Currently working on...

A gay horror story for the next QueeredFiction anthology, adapted from an earlier unpublished story about a haunted house. So far I've written about 3,500 words, but I'm going nowhere fast. I don't write a lot of horror and I'm struggling to find the right tone. I'd like it to be dark and chilling, but at the moment the characters are hijacking it and keep turning it fluffy. And fluffy horror doesn't really work, or didn't the last time I checked.

I shall persevere, even if it means knocking my own characters over the head with a frying pan to stop them running off with the plot.

And no, I'm not going insane. Why do you ask? :P

News on From The Asylum?

Has anyone heard anything further about this online zine/anthology publisher?

Back in February I had a story accepted for their latest anthology, called 'Things Aren't What They Seem'. I sent off my signed contract in the post, plus a load of other bits and pieces (story in a different file format, updated bio etc). Since then I've not heard from them, and not received my counter-signed copy of the contract.

Then I saw from EREC that their publishing arm was closing down. According to their website, last updated in early April, they are honouring the anthologies they had already accepted stories for, including 'Things Aren't What They Seem'. But I'm not sure how they're going to sell the books if they are effectively closed (even their online business is apparently closing in July).

On Friday I wrote to the editor with a few queries including whether they'd received my contract and whether they still wanted my story. So far I've had no response. I really, really hope I'm wrong, but it's beginning to look as though this is a completely dead market. Unless anyone has any different information?

More fishy news...

I wrote yesterday's blog in a hurry because I only found out that my story had been posted at The Pygmy Giant about ten minutes before we were due to go out to the cinema to see the new Star Trek film. So it was a bit light on details, because I only really had time for the basics.

So, here's a tad more information about the story. I wrote it while I was on a writing course a few years back, when the tutor challenged each of us to do a crossover between noir and one other genre. I chose humour, which sounds completely perverse, but oddly it seemed to work very well and I've always been rather fond of the result. So much so, in fact, that I decided to try my hand at one or two other stories in the same style - one of which is Rock and a Hard Place, currently appearing in Radgepacket Volume 2.

You wouldn't think that noir and humour would marry together well at all, but it seems to give rise to an intriguing 'gallows-humour' style of writing which can be quite fun.

And the film? It was terrific. Lots of thrills and spills, great special effects, an exciting plot (as long as you don't think too hard about the time travel causality loops), and excellent acting from the new young cast, in particular Zachary Quinto as a more-Spock-than-Spock younger Spock. A great night out.

Fish Out of Water

My daft little flash about a blind date is up right now at The Pygmy Giant, where you can read it for free.

Feel free to leave a comment over there if you liked it - or even if you didn't. :)

An architectural carbuncle

I love reading about the origin or early useage of words, and this article in The Times is hugely entertaining. It describes possibly the first use of the word 'carbuncle' to describe an architectural design, in this case for Buckingham Palace, the Queen's official residence in London.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6275896.ece

Prince Charles more recently described a proposed extension to the National Gallery as "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend"; it's interesting to see where he might have borrowed the phrase from.

And this bit, about the works on the palace in 1825, made me giggle: "Costs soared. The Times speculated that nearly all of the original grant of £150,000 went on raising a small hill to prevent the hobbledehoy of Pimlico being able to see in through the windows."

Most overused line ever?

This is more from the world of screenwriting than books. But it gets my vote for the most overused line in the world, ever:

"Everything will be all right, darling, I promise you."

Have you noticed it? It's in everything. Films, tv shows, soap operas... you name it, the characters regularly spout this drivel. It's very lazy, and it's also very unbelievable, because you can't possibly promise anyone that you can 'make everything all right' for them for ever more. Just doesn't happen like that in real life, does it?

Do people actually use dialogue like this? Or is it a case of Screenwriter's Formula #103?

Weird research

It's amazing the stuff you have to look up for stories sometimes. Last week I was deep in the rather arcane regulations surrounding the use of child car seats in the UK. Yesterday I had to research the lead actor's name in Twilight (Robert Pattinson, in case you didn't know either) and Russell Crowe's age.

None of these was for the major theme of a story, but just those off-the-cuff little remarks that can make all the difference if you get them wrong. I've seen this myself when I've had my reader hat on. Years ago I found a story in which the hero was on a cruise ship which docked overnight in Paris. A Paris that had miraculously translocated itself to the French coast. By the time I'd finished boggling, I'd totally lost track of where I was in the story and had to go back and start it again. I'd hate that to happen to anyone reading my work.

Besides, it's actually a lot of fun. You never know what you're going to have to find out about next.

Firing off submissions

I seem to have had stories flying out of the door at a rate of knots lately. Usually I like to average at least one submission a month, to keep things ticking over and to try to ensure a steady supply of new stories for my readers, but sometimes it actually works out as more than that.

This is one of those times - I've sent three off in the last couple of weeks and have another almost ready to go. So far, I've sent a story about a Christmas holiday gone wrong to a contest at Words Magazine; a time travel romance to QueeredFiction's latest anthology; and an updated version of the three little pigs to Mslexia for their 'bricks and mortar' themed flash. Later in the week I'm hoping to send another one off to Mslexia, this time a longer piece about a poster for their 'idols' call.

Of course, the only trouble with sending lots of stories out is that you tend to get 'em all back again, in a heap, accompanied by rejection slips. But I can always hope.

Smile of the day

Headline seen on BBC text news this morning: 'Stationery company to make cuts'.

Hmm. That would be paper cuts, presumably? ;)

Offputting guidelines

When I first started submitting work to publishers I was naive enough to pretty much send anything to anyone. A few burned fingers later, I'm older and wiser enough to read the guidelines with a magnifying glass, and there are a few 'red flags' that will make me squawk every time. If I see any of them, I'll start having second thoughts. If I see two or more, the publisher goes on the 'no way, Jose' pile and I'll probably never send work to them.

So what are my pet hates when it comes to guidelines and/or a publisher's business practices? Well, here's some of them, in no particular order:

1. Seeing typos or grammatical errors in the guidelines, or elsewhere on the publisher's web page for that matter. These people are going to be editing my manuscript and I'd expect them to be able to copy edit their own site.

2. Any mention of 'no passive writing' in the editing guidelines. As I've mentioned elsewhere, too many editors are mistaking past imperfect ('was doing') for passive and I can't face taking every instance of past imperfect out of every piece of work I submit.

3. A list of editing/formatting dos and don'ts that's longer than the piece of work I'm submitting.

4. Weird formatting requirements that would take me the better part of a week to achieve. I'm always happy to oblige with font, font size, spacing etc, but intricately detailed formatting should really be the publisher's responsibility, not the writer's.

5. Any invitation to send your work to the publisher's in-house editing staff before, during or after submission, especially if there is a fee. This could represent a conflict of interests on the part of the publisher and it's all too easy for them to refuse a writer's story until that writer has paid for their editing services...

6. Lack of information on the eventual product: will it be electronic or print, when is it due out, will it be an anthology or a series of stand-alone books, will it be distributed via book stores and distribution sites or just from the publisher's website? Believe it or not, I've seen calls for submission with none of the above information, which makes it kind of hard to be certain the work will ever appear.

7. Any sign of the publisher 'rallying their troops' in response to reasonable queries about their business practice. This is quite possibly the biggest red flag of all for me; it's desperately unprofessional and leaves such an unpleasant taste in my mouth that I'll usually add a publisher to the 'no' list the minute I see them doing this.

Does anyone else have submission processes that make them see red? I'd love to know!

Google opt-out update

Some slightly better news from the Google 'opt-out' mess - we authors now have until September to choose whether to opt into or out of the deal. Which does give everyone a bit more time and breathing space to choose what's best for them. In the meantime, I understand that the deal is being re-examined to see whether it's even legal, and whether it best represents authors' interests. I'll be fascinated to see what the result of that is...

The Pygmy Giant accepts story

I heard yesterday that The Pygmy Giant, a British online zine of flash fiction and poetry, have accepted Fish Out of Water. This is a fun little story about a blind date in a posh restaurant which goes horribly wrong.

Bert ran his fingers round the inside of his collar, saw Trudy looking at him, and stopped. He put his elbows on the table, and then he thought perhaps he shouldn't and took them off again. "Are you sure it was fish I ordered?" he muttered. The menu might just as well have been in Greek for all the sense it made to him.

I don't yet know when the story is due to come out, but will let everyone know once it's available to read.

'This Life Sucks' wins poll

Each quarter, Flash Me! Magazine holds a poll to find the most popular story in their previous issue. This time round, I'm delighted to discover that 'This Life Sucks', my short vampire tale, took first place in the most recent poll! I'm really pleased because the story is a little on the dark side and I wasn't sure that readers would enjoy it, but clearly they have.

Thank you to everyone who voted - it's really made my day!

