words ‘n stuff

The best advice for writers, bar none

January 21, 2012

Nick Mamatas says it better than I ever could: Ten Bits of Advice Writers Should Stop Giving Aspiring Writers.

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The best Christmas present you can give a new author: An Amazon review

December 19, 2011

Last month there was a great blog post by Anne Allen about how important Amazon reviews are to new authors: […] Amazon reviews, which were only mildly significant three years ago, now have a make-or-break impact on an author’s sales. When you’re buying an ebook, there’s no helpful bookstore clerk to tell you what might […]

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Argleton: Now available in (a few) libraries

December 5, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I offered a few copies of Argleton to any libraries who wanted to claim them. I ended up with 15 libraries showing interest, so decided to simply say yes to all of them and send out 15 copies. So if you want to borrow a copy of Argleton you will […]

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Novelising a script

September 18, 2011

I was talking to a friend about my upcoming writing projects, one of which includes novelising Tag, the screenplay I wrote seven years ago. I got to thinking about some of the pitfalls of a taking a script as a basis of a novel. I have already had one stab at writing the novel version […]

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In praise of the cliché

June 25, 2011

Suzannah Windsor Freeman, writer of Write It Sideways, has a post about how important it is to avoid cliché in writing. She splits clichés into three main types: Overused expressions Hackneyed plots Stereotypical characters And she gives her readers some good advice on how to avoid them. But clichés aren’t all bad. The human brain […]

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Taking off my overcoat

June 15, 2011

I always used to think that blogging was for the terminally under-employed or the terminally not-very-happy-with-life-right-now’ed. Certainly that was true of me when I started this blog and at various stages throughout its history. Indeed, I often combined both conditions into one great big fugue of skint unhappiness, and was verbose with it. These days, […]

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Writing digitally on paper

December 30, 2010

I’m writing this biog post not on my laptop, or my iPad, or on my iPhone, but with a pen in a notebook. As I write, the pen tracks my movements by referring to a special pattern of dots on the paper, and when I plug it in to my computer it will upload an […]

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Long words

November 18, 2010

I’ve never signed up to the belief that short words are in some way inherently better than long ones. George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language, said, “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” But I always felt that he was being rather unfair to long words. Even the […]

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Google Scribe: Heaven help us

September 8, 2010

I thought I’d have a little play with Google Scribe, so I started off with “I was walking down the” and then accepted every suggestion Scribe had to offer. This is what I got: I was walking down the street from them and they are nothing but another form of therapy for these patients is […]

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Art Space Tokyo and Kickstarter

August 1, 2010

Great piece by Craig Mod about using Kickstarter as seed capital to not only ?fund a book, ?Art Space Tokyo, but also start a publishing think tank, PRE/POST. The essay is most comprehensive – with graphs! – and anyone interested in using Kickstarter to raise money should read it. I hope to be able to write something […]

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Argleton fully funded!

July 30, 2010

At midnight on Wednesday, my Argleton Kickstarter project closed, funded to a level of 173%. I’m very happy and excited, and not a little bit scared! But now I am able to spend half my time working on Argleton (the rest working on client stuff). The project’s success was largely due to the fact that […]

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Argleton Kickstarter project closes in 12 hours

July 28, 2010

?Just a quick note to let you know that my Kickstarter project, Argleton, is going to close in 12 hours so if you want to be a part of it, join up now! We’ve already reached 100% so the project is definitely going ahead, but the more people get involved, the merrier!

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Protected: Argleton geolocation puzzle

July 26, 2010

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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Seven days left to join Argleton

July 21, 2010

It’s very exciting to say that, due to being included in Kickstarter’s first newsletter, my Argleton project is now fully funded! Yay! There are seven days to go, however, so if you’d like to be involved and receive a copy of the finished book, you can still pre-order any of the different packages. If you’d […]

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Argleton Fields

July 6, 2010

This is the first-ish draft of the first scene of my upcoming novelette, Argleton. I think it’s fair to say that everything is subject to change between here and the final draft, but I hope that this gives you a taste for what the rest will be like. If you fancy the look of it, […]

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