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So Life on Other Planets will burst squinting into the light on May 6th with the help of one of the newest indies on the block, Lendal Press, and their stellar team. The book launch will be a mash up with the 2021 WOWFest Pulp Idol final, which is very exciting, and hopefully there will… Continue reading Life on Other Planets: landing May 6th

Way back in November 2019 I was asked to join a panel at the Books on Tyne Festival hosted by Newcastle Libraries to discuss our Books for the Apocalypse. Lots of jokes were made about the poor weather, though none of us could have known the horrors that lay in wait in 2020. Still, it… Continue reading Books for the End of the World – Newcastle Book Festival 2019

It’s been a while. Sheesh. Kids, eh? Anyway, I’m going to begin posting things again, starting with things I’ve found and migrating into my novel Life on Other Planets at some point, which finally exists as a full draft. But it’s still very much a private affair, so here’s Joy Williams reading her story George… Continue reading An attempt to rehabilitate myself through the voices of others

So a year on from Pulp Idol I am making slow headway on the rest of the book, and thought it only fair to post the chapter. You can also read it in the Pulp Idol Firsts 2017 book here on Issuu or in print from Amazon and Waterstones Liverpool.

‘And lo, that celestial crucible which bore us all to Earth doth embrace thy spirit once again.’ Book of Jupiter, Chapter 6, Verse 3

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When I was 15 my family had a nervous breakdown. It was August 1997, the summer my Great Aunt Edith died. The same summer that all the spiders in East Sussex chose to leave their homes and run amok for reasons no scientist on the planet could explain. Were these two things connected? I like to think so.

This year is the 10th anniversary of Liverpool writing festival Writing on the Wall’s novel writing competition, Pulp Idol. Long story short: I entered. Heat’s yesterday. I’m in the final! I read the first three minutes of Chapter 1 from my work in progress novel Life on Other Planets, and against some stiff competition I… Continue reading Pulp Idol 2016: I’m in the final

Macguffin from Comma Press is brilliant. If you don’t know about it, find out now because it’s ace. Basically you can upload yourself reading your own stories so the world can listen and hate your accent as much as your friends do. Check out me reading my story Marble here and rate my accent as… Continue reading Listen to me reading Marble on Macguffin

An old blog article from a long while ago that I thought I’d reblog because I quite liked it: GADDIS ….I’m frequently seen in the conservative press as being out there on the barricades shouting: Down with capitalism! I do see it in the end as really the most workable system we’ve produced. So what… Continue reading William Gaddis in the Paris Review (1986) predicting the financial collapse of 2008