If you haven't yet read the story there's still time, and it's still available free. Simply pop along to Flash Me and check out Issue 23. And I hope you enjoy it (and the other great stories) as much as everyone else seems to have.

Google Opt In/Out

Fellow authors should take a look at this deeply worrying article on the Google Opt In/Out agreement on Jessica Freely's Friskbiskit blog.

Apparently we have only one week to decide whether to opt into or out of Google's settlement, both of which options have hidden pitfalls and neither of which can prevent Google from scanning our work and making it avalable online without our permission.

This has huge implications for anyone with an out-of-contract e-book that they were hoping to release in print. Please read the article, take the time to consider your options, and as Jessica says, spread the word. I didn't know about this, and I'm quite sure I'm not the only author who didn't.

A toast rack?

I've been looking out for something to keep letters and odd scraps of paper tidy on my desk for ages. This afternoon I pottered round to the local high street and happened to stumble across exactly what I needed in one of the charity shops. It's a small silver-coloured (don't suppose for one moment it's real silver!) toast rack, very old fashioned with pointed arches and a looped handle at the top. It's seen better days as the arches are all skew-whiff, but it cost me the amazing sum of... 99p. So I don't really mind. I've already stuffed a load of stamps and business cards in there and it's doing exactly what I wanted, which is making a bit more space on my desk. Thank goodness for charity shops - you never know quite what you're going to find next.

'Men of Mystery' to be republished

Haworth Press, the original publishers of the 'Men of Mystery' anthology containing my short story Any Means Necessary, ceased trading as a fiction publisher before the book could be distributed properly. The editors, Sean Meriwether and Greg Phillips, have worked long and hard and have just negotiated a new deal with Lethe Press, a publisher specialising in gay and lesbian titles. The book is due out later this year with the same contents and in pretty much the same format as before. It's excellent news because this is a top-notch anthology full of cracking good stories and it was a shame that it didn't receive the best 'after-sales care' that it could have done.

I'll be posting more details about the release etc in due course so watch this space.

'I Do' success

Early indications are that the charity anthology 'I Do' has already raised over $1,000 for the Lambda Legal Fund in its first quarter. This is terrific news. It's always nice to take part in a worthwhile project, but it's even nicer to know one's efforts are having a positive effect.

If you haven't yet bought a copy of the book, either in print or electronic format, and would like to contribute to the cause, feel free to pop along to my website for further details on where and how to purchase.

Read the guidelines, stupid!

I spent a long time the other day writing a new short story with a Christmas theme for a contest in Words Magazine. The word count was a measly 1,000 words and I did struggle to fit everything I wanted to say into such a short space, but eventually after a tussle and a lot of hacking, I got it down to 997 words including the title and was reasonably happy.

And then I re-checked the guidelines to see how and where I should send it, and found that the word count was actually... 2000.

Goodness knows where I got the lower figure from but now the story is too short, feels rushed, and there's a danger that I haven't expanded the theme strongly enough to really make the point I wanted to. I'm going to have to sit down and try to fit some more detail in, but without making it feel padded in any way. It's a good job the deadline isn't till June because I've a feeling I'm going to need the extra time.

Memo to self: read the guidelines first, stupid. 8-)

I review a gay historical

And not a terribly good one, sadly. You can read my review of David Pownall's 'The Ruling Passion' (which might have been better named 'Not Much Ruling Passion') at Speak Its Name.

Stuck in traffic....

I had to laugh this morning when the local news programme featured an item about slow-moving traffic on the motorway, caused by an accident involving a cement lorry. Not so much slow-moving as stuck fast, I should think....

A Small Problem

The thirteenth isn't always unlucky. It was the 13th Feb when I heard my latest story had been accepted (The Boyfriend From Hell), and now Issue 13 of Gay Flash Fiction is playing host to A Small Problem.

This little story is a real tease. It's only short but it packs quite a punch as the crew of a manned mission to Mars suffer equipment failure and have to take matters, quite literally, into their own hands, much to the consternation of the mission chief engineer.

You can read it at Gay Flash Fiction and I very much hope you enjoy it.

Ewwww...

It's good to know, sometimes, that I'm not the only writer to make the occasional howler.

We were watching an episode of CSI:Crime Scene Investigation the other night that involved a young woman who'd been killed. A male friend of hers had played a prank on her shortly before she died and this helped lead the CSI team to him (although he turned out not to be the murderer). The prank involved getting her to stick her hand in a bag of elephant dung, and the clue was that she still had traces of the dung under her fingernails.

This is a blooper of the first order. How many women do you know who would put even a fingertip in any kind of dung and not wash their hands immediately afterwards? And not just wash, but soap and scrub and practically use sandpaper to get the stuff off their skin? They certainly wouldn't stand around for hours afterwards enjoying drinks at a party, knowing that they smelled of elephant poop, as this girl was supposed to have done.

So, even the professionals get it wrong from time to time...

My tiny hand is frozen

Our (pretty well brand new) boiler went paf last night and stopped giving us either heating or hot water. After much fiddling my husband managed to get the hot water back on (phew, I hate not being able to have baths) but the heating is stubbornly refusing to work. At this time of year we only have it on for an hour or so in the morning just to warm the house through, but it's amazing how uncomfortable it still is without. I'm sitting at my desk in umpteen layers, with woolly socks and a scarf, and my fingers are so numb I can hardly type.

I wonder how people managed to write before central heating was invented...

Overheard...

Another entry in my occasional 'you couldn't make it up if you tried' files.

We were out walking in our local park the other Saturday and were passed by a very smartly dressed older couple who looked as though they were on their way to church. As they passed us the man was saying, "They can't stand the sight of each other, so they just go cruising all the time."

We're still wondering who he was talking about, why they hate each other, and whether he meant cruising on a ship, or in the clubbing sense....

Currently reading...

Strange Tunnels Disappearing by Gary Ley. This is a rather, um, strange book. Set in Peru in the 1980s but written by a Welshman, it tells the story of Jose, an academic with communist leanings, who goes on the run after hearing that his life is in danger. Every review I've seen of it is absolutely glowing but so far I'm finding it terribly slow and packed with the sort of meaningless, introspective, navel-gazing dialogue where the characters vocalise their thoughts to one another rather than holding proper conversations. I can't help thinking some of these vocalisations are actually of the author's thoughts, not the characters', since in one place he has a Spanish-speaking character muse on the sound of the word 'gringo' - in English!

I shall persevere in the hope that the characters stop musing on the meaning of life and actually do something, but I'm not hopeful...

Gorgeous cover, though!

Currently working on...

...the fourth re-write of a novel set in the Lake District. It's early days yet - I'm still only on the first chapter and setting up the characters, the situation and the backstory - but it seems to be going quite well.

This novel has gradually developed from a ghost story to a character-driven mystery with a hint of paranormal to a character-driven mystery with no paranormal at all. And for a complete change, I'm writing about a family with *gasp* children, which I've never tried before. Although I don't have kids myself, enough of our friends do that I know the sort of things they say and do. It's very different, but lots of fun. The very first line is "Are we nearly there yet?", which will hopefully strike a chord with parents everywhere!

Best childrens' books

This week's Radio Times has a list of author Ursula Le Guin's favourite childrens' books. It's an interesting list, at least as much for what isn't on it as what is - no Peter Pan, no Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen, no Alice in Wonderland, no Wind in the Willows. But lots of Rudyard Kipling.

1. The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book
2. Ferdinand the Bull by Munro Leaf
3. Any book by Beatrix Potter
4. The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
5. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
6. The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
7. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
8. The Once and Future King by T H White
9. The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien
10. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

I'd agree with many of the choices (with the exception of Black Beauty, which I hated, and Ferdinand the Bull which I've never heard of) but my own list of books which had a big impact on me and/or have stayed with me for life would have to include:

1. The Andrew Lang 'colour' fairy tale books
2. A A Milne's Winne the Pooh books
3. Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce (quite possibly my favourite childrens' book of all time).

Does anyone else have any favourites they'd have to include? Or books they hated so much they'd rather pay money than put them on a list? :) I'd love to know.

Radgie on Amazon

Just a brief line to say that 'Radgepacket Volume 2' is now available on Amazon UK, which means you can take advantage of any special offers, free postage, vouchers etc if you want to order it and already have an Amazon account.

You can buy from Amazon here.

Authors' homes

Spurred on by the news that the National Trust is about to open Agatha Christie's old home to the public, I was chatting to some writer friends about visiting other authors' homes. My friends like the idea and a couple of them had been to loads. I was rather startled to realise that I've only ever been to three: Hill Top, which was Beatrix Potter's home; Brantwood which belonged to John Ruskin; and the Bronte family parsonage at Haworth.

I was very young when my parents took me to Hill Top and I can remember very little about it except that it was rather small, but you could see some of the features from the books such as the yard where Jemima Puddle Duck lived and the fireplace from Tom Kitten. I think that 'made' the visit for me.

