Welcome, dear reader, to my blog. That’s right, I have a blog now. Recently, I found myself suffering from blog envy and, as we all know, there’s only one cure for that. Get blogging. Whether anyone asked you to or not.
I can’t promise this is going to be a weekly thing. Or monthly. I guess that all depends on how well the writing is going and just how distracting the world beyond my keyboard becomes. I can’t promise it’ll be much more than me talking about myself either. There might be some book and film reviews of a sort in there. Or some hype and hope for the many talented people I’m lucky enough to know. Still, I’ll do my best to make this as interesting as I can and keep you posted on exactly where me and my brain are when it comes to co-existing on a daily basis and telling stories. I’ll try and make some good points along the way and be as open with you as I can. If I can do that, then I think we’re off to a good start.
Brace yourselves, people.
As of last Sunday, all of my work previously published by Kensington Gore is no longer available on Amazon. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
If you’ve previously bought yourself any of those novellas, collections or novels then, first of all, I’d like to say thank you. Secondly, here’s a piece of good news for you: you’re now the proud owner of what we can officially label a first edition.
Read MoreTime and distance have become oddly toxic to our mental well being in 2020. I think the odds are pretty high that, as most of us welcomed in the new year nearly four months ago, we didn’t realise events halfway around the world were about to stampede through our streets and hospitals. Even as the news began to talk about China in January, we didn’t quite understand the scale of what was coming. Now, here we are, time and space making far less sense than they did a month ago. If it was a month. Who can even tell anymore?
Read MoreOf course, back then November 2019 seemed an impossibly long way away. Never mind your galaxies far, far away. Blade Runner felt even more unreachable, if only because we’d been told at the start just how close to our lives it might be. The flying cars. The replicants. The seething streets and the nightmare skyline. Flames erupting into the darkness from skyscraper high chimneys. Towering advertisements for soft drinks and escape blaring into the night at all hours. The rain and the traffic never stopping.
Read MoreI hate starting novels. Short stories, when they’re feeling generous and playful, can pop into being like you’re opening a bottle of champagne. Or, as is more my experience, they can budge into being like opening the stubborn lid of a fairly decent jar of coffee.
Maybe a better metaphor for this involves cars. Starting a short story can be like starting a car. The idea comes to you with some sense of theme and ending, if you’re lucky and you’re not trying to ignore the deadline breathing down your neck and asking why you’ve not got your shoes on yet.
Read MoreWe take in so much information on a daily basis. It makes sense that certain things will just slide past our attention after we’ve seen them enough times. Building sites, shops, queues at bus stops. They’re in our world every single day. They become white noise, background details. Scenery. I had a moment yesterday when I noticed something on my wife’s desk at work that I had completely been looking through for months. Don’t worry, it wasn’t divorce paperwork.
Read MoreOh, summer. Cruel, hot, possible globally catastrophic summer. Soon you will be gone, never to dark our barometers and shorts drawers again. No longer will people walk into a room and declare ‘oh, isn’t it hot in here’ or ‘oh, isn’t it cold in here’ like some demented, inbred thermometer parrot. No longer will people claim to love the summer but always seem to be the first to reach for the air conditioning, thus exposing themselves as a total fraud.
Read MoreIt’s been a while since we were been treated to a new K.B. Goddard publication. Her last novella, the chillingly atmospheric ‘The Girl with the Roses’ came out back in 2017. Thankfully, it’s not been a complete drought for fans of her work. Since 2017, she’s gone onto become an award winning horror writer with stories popping up to terrify you on both The Wicked Library and The Lift podcasts. As well having a story featured in the first Lift anthology. Now, though, she’s managed to find the time to gather some more tales to haunt the e reader of your choice.
Read MoreIt was a magic trick that very rarely received the applause it deserved. Certainly it wasn’t as flash as some. No ladies were cut in two. No one stepped over a bed of scolding nails or guessed the capital city that someone in another room had written down and sealed in a golden envelope. Still, it was magic none the less. Just of the more everyday variety. Similar to the strain that occasionally left a fiver in a summer jacket pocket.
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