At the end of the film The Time Machine, Filby and the Housekeeper realise that three books are missing from the shelf. They have been taken into the future ( Read more... )

I was tagged in a rather playground style game between writers.  I’m now ‘it’, caught by always wonderfully happy Gaie Sebold of the Babylon Steel books.  Her second book, Dangerous Gifts, is having a launch party at Forbidden Planet, Shaftesbury Avenue in London on Thursday 24th January.

I have to answer a bunch of questions and then, pyramid ( Read more... )

One of the problems with ebooks is that all ebooks look the same: the cover, the typeface, the grade of paper and the weight.  (Of course, one of the advantages of an ebook is that they all look the same, so you aren't hiding it from your fellow passengers as you squint at the toilet paper while getting muscle strain from holding it up ( Read more... )

Aren't there days when you take a step forward to take two backwards?  I think today I've been taking a step forward to discover that I've been walking backwards.  It's half-term, so I am filled with a desperation to do something otherwise a week will whizz by and I'll have got nothing done.  The trouble is all I'm doing is undoing.

This morning I ( Read more... )

I'm trying to sort out a cover for my novel, I, Phone, so I thought I'd ask for opinions.  Below are three attempts.  It isn't the execution so much as the idea, because obviously I can move this font to that picture.  I'll have to re-do some of the components anyway.  Oh, it's a near future SF novel.  Any thoughts would be much appreciated.


( Read more... )

A few thoughts have just come together about ebooks.  I've been watching the excellent "The Book Group" on video (yes, VHS), thinking about the recent controversy about authors buying five star reviews for their ebooks and the way in which the death of legacy publishing means that we're about to lose editors (but not people who edit).

The digital ( Read more... )

I've just finished doing an MA in Writing.  (For strange political reasons it wasn't called "Creative Writing" but that's what it was.)  I was going to blog here about it, but given the vast quantities of writing that the coursework demanded (70,000+ words) it became unappealing to write elsewhere.  I'm only just realising everything that I've been ( Read more... )

I've just ordered my t-shirt for Eastercon - red with a quite wonderful Christmas scene by Smuzz.  You know, I might dig out a hat to go with it and some tinsel to wear.  Xmas!  It comes earlier every year.

I realise it makes little sense, but I'm on a panel about epublishing, so I thought I'd wear some advertising for my novella, "The Other ( Read more... )

Do you think that ebooks will increase literacy ( Read more... )

On the same day that it was announced that "Fahrenheit 451" had, against its author's wishes, become an eBook, I published my own eBook.  Surely a certain sign of the death of the book (that's Ray Bradbury's novel on the importance of paper books becoming an eBook, not my own entry into the field)?  So, if you fancy reading something that's a ( Read more... )