Brantwood I remember only as being rather dull, but I think that might be because so much of the house was given over to galleries of his illustrations, rather than showing how he used to live. Haworth was more rewarding, at least in part because it still looks like a family home and you can get a real sense of the Brontes living there.

I'm in two minds about visiting more of these places. For one thing, they tend to get so hellishly busy because they attract both general tourists and fans of the author concerned. Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's home in Grasmere, for instance, attracts simply thousands of visitors a year and it's minute. You wonder how they fit everybody in! On top of that, it can get a little tedious being told endless variations of 'this is the desk s/he wrote so-and-so at' and 'this was the pen they used'. Everybody says 'ooooh' in a suitably impressed way, but there's not much more you can say or do.

However, there are a few places I'd love to see. One is Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's former home, which I've seen on television and which looks fascinating. Then there's Virginia Woolf's houses: Knole where she was born, Charleston where she lived with Duncan Bell and various other artists and writers in a sort of commune, and Monk's House where she had a holiday home. And finally, if anyone ever opens up any of Daphne du Maurier's former homes I shall be there like a shot, because she's my hero when it comes to writing.

Has anyone else visited any interesting writerly abodes? Were they interesting? Did you get to see anything more than The Desk, or The Chair, or The Pen?

The Boyfriend From Hell...

No, this isn't something better-kept-secret from my personal life. I had some lovely news this morning - From The Asylum have accepted 'The Boyfriend From Hell' for their forthcoming anthology Things Aren't What They Seem.

FTA are an online magazine who publish print anthologies - sometimes of the best stories from the zine, and sometimes with a specific theme. This is one of the latter, with all the stories focussing on the idea of 'aliens amongst us'. 'The Boyfriend From Hell is a short short about a boyfriend with anti-social habits who turns out to be something different - and there's an extra, unexpected twist!

I don't yet have any details on when the anthology will be published but I'll post them on here when I do.

'Radgepacket 2' released early

I've just had some really exciting news - 'Radgepacket - Tales from the Inner Cities Volume 2' from Byker Books has been released early, complete with my story 'Rock and a Hard Place'. Originally it was due to launch on 2 March, but Byker have had an advance order made up and it's available to buy from their website (for a measly £5.99) right now!

My story is a darkly humorous gritty urban tale about an ageing rock star pretending to be gay in order to sell more records, with unexpected and hilarious results.

I haven't read the other stories in this volume but the first anthology was a hoot, full of stories that were noir but with a humorous or quirky twist, and very entertaining.

You can find much more detail including an excerpt and a link to Byker Books' online catalogue at my website.

And, um, woot. :)

New free story

If you want to read the latest free story by yours truly, pop along to Flash Me! Magazine where the January 2009 issue has just gone live, complete with 'This Life Sucks'.

This little tale about a disillusioned vampire was based on a news story about some dustbin men discovering a fully functional, empty coffin propped up next to somebody's dustbins one morning! Nobody could work out where it had come from and it made such a surreal 'truth is stranger than fiction' story that I just had to write about it. 'This Life Sucks' is the result.

"This would be his last night in this form. No more biting, no more sucking, no more taking of innocent lives. No more lurking in the shadows and hiding from the sun; from now on he would be a creature of the light."

I hope you enjoy the story.

Apostrophes on street signs

Birmingham City Council has been getting a lot of stick lately for its decision not to use apostrophes on street signs.


As a writer part of me does worry about this. It's yet another erosion of the traditions of our language and grammar, and yet another blow to the trusty old apostrophe, the use of which baffles many people already.

But just how important is this? Fair enough, something like St Paul's Square really should have an apostrophe because it's called after St Paul's Church, which is called after... St Paul. The apostrophe is there to show possession. Place names, on the other hand, tend to be less clear-cut. Kings Heath perhaps ought to have an apostrophe because it refers to the heath owned by the king (singular). But how about Druids Heath? Is that singular or plural? Where should the apostrophe go? It might well be better in that case to leave it out than get it wrong. And as for Acocks Green, is this even named for someone called Acock or does it come from a different source altogether?

As the article I link to above says, many of the apostrophes were already dying out in the 1950s so this is hardly a new phenomenon. Indeed, I have an old map of the area which shows Kings Heath spelled without the apostrophe as far back as 1880 - and many other such names around the country have either lost their apostrophes or never had them in the first place: Kings Pyon, Bishops Itchington (yes, really!), Canons Ashby.

So perhaps Birmingham council deserves a bit of slack. After all, I'd much rather see a road sign spelled Kings Heath than the sign I saw in a computer superstore this lunchtime, which read "IPOD's". That really did annoy me. :)

'I Do' in print

Had some exciting news over the weekend and have finally found a spare minute to blog about it - the charity anthology 'I Do' is now available in print.

You can buy your copy at either Amazon UK or Amazon US depending on where you live and where you'll get the best deal on shipping.

For more information on the book including an excerpt of my story; reviews; and a list of places to buy the electronic version, feel free to pop along to my website where you can find all these details and more.

If that's a myth I'm a...

Nul points today to Labour MP Graham Stringer, who has declared that dyslexia is a myth designed to cover up poor teaching methods. I'm sure that will be a *huge* comfort to all those kids out there who suffer from it, and struggle to make sense of their reading and writing. Of *course* they could pull themselves together and get over it if their teachers worked harder, couldn't they? Right.

These sort of medieval attitudes help no one. I taught adult basic English (ie literacy) for only one term before I realised I wasn't best suited to helping those people who need it most. Several of the class members were dyslexics, some of whom had slipped through the net at their schools and therefore never learned to read and write. Watching them applying themselves week in, week out, with little or no real progress, and watching the sheer warmth and patience of the teachers, gave me a whole new insight into this difficult condition and one I won't forget in a hurry.

Perhaps Mr Stringer should visit one or two Adult Literacy Classes and see for himself the dedication that goes on there before making any more foot-in-mouth pontifications.

This Life Sucks

Nope, this isn't me getting morbidly depressed - it's the title of my latest story to be accepted.

The story, a short dark tale about a disenchanted vampire, will be appearing in the upcoming issue of Flash Me! Magazine, which is due out on 31 January.

Believe it or not, the story was inspired by an online challenge after one of my friends read a news item about some dustbin men who were rather baffled to find a complete, new, unused coffin propped up next to the dustbins one morning! This Life Sucks is my quaint attempt to explain why...

As usual I'll post as soon as the story is available to read, so do watch this space.

Reaction to 'I Do'

We've had some wonderful positive feedback on the new anthology already. Have a look at these quotes, supplied by authors Victor J Banis and Josh Lanyon.

Double Your Pleasure
This is like the steak specials at my local market: buy one, get one free. When you buy this book, 100% of the proceeds go to the Lambda Legal fund, to help in their fight against California's Proposition 8. That's a good thing in itself, as I'm sure you will agree. But, not only are you making a donation to a cause we all care deeply about, you also get—this is the FREE part—a collection of 20 stories from an elite list of M/M and LGBT writers. How can you beat a deal like that?
And what a collection! There's surely something here for every taste: man on man and woman on woman; fantasy and funny and sizzling and sweet. Swans and Snow Queens and salty sailors and slithering serpents, oh my! And Holy Macaroni, but you're going to have to buy the book to figure that out. French Legionnaires do it in the mud; little girls grow up married from childhood, and first timers discover the magic. All of the myriad elements of love lost and found and refined and redefined. I could go on and on, too, but every story here is a treasure on its own; together, they make up one of those rare "read-over-and-over-and-keep-forever" books.
I recommend stocking up. Get some steaks while you're at it, you're going to be doing a lot of curling up.
Victor J. Banis
Author of The Man from C.A.M.P., Lola Dances and Deadly Nightshade

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: twenty tales — funny, sweet, erotic, poignant — from some of the best and brightest writers in GLBT romance. Never has support for a good cause been more delicious, more delectable than in this generous helping of life — and love — affirming stories.
Josh Lanyon
Author of the Adrien English Mystery Series and Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M for Kinks and Ca$h

I'm delighted at the response to the book. The more people who like it, the more will hopefully buy it and make lots and lots of $$ for the cause. And with endorsements like that, how can you resist? ;)

Nice start to the year

I had some lovely news yesterday as the editor at Byker Books confirmed that Rock and a Hard Place will indeed be appearing in Volume 2 of 'Radgepacket - Tales from the Inner Cities'. This is a real bonus since he wasn't originally sure he could squeeze it in and was talking about putting it in Volume 3 instead. Since that would have meant waiting an extra three months or so, I'm delighted. Vol. 2 is due out late February/early March and obviously I'll post more details as soon as I have them.

In other news, I've managed to do some writing again for the first time for weeks, on the Lake District novel. I didn't get far, but I did manage to start it for the *fourth* time of asking, to copy across the prologue and the first few paragraphs of Chapter One, and add another 1,000 or so words, before close of play. And have a jolly good think about where I'm going and what the structure will be, since that's always my biggest downfall. Now, if I can just keep the momentum going....

