Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Third First

My time travel story Artefact Nouveau, my longest short story to date, has been published by Planet Magazine today. The thing I like about this webzine is that it provides art work to go with each story. This will make three 'firsts' I have coming up in the next couple of months:

- My first translated story in the Hebrew webzine Bli Panika
- My first story in print in Scifantastic
- My first story with accompanying art work in Planet Magazine

Thursday, December 15, 2005

That's Novel

I reached a landmark today. My epic space opera adventure hit 40,000 words; that makes it officially a novel! Only a short one at the moment, but I'm about 1/3 of the way through the plot so it should end up at about 350 pages.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Fluctuations

On first reading Fluctuations you may well be thoroughly confused. It's all about a tear in the fabric of reality, and as I wrote it subjectively you have even less idea of what's going on than does the protagonist. The Bewildering Stories editors wrote an excellent review of it though, so hopefully you'll like it too once you've worked out what's going on.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Trek Fiction

I didn't particularly intend to write any fan fiction, but the two Star Trek stories I wrote this time last year were based on very specific ideas I had.

The idea for Data Dump came about after watching Nemesis. I wondered whether it would be possible to bring Data back; after all, we thought he'd been blown up in a space ship once before. After some thought I came up with a plausible sounding pseudo-scientific way for him to make a come-back.

The title Pro Capitaneous Mori is derived from the Wilfred Owen poem Dulce et Decorum Est. I wondered what life was like on the Enterprise under Captain Kirk for those red shirted security guards who always got shot. I wrote this one as a diary, one of a number of different formats that I've tried. I'll tell you about the others another day.

Monday, December 05, 2005

The Stories So Far

Here's a list of my published stories so far:

A Feast of Eyes - Star Trek & Science Fiction Stories - Dec 2004
Data Dump - Trek Writer's Guild - Feb 2005
Fluctuations - Bewildering Stories - Mar 2005
Pro Capitaneous Mori - Trek Writer's Guild - Mar 2005
The Grey Hole - Aphelion - Apr 2005
Devotion - Bewildering Stories - Apr 2005
Fluctuations - Bewildering Stories 'Best Of' Anthology - Jul 2005
Fool Britannia - Aphelion - Aug 2005
Too Late the Hero - Aphelion - Nov 2005

I've put links to these stories or the sites they appear on to the side. I've also added a link to a review of Fluctuations. Comments on the stories that appeared in Aphelion can be found in Aphelion's Lettercol under the relevant month.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Fantastic!

Make that three stories accepted! I've just heard from Scifantastic, the new British small press magazine. They've accepted my story 'A Word in the Right Place' and it will appear in issue 3 or 4. I wrote it in one sitting while on holiday in Luxembourg last year. I've had trouble finding a home for it because it's a very British story and there aren't many British markets. This will be my first story in print.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

First Anniversary

Today marks the fist anniversary of the publication of my first story, so I thought it would be a good day to begin this blog.

'A Feast of Eyes' was published on 'Star Trek and Science Fiction Stories', and remains the best presented story I have on-line so far. I received a couple of favourable emails about it, and a request from an English teacher at a school in Singapore to use it in his lessons!

Since then I have had five more stories published and a further two accepted. I also posted two Star Trek stories at Trek Writers Guild, but that doesn't actually count as having something published. There are another five stories still under submission and more ideas to come...