Remember Yugoslavia?

My short story Remember Yugoslavia? is out today in Nature magazine. You can read it online, or listen to the podcast too. This will be my first podcast in an English accent!

The Future is Murky

Terry Martin of Murky Depths has given his first post-MD interview, in which he discusses the future of The House of Murky Depths now that the magazine itself has come to an end. The long-planned Best of Murky Depths is still on the cards along with several other projects. In fact, I have another possible project I discussed with Terry a while back; must give that some thought...

BSFA Award Nominations

Nominations for the BSFA awards have started making their way to the BSFA and the nominations so far have been posted. As I thought inevitable, the fabulous artwork for The Immersion Book of Steampunk has been nominated, along with one of the stories from the anthology. It will be another couple of months before the shortlist is anounced.

Demise of Murky Depths

As reported at the blog of editor Terry Martin. Depressing, but unsurprising I guess.

I've appeared twice in Murky Depths: Looking In, Looking Out in issue #1 and my first ever comic Frozen in #15. I'd since had another comic and a non-prose story accepted and another comic under submission. It's going to be tough finding another market anything like Murky Depths.

The Future is Soon

My story Remember Yugoslavia? is due to appear in the November 20th issue of Nature magazine. Plus something else exciting I'm not sure whether to anounce yet...

The Gondolier in Norwegian

I thought I'd found somewhere for this to be published, but sadly it never happened. So here's The Gondolier in Norwegian - the thirtieth langauge for it to appear in.

Gondolføreren

Min gondols sorte stamn gled fram gjennom de stille kanalene. Det forseggjorte stykket håndverk hadde gjort jobben godt i mange år, fraktet passasjerer gjennom byens vannveier etter veiledning fra hendene til generasjonene før meg.

Sola gikk ned over den gamle byen, gjorde vannet til et rosa bånd som la seg mellom elegante sandsteinsbygninger. Jeg tok et dypt åndedrag av den svale kveldsbrisen.

Fantes det noe vakrere sted enn denne utrolige kanalbyen? Mens båten roet seg i fortøyningen, stoppet jeg og stirret med tilfredshet inn i Mars mørke himler.

Slutt

Translated by Sigurd Koran

Science Fiction Encyclopedia

The third edition of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia is now on-line. It includes an article about Jupiter magazine that mentions my Roadmaker series, much to my excitement.

Yugoslavian Proofs

The proofs of my story Remember Yugoslavia? arrived today. That usually means that it will only be a few weeks until it will appear in Nature magazine.

Immersion Steampunk Imminent

This weekend you'll be able to get your hands on The Immersion Book of Steampunk at FantasyCon in Brighton. Look out for the Immersion Press stall in the dealer hall.

Meanwhile, you can check out cover artist Charlie Harbour's work at his new website, including a much bigger version of this glorious cover.

You Can't Please All the People

Suffering rejections, harsh critiques and bad reviews is part of the life of the writer. I've come to realise that the old saying that you can only please some of the people some of the time can be a writer's greatest comfort.

One story I recently submitted for critiquing is a good example. The critiques I received are split down the middle between 'this is great, just needs a couple of tweaks' and 'what is it about? I don't get it, needs completely rewriting'. It's the clearest split I've seen yet in critiques. Now I need to find a magazine editor who shares the opinion of the first group.