I've won a book!

Rather to my surprise, actually, since I almost-to-never win anything, and I had no idea I was taking part in a contest!

It turns out the contest was being run by fellow author Anne Brooke to promote her latest book launch at Riptide, a new(ish) publisher specialising in gay fiction. I commented on one of Anne's blog posts to congratulate her on the new release and hey presto! the very next day she told me I'd won the contest and could choose any book from her impressive back list.

The one I've selected is called The Bones of Summer and is a gay mystery thriller involving missing persons, amnesia and a disastrous past love affair. Oooh-er. It sounds right up my street and I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

How many endings?

I caught part of an interview on BBC Breakfast this morning with author Caroline Smailes, who has apparently written her latest novel with no fewer than eleven different endings which the reader can choose between. Apparently she did this after readers complained the endings of her last two novels were 'too gloomy'.

I missed hearing how the technology is supposed to work but this article in The Daily Telegraph has more detail. It seems that the book will be published electronically and the readers will have to answer questions and depending on the answers the software will select an ending for them. This sounds a little too much like those quizzes that turn up on people's blogs from time to time, where you answer a bunch of random questions to find out which chocolate centre you resemble or what sort of an elf you are.

It's an intriguing idea and one that explores the possibilities of new digital technology, but I don't think it's for me. Not as a writer, and certainly not as a reader. When I read a book I'm not aware of turning the pages, I'm not aware that it is a book. Instead I slip inside the world the author has created and become a part of it, only to surface again when I turn the final page. If I have to stop and answer questions about my mood or my favourite colour it will pull me right out of the story, which surely defeats the object of the book.

And as a writer, it would simply drive me wild. The BBC also interviewed author Josephine Cox at the same time and she explained that her characters 'write' her books and that they themselves choose their own, natural, ending depending on the events they've been through. This is very much the way I write and I'm not sure a book would feel properly finished unless I'd written the last sentence and drawn a (metaphorical) line under it.

I suspect that like most new technologies it will become something of a fad for a while, but would you really want to have to do this for every book you read? Wouldn't you rather the book's author had already done the hard work for you?

Stars (of both varieties)

We've just arrived home after a long weekend away in London attending the annual 'AstroFest' conference. Dave started his lifetime ambition of a degree in astronomy last year and managed to bag one set of free tickets for the event, so we bought ourselves another set and indulged in a two-for-the-price-of-one weekend away, while using some of his vast store of hotel points to stay in a large hotel in Kensington for only the price of breakfast.

The conference was a blast. Highlights for me including the particle-physisist Simon Singh (who turns up on learned programmes on BBC4) setting fire to a gherkin live on stage; and collecting a smile from Brian May. Yes. That Brian May. He was attending in his 'doctor of astrophysics' persona, not as a rock guitarist, but I've been a fan of Queen for years so it was still rather special.

The talks were fascinating and much to my amazement I enjoyed the super-scientific ones (Lucie Green on the structure of the sun's surface; Don Kurtz on the role of the Kepler mission in discovering new exo-planets) much more than the more historical ones. Given what a duffer at maths and physics I was at school, that was a major surprise.

In addition to cramming in sixteen talks in two days, we also managed a bit of sight-seeing, including lots of exploring round the local streets. Kensington is an area neither of us knew very well and we fell in love with it. It's full of stunning houses; rows of old mews cottages half-hidden down back alleys; blue plaques to famous residents like Benjamin Britten, Hubert Parry, T S Eliot and Alfred Hitchcock; churches; and garden squares. It's also home to some of the most expensive property anywhere in the country so I doubt we'll be moving there any time soon. Add in a run round the natural history museum and a more sedate visit to the science museum, as well as several nice meals out, and all in all it was a very successful trip. Apart from the train journey home, which should have involved one train and taken about two hours. Four hours, three trains and one bus later we finally made it home. Sunday rail travel is a bugger.

Oh, and the gherkin? Dr Singh hooked it up to an electrical current to show the sodium ions (in the pickling brine) glowing orange... and accidentally left it connected just a little bit too long. The smell was interesting, at any rate.

Spooky

The story is finished and sent, so I finally have time to drop in and report a couple of slightly strange experiences from the previous week.

The first involved finding a very large bright green caterpilar making its way determinedly upstairs. Nothing odd in that, you might think, except that it's the middle of winter and we're having a particularly cold spell outdoors. Added to that the stairs are in the middle of the house, about as far from any doors and windows as you can get. And caterpilars aren't exactly the Speedy Gonzalezs of the insect world... and it can hardly have flown. Just where it had come from, and where it was going, are still creeping me out.

