Hello and Merry Christmas to all those who pass this way. Welcome to my annual round up.
Following last year’s quiet year this one started with a bang, with three stories accepted. Yes, three.
The first of these appeared in New Maps in May and is a silly wee thing about keeping hold of data after the fall. You can find it here.
However, after this, the waiting began. I had two other stories accepted but, for various reasons they took a while to turn up. The first was a short in the British Fantasy Society magazine, Horizons. It got picked up in April and, to be fair, didn’t take that long to become available to society members as a PDF. But they’d promised there would be a physical copy and that non-members would be able to buy it. Leaving me not shouting about it as I waited for that to come along which, for valid reasons, it still hasn’t quite. I think only contributor physical copies are yet out.
So consider this my shouting at those non-members who might want a sort-of fantasy story called The Dragon Raids which may well not be about dragons. You can buy that here in Kindle format and, hopefully soon, in physical format.
Just look at that lovely cover by fellow GSFWC member Jenni Coutts.
The third story is called Ogres in the Mist and was sold to a Canadian magazine called On Spec back in February. We quickly went through the editing and I’m very happy with what we’ve produced. But I don’t know when it will be published. Presumably they’re holding it for the right vibe of issue (or just got lots of really great stuff to get through) which has left me spending most of this year refreshing their web page on the hope I’ll suddenly appear in a table of contents.
They’ve already paid me, so it will turn up one day.
And now we turn to the bit you all grudgingly accept, my annual Christmas present of putting one of my old stories up on the site for you to read. This year it is a story that I got published in KZine back in 2016, More Certainty in your Shopping.
Hope you like it.
For those paying attention, you’ll have spotted I’ve made some tweaks to this here blog, moving it to WordPress and, finally, putting it behind the URL I’ve owned for years. Do let me know if there are any issues with it or things I could do better now I have all the modern tools. I’ve got it on default at present, so I’m sure there is much I could do.
And finally, what of next year? Worldcon is coming to Glasgow in August so I can expect a lot going on around then and one of the most exciting is that the Glasgow Science Fiction Writer’s Circle are going to produce an anthology for selling there. There will be some brilliant examples of the sort of thing being produced by the circle right now across all genres and styles and, should you be around in Glasgow this summer, I will wang on about it to you. You have been warned.
Have a good festive season and, hopefully, I’ll be updating this blog more often next year as Ogres, Worldcons and anthologies pop up. Cheers.
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