the shelves on 4th June, or may indeed already be sneakily sitting there in a bookshop near you (you should go out and check, right now!). In the run up to C‑Day I'm going to take you on a journey from the world of tomorrow all the way to the distant, broken future […]

The Sound of Guns: sneak preview of Guns of the Dawn

Well, perhaps not the sneakiest of sneak previews as this is the section I toured with through 2014 — if you heard me read at a convention, this was likely the piece. However, it's a nice, concise bit and it gives the flavour of the book very well. Emily Marshwic, our hero, has gone from being a gentlewoman in the […]

Warcraft, Lovecraft and Horrible Things

But not on this site — and not kinden stories. I'm proud to announce some new writing that's turning up here and there in the next few months. You may recall my story The Dissipation Club that was published in the collection "Dead but Dreaming 2" — I also submitted a story for a similar collection from Miskatonic […]

Javert in Space!

OK, I lie. But Javert in the future, anyway. Just been to see In Time and it's a very well done piece of proper SF with some involving action sequences and a tight cast of good actors. It's one of those Big Concept pieces of SF (1), and the basic idea (that in the future time is currency […]

The Usual Suspects

Thieves are back. Possibly they never went away but were just being sneaky. They're a staple of fantasy fiction that goes back to its most influential roots (1), and recently there's been a grand resurgence of books specifically showcasing thief leads. (1) And I'm not qualified to go into the whole mythic archetype businss but, suffice to say, […]