Collaborative Completion

After 7 months my collaborative story The Blind Collaborators, written with 4 other authors from the Aphelion forum, is complete. It's great fun to see how the other author's sections tie in together with only the vaguest of guidelines from me. It's finished up at 10,800 words, twice as long as any short story I've written on my own. I'm looking forward to seeing my collaborators reactions when they see what happens to their characters at the end.

Attempted Drabble

One of the unusual features of Farthing magazine, that I omitted to mention in my review of issue 5, is that they include a selection of drabbles between the stories. That's a story of exactly 100 words, for the uninitiated.

I've written a couple of stories of roughly that length, The Last Adam and Ten Years at the Bar, so I thought it would be interesting to aim for 100 words exactly.

I'd been thinking of another idea for avery short story for a while, so I set about writing Gap Years, about a teenager who ends up being away from Earth for rather longer than expected. It ended up at 528 words.

That doesn't count as a drabble!

Forgotten Worlds #6 Review

While issue 5 of Forgotten Worlds contained predominantly science fiction stories, this edition leans a lot more heavily toward fantasy. This makes my review more difficult to write as I’m not really a fantasy fan, but nonetheless this is still a collection of varied and, for the most part, well-written stories.

Read the rest of my review here.

Farthing #5 review

Farthing is a shiny, digest size magazine that is published quarterly, and has already made an impact after the cover to issue 2 was nominated for a BSFA award.

Read my review of issue 5 here.

The Final Collaborator

The final section of my collaborative story has arrived. Four other authors have written six ~1000 word sections each with its own character. I've slotted these together and where their contributions are divided into subsections I've split them up and done some minor edits for continuity. The introdcution is about my charcter, who also appears in a couple of other small sections to tie the stories together. Most of my conclusion is already written, and now I have the final character I can finish it off and submit it to Aphelion

Meanwhile I have an idea for another collaborative story...

Roadmaker Reviewed

Issue 16 of Jupiter has been reviewed by Jim Steel for Whispers of Wickedness.

He writes that Roadmaker is 'a gorgeous story' and 'the highlight of this issue.'

You can read the full review here.

Why has my blog got such an uninspired name?

That's a very good question. After all, I'm a writer, I could probably come up with something better.

Other SF bloggers have great titles like Velcro City Tourist Board, Adventures in the SF Trade and In the Plane of the Ecliptic, all much more interesting.

Well when I began blogging as an internet novice, my reasoning, perhaps faulty, was that if somebody wanted to look me up an obvious name would help narrow their search. There are quite a few other Gareth Joneses out there. So the title may not be the most astonishing ever, but I'm keeping it.

More Mare

After writing my own, very short, Mare Inebrium story for this month's Aphelion, I've had an idea for another story, this time of about 1800 words. I've only read about half of the Mare Inebrium back catalogue though, so I need to finish that first to make sure my story fits with everything else. I've written the first draft but already come across a few things in other stories that mean I'll have to make changes. I guess it'll be another month or so before I finish reading the other stories and complete mine.

Ten Years in Spain

My short Mare Inebrium story Ten Years at the Bar has been accepted by Spanish flash fiction webzine Efimeras. It's due to appear in issue 112 in May. This will be my second story woth them, and the first Mare Inebrium story to appear in another language.

What's wrong with sci fi anyway?

Have you noticed that people who aren't into science fiction refer to it as 'sci fi', but a growing number of SF fans are proclaiming that they don't like the phrase? They like to use the full term 'science fiction', or to say 'SF' because it could also stand for 'speculative fiction'.

Personally I don't see the problem. I mean, 'science fiction' never was a great term to start with. We don't write fiction about science, we don't even necessarily write about fictional science; but we all know what we mean.

So, there we have it: I write science fiction stories and other tales with a speculative element. I'm a sci fi author.