'I Do'

I must admit I haven't been keeping up with the latest happenings during the Xmas break, but switched on the pc this morning to find some very good news - the charity anthology 'I Do' has been published in the interim.

This is a book full of m/m short stories published in support of the Lambda Legal Fund to fight Proposition 8 against same-sex civil partnerships in California. It includes a wealth of stories by such well-known m/m authors as Alex Beecroft, Erastes, Lee Rowan, Storm Grant, Sharon Maria Bidwell and many, many more, as well as a kitchen-sink style romp called 'Salad Days' by yours truly which involves two men and some fennel.

"Tim had finished the carrots. He searched around for something else to keep his hands busy and found he'd picked up the fennel again. Holding it firmly this time he began to slice into its bulbous flesh, imagining it was Ed's smoothly handsome face. Him, jealous?"

The anthology will be widely available in electronic format and a print version is due out later this month. Currently you can buy your copy at either All Romance E-books or Mobi. And don't forget - every penny of the proceeds will be going to a very worthwhile cause.

Story material....

This has just got to go in a story, and might also serve as a warning to check - and check again - before choosing a name for anything.

On the tv the other night we saw an advert for an online bingo company called... WinkBingo.com. With just one teensy alteration to one vowel, it becomes something else altogether, which is much too rude to print in a family-friendly blog like this. Although it might be closer to the truth, given how solitary most online bingo players must be... Even better, their tagline is 'Yes'. O.o

I'm making notes for a humorous noir as I type.

Losing a story - or my marbles

I spent over two hours yesterday trying to find a story that I was convinced I'd started several years ago, got bored with and set aside.

The reason I remembered it at all was that I was sure I'd rediscovered it only a few weeks ago while hunting out some other older stories to re-work for contests. I'd started it as erotica, but thought it would actually work better as noir. At the time I didn't have time to do more than glance at it, but I did take note of a rather memorable first line about someone jumping out of the cake at a birthday party.

I'd already decided it was going to be my first project in the new year, so yesterday afternoon I tried to find it again. I couldn't remember the title, but I looked through all my word processor documents - no sign of it. I went through again, and opened ANY file that I didn't immediately recognise as being something else - still no sign of it. I thought I must have deleted it, so got out my flash drive and my external hard drive with all my saved stuff on, plugged those in and searched both - still no sign of it. I even ran a search on 'cake' on the whole pc, and although it came up with all sorts of weird and wonderful files (how can you have 'cake' in a jpg?), there was STILL no sign of my story.

At that point I began to think I must have dreamed the entire episode - not just finding the story, but ever writing it in the first place. Not good. I was quite worried.

And then, just before I went to bed, I had another go. This time I was looking through old cd's, although I didn't think I'd ever saved it onto one of those, but while ferreting about an old folder caught my eye - the one with all my roughest scribblings of ideas. I hauled it off the shelf, leafed through - and there was the story, all one page of it, handwritten without even a title.

Phew! I'm not going mad after all!! (Well, no more than usual....)

Fiona 0, Temptation 1

I gave in to temptation, and to the logic that netbooks are so new they probably won't be reduced in the sales anyway. So - I am now the proud owner of a Samsung netbook.

So far I've set it up to surf the net and use webmail. Next I'll be putting WordPerfect on, so I can use it to write while I'm away. After that, I might load it with my web authoring and ftp software so I can update my websites while I'm away.

I must say it's a very attractive little thing - and I can't believe the hard drive is eight times larger than the one in my desktop pc, in something not much bigger than an A5 envelope! The keyboard is surprisingly easy to use and I have a feeling it's going to come in very useful indeed.

And of course, I just have to take it away for Christmas now I've got it. ;)

Christmas writing... or not

I find it incredibly difficult to concentrate on writing at this time of year. I find it pretty hard the rest of the time, too, but the run up to Christmas is just so... distracting. There are all those pings on the doorbell with deliveries and carol-singers and long-lost friends who 'just thought they'd pop in on the way past Birmingham'. There are cards to write and deliver, letters to write and remember to put in with the cards, the tree to find, put up and decorate, last-minute presents to buy and wrap, mince pies and non-traditional Christmas pud to add to the shopping list. It's all a lot of fun, but it means my brain is stuffed with tinsel and other sparkly things and I cannot. think. about. writing.


Added to that I've been working like a navvy the last two or three months, writing stories and firing off submissions like there's no tomorrow. Suddenly, my motivation has gone on strike. My get up and go didn't just get up and go, it stretched, wandered into the kitchen, made a cup of tea in the 'I'm allergic to writing' mug, and settled down for a snooze in front of Shrek the Third. Sigh.

It's hard, but perhaps I should just knock the whole writing thing on the head for the next three weeks, have a break, and come back refreshed in the new year, when hopefully my inspiration will be more cooperative. Or at least until the next idea bats me over the head in the middle of the night and I traipse off to the computer, bleary-eyed, at half past four because my brain is fizzing so much I can't get back to sleep....

Rules of British noir

I've been reading quite a bit of noir fiction lately and it's inspired me to write a list of rules of the genre in case anyone else would like to try their hand at it. So here, in no particular order, are my (slightly flippant) top ten Rules of British Noir Fiction.

1. Everybody dies.
2. There's always a character called Albie, who is elderly, homeless, drunk - or all three.
3. All relationships are doomed to fail, no matter how promising they seem on the first page.
4. It's always either dark or raining, except when it's foggy.
5. Bouncers (doormen) are the most common characters - in fact they litter the pages like cigarette butts on a pavement.
6. Everybody dies.
7. Trips to the country invariably lead to the main character digging his own grave.
8. Pubs are always grubby and serve warm beer.
9. Female characters never wash their hair.
10. Everybody dies.

Strange research

It's amazing the things writers have to research sometimes.

I wanted to send a story off today - just a little flash thing about a vampire. But I realised on reading it through that I'd used very British language and the story was heading for an American market, and one or two terms in particular would have been baffling. And why baffle a potential publisher before they've even finished reading the story? They've got more than enough reasons to reject it without adding to them....

The worst offender this time was 'bin men'. In the UK, they're the people who come round once a week (or more likely once a fortnight as councils try to force everyone to recycle more...) and empty your dustbins (trash cans). I googled and googled but although I discovered a long list of regulations on the weekly trash collection in Philadelphia, nowhere could I find out what the collectors were called. I tried 'garbage collector' and 'trash collector', but both of those turned up pages about clean-up software for computers, and nothing about real life as opposed to virtual trash.

In the end, I put a call out on my LJ and a very helpful person stopped by and told me - it's 'garbage men'. The story has now been tweaked and sent off, and I'm delighted that I haven't bewildered the editor even more than usual.

But what's the oddest thing you've ever had to research?

Soooo tempted....

I'm not a massive fan of gadgets but I do like a decent laptop. Something I can drag round on holidays or weekends away, so I can stay in touch with email, surf the net and even do a spot of writing if the mood takes me.

I have a decent laptop (Advent, if memory serves me) which has coped very well with all of the above for a couple of years now. The only trouble is, that by the time I've packed it away in a bag with the battery, power supply, extra cabling, decent mouse (because I simply can NOT use those weird touch-pad things) and a mouse-mat, it weighs about the same as trying to lug the ruddy desktop with me. ;)

I've dreamed about having something so small it could go in my handbag and at last, it looks as though netbooks are catching on. They're small (10" screen), they're lightweight (1.4 kg or less) and yet they have most of the features a full-size laptop would have, in terms of operating systems, software, memory, capabilities etc etc.

Top of the bunch at the moment is this little fellow from Samsung. Not only does it have Windows XP and 160 gigs of memory, but it comes with a full-size keyboard so this particular touch-typist wouldn't be turning the air blue through hitting so many wrong keys.



I am oh-so-very-tempted. Maybe after Christmas, if they have January sales and I save up all my Christmas pennies...

Stand and deliver!

The latest call for flash fiction from Mslexia involves the theme of riding. I didn't want to do something dull about horses or bicycles, but this morning I suddenly thought of an idea about highwaymen - and a magician.


I scribbled the result, called it 'Trick of the Trade', and spent the afternoon polishing it. It's come out far too long for Mslexia in the end (their word limit is a measly 150!) - and I'm not sure it would have enough of a link to their theme even if I managed to trim it down. But hopefully I can find somewhere else to send it in the coming weeks. It would be a shame to waste it.

Linden Bay Romance to be sold

The biggest news in the electronic-to-print romance publishing world today is the sale of Linden Bay Romance to Samhain.

If you haven't already seen details on every other romance writer's blog between here and Outer Mongolia, you can find the full press release about the upcoming sale at the EREC blog.

