Punching Yegor on the nose wasn’t the most tactful way of expressing my objection. I think ‘expressing an objection’ was the phrase they taught us in conflict management, but it was a while ago and I may have dozed off. …
Blog Archives
Blast from the Past: The Endocrine Tyranny
In a change from Saturday’s usual hooptedoodles, it feels like a good day to remember an old story. I remember writing The Endocrine Tyranny in Cape Town’s Obz Café, trying to conjure the brutalist architecture of the English Midlands, so…
Arctic Adagio is on NetGalley
My recently published novelette is on NetGalley all month, available to download for anyone who would like to review it. If that’s you, just click, register and download. I’ll appreciate any or all honest reviews. Much as I’d like you…
Tagged with: Arctic Adagio, crime fiction, Dystopia, Novelette, Novella, science fiction
Posted in Giveaway, Publishing news
Posted in Giveaway, Publishing news
Life by Screen and Microwave
You see a bus full of heads bent over tiny screens, each one stamped with a different logo that came from the same Foxconn factory. Tops of heads tell you nothing of use, which is why you need me to…
Arctic Adagio sets sail
How do you catch a murderer when your suspects own the law? Superintendent Rex Harme’s job is to protect the super-rich from pirates and anarchists. It’s not his job to investigate them. If they cared to be investigated, they wouldn’t…
Diminuendo in Three Letters
I thrill to music I’ve never heard before. That’s the beginning of this week’s hooptedoodle. The rest of it is over on the website of Constellatory Tales, who have published Diminuendo in Three letters in full. Many thanks are due…
Tagged with: Constellatory Tales, Diminuendo in Three Letters, Flash fiction, science fiction, short story
Posted in Publishing news, Saturday Hooptedoodle
Posted in Publishing news, Saturday Hooptedoodle
Fiction Review: The Suicide Club by Rachel Heng
The two people ahead of me in the queue agreed they wouldn’t want to live forever. “What if your choice was to live forever or die tomorrow?” I asked. Neither of them had an answer for that. Neither did I,…
Tagged with: Dystopia, Literary fiction, Rachel Heng, science fiction, The Suicide Club
Posted in Book review: fiction, Wednesday Pontification
Posted in Book review: fiction, Wednesday Pontification
Fiction Review: The Reopened Cask by Richard Zwicker
My quest to read more of the type of short stories I write continues with Rich Zwicker’s latest collection, The Reopened Cask. The cask in question is the cask that was, at least at the beginning of Edgar Allen Poe’s…
Tagged with: Collection, Fiction, Humour, Richard Zwicker, science fiction, short story, The Reopened Cask
Posted in Book review: fiction
Posted in Book review: fiction
Cal in Love
Julia wanted to know why my brother wouldn’t be coming to our wedding. “Because he won’t leave the Institute of Immersion”, I said. “Not for one day?” She didn’t get it. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t get it either.…
Tagged with: Flash fiction, Microfiction, science fiction, Valentine's Day
Posted in Saturday Hooptedoodle
Posted in Saturday Hooptedoodle
Fiction Review: A Dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest
If Christopher Priest has a formula, it can be summed up as two worlds = one character. In A Dream of Wessex, one of Julia Stretton’s worlds is an experiment conducted by the other: a utopian future based around the…
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