My novel, Spellhaven, is out now from Mirror World Publishing.
Every Midnight, a short story of mine is published in Swords and Sorcery Magazine for June 2017.
Spellhaven
Mirror World Publishing have accepted my novel, Spellhaven and are planning to bring it out in August this year.
I am thrilled about this. I really enjoyed working on Spellhaven and it is wonderful have the opportunity to share my imagined world with other people. Mirror World have been very welcoming and efficient. I look forward to working with them over the next few months. Their website is at mirrorworldpublishing.wordpress.com and they have put up a great introductory post about my book.
Short Stories
I had two stories published in December, which rounded off a good year for me. Greytooth was in Hammer of the Gods, an anthology of Viking stories, and Strawberries in the Snow in Three Drops from a Cauldron, the Midwinter issue.
My other stories published in 2016 were –
The Winter Queen, in Midnight Circus, Winter 2016
The Night Hound, in Detectives of the Fantastic, volume IV from Horrified Press
Stolen Dreams, in Aurora Wolf, the September issue
The Drinker of Tears, the story of the month circulated to members of the British Fantasy Society in June.
Most of these were critiqued before I submitted them anywhere, either by my online writing group, the BFSA Orbit, or Middle Oak, a small group who meet face to face once a month. I have found it really helpful to have feedback from other writers, who can tell me when I’m making things overcomplicated or not getting a point across in the way I hope.
Focus
I am starting work on a new article for Focus, the British Science Fiction Association’s magazine for writers. I enjoyed the two I wrote last year. The first, High Stilts: the use of Language in Fiction, in the Winter 2015/16 issue, was about the different techniques writers can use to add flavour to their writing, now that high-flown language is not much appreciated these days. The second article, Systems of Magic, was in the issue for Summer/Autumn 2016, and was about the advice writers are given on the way they develop secondary or invented worlds. Both gave me a chance to think more deeply about my approach to writing,to include examples from some of my favourite authors and discover a few new ones.
The new article will be about the challenges of writing a novel but I haven’t planned it out in detail yet.
My latest stories are Thorncandle House, in Sword and Sorcery, September 2015 and Inside, in BFS Horizons, #1, which has come out this October. I also have a couple of book reviews in the BSFA’s Vector for Winter 2015. One of the reasons I undertake reviews is that it spurs me on to tackle books I might not otherwise have read – in this case, I particularly enjoyed Kim Newman’s Night Mayor. The meetings of London Clockhouse writers have begun again after a summer break and this is also good for spurring me on as we workshop ideas for stories. Something often comes out that I might never have thought of otherwise.
My most recent fiction publications are short stories. The Lion Keeper’s Daughter is in Outposts of Beyond, October 2014. Torn to Rags is in Wordland 5, the True Love issue published in February this year. That story was co-written with David McGroarty, another member of London Clockhouse Writers.
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