Friday, March 30, 2007

Map of the World

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find a great new widget I've added: a map showing today's visitor locations. How great is that?! I may move it somewhere different when I've had a chance to think about it.

There are some brilliant things you can find to add on - like the Babel Fish translator in the side bar. Eventually there will be more gadgets than writing!

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

A Million Writers

My almost award-winning story The Last Adam has been nominated for another award. The Million Writers award is for the best story on the internet. I'm very pleased to have been nominated, but I can't encourage you to vote for me as I noticed in the rules that the story has to be over 1000 words. As The Last Adam is only 78 words it won't qualify I'm afraid.

It's the thought that counts though!

Monday, March 26, 2007

Labels

After much procrastinating and several days of typing I have finally added labels to all of my posts. The task took even longer because I haven't got into the habit of adding labels to new posts, so I had to keep going back and adding them afterwards. My next task is to switch to the new template that gives a label index and can do lots of other fancy stuff. The problem is that I'll loose almost everything else on the sidebar and have to put it all back in again. Maybe one day when I have nothing else to do...

Friday, March 23, 2007

Eastercon

Eastercon is the annual British National SF Convention, held over the Easter holiday weekend every year. This year I'm planning to attend for the first time, though I'm not sure which day yet. I've seen some names I recognise on the guest list - authors, editors et al, so it should be a worthwhile trip.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Forgotten Worlds Survives

UK SF magazine Forgotten Worlds, initially published monthly, has had a run in with reality, but happily survived to continue as a quarterly magazine. You can read my review of issue #5 here.

Monday, March 19, 2007

The Road Ahead

Next month my post-industrial tale Roadmaker will be appearing in UK SF magazine Jupiter. It was actually one of my first stories to have been accepted - by Apocalypse Fiction Magazine. Sadly the magazine went into hiatus and never continued publication. I withdrew Roadmaker a year later and it eventually made its way to Jupiter.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Fiction Contest

If you fancy an hour of hysterical laughter, then have a look at last year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The aim is to write the opening sentence to a truly awful novel.

I've sent in a couple of entries, in the SF catagory of course, and with each entry a permission form to allow my entry to be reprodcued in their compilation book. The book is due out in August, but I'm not entirely sure whether either of my entries will be in it; it may just contain the winning entries. Either way, it's worth a read.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Internationalization

According to my Site meter statistics, most of the visitors to this page are from the UK and US. Two new countries were added last week though, so I've now also had visitors from:

Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, China, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Portugal and Spain.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Penultimate Collaborator

Another section of The Blind Collaborators arrived today and has been integrated into the growing story. Just one more section is expected from a fellow conspiritor before I can finish writing the conclusion.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Absolute Zero

Almost 20 years ago during a physics lesson at school we were learning about the Kelvin scale and absolute zero. A friend and I came up with an idea for a story about an astronaut who's ship was frozen (very similar to Buck Rogers so far), but got so cold he went below absolute zero into a reverse universe where molecules worked backwards.

Sadly the story was never written, but the concept came back to mind more recently where it has lurked at the back of my mind waiting for a plot for several months. The new version of the story does away with astronauts altogether, but involves an ingeniuous piece of scientific equipment I've invented for the occasion. I finaly wrote the story last week, and it comes in around 3,100 words.

Unfortunately, 3/4 of that is description of the equipment and experiment; pretty dull unless you're a particle physicist. I like the concept though, so now I have three choices:

1. Add lots of dialogue / emotion / action to make it more exciting.
2. Cut out lots of technical jargon.
3. Both.

Can I bear to cut out any part of my lovingly created scanning neutrino microscope though?

Listen out for lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth as I'm forced to write a new draft of Absolute Zero.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Rejected but not Dejected

I've received a rejection from Interzone for my new story National Go To Work Day. I'm not too bothered though as I didn't really expect an acceptance. Each magazine has a different style, and my stories just aren't Interzone's style.

The problem is, this particular story is very British so probably wouldn't be appreciated by any markets abroad. I sent it to Interzone because, firstly you never know, and secondly I have no other UK markets to send it to at the moment.

I have stories accepted by Jupiter and Murky Depths, I'm waiting to hear back from Fiction and Hub, and the others are closed to submissions at the moment. I guess it will just have to wait its turn.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Efimeras


The spanish translation of The Last Adam appears today in edition 106 of Efimeras. Unlike my two previous translated stories that were in Greek and Hebrew I actually have half a chance of reading this one!