Shadows of the Apt

Just a brief note to say that my story "21^st Century Girl" is in the Futures section of this month's Nature magazine, and can also be read here. Enjoy. Next stop Forbidden Planet 1pm onwards 30^th June  for the small press expo.

This is something of a cautionary tale about agreeing to do things and then forgetting that you did. The Edge Lit (Derby Quad, 14^th July) schedule has come together, and I'm pleased to announce that I will be: 10am Digital Workshop — running a workshop about world-building 2pm Meeting room — joint reading slot with MD Lachlan — […]

Caution — spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the film. I was a bit thrown when I saw the trailer for this, as it was apparently advertising an entirely different film whose full title was "Snow White and the Witch and the Wardrobe of the Rings of Thrones". Which was basically what we got, by way of Robin […]

The schedule for Nerdeast on 9^th June in Durham is set — I will be giving some sort of talk, hopefully assisted by fellow author Russell Smith, from around 3pm. We'll be the last people on, so if anyone fancies grabbing a drink (1) afterwards that's probably a good time — also for getting stuff signed or similar. The […]

Samsung Galaxy (untranslatable squiggle) III ad, actual text: "It knows it's early It lets you have an extra 3 mins in bed It tells you where the nearest coffee shop is It chooses the best photos from last night It knows when you're looking at it and when you're not. At last a phone that understands you." And the tagline: "designed for […]

Over the last few months Zach Jernigan has been conducting a long-distance interview on the subject of race in fantasy writing. His interviewees are David Anthony Durham, Aliette de Bodard, Ken Liu and myself, and it's been a privilege to be amongst that company and get to talk around that subject. Zach put a huge amount of work […]

So, something of a news update in brief, but: I have been asked to make a showing at Nerd East, the Larp fair at Durham on 9^th June 2012. There may be some manner of speechifying. The speech may include recycled elements from my Picocon speech. See how green I am? I'm constantly trying to reduce my inspiration […]

Way way back in the early 1990's I was at university and I was running an RPG campaign using a horrible mishmash home-grown system I had slung together. The setting was a place called the Lowlands. Instead of elves and dwarves, it was populated by a pack of oddities known as the insect-kinden. There was a Beetle intelligencer called Stenwold, a Mantis Weaponsmaster […]

OK — I'm on the final attack run for the last book of the series — everything speeds up at this point, so no time to write. Also working on Super-Unpublishable Project Zeta, several non-kinden shorts and my writing group project. Upshot: Damn all time for proper blog posts. However: This is phenomenal : This is the […]

Soooo, we've got to that hilarious third act section of book 10 where I keep getting these fantastic ideas about stuff I absolutely have to include, only that means I would have to rejig the entire end third of the plot to fit in this, by now, irresistible idea. So, spent considerable time faffing about with my chapter […]