Favourite Books of 2015

This year I read my usual mixture of some brand new novels, a few from ongoing favourite series and a few of those books hailed as classics. These are the ones I particularly enjoyed, in chronological order of reading:






Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Children of Time by Adrian Tcaikovsky
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

2015 in Writing

This year was not my most productive for writing, but I still managed to complete 7 stories: 4 flash fiction, the slightly longer than flash Englebert that was published in Daily Science Fiction, and 2 much longer stories, one novelette that took over a year altogether, and one that was almost long enough to be a novelette.






Coming up: a story for an invitation-only anthology, and lots more ideas still to make it onto paper...

Ten Years Ago In Fiction

Ten years ago, I'd just had my 2nd, 3rd and 4th stories published - all accepted by the first markets I subbed to, a trend that lulled me into a false sense of security, but inspired me with confidence to carry on writing. Both were non-paying exposure markets, and both are still going strong today: Aphelion and Bewildering Stories.



Fluctuations, in BWS #139 in March 2005 remains one of my favourite stories. It was reprinted in one of their 'Best of' summary issues in July 2005, my first reprint. A revised version was published in the anthology Quantum Genre on the Planet of Arts in November 2010, and earned me a footnote in Wikipedia in the article on quantum genre.


Devotion was my second story in BWS in April 2005.



The Grey Hole, in Aphelion #91 in April 2005, was the first of 8 appearances I made in that webzine, and one of a very few attempted 'hard SF' stories. It was a wonderfully friendly place, the first on-line forum I joined, and I remain in touch with some of the regulars still. The Grey Void was the first sequel I wrote and appeared in Aphelion #102 the following year.

EasterCon Report 2015

It's 8 years since my first EasterCon in Chester, and I noticed this time that there's been a big change in demographics during that time. I met up with another first-timer at Chester and we seemed to be the only men who weren't middle-aged, bushy-bearded, pony tailed and sporting a waistcoat. Nowadays there are much more younger people of all different backgrounds and it seems much less insular than when I first attended.



I met up with several people I know from real-life or on-line, most of whom I only ever see at cons, and some of whom I met for the first time:



Gareth L Powell, who I first met on-line almost 10 years ago, Aliette de Bodard, Mike and Sarah Wood, Neil and Gemma Beynon, Ian Whates, Ian Watson, whom I overtook in a corridor, Chris Priest, Nina Allen, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and his wife whose name I didn't catch but I stood next to at the bar buying a sandwich, Daniel Benson and Guido Eekhart whose name badges I saw in passing and by the time their names had registered I'd lost sight of them, Kim Lakin-Smith, and plenty of others I saw in the distance.



Best presentation I attended was entitled 'Unfortunate Incidents Involving Balloons and Parachutes', which was a highly entertaining history of heroic accidents and tragedies. I'm hoping the same talk will be on again next year.