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Book Restoration: a story
Have you ever wondered what is involved in a book restoration? I grew up with this cookery book. It holds the recipes of my childhood. I’m not so keen on liver, but you can see from the stains that we ate it a lot. The book was in a very sorry state. There was hardly a single page…
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Blog Tours: an explanation
Last week I was at a meeting at Writing West Midlands. I was asked to explain blog tours because some of the people present weren’t familiar with them. I’m quite sure I didn’t do the subject full justice, so I thought I’d write a brief blog about the experiences that I’ve had with them. A blog…
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Baby’s Fantasycon 2018
Baby got back from Fantasycon in Chester, very happy to have mingled with old friends and new. Here is Baby’s account, as written up by Heide. Friday Baby and I arrived in Chester just after 3pm on Friday afternoon. Friday was our busy day, so I went to the bar to look for the other…
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Writing conventions to get excited about
What’s the collective noun for a whole load of writers? It’s a convention – yay! The fun times during the year when lots of genre writers get together to exchange best practice and sing bad karaoke. It has dawned on me recently that we have a slew of fabulous events on the horizon, so I…
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Creepy Dolls (and how this one demanded to have stories written about it)
The Uncanny Valley You may have come across the concept of the “uncanny valley”. This is the strangeness that humans perceive when something is very close to resembling a human, but isn’t quite right. The reason for it being described as a valley is because our acceptance of human-like forms goes up and up as…
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The power of local services: 4 things that can work locally
We recently blogged about micronations. If you’re not quite ready to set up an entire new country, you might want to dip your toe in the water by declaring independence for your local area in a more targeted way, perhaps with local services. Today we’re looking at some of the fascinating ways that areas of…
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Has humorous fiction lost its fizz?
Where are all the funny books? It’s apparently a question being asked by the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize (the only prize in the UK for comedy novels) as they have decided not to award the prize for 2018 because none of the entries was funny enough. Can it really be true that there…
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10 ways to fight Blue Monday
Blue Monday – a fake media construct? Blue Monday used to refer to washing, but in recent years it’s the day that the newspapers tell us that we are all supposed to be at our most miserable. The combination of weather, dark days and debt culminates specifically on the third Monday in January, we are told. For…
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Festive Excess. Can you recognise it?
This is a handy guide to festive excess. If you find yourself doing the things described here over the Christmas season, you are almost certainly overdoing it. Be warned. Len Deighton’s Action Cookbook This book is for you if you want to emulate the lifestyle of a 1960’s action hero. Len Deighton is most famous for writing…
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Guest Post – Hilary Mortz looks at Christmas Films
Today’s post is written by Hilary Mortz, who wrote one of the stories in Festive Treats (the free Christmas anthology, have you got your copy yet?) Christmas Films I got my ultimate guilty pleasure FESTIVE TREAT today – a glossy shiny 14 Day What’s On At Xmas TV Guide. Christmas is finally here – forget…