The Black Glass at Derby Quad

Had a great afternoon meeting readers and writers at Leicester Sci-Fi Festival this weekend - I joined Alex Davis of Boo Books and fellow writers Gary Budgen and Mike Chinn to launch After the Fall, our collection of short stories around the end of technology.

I really enjoyed reading The Black Glass, and it was interesting to see how other people received our ideas on a world where the technology we take for granted was no longer something you could rely on. Stories shared, books signed, friends made - a good day. Big thanks to Starbase Leicester and the festival goers for making us feel so welcome.

If you missed us at Leicester, you can catch up with us at Derby Quad cinema on Thursday 15th May - we'll be reading and discussing our work from 7pm as part of the Derby Film Festival, with the genre defining Mad Max to follow. 
I'm really pleased to be reading at Quad, it's a fantastic venue for Derby, and a key location in The Black Glass, my short story in After the Fall - if you want to find out more, come and say hello!

If you can't make it but you'd like a copy of After the Fall, it's available now - visit the Boo Books website now.

Flatpacks, Anthologies and Interviews



The Sillitoe Workspace at
Nottingham Writers Studio

I’ve been knee deep in allen keys and instruction booklets this week while helping to build the writing workspace in the new Nottingham Writers’ Studio – transforming a derelict pram shop into a new focal point for writers in the city is a lot of work and dedication, but it’s worth the effort, and coming together brilliantly.

It’s been fantastic to see the reaction of people as they come to visit the space for the first time (thank you for calling in, Paula Rawsthorne) and it’s exciting to see new people see the potential of the space as we get closer to our launch event later this month.
 
Which is why I’ve only just managed to blog about next week’s reading at Leicester SF Festival – and why I’ve only just started to get nervous about it…

I’ll be reading The Black Glass, my short story in the new Boo Books Anthology of post-technology tales, After The Fall. I’ve read work at the festival before, and the crowd are always really friendly and receptive to writers they may not have heard before, so I’m really looking forward to it. I just hope they won’t ask me a tricky question in the Q&A session.

After the Fall from Boo Books, featuring The Black Glass

Sarah Dale, author of Bolder and Wiser

Being interviewed about your work is tricky, but interviewing someone about their work can be even trickier – so I’m choosing my questions for Sarah Dale very carefully when I head back to Waterstones Nottingham and talk to Sarah about Bolder and Wiser, her collection of interviews with women aged sixty and older.

So… if I plan to be kind to Sarah in the evening, will the festival goers at Leicester be kind to me earlier in the day? Should I be thinking about timeslippery shenanigans like this, or should I get on with writing? I think we all know the answer to the last one…

Tickets are still available for both events!
If you’d like to join us at Leicester SF Festival, click here.

If you’d like to join us at Waterstones Nottingham, click here.

Boo! New short story to appear in 'After the Fall' from Boo Books

Although it's February, I've just seen the result of a great start to my writing year - my YA short story 'The Black Glass' has been accepted for Boo Book's forthcoming anthology, 'After the Fall' - it's a real honour to have your work read and commended by your peers, especially when they like it enough to share it with others in their book.

The theme of 'After the Fall' explores a world where the technology I'm using to write this blog, and that you're using to read it, is gone. After a lot of scribbling off-grid with a crayon in January (as low tech as I dared to go), the first line of the story appeared out of nowhere, challenging me to write the rest.

It's one of the first 'longer' short stories I've written (about three and a half thousand words), and I'm really pleased I stuck with it to make it work.  Big thanks to everyone who listened very patiently to me talk about The Black Glass while I was trying to get my head around telling the story of Mad Alice.

'After the Fall' launches in May 2014 - looking forward to reading the other contributors and seeing their vision of a very different future appear through the pages.

Write. Finish things. Keep writing.

Write. Finish things. Keep writing.

That's what I've been trying to keep up across 2013, which has been backed up by the brilliant Neil Gaiman (or rather, Neil Gaiman's brilliant hand), and the results are pretty good - I've done a quick rundown of the milestones I've left for myself in the past year as I launch myself into 2014.

I'm working on finishing Red, my contemporary fairytale very soon, and am really looking forward to the Costa Book Award event at West Bridgford Library this week after winning a pair of tickets with my winning Letter story in a Tweet:
      

For 40 years, it waited in a locked drawer to be sent. But it did not worry. It knew unspoken words said enough 40 years ago. #nccletters

 

If you've not had a quick look back, do it now - you'll be surprised what ground you've covered.  And the stuff you didn't do - that's 2014 planned.

Write. Finish things. Keep Writing.