Today I learned two things in quick succession from this news article in the Graun: There is currently a CO2 shortage in the UK This is affecting the production of a number of food items, due to CO2 being required for use in their packaging, not least of which is …
This is not the blog post I was going to write. I was going to write about how my outlook has changed over the past year – politics, changes in the genre I tend to hang round in, understanding more about my own writing, and working my way through a …
It’s November 30th, aka the day of reckoning in the world of NaNoWriMo. I’ve not “won”. I did write a total of just over 25k words, which was my minimum target, and I almost achieved my bigger target of writing every day (total of 3 days over the month with …
Every so often when I’m writing I come across something which, when I look at it again, I realise “Oh! I wouldn’t have thought that a few years ago!” It’s not just age/maturity/extra life experience which causes these moments for me, it’s also where I live, how we live, and …
I’ve spent most of the last year writing – or trying to write – short stories. Most failed at the first hurdle: I found out while writing that the story was too long to be short, so those ideas have been put to one side to be worked on later. …
Not very busy recently with the ‘getting words on page’ part of writing, alas, though I’ve been plotting, making notes, and reading around for the two projects I want/need to get on with this Autumn. First up is a short story for Manifold Press’s No Holds Bard anthology. I decided quite …
There’s different types of dangerous books. We’ve all heard tales about books which are directly dangerous to your health: either the arcane knowledge they contain will drive you mad, cause you to become possessed, or some other terrible fate – possibly ending with the book reading you rather than the …
It’s nearly a year now since Under Leaden Skies was released. It seems both far longer and far shorter than that – I’ve certainly learned a lot in the last 12 months, and my writing has developed in ways I hadn’t expected. My confidence has too – I’ve had to …
It’s taking me a while to work through all the words I wrote whilst at Gladstone’s Library a few weekends ago, but here’s another bit of my musings – I remembered I hadn’t yet posted it when I found myself checking the time & thinking “Not long before 5, I’ll …
I spent last weekend at Gladstone’s Library. Between my arrival on the Friday afternoon and when I packed up to check out on Sunday morning, I wrote over 9,000 words: mostly story drafts (of which I posted a short one the other day), but some of those words were drafts of blog …