Two days later the doorbell rang and when I opened the door there was nobody there. Nothing unusual in that either, of course - kids do it all the time, not to mention a tradesmen or two when they realise they've got the wrong address. But this was different, because I was right by the front door when it happened, and I could see through the glass panels that there really was nobody there. Our front garden is small and the gate is in line with the front door, so unless someone folded themselves up and escaped down a crack in the paving slabs, there was nowhere for them to have gone. So who or what rang the bell? It's still a complete mystery to me.

Mind you, nothing can hold a candle to this photograph in the Westmorland Gazette, of a woman's figure at the window of an empty house.

I don't think I really believe it's a ghost - it looks more like a reflection of someone outside and is probably too small for the proportions to work. But it's a wonderful picture nonetheless, and just creepy enough to send shivers down your spine!

No time...

I realise I've been neglecting this blog the last week or so but there's a good reason for that. Last Friday I spotted a call for submissions from a publisher which might be right up my street, for a theme that I wrote a story about many years ago. The story needed a complete rewrite but I figured I could do that, and get it to the length the publisher was asking for. The only problem? The closing date is 1st February, which was only ten days away.

Writing a 10,000 word story from scratch in only ten days is a tall order, especially for me as I tend to work more slowly than some writers. Nevertheless, I've parked my bum in my study chair every day this week, and have made remarkable progress. Luckily, because I'd already written a version of the story, I knew where it was going which has helped. Now I'm only a couple of thousand words or so away from finishing it, and hoping against hope that I'll have time for that next week.

In the meantime, I shall reapply nose to screen and get typing again. Sorry for the silence. I should be back soon!

Kindle charges

This post is really aimed at any writers out there thinking about publishing their work on Kindle; the information has filtered down to me (via a writer friend) from the head honcho at electronic publisher Untreed Reads.

Apparently, for any work priced at less than $2.99 (or the £ equivalent in the UK, presumably), Amazon takes back a hefty 65% on every sale. For titles over $2.99, Amazon check regularly and if they find it for sale at a lower price anywhere else they will automatically reduce the Kindle price to match and only pay royalties on the lower price.

It's worth bearing this information in mind, especially for anyone hoping to put out single-title short stories on Kindle, as it will have a big effect on the amount of income you can expect from your sales.

There's always a downside, isn't there?

Houston, we have a cover...

And here it is - the brand new, just-announced cover for Radgepacket 6, the latest volume from Byker Books.

The book itself is due out in March (I've already blogged about the launch party) so there's not too long to wait before you can get your sticky mitts on another great collection of gritty 'industrial-strength' stories from authors established and new. Including yours truly, with a tale about a man jumping out of a birthday cake in his... birthday suit.

I hope that snippet, and the cover, whet your appetite!

Scribbling again

Ooof, that was a long break from writing over Christmas and the New Year. First there was a two to three week period in December when I seemed to do nothing but plan for presents, shop for presents, wrap presents, pack presents, and heave presents up the high street to post them.

Then there was the whole holiday period, which dragged on even longer because both Christmas Day and New Year's Day fell on Sundays, so we had to have extra bank holidays to make up.

And then there's that 'first few days back at work' when you're itching to get going again but your brain has been idle so long it's effectively shut down and you have to scrape around for every word.

However, I'm delighted to say that the scraping is over and I'm starting to make some decent progress again at last. I've picked up an old ghost story for now and am having a go at re-writing it since it had some Major Issues I need to work out. Let's hope I can keep the momentum going long enough to actually work them out.

Currently reading

Right now, Dicken's 'Great Expectations', which we watched a brilliant BBC adaptation of over Christmas and enjoyed so much I decided to dig the book out again. I haven't got very far with it yet but I must admit I'd forgotten how funny Dickens can be. Funny, but also caustic. Last night I was giggling over his description of a village school where the children paid twopence a week to watch the elderly teacher fall asleep!

It's quite a contrast to the last book I read, 'The Brutal Art' by Jesse Kellerman, which is far more modern in style and content but in its own way no less good. The book is mostly narrated by Ethan, a rich playboy art dealer who discovers some artwork by a tenant in one of his squillionaire father's properties. The artwork is original, brilliant and holds clues to a series of murders decades ago, but the artist himself has vanished and Ethan sets out to discover who he is, where he is, and whether he had anything to do with the murders.