Further details are understandably woolly at present but one or two LBR authors I know are crossing their fingers that their particular imprints will continue under the new Samhain umbrella.

Writers' rooms

There's a fascinating audio slideshow on the BBC website with photographs of the rooms well-known (or at least, established - I'd never heard of some of 'em) writers use to write in, plus a commentary by the photographer.

Some of the rooms are really surprising - the blood red one, the one that's in a basement with piles of stuff everywhere, the one that looks like a 16 year old's study. More are what you'd expect - filled with books and a lifetime of thoughts, pictures and memories. Those were the ones that appealed to me most of all - in fact, some of them made me chartreuse with envy. I'm lucky to have my own space to write in, but it's in the attic and the roof comes half way down the walls, which means no floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Having adored books since the age of five, I would love to have a room lined with them, but it's just not possible.

What would your favourite work-space involve? Lots of light and space? Something cosy and familiar? A wonderful muddle? A lap-top on your knees in front of the telly?

Interestingly, the photographer commented that he was originally going to do a series on writers' desks. But the advent of the lap-top means far more people have no fixed desk, but cart the lap-top around with them to work whenever and wherever they get the urge. So he had to widen his scope to the room they usually worked in instead. A sign of the times.

Incidentally, if you want to run the slideshow for yourselves, click on the tiny right-arrow under the main picture. They don't exactly make it clear!

Bloopers

I've decided to try my hand at adapting a fun paranormal short story I wrote earlier in the year as a chick-lit novel. It'll need quite a bit of work, not least expanding from around 20,000 words to full novel length, and giving the main character a sex change from male to female. I read it through from start to finish to see where I could add new sections, where I could expand what I'd already written etc, and came to the rather horrifying conclusion that I'd really rushed the writing, because there are three separate stonking continuity errors in one longish short story. Aargh.

For starters, one character (a vicar who tries to carry out an exorcism) simply vanishes into thin air and is never heard from or seen again. Then I refer to someone's portrait as hanging in two different places at the same time. And finally, when the two main characters get up to a bit of hanky-panky it's in a bedroom lined with rediscovered paintings - and yet in spite of bouncing around on the bed they never disturb a single one!

*headdesk*

I know I was writing it quickly for a deadline, but even so I'm usually more careful than that. It just goes to show that no matter how often you read something through at the time, you can nearly always find masses of bloopers later on. I've made a note... well, several actually. *blush*

Kindle update

A writer friend of mine has now also discovered a long-out-of-contract book available on Kindle, so mine wasn't a completely isolated case. Please, do take the time to run a quick search on yourself on Amazon, to make sure your own old books aren't being sold when they shouldn't be. Remember, you could effectively be paying someone else (your publisher and Amazon), and making no money yourself, if you don't.

Warning on Kindle

A friend of mine has just discovered that 'Roses in December' is still for sale on Kindle via Amazon.com, some five months after the book's contract came to an end. I've written to the publishers for clarification but don't know yet if this is just an oversight or something that Amazon have started doing to try to increase their own sales. Either way, I thought I would pass on the warning. If you're an author with a book that's relatively recently come out of contract, it's worth checking on Amazon.com to see if it's still for sale as a Kindle product. If it is, it obviously has repercussions for both royalty payments and any future publication of the book and I can only suggest contacting your publisher to ask them to sort it out.

Pointless words from hell

Having adapted, rewritten or edited several older stories lately, I'm getting very frustrated with myself and the number of completely pointless words I fill my writing with. All those 'so', 'really', 'a bit', 'that', 'almost', and 'already's are bad enough, but now I've noticed that I constantly use 'began to' or 'started to' instead of just saying what the character did. The number of 'he began to wonder...' or 'she started to feel that...'s I've had to chop out of stories is incredible. I can't believe I didn't spot them while I was writing!

So, does anyone else have any 'words from hell' that they use when they don't need to, and fill up their word-counts with? If so, I'd love to know what they are.

Anthology for a good cause

I heard yesterday that I've had a story accepted for 'I Do', an anthology in support of gay civil partnerships in California. All proceeds from the sale of the anthology will go to the Lambda Legal Fund to assist in the fight against Proposition 18, the recent law-change which has left thousands of civil partnerships in limbo.

The story is called 'Salad Days' and is another of my 'kitchen sink' romps, this time involving two men and some fennel. ;)

The anthology will be due out early next year and I'll keep everyone posted on release dates etc in due course.

Odd socks

What does happen to all the odd socks that get lost in the wash? For a fun take on this perennial problem, why not head over to Cobblestone Press and download their free magazine, CPQ. The September issue (out a little late due to editorial constraints) includes my short story Washday Blues, which is a complete romp involving two men, a washing machine and a pair of navy blue socks!

You can download the magazine, free, as a pdf file from the Cobblestone Press catalogue.

Have fun with the story, and watch out for those socks!

Worth a few pennies...

I don't often have adverts on my blog - but then I don't come across the sort of gritty urban fiction I like all that often. But here, for a change, is an anthology of hard, dark, urban short stories from Byker Books. Their tagline is 'industrial strength fiction' and their stated aim is to publish an antidote to chick-lit, which should give you some idea of what they're about!

For the record, I don't have a story in this volume, although I'm hoping 'Rock and a Hard Place' will be included in the follow-up.

-----


‘Radgepacket – Tales from the Inner Cities Volume One’ will be available from 17th November. This is a strictly limited edition publication featuring brand new fiction from up and coming British authors Andy Rivers, Will Diamond and Nick Boldock amongst others as well as an exclusive story from renowned novelist Danny King.

‘Byker Books have mustered a cabal of writers who write like men possessed about men possessed. Tales from the Inner Cities wades into the British underclass with tight clenched fists and eyes wide open.

Pick it up if you’re hard enough – put it down if you can.’

Matt Nesbitt, Oxfordshire Press

Radgepacket Volume One

-----

And what's more, it's only £5.99! I'm off to order my copy today.

Heat Haze

Velvet Mafia have duly uploaded their latest issue, complete with my short story 'Heat Haze'.

This is a very naughty little story set in a desert, where nothing is quite what it seems. English gentleman Edward lusts after his Arab guide Rashid, and gets more than he bargained for when they set up camp in the desert. But the story's title gives a clue as to what's really going on... ;)

Click the button below to read the story (for free!) at the magazine's website and as usual, I hope you really enjoy it.

Great news

It's not often I get two acceptances in the same week, let alone on the same day. But that's what happened today, much to my amazement and delight!

First of all the gltb online magazine Velvet Mafia emailed to accept 'Heat Haze' for an imminent issue. It's a naughty-but-fun tale set in a desert, where nothing is quite what it seems.

I'd just written back to thank them when a second email bounced into my inbox, this time from Byker Books who have taken 'Rock and a Hard Place' for inclusion in their Radgepacket - Tales from the Inner City anthology next year. The story should appear either in the second volume in the spring, or if that gets too full too quickly, in volume #3 in the summer. I can hardly wait!

I'll obviously post more details about when and where as soon as I have them. Right now I'm just glowing. It's a nice reward for some very hard work.

Lots of submissions

I've been sending stories off rather madly in all directions the last couple of weeks, to markets including a flash contest, various magazines, and the prestigious Aeon Award.

I'm not particularly hopeful on the latter; it's a national contest attracting some of the best names in sf and fantasy and I'm not sure I stand a chance against them. I've never had the courage to even enter it before. But this year I happened to have a story about time travel, which I've always liked, floating about, so I thought I'd bung it in and see what happens. If nothing else it's good experience. Hmm. Why does that sound ominously like the old 'it's good for the soul' whenever anything awful comes along? :D

Litfests - is this the end?

Private Eye had an interesting snippet on the future for literary festivals in the current economic crunch a couple of weeks ago.

Although some of the best known, longest running and most popular festivals (such as Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh) may be financially secure enough to survive, a lot of the others apparently depend for their existence on the attendance of authors who are paid (or at least heavily subsidised) to go along by their publishers.

The only trouble is, Random House have already announced they will no longer pay for author 'jollies' of this kind and other publishers are likely to follow suit. This could easily mean that the rash of literary festivals that sprang up in virtually every town and city (heavens, even Birmingham has one *g*) may find themselves at risk.

Has anyone ever been to a literary festival? I keep looking, but they all seem so dreadfully woolly - it seems virtually impossible to get details of exactly what's on when, and how you pay, and whether you can pay for the whole festival or only for individual workshops. As for accommodation and food, those have obviously never even crossed most of the organisers' minds.

It'll be interesting to see whether Private Eye is right, and the number of festivals falls off sharply during the next few months. In which case I might have missed my chance...

It's like buses...

None for a while, then two come along at once! I had not one but two stories released yesterday - first the Byker Books one (see previous post) and then Aspen Mountain put out 'Shifting Perspectives 2'.

