Category Archives: Writing & Publishing

Gods are an irresistible subject to writers. They were, after all, the first characters, in the first stories. “In the beginning was the word” is both true, and a clever way for ancient scribes to improve their job security. God is, when all’s said and done, whoever is writing. I found myself writing these storiesContinue reading “Odd Gods”

Two old tramps stand in a field. One struggles to take off his boot. The other does nothing to help. They talk, but they don’t listen. They are are waiting for somebody. Whoever it is does not arrive. And that, folks, is the whole of Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. Beckett’s play is oneContinue reading “Can you name a story where nothing changes?”

Spoilers. Watch first, then read. Blade Runner is a diamond of a movie. A broken genius crazy novel, adapted into a mashup noir / scifi screenplay, directed by an auteur who had his main sight on other projects, vandalised by a studio who didn’t know what they had, with its best lines of dialogue improvisedContinue reading “Watch Blade Runner 2049, then read this.”

If you really want to divide people into two opposing tribes, and judging by the political divide between Conservatives & Liberals it seems that we do, then this is the real dividing line. People who treat culture as absolute. vs People who see culture as a construct. Pop quiz. Is America a real place? OrContinue reading “Westworld didn’t deserve those Emmys anyway”

You’re sitting in bed on a Saturday morning with your nose in a novel, or maybe in row F of the cinema with a movie on the screen, or you’re just having a quiet night in with Netflix, and your nose is bubbly with snot, tears streaming down your face, laughter bursting from your lips.Continue reading “Emotion Tone. The thermonuclear weaponry in the writer’s arsenal.”

Writers can be a hugely insightful bunch. A good novelist can tell you what’s going on inside the head of another human being at fifty yards. But when it comes to seeing the blindspots in our own self-awareness, novelists suck. Today, The Bookseller published a little summary of a radio interview with Robert Harris, whoContinue reading “Let’s be honest, the novel is dead.”

Over on G+, in response to my thoughts on liberal dystopias, Jason Baryla mounts a sterling defence of the widely maligned Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. # “Maybe it’s because of how much Donald Trump resembles Baron Vladimir Harkkonen” Sorry if this is off-topic, but I cannot agree with this statement. The Baron was a hedonist withContinue reading “In defence of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen”

The future that liberals want only looks great for the Alphas who can buy a place in the techno-corporate hierarchy. Maybe it’s because of how much Donald Trump resembles Baron Vladimir Harkkonen. It’s hard to have a conversation about the weird landscape of politics today, without referencing at least one scifi dystopia. “a much moreContinue reading “Liberals have to do better than Brave New World”

It’s well documented that William Gibson started out writing science fiction, and book by book progressed towards the future he had once predicted. By Pattern Recognition in 2003 Gibson was writing about a London that seemed to come into existence even as the book was published. I know, I was living and working in theContinue reading “A Neuromancer movie in 2017 will look a lot like a documentary”

20 years into making my living as a writer, I’m neccessarily a sentence obsessive. I chose to spend my weekend revising sentence structure, a task I undertook with the help of Brooks Landons’ Building Great Sentences, my favorite text on the subject. Sentence revision filled my Saturday and Sunday for two reasons; I’m planning aContinue reading “Your Voice Is In The Sentences You Write”