• Greetings from the edge, Well, if you are reading this, it means I can still be found. I had a bit of a SNAFU with the web address. The way I keep the lights on here in the broom cupboard is by fixing computers. Oddly enough, being a caffeine-fuelled Gollum who rants about horror, roleplaying…

  • Greetings from the edge. Been digging through some old short fiction that has been mouldering in my lowest, darkest desk drawer, and, as it turns out, there is a very good reason I never came back to them.  I mean, I stand by the central ideas for some of them, but out of a dozen,…

  • Greetings from the edge, Still spelunking my way through On Writing by Stephen King. There is so much good information in there, and I am well aware that drip-feeding what I have learned is a bit like describing Dracula as “a bit influential” or saying Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is “quite good”. Simply…

  • Greetings from the edge, It strikes me, dear reader, that I have been exceptionally lucky when it comes to books. I have never read a truly awful one. I’m not just saying that as a mediocre writer trying to defend his brethren, although I am doing that as well. I think every single thing ever…

  • Greetings from the edge, Stick a fork in me, I’m done. The article comparing the novel The Silence of the Lambs to the film is now live. It’s proofread, formatted, posted, and unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. You should check it out. I’m currently working on the first in what I hope will be a…

  • Greetings from the edge, I’ve been a busy bee. I now have about half of the Silence of the Lambs article written, and I’m still ploughing my way through On Writing. At this point, it feels less like a craft book and more like Stephen King is sitting on the other side of your desk,…

  • Greetings from the edge, Deep into On Writing right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly enjoying The Three-Body Problem, which insistently is not about the problems that arise from needing to dispose of three cadavers, and I’m also really enjoying the alien-eye view of human jingoism and bloodthirsty expansionism in The Word for World…

  • Greetings from the edge, I got some last-minute feedback on The Bone Garden, so I’m thinking about reworking it in a few places. The main thing I keep hearing is that readers want more of it. That suggests there may be more story there than the format of a long short story can comfortably hold.…

  • Greetings from the edge, Well, here we go, I guess. I’m reading On Writing, and the ineffable Stephen King is very clear: if you want to be a writer, you need to do two things. Read a lot and write a lot. He recommends applying arse to chair, hands to keyboard, and not stopping until…

  • Greetings from the edge, I’m on a lot of painkillers right now, so putting words on the page is proving difficult. I get days like this from time to time. As a small glimpse behind the curtain, I’m on some fairly strong medication for a chronic pain condition, and there are days when the words…