This is a follow-up, unsurprisingly, to 'Shifting Perspectives' and contains sequels to both Feathered Friend and Emily Veinglory's The Rat Burglar, as well as a brand new story (about a shapeshifting fish!) by Sharon Maria Bidwell.

In my sequel, Steal the Sky, Avery insists on entering a pigeon race but gets off course and finds himself locked, naked, in a stranger's garden shed!

As ever you can find more details including full size cover art, a blurb, and how to order the book, on my website.

I had a blast writing Steal the Sky and hope you get as much enjoyment reading it.

Radgepacket?!

Byker Books have very kindly offered to feature Any Means Necessary on their website, even though its previously-published status means they can't use it in their anthology. It's up there right now in the 'Radgepacket' fiction section of tales of inner city life. Do please bear in mind this is a slightly abridged version from the story that appeared in 'Men of Mystery' (Haworth Press); if you like the story enough you might consider visiting my website and splashing out on the full-length version (plus a heap of other great gay stories in the anthology)!

You can read the Byker version here (the link is a little way down on the right hand side) and you can find out where to order 'Men of Mystery' here.

I think I've mentioned before that Byker Books are based in Newcastle (Byker is a district of the city) and they seem like a fun crowd to deal with. But please don't ask me what a radgepacket is - not being from the north-east myself, I have no idea!

So near and yet...

I had an amazingly quick response from Byker Books. They loved the story... but they don't take previously published work. Aaargh! Just my luck.

However, the editor has encouraged me to send along something else. I haven't got a free story that's the right length, the right subject matter, *and* hasn't been published before, but I do have one story that might work. It involves an ageing rock star and at the moment it's too long, but with a bit of judicious hacking I could probably get it close to the 3000 word target.

I've already dug out the file and I'm busy cutting it down to the bare bones and hope to have it ready to send off later in the week.

Another one away...

I've just this second hit the 'send' button on a new submission. Well, 'new' is a slightly misleading term since the story is actually an adaption of 'Any Means Necessary', the gritty little tale of two bent cops I had published in Haworth Press's 'Men of Mystery', which was shortlisted for a Lambda Award earlier in the year (the anthology, that is, not just my story).

Last week I spotted that Byker Books, an indie publisher based in Newcastle, were asking for short stories with a gritty, contemporary urban feel for a new anthology of 'tales of inner city life'. I thought that story fitted the call to a 't', so I brushed it off, downsized it by a couple of thousand words, toned down some of the graphic sex, and finally decided to take the plunge. I've got no idea if it's still too graphic for them, or even if they'll consider gay material, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Wish me luck!

Wrong Number

This is the title of a new 'flash' story appearing in the latest issue of Gay Flash Fiction, which came out yesterday.

The story involves a mobile phone call with disastrous results. It's rather darker than my usual flashes but it does have a twist in the tail. You can find it, together with the rest of the new batch of stories, at the magazine.

Enjoy!

Passive headache

One of the biggest challenges I've found in writing mostly for the American market is the little-known but surprisingly big gulf in grammar between the two languages. Over the last few years I've argued the toss with various US editors *g* and been geuinely surprised by their explanations. In one case, the use of passives, the difference is so great that I decided to write a little article about it, in the hope of smoothing the waters both for other British writers, and for American editors who may be tearing their hair out over the British language. :)

The article, 'Separated by a Common Language', is up at the British Writers Blog and you can read it here.

Swans, pigeons and fish, oh my!

In other words, we've had the cover art through for 'Shifting Perspectives 2', and very nice it is too. The model is the same one Aspen Mountain used on the first volume, but in a different pose, and the animals represent the shapeshifters in the stories.

Here's a thumbnail of it, and I'll be putting a full-sized version on my website in a few days' time. The book is due out at the end of the month so watch this space.

Home again...

We got back from holiday at the weekend having had a really good break - although we could both have done without the flu! (Which explains why I'm a day or two late updating this - it hit me quite hard for once and I've been having problems working out which way is up.)

The weather was surprisingly good, if rather misty a lot of the time, and we managed some good long walks and a couple of climbs (to the tops of mountains, that is - I don't go in for rock climbing!) The scenery in the Lake District is magnificent at any time of year, but I often think autumn, with the leaves turning to gold and the hillsides swathed in russet bracken and purple heather, takes some beating. Mind you, we did get a little too 'up close and personal' with one particular lot of bracken, on a precipitous slope heading from the Dunnerdale Valley towards Seathwaite Tarn, but that's another story. Let's just say my lungs didn't take very kindly to being head-first in the vegetation as I crawled up on my hands and knees!

The search for background material was partly successful; I called into a local bookshop and came away with two books. One is a sensible one, full of old postcards of the area together with interesting snippets of history. The other is emphatically not sensible - a lurid little volume of ghost stories and other hair-raising tales, most of which are probably apocryphal but highly entertaining!

Part way through the holiday I realised that the Lake District is changing fast, to the point where it's in danger of losing its identity. Village after village is filling up with the sort of shops you can find anywhere else in the country; gourmet restaurants are taking over from the local cafes and pubs that used to sell hearty portions of well-cooked local food (bliss after a long day out walking the fells); and the people who visit are changing from serious outdoorsy types to well-groomed older folks on coach tours. It all seems a little sad (especially as I've known and loved the area for the best part of thirty years) but I can't help thinking it will make an excellent backdrop for a novel. The pressure on the locals to either conform or go bust must be horrendous...

Holiday

It's that time of year again - we're off to the Lake District for two weeks' holiday. It's a very beautiful area of lakes, mountains, streams, waterfalls, moorland, long walks and pretty villages and we love visiting. I'm even hoping to set a novel up there at some point, so will take a notebook for research and look out for any interesting books. At least browsing the bookshops gives us something to do on the wet days - there's always plenty of those!

New short story

Has anyone else ever tried writing 'flash' fiction, or very *very* short stories? They often have a word count of only a few hundred words, sometimes even less, and I find writing them a real challenge. Just how do you tell a complete story in so few words?

For the last year or so I've been trying my hand at flash, with varying degrees of success. I freely admit that some stories work out better than others! One I'm particularly fond of, which was inspired by a friend's true story, is a creepy little tale of a dog and a beach. I've just posted 'all' 150 words of it on my website if anyone would like to take a peek. I hope you enjoy it. :)

'Boulevard' review

I've been forgetting to mention for the last week or so, but my latest book review of Jim Grimsley's 'Boulevard' is available to read in Forbidden Fruit. The book, a gay slice-of-life novel set in New Orleans in the 1970s, is an intriguing mix of literature and sleaze, and a window onto the world of gay sex in America before the advent of AIDS. You can find out whether I liked it or not by reading the review in Forbidden Fruit.

Anyone for Tolkien?

Fans of the great JRR might be interested in a little article I've just thrown together and posted up at the Britwriters' Blog. In it I've described some of the locations around Birmingham which Tolkien used in Lord of the Rings, either directly or as inspiration for some of the book's wonderfully atmospheric settings.

As I say in my post, you may not associate the rural Shire with Britain's buzzing second city but there are actually more links than you might expect, and some surprising hidden corners. Pop along to the Britwriters' Blog for more information, and pictures.

Writing through the mess

We seem to have had a constant stream of workmen in and out of the house the last couple of weeks - first to fix the roof, then to repair the boiler which stopped giving us hot water, and lastly to replace the boiler when the old one was condemned. Lots of workmen means lots of banging and lots of mess and it's been difficult to concentrate on anything, but yesterday I surprised myself by writing about 2000 words.

I've put aside the Irish novel for now because I was itching to actually write rather than just ploughing through edits. Instead, I've unearthed a novel (novella? longish short story?) about a reality tv show set on an exotic island, which I started a couple of years ago. I lost confidence in it after 4 or 5 chapters because I wasn't sure I knew enough about the workings of tv production, but I suddenly realised that I could turn it round and write it from a slightly different point of view, which wouldn't need so much of that inside knowledge. It also needed livening up as the first chapter was deadly dull.

By last night I'd finished the first chapter, re-writing it as a scene between Nancy, the main character's agent, and her flat-mate, rather than just Nancy's own internal musings. It reads a good deal better as a result. Now I need to tackle the second chapter, a board meeting at the tv production company's office, which should be a challenge given that our plumber is hammering again. Oh for some quiet time on my own to think.

Getting back to normal

I'm slowly and steadily getting back into the groove of work, after a week or two when I didn't feel like doing very much. Last week I wrote a flash fic about a snake, inspired by this site which gives you a new word each day to write about. It isn't always updated when it should be, but it's great inspiration because the words seem to have more than one meaning. Last week's, for instance, was 'diamond' which produced ideas for two shorts - one about the diamond pattern on an adder's back, and one based around a diamond-paned window. I wish a few of the places that run themed contests and anthologies would use such flexible words. I'm a little tired of trying to come up with stories about Velcro, or gloves!

