Blog

Reviewing the Academy Awards

Every year when the Oscar nominees are doing the rounds, I always intend to see each of the Best Picture films before the ceremony, and...

The Hillside Curation: Fraternal Mixtaping

Another day, another project. At the back end of last year, with a work-in-progress milestone reached, my fingers were itchy for creative...

2017 & 2018 or; The Mental Management of the Relentless Flow of Time

I’m trying to learn, I think, what is possibly the greatest skill of middle adulthood: the mental management of the relentless flow of...

The Shadow Booth: Weird Times, Weird Fictions

Weird times call for weird fictions. We're all looking over our various shoulders at the lurking shadows and the too-bright lights...

#100 Days of Writing (and no more days of admin day job [hopefully])

Full-Time Quietly, with only a little fuss, I've ov'rleapt the final cliff-edge and plummeted out of my day job into the PhD full-time....

Sprawled in The Pool: Adventures in RPG

Since the start of the year I’ve been engaged in a regular creative endeavour that has evolved and transformed all I thought I knew about...

On Being a Critical Reader

One of the greatest pleasures of having writers as friends is when they ask your opinion on their works in progress. It’s always an...

Writing Animals: Pigskin

For a long while I tried to keep my gastronomical inclinations out of my animal stories after deeming meat-eating too obvious a target...

Writing Animals: A Place to Dump Guinea Pigs

Tuesday 13th September, Liar’s League in London, actor Greg Page reads my latest animal story “A Place to Dump Guinea Pigs”: Enjoy that?...

Is there a Doctorate in the House?

Announcement time. As of the 19th September 2016 I will be returning to the University of Manchester to start a part-time PhD in Creative...