Tag: Writing

    • Saturday, 30th May 2026

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      Greetings from the edge, A day late..? Yes, a dollar short..? Also yes. However; The weather persists, very hot. You know it’s hot when you go to pee and pass steam. I have been plugging away at my first novella, The Echo Man, chiselling away a word at a time. I remember reading that Michelangelo…

    • Step 12: Appeal directly to machine spirits.

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      Greetings from the edge, One of the peculiar side effects of working from the broom cupboard is that during winter, between my body heat and the NASA-like array of monitors and assorted electronic nonsense around me, it becomes wonderfully warm and cosy. In a heat wave, however, those exact same factors transform it into something…

    • Wednesday, 20th May 2026

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      Greetings from the edge, Quick update from here in the broom cupboard. I got an email the other day asking me to apply for a job opening at a local-ish library. It’s only part-time, so I’ll still have time to write, and with the commute I’ll probably even get more audiobook time out of it.…

    • Ink, Pixels & Narrators

      Greetings from the edge, I’m a bibliophile. A die-hard, hardback, leatherbound devotee of the written word. I like books of all shapes and sizes and read across a wide range of genres, although I am yet to venture into family sagas. One day perhaps. When the Kindle first appeared, I carried that sleek little slab…

    • Building a Life in the Broom Cupboard

      Greetings from the edge, Things have been busy here in the broom cupboard. Between the blog, the short fiction, the articles, my computer repair work, the library, and trying to hammer my D&D setting into a professional-looking PDF, I have had very little time for anything else. So I have decided to, rather than just…

    • The 5-Minute Idea Test: Is This Worth Writing?

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      Greetings from the edge, Every writer eventually gets asked the same question. Not the one about when you’re going to pay the bill, sir, but the other one: where do your ideas come from? There’s a well-worn trope about “the muse.” Stephen King famously describes his as a gruff, middle-aged man who smokes, drinks bourbon,…

    • Saturday, 9th May 2026

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      I’ve taken a short hiatus from writing proper for the last ten days or so, but I’m pleased to report that the wheels are turning again, and I knocked out a treatment and plot outline for my new short story, Rare, last night. It’s about a chef at a vegetarian restaurant who gets bitten during…

    • Tuesday 21st April 2026

      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,…

    • Monday 20th April 2026

      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…