Jay Moulth was far more handsome in death than he ever had been in life. Okay, not true, but at the very least his Facebook profile picture was a lot more dignified. Not difficult, since his profile picture while alive had been a photo of him vomiting onto a horse after a drunken racing carnival. Now that he was dead - of an embolism, rather than ( Read more... )

What am I excited about right now? The Emerging Writers Festival, which opened last night and is powering into two weeks of panels, seminars, twitterfests, workshops and other activities. I went to last year’s EWF and thought it was a fantastic, useful project that really aimed at getting writers to network and help each other.

Part of my excitement ( Read more... )

So here's a question for the writers out there - how much time do you spend editing short fiction, as opposed to novels and novellas? Do you go through multiple drafts for a 3000-word story, or do you tick it off as done with only some tinkering?

I'm pretty definitely in the latter camp. I find most of the work of developing a short story happens at ( Read more... )

A great cloud of poisonous lacquer vapours is rolling through the main part of the house, preventing me from watching TV or playing Red Dead Redemption, so that seems as good an excuse as any to hold up in the study, get some more work done on my Godheads anthology and make some notes about my upcoming Emerging Writers Festival panel appearance.

On ( Read more... )

Cal Sugarman was someone with a deep understanding of his own poop.

Not, it must be said, through some kind of deliberate study. That'd be weird.

No, this was the result of more than thirty years of fatty foods, coffee, tea, steak, chilli, beer, scotch, curry, cheese, bourbon, vitamin supplements, hangover cures, vodka, soft drugs, energy drinks, bar ( Read more... )

So of course, after posting about how I needed to put aside video games and get back to serious writing, I spent most of this weekend replaying Dragon Age.

Don't look at me like that. DA 2 comes out soon, and there's a whole pile of DLC I haven't played yet, and I want to refamiliarize myself with the game and its setting/feel, after last playing it ( Read more... )

It's probably too early to be confidently crowing about it, but it looks like I might be on a panel at the Emerging Writers Festival this year, talking about ebooks and the like!

...okay, I now have three months to really get my shit together on that.

Character idea - a social media undertaker. When you die, he goes around the web and shuts down your presence - makes final posts in your name in forums, alerts your Twitter followers, updates your blog and Facebook pages with the news and lets people know where to send flowers. Part web expert, part detective, part grief counselor ( Read more... )

With 2010 almost stuffed down into the barrel and the lid about to be welded on top, it's time for another update on how my ebook ventures are going.

Sales of Hotel Flamingo had a bit of an uptick in the lead-up to Christmas, now standing at 31 in total - okay, still not setting the world on fire, but that's okay. Downloads, however, were 2-3 times ( Read more... )

 So Hotel Flamingo has been on sale for two weeks now, and it's time to look at the sales figures and hits to work out what to do next.

And I certainly have to do something. 'Cos right now this isn't hitting the big time.

So far I've had 21 sales in two weeks. Which sounds okay (well, I guess - I have nothing to compare it to) until you look at the ( Read more... )