Ethan is a lot more entertaining than you might expect, with a good line in caustic humour of his own, and his search for the truth is intriguing. The book also features interludes from the past as we follow Ethan's family from their first arrival in New York up to the present day. Some of these are beautifully written and surprisingly poignant. One or two include dialogue which is reported strangely without the use of quotation marks (something I usually hate) but in this case there's a very specific reason for that and it's actually rather clever.

The ending is possibly the weakest part of the book; part felt slightly 'bolted on', and there was one (mercifully short) 'Dear Reader' bit which stuck out like a sore thumb. But on the whole, it keeps you guessing right up to the end, with some very unexpected twists and turns. I can thoroughly recommend it.

Passive explained

Lately I've been seeing some increasingly odd statements from editors about the use of passive in writing. Chief among these are that passive is a tense, not a voice, and that every single instance of the verb 'to be', especially when used in past tense, is an example of passive.

So I was delighted to come across writer Pat Wrede's delightful, simple yet intelligent blog post on the subject of passive and the sudden passion for 'de-wasing'. She puts it so much better than I ever could (I can never remember the names of all those past tenses!) and it's well worth popping along for a read.

If we spread the word, we might be able to stop an entire section of the English language being put 'off limits' for the wrong reasons.

Radgepacket 6 launch party

Byker Books have just announced the date, time and venue of the launch party for their latest volume of 'Tales from the Inner Cities', Radgepacket 6. As with several of the previous parties it's being held at The Back Page, a spectacularly well-stocked sports bookshop in Newcastle upon Tyne (England, in case you weren't sure!), and this time it's on Saturday 10th March 2012 between 12pm and 3pm.

I have a story appearing in the book, but this far ahead I can't say for sure whether I'll be able to attend the launch or not. We do so much travelling these days that I never know where I'm going to be more than two weeks in advance, so two whole months away is a step too far. If I can be there I will, though, and I'll obviously let everyone know a little nearer the time.

In the meantime the book's editor and an assortment of authors will be there, and there'll be free drinkies and nibbles on the house, so if you've got a spare Saturday afternoon and want to get a signed copy of Radgepacket 6 for your collection, do pop along to:

The Back Page
56 St Andrews Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 5SF

You never know, you might even meet me there!

Not so much white as wet

There's been no snow over Christmas this year. Our neighbours' children were most upset, but all the adults have been quietly saying 'thank heavens for that' and enjoying being able to get about without the aid of spiked boots, 4-wheel-drive and sledges.

Even so, the weather has been atrocious, with almost non-stop rain that's been either diagonal or horizontal depending on whether the wind was gale force or severe gale force.

We'd hoped to get out for some nice walks over the holiday period, at least at lower levels below the snow line. Sadly, the awful weather has mostly put paid to that. We can cope with rain OR wind, but put both together and umbrellas become impediments last seen flying in the general direction of Yorkshire, and not even our expensive waterproofs can keep us dry.

We did manage one walk on Christmas afternoon, as penance for the turkey. It was only short, to one of the small range of fells at the back of the town, and it was more than enough for us. The rain bounced, the wind howled, the path was indescribably muddy in spite of being on a slope, and when we crawled, slithered and sludged our way to the top it was so blotted out that we couldn't see a thing. Not even the lake, which is a pretty big target to hide so successfully. We stood there for a minute or two staring at the fog, blew rain drops off the ends of our noses, and slithered back home. Not one of our more successful outings, and since then we've stuck to the pavements. Figuratively if not quite literally. Roll on spring!

Merry Christmas

Hope it's a good one for everyone with plenty of relaxing and all your favourite things, be they food, drink, dreadful old films on telly, or good books!

I'm off to partake of all of the above but should be back in a couple of days' time, rested, fed, watered and entertained.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Daily Flash available at Amazon UK

The title says it all, really - Daily Flash 2012, complete with four of my short stories, is now available to buy at Amazon UK. This is good news for British readers as it means you can order the book without paying shipping all the way from America.

Try this link if you'd like to buy the book.

And even more good news - the book should shortly be available in e-book format for both Nook and Kindle. I don't yet know how much it will cost, or have any links, but I will post an update as soon as I have more details.

Currently reading

A couple of charity shop finds. And they could hardly be more different if they tried.

The first is a 'two books in one volume' by David Hewson, who specialises in thrillers set in modern-day Italy but often with historical overtones. Or perhaps I should say hysterical, since the one I've tackled, 'The Garden of Evil', reads like Dan Brown on a slightly better day. The style is reasonable but the plot is a wild and indigestible concoction of murder, religious cults and medieval art and the characters are so wooden you could chop them into planks and make wardrobes out of them. Indeed, the only character who came to life in any way died at the end of the first chapter and after that I rapidly lost interest, not helped by illogical and irrational dialogue that sounds as though a mad editor has simply hacked out every tenth line, so none of the conversations quite make sense.

