Gone to press

April 20, 2011

Today, Argleton passed probably the biggest milestone in the project ahead of mailing everything out: it went to press. I’ve been talking with Oldacres in Hatton Garden for the last few months, figuring out with them all the fine details of the job, such as what paper to use, whether to perfect bind or sew […]

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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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Ada Lovelace Day: 7 October 2011

March 3, 2011

Cross posted from FindingAda. As announced on the front page of the Ada Lovelace Day site a few weeks ago, the date of this year’s Ada Lovelace Day has moved to Friday 7 October 2011. Please put it in your diary! I didn’t take the decision to change the date lightly. We’ve had two years […]

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Following the threads of a tale

February 25, 2011

Maria Fischer has made a beautiful book where the illustrations are sewn in thread. She says: the book is designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. Analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. They are connected by threads which tie […]

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In which I am absurdly busy

February 6, 2011

It feels like forever since I last wrote a blog post, let along a post that wasn’t about something specific. Blogging seems to have faded a little, not just for me but for a few friends of mine as well. Is the impulse to blog lessened? Has Twitter taken over, providing as it does immediate […]

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Lessons from the TikTok

January 6, 2011

Bryce Roberts takes a look at why the TikTok and LunaTik multitouch watch kits were so phenomenally successful at raising money – $941,718 – on Kickstarter. Bryce boils it down to: Strong personal story Strong product story Attractive rewards Progress reports He concludes: I believe we’re moving away from the WalMart-ification of everything. People want a […]

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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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For 2011

December 20, 2010

My friend Terence Eden wrote a blog post at the end of November about his goals for 2011. I’ve never really been one for resolutions, knowing how easy they are to break, but goals I can get behind. My goal for 2011 is really very simple: Finish your open projects before you start any new ones. […]

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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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Bookbinding Club #1

October 3, 2010

Last Wednesday’s inaugural Bookbinding Club, held at The Lamb on the wonderfully named Lambs Conduit Street, was a runaway success! Ben O’Steen and I were joined by about half a dozen others, and much beer, food and conversation was had. Not a bad turn-out, given that the weather was so vile. I took a few […]

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Bookbinding Club – 6pm, 29 Sept

September 17, 2010

Inspired by the wonderousness of The Stationery Club, Ben O’Steen and I have decided to run our own Bookbinding Club. We’re going to get together at 6pm on Wednesday 29 September at The Lamb on Lambs Conduit Street for our inaugural meeting. Anyone who is interested in bookbinding, whether or not they practice, is welcome. […]

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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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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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Interesting North & Eyjafjallajökull

August 17, 2010

I’m going up to Sheffield in November to speak at Interesting North, a day-long conference where people talk about their passions (rather than their work). I, for one, will be going way off piste: Suw is a writer, collaboration strategist and lapsed geologist. Earlier this year she followed, in considerable detail, the exploits of Eyjafjallajökull, […]

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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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