The Shepherd’s Crown
The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars It could have been a lot worse.As Rob Wilkins explains in the afterword, Terry Pratchett hadn’t actually finished writing this when he...
View ArticleThis Week’s Goodreads Reviews
As I’ve not been doing very well at reviewing books on here — and as I’ve not had the energy to write full blog posts recently because of my health — I decided this week to write a short review, only a...
View ArticlePre-Order Tales Of The Great Detectives Today!
The City of the Saved houses every human being who ever lived… but some of its immortal Citizens need more. For the Remakers, one fiction above all exerts its fascination: a character existing in...
View ArticleThe Pendragon Protocol
(Ob. disclaimer before I start — I know Philip Purser-Hallard, he’s an internet friend, and he’s commissioned me to write for an anthology he’s editing. However, I got to know him because he’s a...
View ArticleSelling Themselves Down The River
I am getting more and more annoyed at self-publishers. Before anyone gets confused, I self-publish myself. While the next book of mine to come out is likely to be through a traditional publisher...
View ArticleHugo Blogging: Best Novelette
My thoughts on the nominated novelettes: The Lady Astronaut Of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal is a very touching story about lost possible futures, whether the futures we give up for others or the...
View ArticleHugo Blogging: Best Novella
Here we get to another of the controversies surrounding this year’s Hugos — the “Sad Puppy Slate”. Novelist Larry Correia put together and promoted a slate of works for this year’s award, which he...
View ArticleFaction Paradox: The Brakespeare Voyage
Now I’ve finished the latest draft of my novel (and hopefully any further revisions will be relatively minor rather than the major changes I made this time) I can get back to blogging, and to start...
View ArticleFaction Paradox: Against Nature by Lawrence Burton
Full disclosure before I start this — I am friendly with the author and the publisher, and I also potentially have a book coming out from this publisher. I don’t think that this has biased my opinions...
View ArticleShell-Shocked by @howardkaylan
For the next month or so, most of my writing time will be taken up with copy-edits on the Beach Boys book and on my novel (along with the Doctor Who posts and How To Build Your Own Time Machine). So...
View ArticleA Brief Note on “Piracy”
I have been wanting to read Howard Kaylan’s book Shell-Shocked (his autobiography) for some time now, but when it first came out it was only in paperback, and I’m trying not to buy dead-tree books...
View ArticleScience Of Discworld IV
Just a brief note for those who are planning on buying this. The first three Science Of Discworld books, by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, were pretty good general pop-science books...
View ArticleSignal-boosting — Call For Female Writers From Obverse Books
I was about to post a short review of Lawrence Burton’s excellent Faction Paradox novel and Phil Purser-Hallard’s equally excellent Senor 105 novella (a post which will go up tomorrow or Monday...
View ArticleThat new Jeeves book
What exactly is the point of this? I could, sort of, almost, see the point of the Hitch-Hiker’s sequel written by someone else — while the whole point of those books was Adams’ writing, I can sort-of...
View ArticleKinks ebook now (finally!) out!
My book on the Kinks, which has been out for a while in paperback and hardback, is now available for ereaders. The delay was due to some health problems, which are thankfully starting to abate. It will...
View ArticleIn Praise Of Mad Norwegian ( @MadNorwegian )
Just a quick note here to mention, once again, the absolutely exemplary customer service provided by Lars Pearson of Mad Norwegian. I’ve already pointed this out before, when because it took him a...
View ArticleFaction Paradox: Burning With Optimism’s Flame
I don’t have much time for blog posting at the moment, but I couldn’t let the release of the latest Faction Paradox short story collection go without at least a short review. (Ob. disclaimer — I know...
View ArticleSo What’s Faction Paradox Actually About?
This is less of an essay, more a stream of consciousness braindump that I’m going to type until I fall asleep on the keyboard. I’m too tired today to write my Mindless Ones piece, and certainly too...
View ArticlePublishers Hate Money, Clearly
I quite want to read Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Rapture Of The Nerds. I’m not hugely interested — I like some of Stross’ work a lot (basically the Laundry series and the...
View ArticleKinks Book Now Out!
The book on the Kinks I’ve been serialising here, Preservation: The Kinks’ Music 1964-1974, is now available in paperback, hardback and PDF formats from lulu.com . Versions for ereaders should be up...
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