tctaylor

October 16, 2022

October 16, 2022

Life Imitating Art. My Art.

This post was originally published in Legion Bulletin #128. Join the Legion to receive the Bulletin. The power of story Stories have power. Don’t underestimate that power. Because compelling stories have motivated people to tear down empires, endure hideous torture and death, and to reshape the world. Whether the stories being told have much truth to them matters not a jot. In recent months, I’ve seen this truism up close in real life. It’s also a theme I’ve used throughout the Chimera Company series. I’ve found the similarities uncanny. I’ve written about the oppression of the so-called mutants, egged on by the likes of Kadeja Independent News on the planet of Kryzabik (Book4: Smuggler Queen). Then there’s the utopian-dystopian world […]

July 15, 2022

Me, Multiple Sclerosis, and the SciFi Readers Chart Show.

I’ve just posted some fun and not quite so fun news over on my personal blog. I don’t wish to be overly dramatic about this, but in light of my increasing neurological problems, I’m no longer confident about how much time I have left to write novels at the level I know I can deliver. It could be many years, I hasten to point out. But it might be a lot less. Consequently, I have reprioritized my writing projects. If I have to stop writing novels, I don’t want to leave any book series unfinished. I’ve just completed a good draft of Time Dogz#2. I had intended to get that to a trilogy before attempting to interest publishers. Instead, I’m […]

May 11, 2022

Two new stories from me

You know how it is. You go for weeks and then two anthologies turn up at once! We Dare: Wanted Dead or Alive came out last week and is themed on bounty hunters and the hunted. My story, FRAkkers, features a mutant bounty hunter and his cyborg sidekick. The name comes from the Felon Recovery Agency, which regards their ‘Baleview’ bounty hunters to be just as bad as the felons they hunt. When I was a kid, I enjoyed the Strontium Dog strip in 2000AD comic. I remember someone at the Search/Destroy Agency who hated his mutant bounty hunters so much that he hoped some of them would be killed bringing in a particular bounty. That might be a false […]

May 3, 2022

New books coming this week and next

Here’s the lowdown on three new releases. This Friday (May 6th) sees “FRAkkers”, my mutant bounty hunter anti-hero story in We Dare: Wanted, Dead or Alive out Friday. His cyborg sidekick will hopefully get her own story released in another anthology later this year. What can I say? Strontium Dog meets Gill “the ARM” Hamilton with aliens like you’ve never seen before. Standing Fast on Foreign shores (May 10th) is post-apoc royal intrigue and action set in The Last Brigade Universe. The action moves across post-Collapse England from Birmingham to Bristol to Colchester. As these things do. And if you ever wondered what happens in Scotland after the Apocalypse, author David Appleby’s got that covered. And talking of new book […]

March 28, 2022

Titan’s Rising: a personal journey from 1937 to 2022

I posted the following on my personal blog last Friday (timctaylor.com). Although my new book is non-fiction, it occurs to me that readers of my stories might be interested in what I wrote in Titan’s Rising about my biography and my predictions for where publishing is going. If you’re in Kindle Unlimited, you can currently get the title for free and skip to the bits that interest you. Which probably means straight to Kevin J. Anderson. LOL. Anyway, here’s the post… My latest book, out today, has its genesis in books by other writers published 52 years apart (or perhaps 73, as we shall see). One is a personal improvement book written in 1937 that has sold 15 million copies […]

January 29, 2022

You Pay; We Slay

It’s anthologies week at Legion HQ. Three paperbacks arrived this week and I’m hugely proud that my name is on the cover of all three. You Pay; We Slay is the brand new one that was launched on Friday. This is set in the Hit World universe, which is similar to our own except that licensed assassination is legal. And there are aliens and magical creatures and much that is weird. In my effort for this anthology, Being Cassidy Dupuis, I deliberately avoided any science fiction and fantasy angles. Just human beings, albeit extreme ones. If you like it, let me know and maybe I’ll write some more Hit World. You can find more info on amazon.com here. As a […]

January 23, 2022

Listen to Conan the Space Monster?

Just a quick update to let you know that my latest release isn’t You Pay; We Slay as I had thought. Instead, it’s the audiobook edition of In The Wings. That’s how it often works: the audiobook editions pop up at a random date a while after the eBook and paperback. For my story in this anthology, I bought a collection of Robert E. Howard Conan the Barbarian stories and read the lot. I wanted my alien space monster to play the role of Conan, you see. To be honest, I don’t think anyone will listen to the result and see any connection, but I don’t mind because I’m proud of my story and had a wonderful time doing my […]

December 4, 2021

Sleeping Legion Deluxe

Lance’s First and Last Mission Today is the launch of the Sleeping Legion Deluxe Box Set. You can grab it here: http://getbook.at/SL_Box After JR and I went to-and-fro, we settled on a launch price of 99 pennies for December. I called the box set deluxe not because of the smart picture of Lance Scipio on the front (courtesy of Vincent Sammy), nor even due to the bonus bits and bobs from JR and me. It earns the description deluxe because it includes a brand new story. Trial by Fire is Lance Scipio’s last mission but also his first from a story chronology. Either way, it’s a cracker: brutal, tense, and shot full of dark humor. Inside this Kindle book are […]

November 27, 2021

Didn’t he write those Dune books?

The Final Days I’m counting down the days for 2021. Hope it’s been a good year for you, though I know it hasn’t for a lot of people. As the clock’s ticking down, I’m racing to get finished the projects I had planned. I’m the anthology king Okay, so king is putting it far too strongly, but I am doing more novelettes for anthologies this year. It’s been a great way to mix things up from a writing perspective and try some new approaches. Keeps me fresh. Last week I sent in a story for a post-apocalyptic adventure set in the Last Brigade Universe. It’s my first story to feature a castle! Yesterday I finished a first draft of a […]

October 1, 2021

On Deadly Ground

It’s book launch day… and more! The latest anthology from Bayonet Books is out and my name is on the cover! (And what a great cover it is too, courtesy of Jamie Glover). On Deadly Ground: A Heroic Last Stand is out today and features Ten Tales of glorious (?) last stands. My story features Steve “Stiletto” Cauldwell, the anti-hero of the Time Dogz. Not entirely through choice, he is embroiled in humanity’s desperate last stand in the shadow of the beautiful rings of Saturn. This was a try out for a potential new books series. I’m about a third of the way through the first Time Dogz novel, so Stiletto must have done something right for me. It’s out […]