M-Brane SF has posted the table of contents of its August issue, #19 here. Included in it is my story, 'Through the Eye of a Needle', which, despite its description as a "dystopia", I actually consider to be optimistic sf... No, really. The other stories sound pretty damn interesting, too.

(Cross-posted from It Doesn't Have To Be Right...)

I managed to sneak in a review of a short story for Short Story Month on Gav's NextRead blog. I picked 'A Woman Naked' by Christopher Priest, from his 1974 collection Real-Time World. I hadn't actually intended to contribute a guest review to Short Story Month, but when I read the story I felt it was worth writing about. The review is here.

(Cross- ( Read more... )

This year, a number of people in the sf blogosphere have vowed to read more short fiction, or are blogging their way through issues of sf magazines. I've decided to do something similar. But I'm not going to blog about every short story I read, I'm just going to try and keep up to date with the magazines I subscribe to/follow. And if I come across ( Read more... )

Shameful confession time. I write short fiction, but I don't read as much of it as I should. It's not like I have an excuse. I subscribe to a number of print magazines, and I regularly visit the sites of several online magazines. But between my own writing, and reading novels and non-fiction, I never seem to find the time to read the short stuff ( Read more... )

It occurred to me some people might find it interesting to learn how I came up with the ideas for my stories, how I approached those ideas, and what I was trying to achieve with the stories which resulted.

First up is 'The Amber Room', which was published in Pantechnicon #9 in March 2009. If I were to write a blurb for the story, it would go ( Read more... )

My story 'Thicker Than Water' was published in Jupiter magazine's January 2009 issue. Unlike 'The Amber Room' (see here), it received a couple of reviews and was described as an "exciting story" (SFRevu) and "a good story with much promise, atmospheric and exciting" (SF Crowsnest). SF Site was less complimentary - "I was not really convinced ... ( Read more... )

SF Signal today posted a couple of Mind Melds on "Memorable Short Stories to Add to Your Reading List" parts one and two. An excuse, in other words, to ask a bunch of people to name their favourite genre stories.

So I thought I'd do the same - list my favourite stories, that is. And here they are in chronological order of publication (where copies ( Read more... )