I've given up, at least for now, and moved on to the other book - 'The Brutal Art' by Jesse Kellerman. So far I've only read a handful of chapters but it's brilliant. Oddly, this also involves art and murder but both elements are far more original and far more gripping and the style is a wonderful mix of vivid description and self-deprecating, wry humour. I can't wait to read the rest.

Both books only cost me 75p each, which makes the latter an unbelievable bargain and the former less of an annoyance than if I'd paid full price for it.

You know it's cold when...

...even the pigeons hunker down, fluff themselves up and huddle together for warmth. We walked down to the lake yesterday in a brief gap between showers of horizontal sleet and I managed to grab some more nice pictures, both of the snowy fells in the distance and also of one or two fun little things closer to home.

Here are the huddled pigeons, and some tourists have tremendous fun feeding the birds, as well as a shot of the fells looking dramatic again:

Early snow

We've had the first snowfall of the winter here - lots of sleet showers over the weekend and then yesterday morning we woke to find everything white.

On Sunday after the heaviest of the showers we took the car, carefully, to the top of Kirkstone Pass where we could get great views without having to venture too far from home. It was snowing the whole time we were up there and there was snow on the verges but the road itself was fine, thank goodness, as it's 1500 feet above sea-level and can get pretty hairy up there.

The car park was quite literally flowing (there's been a lot of rain recently, even before the snow) but I managed to wade about and get some half decent photos of the fells looking their dramatic best. Here are a few to show you what I mean:

A distant shot of the fells taken from further down the road to the pass.

The top of the pass with Red Screes in the background.

Not so much Red Screes as white...

Daily Flash 2012

Once again the editors at Pill Hill Press have bust a gut (hopefully not literally... eww) in order to ensure Daily Flash 2012 is ready before Christmas. They've done it, and the book is available right now from Pill Hill themselves and also from Amazon US.

Don't forget that the anthology contains not one but four short stories by yours truly, ranging in subject matter from depressed vampires to enigmatic dogs, scarecrows to a monster in a maze.

More ordering options will be added to the list shortly, including Amazon UK for any British readers not wanting to pay shipping all the way from America!

In the meantime if anyone you know loves reading, then a collection of 366 stories, one for every day of the year, might make the perfect Christmas present.

Shark tales?

Well, not quite, but I have a snappy little story up at The Pygmy Giant today. It's called Make It Snappy and it's set in one of these fish foot spas that are suddenly springing up on every high street, all over the country. We had two open in our small village in the Lake District over the summer; sadly not even the tourist trade could keep both going and one closed a few weeks ago. The other still seems to be packed!

Sticking my feet in a tank full of fish that may or may not have been cleaned since the last pair of feet were flapping about in there is not my idea of heaven so I've never actually tried the experience for myself. I'm told the fish tickle... and that it's an effective way of dealing with all sorts of skin conditions and diseases. But... but... oh, I don't know... FEET. Ugh.

Still, I hope everyone can get over their various feety dislikes and enjoy the story. It's dark, it's slightly evil, but I'm hoping it's fun.

Heave away, haul away

We seem to be booked into a sudden flurry of concerts and events lately. Last night it was the turn of Fishermen's Friends at Birmingham Town Hall. They're a group of Cornish fishermen and artisans who have become famous for singing sea shanties and other old folk songs, often in the open air in their home village of Port Isaac.

The sea shanties were particularly appropriate last night as we could have done with a boat to row ourselves into the city centre and back - it was absolutely sloshing down!

I'm not sure shanties are my favourite type of music - they all sound the same after a while - but the evening was great fun. The men do wonderful harmonies and because there are ten of them they can give it some 'oomph', and they sang a good selection of songs including a methodist hymn, a calypso number and what sounded like a negro spiritual, which helped keep the sound more varied. And in between the numbers, the group's blogger/raconteur did a great line in 'patter' with jokes and snippets of information about Cornish history and the background to the songs. He turned the evening from a recital to an event, and was a lot funnier than two of the comedians we saw the other night.

The support band Flats & Sharps were a revelation, too. When they came on stage they looked incredibly young and we thought 'oh, no, yet another group of festival-band-wannabes'. Then we saw their instruments - double bass, banjo, mandolin... and thought 'no'. Turns out they're a teenage bluegrass band from Cornwall (now there's a combination) and they were incredibly good. I think I preferred them to the main act, actually...