books, authors and other interestingness

Anne McCaffrey

November 23, 2011

It was with great sadness that I read today of Anne McCaffrey’s death. I remember the very moment that I discovered Anne McCaffrey’s work. I was standing in my aunt and uncle’s dining room after some family gathering, almost on the way out of the door, when my uncle picked a book off his shelf […]

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Win a copy of Argleton

November 4, 2011

I have decided to give away one paperback copy of Argleton to a random person on my Writing & Bookbinding mailing list, just as soon as it hits 100 subscribers! Yay! Note that this doesn’t automatically go to the 100th person, because that wouldn’t be fair to everyone who signed up in the beginning. Rather, once […]

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Thinking about an author’s needs

October 17, 2011

The whole discussion about what the British Fantasy Society could morph into after its recent crisis set me to thinking about what, as an emerging author, I need and where I get those needs met (if I do at all). I’m a bit of an edge case, because right now I’m more interested in getting […]

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What to do with the British Fantasy Society?

October 11, 2011

I don’t know much about the British Fantasy Society, other than what I’ve gleaned from their website or at FantasyCon last year. In many ways, I’m in a poor position to pass any comment whatsoever on what they should or shouldn’t do after the recent controversy around the British Fantasy Awards. I’m not even in […]

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Can you afford a monoculture career?

April 13, 2011

Last night there was an interesting discussion on Twitter between Cory Doctorow, David Hewson, Nick Harkaway, Baldur Bjarnason and, towards the end, me, about whether or not it’s reasonable to expect fiction writers to have to do something else as well as writing in order to keep the lights on. (The as-full-as-I-can-manage collection of Tweets […]

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The limiting nature of limited editions

August 17, 2010

We live in a world of abundance, a fact which scares silly anyone whose business relies on scarcity. Predictably, we now frequently see attempts to recreate scarcity, many of which are absurd (cf. most newspaper efforts) and some of which are smart. The use of limited editions to create a desirable object available for only […]

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Sean Cregan and an unfortunate incident in The Levels

August 10, 2010

Sean Cregan (aka John Rickards, Mr Nameless Horror) and I had a chat on Friday afternoon on Skype about his book, The Levels, which came out yesterday in paperback. Sean describes The Levels as “Cyberpunk without the cyber”, and it’s somewhere roughly in the thriller genre. It’s not the sort of book I think I would […]

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A book that is not this one wins the Newbery

January 26, 2009

Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book won the Newbery Medal today. It was kinda sweet watching him go through the winning process on Twitter: neilhimself: woken up by assistant at 5.30 in the morning. Not quite sure why. All rather bleary, to do with someone trying to call. argh. — 13:47:53 neilhimself: oh. forget about it. — […]

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Bookcamp: Designing the socialised book

January 17, 2009

Interested in paper books, and how to turn the into social objects. They are very social things all ready – people pass them on, each one is the same, they last a long time. But what would you do if you designed a book to be a social object. Designing a book to read includes […]

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Bookcamp: Harper Collins, Authonomy & Book Army

January 17, 2009

Harper Collins – Kate Hyde, Mark Johnson. Authonomy, book with rating new books. Getting agents on board. Going to be using Blurb to move manuscripts into PoD. Big learning curve. Tension about being a large company wanting to find the best books, with the needs of the community. People quesitoning why they’re doing it and […]

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Bookcamp: When users create their own stuff

January 17, 2009

I’m here at Bookcamp today, a day of talking about publishing, books, paper and all sorts of related things. Notes are a bit all over the place, but hopefully they’ll be interesting. Comic Life, kit who put together a comic for show and tell at school, ended up selling copies to his friends. What if […]

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Asterix yn y Gymraeg

November 26, 2008

Dw i newydd darganfod bod ‘na fersiwns Asterix The Gaul yn y Gymraeg. Mae ‘na wyth o deitlau: Asterix y Galiad (1976) Asterix ym Mhrydain (1976) Asterix a Cleopatra (1976) Asterix Gladiator (1977) Asterix ym myddin Cesar (1978) Asterix yn y gemau Olympaidd (1979) Asterix a’r ornest fawr (1980) Asterix ac anrheg Cesar (1981) Dyma’r […]

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Vote for Neil!

November 8, 2007

OK, we all know I’m a devoted fan of Neil Gaiman. Devoted, if possibly a bit rubbish at actually doing fan-like things, such as standing in line for signings, making it to any of his recent appearances in London, or buying everything he’s ever released. I hang my head in shame for that and hope […]

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World's Sexiest Writer 2007

August 12, 2007

Vince and some of his pals at Crimespace have set up a poll to find the World's Sexiest Writer 2007. The nice thing about it is that you can add people to the list, not just be forced to vote for one of the existing entrants. Of course, I entirely deny that I added any […]

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A suffusion of… puce, I think it is

August 1, 2007

Good to see that Neil's Official Web Elf has our best interests at heart, rather than his.

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