25/03/2015: Cover Reveal for 'Colours'
My third novel, Colours, is nearing the end of its final draft before it goes to the editor. It's the first in a sci-fi trilogy set in a dystopian future where nations have been replaced by corporations. Colours is set in a place called Leafen, where a deal with a major defence conglomerate has ju...
12/01/2015: Mark Matthews on Running and Writing
My second guest post has been kindly written by Mark Matthews, author of MILK-BLOOD, and On the Lips of Children, as well as Chasing the Dragon: Running to Get High, a non-fiction work on running. Mark tells us how running informs his writing. Thanks, Mark. I've written 4 four novels. Two feature...
25/12/2014: The Stories you Believe
Some close family members were married by a minister from New Zealand who said: “The bible is just a book of stories - the way you live your life depends on the stories you believe.” I am aware that might cause a fair amount of nose-wrinkling in some Christians. To me it’s skewed way of saying “Tr...
“The trouble is, you think you have time,” said Buddha, a bit patronisingly, to somebody with no children. When I was 26 I went travelling. The highlights of the trip were, in order: witnessing a man from Sydney with three missing fingers falling off a train whilst it moved through a Thai jun...
24/10/2014: More than a Marathon
Rachael Bateman tells us why she runs so far When I was writing The End of the World Running Club, I got a lot of help from a group of runners and ultra-runners, who told me what it was like to run very long distances and why they ran them. One of them, Rachael Bateman, went a step further and ag...
In a week or so, right around the time when a lonely Tibetan hill farmer lines up his iPhone to perform the world’s final ice bucket challenge, Scotland will vote on its independence. The following are my thoughts about what this means to me. Most of this remains raw and unedited because that’s ho...
A friend told me that someone asked him: "What's your one true passion in life?" He faltered. He didn't say the thing he thought he was supposed to. And that worried him. Here's what would go on inside my head if somebody asked me that: This person is asking me if I have passion. Not just ...
12/05/2014: How you feel about running
A few months back, I asked you for some help with my second novel, The End of the World Running Club, which is published next month. I wanted to know about your experiences running - especially from those of you who run long distances. I wanted to know how you feel about it, what moves you to ru...
This week, Kickstarter welcomes a new project to its pages. Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant and David Wright (who host the Self Publishing Podcast and wrote the excellent Write. Publish. Repeat.) will be asking us to fund a project called 'Fiction Unboxed'. The goal? To produce a book in thirty da...
20/01/2014: Calling All Runners!
I want to hear about your experiences running long distances. Can you help?Last year I began writing my second novel. It's a post-apocalyptic story called The End of the World Running...