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…
Blog Archives
Blog Tours: an explanation
Posted in 2018 Tagged with: Anne cater, blog tours, bloggers, Rachel Gilbey, Tracy Fenton, writing west midlands
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…
Posted in 2018, Events, Genre Tagged with: Adam Millard, Anna Smith Spark, Chester, Duncan P Bradshaw, Fantasycon, G V Anderson, Good Omens, googly eyes, Heide Goody, Iain Grant, Jen Williams, Jim McLeod, Joanne Harris, John Niven, Justin Lee Anderson, Marion Pitman, Naomi Foyle, Peter Haynes, Peter Rabbit, Rachel McLean, Richard Webb, Rio Youers, Ritchie Valentine Smith, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Steve McHugh, Steve Poore, Tasha Suri, Terry Grimwood
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…
Posted in 2018, Events Tagged with: 20Booksto50K, Collectormania, conferences, conventions, Fantasycon, Sledge-Lit, Stokercon, Theakstons Crime Festival, Worldcon
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…
What price research?
Heide and I are currently working on third and fourth books in the Oddjobs series. If you’ve not read them (and you can get the first one HERE) then we should explain that they’re comedy horror novels about the government…
The Virtual Reality Book Trailer – Simon Fairbanks gives it a test drive…
We met up with indie author, Simon Fairbanks, at the Edge-Lit genre fiction event in Derby last weekend and we showed him our new Virtual Reality Book Trailer. He was so impressed, we asked him to do a guest blog…
Posted in 2018, Books, Events Tagged with: book trailer, Edge-Lit, Heide Goody, Iain Grant, snowflake, virtual reality
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…
Posted in 2018 Tagged with: Hull phone boxes, local currency, Robin Hood Energy, sharing economy, Totnes
Set up your own micronation for fun and profit!
We live, as the Chinese allegedly say, in “interesting times” or as internet memes would have it, in that bit of history labelled in school textbooks as ‘Factors Leading Up To…’ and followed by a section which involves maps with…
Posted in 2018 Tagged with: Asgardia, Melchizdek, micronation, Nation of Celestial Space, New Utopia, Sealand, Wirtland
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…
Talking about Genres – Who cares about genres?
Writers, publishers and readers talk about genre a lot. It’s how bookshops decide where a book belongs. It’s used to draw up charts, award prizes and produce those “If you liked this book, you might also like…” messages on-line retailers…
Posted in 2018