Very sad news

My mother passed away rather suddenly yesterday afternoon. She'd been ill for a long time, but with a sort of long steady decline so it still came as rather a shock.

I'm going to be tied up with arrangements for the funeral and so on for the next couple of weeks, so please bear with me if I don't post much here during that time. Like Arnie, I'll be back. :)

The way forward for e-books?

The hype for the new Sony e-Reader has just caught my eye. On the face of it, this looks like a really good product. Not only will it store up to 160 books at once, but you can read a whole page at a time, just as you would with a real book, rather than having to scroll madly back and forth and up and down just to finish a sentence. (I once tried to read an e-book on my husband's palm-pc and nearly blinded myself.) And, apparently, one battery charge gives you enough juice for over 6,000 'page turns', which is (they say) enough to read War & Peace five times, assuming you would want to. LOL.

If this is as good as it sounds, it could be a real breakthrough in e-books and e-readers. Other products I've seen have been clunky, the screen has been small and hard to read, and you can often only store a handful of books at a time.

I do have a few concerns, though. One is the cost. This thing is currently retailing at £199 - that's around $400 - which is an almighty amount given that you have to pay for the books to put on it as well. I'm also baffled as to when it's going to be available. According to The London Paper, it's available in the UK today. But according to the official website, it's not available till September. Hmmm. And I'd need to actually see one in action before I splashed out the cash. Is the screen as clear as it looks in the promotional pictures? Is it easy to operate? Does it take ordinary batteries or do you have to pay for something that only Sony make/supply, at greater cost? How heavy is it to lug about? And does it handle any file type, or do you have to buy one specific type of e-book that only one bookstore chain or distributor actually sells?

Until some of those questions are answered, and until the cost comes down a bit, I won't be paying out for one. But it's the first e-reader I've seen that's even got close to tempting me...

Are you right for writing?

This is a fun little quiz by writer-and-guru Holly Lisle. It's short (10 questions) and only takes a minute or two to complete, but the results can be fascinating as well as fun.

I already knew that my easily-distracted mind is one of my biggest downfalls in sticking to writing and sure enough, those were the questions I scored lowest on. I also knew that I have a vivid imagination (too vivid?!) and I scored much higher on that.

There's a serious message behind the fun, too. Anyone who's in this for a fast buck, or for any other reason than the sheer love of writing, is probably in the wrong job!

You can find the 'Are you right for writing quiz' at Holly Lisle's site. I scored 60. How did you get on?

Shuddering halt

I knew it was too good to last. I raced through three chapters of edits on 'Gleams', only to discover that I'd said a certain event would happen at a certain time - and it doesn't! It's because I shoe-horned an extra chapter in and forgot to check the back timeline as well as the future one. Sigh.

I had two choices - either move the missing scene back to where it had been, or write an additional scene that explains why it doesn't happen when it's supposed to! In the end, I opted for the latter. Not only does it give me the chance to add another thousand words or so, but the current timeline helps to explain some tension between the main characters which wouldn't happen if I moved the scene again.

I'm about half way through the new linking piece (a wake, would you believe!) and hoping to finish that today.

But it's a good job I picked up on it before I sent the thing off to any publishers... ::headdesk::

Flying along

No, not me personally *g* but the edits on the Irish novel. I've been working at it steadily for the last three days and progress is surprisingly good. I crawled through one absolute pig of a chapter, where the wrong people did the wrong things at the wrong times and the whole thing needed re-working from the ground up. But once I'd cleared that hurdle I've been chugging along, polishing, tweaking, and adding explanations as I go, and have finished a total of three and a half chapters since Wednesday. I've got another tricky bit coming up now (the direct results of rewriting that earlier chapter - it's like pushing over a stack of dominoes) but even so I'm really pleased with the way it's going.

The novel was inspired by the wild rocky scenery of the Galway coast, and in particular by Gorumna, a small island linked to the mainland by a causeway, which brought a whole new meaning to the word 'wild'. The views were magnificent, the villages remarkably quiet and unspoiled, and there was a ruined church overlooking the sea. I can't find any decent pictures of the church, but you might like to see this brief YouTube video of the scenery to give you some idea of the place. It left a lasting impression on me and I decided it was the perfect spot to set a ghost story! Seven years later, 'Gleams of a Remoter World' is not far off being born.

Not good, professor

Chest infections and creativity do not mix. I've had one for the last week and haven't been able to do any writing whatsoever - I think my brain just switched off! I'm feeling a little more human today though, and determined to get on with something constructive. On the grounds that edits might be less taxing than out-and-out composing, I'm tempted to go back to my Irish novel. I'd love to have something else to offer a publisher if 'Roses' ever makes it to print, especially something in a similar genre. That way, if they like 'Roses' and it's selling well and they say 'Have you got anything else like this?' I can cheerfully say yes and hand over another manuscript.

Of course, reality is never as straightforward as that, and 'Gleams' needs a lot of work before it's ready to unleash on any publisher. It doesn't help that I wrote it in fits and starts over a period of seven years! During that time my writing style changed, my idea of good structure changed, and my plans for the characters themselves changed. The result, I'm afraid to say, is a dog's breakfast. One major character swapped gender half way through and although I used search and replace I'm still finding places where 'she' is actually 'he'. And as usual, I've under-written the early parts badly, so they sound hopelessly rushed.

Still, I was making good progress on it earlier in the year and it would be good to get my teeth into something longer again. I'm dragging the file towards me as I type!

All in a flap *g*

I had some good news the other day as Aspen Mountain have accepted our 'pitch' for a follow-up to Shifting Perspectives, with sequels to some of the stories including a brand new outing (pun not intended *g*) for my shape-shifting pigeon. It's early days yet but I'm hoping Steal The Sky will be available in Shifting Perspectives 2 in the autumn (fall), and will also include a sequel from Emily Veinglory, and a brand new story from Sharon Maria Bidwell.

I'm really pleased because this is pretty much the first time I've ever written a sequel to one of my stories. Usually I write with such a twist in the tail that a sequel wouldn't really work because the element of surprise would have gone, but when I looked at Feathered Friend, my story in the original volume, I realised that I'd left it open enough for further adventures. So, a further adventure is what I wrote, about a pigeon race that goes horribly wrong.

I'll post more details as soon as I know myself, but just wanted to share the news first.

Changed my mind

I've pretty much decided not to work on the old historical for Lace & Blade. Not so much because of the payment issues (after all, it might only be $10 but it would also be a print credit on my resume) but more because of lack of time. The deadline is 1 August, which is rapidly approaching (too rapidly!) and on a second read-through I realised the story needed a LOT more work than I thought it did. I don't think I could get it finished in time. Never mind, there'll be other places to send it if/when I do pummel it into shape.

The current issue of Mslexia has some tips from journalist & novelist Aminatta Forna. They're all good advice, but I particularly liked this one:

When you get stuck, it can be quite useful to go back and work on what you've already written. Perhaps the story has slightly changed since you wrote that chapter? 'Housekeeping' work - revisiting, editing - keeps you going with the flow.

This isn't advice you see very often. More usually, you're told as a writer that going back and editing something stops the flow and is therefore a Bad Thing. But this sounds very sensible, and I've done it myself a few times and found it worked. I just have to be careful not to get so bogged down in the minutiae of whether it should be 'and' or 'but' that I lose track of the story entirely!

Inspiration

I had a sudden Eureka moment yesterday, in the bath of all places! A brand new idea for a novel popped fully formed into my head, leaving me splashing around because I had no paper or pen to hand to make notes. I remembered what I could, got out, got dry and scurried off to jot things down. That sort of lightning strike doesn't happen very often and it can be rather frustrating when it does; it's as though an entire novel has suddenly been downloaded into my brain - plot, structure, characters, even chunks of narrative and dialogue. If only I could find some way of hooking myself up to a computer and re-downloading it onto disk, it would save an enormous amount of hard work and trouble. It never works like that, though, does it? That would just be *too* easy. LOL. Instead I have to hoick it out bit by bit over months or even years, and by the time my typing has caught up with my brain I've forgotten most of the original inspiration. Sigh. Who'd be a writer? ;)

So, where does inspiration strike you? Bath? Bed? While you're asleep? Half way round the supermarket so you start babbling about elves or monsters in the middle of the home baking aisle? I'd love to know!

Slow progress

The historical for Lace & Blade won after all, but I'm not making much progress. It doesn't help that I'm having to retype it from scratch because the only electronic copy I had was on a cd that got corrupted. Luckily I had a printed version but retyping nearly 5,000 words takes longer than you might think, especially when you keep wanting to change stuff while you're typing. And I do seem to want to change a lot. This is an old story, and it shows. Far too much 'tell not show', far too much waffle, not nearly enough direct dialogue or action. It's going to need a lot of work even when I've finished the retyping. For the moment, I still think it's worth it. There's a good story in there somewhere, I just have to find it and drag it, kicking and screaming, out into the world.

Another story off

Formatting? Check. Extended blurb? Check. Cover letter? Check.

I duly sent off the ghost story to Cobblestone Press for their halloween anthology, and had an auto response back. This is something I wish more publishers would do. It takes away all that horrible uncertainty about whether your book or story ever turned up, and saves a lot of wasted time of the 'wait six months, query, and find they never got it in the first place' variety. It must save time for overworked editors too, because they don't have to bother with all those endless 'did you ever get my story?' emails. And it's so easy to set up. I managed it in about five minutes flat with Forbidden Fruit and I'm certainly not a tech-head. So why don't more publishers do it? After all, it's the modern email equivalent of including a stamped addressed postcard with your submission so the concept is hardly new. Baffling. I feel a campaign coming on. :)

I've been working on 'Got Ghosts?', one way or another, for so long that now it's done and sent I'm slightly stuck for what to work on next. I could dust off a historical for Lace and Blade, which Erastes mentioned the other day, but to be honest 2c a word on a short story doesn't amount to very much. Or I could go back to the edits on my Irish novel, which I was making quite good progress on, or perhaps the new contemporary set in Birmingham, or a short story I've just discovered in my wip file that I'd forgotten about, or.... Oh dear. I think I'll have to flip a coin.

I must be keen...

I even worked on Saturday morning!

And very productive it was too. I sent off the 'wrong number' flash fic to GFF with a cover letter etc, and then settled down to read through the new bit of the ghost story. Usually when I rewrite scenes in an existing story I have to polish extensively. I've always said it's rather like knitting - you put a sleeve or something down for a few days and when you pick it up again your tension has changed and the new knitting comes out a totally different size! Well, writing often seems like that and my style or tone can change subtly from one day to the next (I suppose depending on my mood). Luckily this time that hadn't happened and I only needed to fiddle with it a bit before I was happy with it. It's much better than it was and the joke at the end helps to finish the story off so much more clearly than just sort of trailing off into nothing. :)

I didn't have time to do the cover letter and all the other submission paraphernalia but at least the story itself is now ready to go.

Finished!

The re-write of the ghost story, that is. Phew, what a struggle it turned out to be! I got the lads into the bedroom but they rebelled and didn't want to cooperate at all. Still, it's done now and I've added about 1100 words as a result - and what with that and juggling the ending slightly, it's definitely improved. I'll let it lie fallow for a couple of days before the final read-through, and then I'll send it off to Cobblestone for their Halloween call.

Now I'm off to look at a flash fic called 'Wrong Number' that I'm thinking of subbing to the next issue of Gay Flash Fiction.

Working on...

Right now I'm re-writing the end of 'Got Ghosts?', the ghost story set in an ancient English country house. I wasn't overly impressed with the way I'd ended it, but had to finish it off in a bit of a rush to meet the Samhain deadline a few weeks back. Sadly it didn't get picked for their anthology, but Cobblestone Press have a call out for paranormal romance for Halloween and I'm hoping to have it ready in time for that. As well as a bit of juggling of dialogue to get a joke at the very end, I'm also adding a sex scene. I know perfectly well that sex sells *g* and the original story didn't have any, just a couple of kisses and an interrupted clinch. ;)

Luckily the Cobblestone maximum word count is much higher than Samhain's was, so I've got plenty of space to get the two guys into bed together in the Small Blue Bedchamber, on Adam's great-grandmother's antique patchwork quilt. The only thing to decide is what to do with them once I've got them there. :D And fast, because the deadline's in early July and I'm not sure I'll be ready in time. Eeek!

Beach Nuts is out!

I've just heard today that the brand new issue of Gay Flash Fiction is up and running, complete with Beach Nuts (see previous entry for details).

Do pop along to www.gayflashfiction.com for a free read - and I hope you enjoy it!

Coming soon to a zine near you

Good news this morning - Gay Flash Fiction magazine has accepted 'Beach Nuts' to appear in the next issue. GFF is now the sister-zine of Forbidden Fruit and does exactly what it says on the tin - it specialises in flash fiction (under 1000 words) with a gay theme.

'Beach Nuts' is a very silly little story featuring two men who find themselves bothered by a nutter on the beach, and decide to take matters into their own, er, hands. I wrote it specially for GFF so I'm really delighted that the editors liked it enough to accept it.

The new issue is due soon, probably in the next couple of weeks, but I'll let everyone know once it's available so you can read my story. Or if you prefer, keep an eye on my website where I'll be announcing the release when it happens.

Short story delay

Yup, that's a short story *and* a short delay. LOL.

'Washday Blues' was due to come out in the June issue of Cobblestone Quarterly Magazine, and I was really looking forward to it 'cos I haven't had anything new come out for a while. But they needed the issue to promote their brand new vampire anthology and have held over the fiction to the next issue instead.

'Washday Blues' will now be coming to a zine near you (ie Cobblestone Quarterly) in September, so I get to look forward to it all over again. And I'm hoping they'll be running a brief interview with me in the same issue, so watch this space for further updates.

Roll on September. :D

And yet another new blog...

When I signed up for Wordpress in order to join the Britwriters Blog (see previous post for details) I got myself a free Wordpress blog. And at first, had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I already have this blog, an LJ account and a Myspace page and was running out of ideas what to post! Then I thought about book reviews. I did have an old site for posting reviews of books I'd read but it was on a website that I hardly use any more and most of the reviews were simply gathering dust.

So I'm gradually copying the old reviews across to the new site and will also add new reviews as and when I write them. I'm even including some reviews that I've had published or posted on other blogs and magazines.

I have a very strange a eclectic taste in books - anything from fantasy to the labels on sauce bottles! - so the site's going to be a rather mixed bag. But hopefully there'll be something interesting on there, and it might even persuade people to rush out and buy a book or two. :)

You can find the new version of The Sharpened Quillhere.

Britwriters Blog

There's a brand new blog in town. Britwriters is a collective of writers who live and work in Britain, but publish most of their work in America. To find out about the opportunities, experiences, and occasional frustrations this brings in its wake, as well as gaining an insight into British life, why not pop over to Britwriters and catch up with me, Alex Beecroft, Ansley Vaughan to name but a few?

New story available

I meant to blog about this last week but ran out of time. Eep. The latest issue of Forbidden Fruit (#15, would you believe?) went live early in April and includes my very silly short story 'Rash Moment'. This tells the tale of a fractious hospital patient and his lover who gets his own back with the aid of some lipstick and a very understanding nurse! You can read the story here and I hope you enjoy it.

In the same issue there's also an interview with yours truly, which the new editorial team insisted on doing for some reason. *g*

And the zine, as ever, is stuffed with great stories, articles and artwork after some sterling hard work from the new team. I'm delighted. See the results here.

Lambda Awards finalist

I've just discovered that the Haworth Press m/m anthology 'Men of Mystery', which includes my short story Any Means Necessary, has been listed as a finalist in the lgbt anthology category of the 2008 Lambda Awards. Needless to say I'm absolutely delighted. The anthology is a great-looking book, very nicely produced with lovely cover art and a selection of fiery-hot stories. It's up against some pretty, ahem, stiff opposition, but watch this space to see if it wins.

Pigeon snaffled!

Many congratulations to Bethany, who won my Spot the Pigeon contest and was the first name out of the virtual pigeon basket. Bethany wins herself a copy of 'Shifting Perspectives' and I hope very much that she enjoys her prize.

Many thanks to everyone who took part. If your name wasn't drawn this time, do keep an eye out for future contests when you might have more luck!

Last call for the pigeon!

Don't forget that my 'spot the pigeon' contest finishes on Friday (29th February).

If you haven't already taken part, and would like a chance to win a copy of Shifting Perspectives, then pop along to my website for full details on how to enter.

And good luck!

Review on Speak Its Name

I've just had my latest book review uploaded on Speak Its Name, the gay historical review site that I've done a few things for before.

This time, it's Patrick Gale's Facts of Life, a mammoth tome I picked up in my local Oxfam charity bookstore. I absolutely loved Gale's Rough Music and Little Bits of Baby; you can find out whether this one floated my boat as much as those *g* by going to the review.

Anyone for lipstick?

I've had a new story accepted for the forthcoming issue of Forbidden Fruit, due out in March.

Rash Moment is a very tongue-in-cheek little tale about a man who gets his own back on his lover with the aid of some lipstick and a very understanding nurse!

You can find further details at my website, but I'll be posting updates here once I know exactly when the zine is due out.

Contest update

The organisers have waded through more than 1,500 entries, and the winners have been announced in the Blast in the New contest. If you entered and haven't already received your prize(s), pop along to the contest blog now to see if your name is on the list.

And I very much hope that whoever won Shifting Perspectives and Watery Grave thoroughly enjoys reading them!