November 27, 2021
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
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 […]
August 11, 2021
I had a chat over on the Blasters & Blades Podcast about the Monster at the Gate story that came out a few weeks ago in In the Wings. Secrets were divulged.
August 10, 2021
After beavering away for the last two months, I can now proudly announce that The Reality War is rewritten, polished, repainted, and now sports the words ‘2nd Edition’ on the copyright pages. For those who don’t know (and I wouldn’t blame you) the two novels in The Reality War were the first novels of mine to be published, back in 2011. Although they are set in the Human Legion Universe, they are a different style to later books, such as Marine Cadet. Consequently, I didn’t speak of them much, worrying that readers who enjoyed the Human Legion might not take to the earlier books. That, I decided, was unfair on The Reality War. It’s been bothering me for years, because […]
July 12, 2021
My latest book has just come out in Kindle and paperback editions from Seventh Seal Press. This is In the Wings, the latest Four Horsemen Universe anthology. The first anthology (A Fistful of Credits, 2017) was my introduction to the 4HU, and it excited me enough that I was soon writing 4HU stories myself. I hope this new 4HU anthology (the tenth!) will be a happy starting point for some more readers. In this book, fifteen of us have taken leading support characters from earlier stories and made them the stars they always were. My story was about how rogue trader, Captain Jenkins, fell foul of the Earth authorities and wound up plying the trade lanes of the Spine Nebula. […]
July 2, 2021
I have another book launch today! Hold the Line is the fifth and best Chimera Company novel and it’s published today by Theogony Books, featuring Vincent Sammy on the crayons. Audio will follow later with Steve Campbell on the voices. This is my 21st published novel, which means I have officially come of age and am now a writing adult. Or something. What I like most about this is that my writing has changed for the better since my first serious attempt at a novel, which was shipped around various publishers in the late naughties. A small press outfit called Solaris requested a full manuscript and sat on it for a year before declining. At the time that almost felt […]
June 23, 2021
Octo Racing! Greetings from the sunny depths of England, where the Covid restrictions will soon be relaxed and I’m starting to plan some Octo Racing for August. Please don’t confuse this with the traditional races featuring elite sports octopi. I’m referring, of course, to racing octogenarians. As far as I can make out, my family’s enjoyed the beach at Walton-on-the-Naze every year since the 1930s, interrupted only by Adolf Hitler and Covid. My parents’ legs aren’t too clever these days, so their loving grandson has decided we’ll mark a racetrack out on the beach and push them in their wheelchairs. If I receive a concerned phone call tomorrow, I’ll know they’ve read this edition of the bulletin. Don’t worry, Dad! You’ll be strapped […]
June 14, 2021
I’ve just typed ‘The End’ and sent off a couple of novelettes for anthologies. One’s a space opera adventure with plenty of exotic aliens. The other is unusual for me in that the story of hired assassins has no fantastical elements. Well, it’s set in an alternate version of contemporary America, so it’s technically a fantasy, I guess, but there are no ray guns or interstellar squids, so I’m keeping it real for this one. Fingers crossed they get accepted. I have some tidying up and admin things crying out for attention before I start on my next novel. One of those things is the website at humanlegion.com, which I think needs trimming back and then tuning up. If there’s […]
May 19, 2021
Theogony Books has just launched the latest Chimera Company novel. If evil terraforming operations, the exotic court of a sector crime boss, and an alien goat with attitude are your thing, the fourth Chimera Company novel is for you. Prior to this, the Theogony novels have been a mix of new material and old. Smuggler Queen is all new. I sent the the fifth novel, Hold the Line, off to the publisher yesterday today. Hopefully they’ll like it, because it’s due to be published next month! I also was fortunate enough to have my second Covid vaccine yesterday, and my brain is currently mush being massaged by a pneumatic drill. Hopefully these words make some kind of sense! If they […]
April 16, 2021
The latest Chimera Company novel is published today. As a writer, getting books out and into the hands readers (or their ears) is what it’s all about. Department 9 is my nineteenth novel. I have decided that novelists come of age after 21 novels, because that’s a milestone I expect to meet in the summer. Since I’ve not yet come of age, Department 9 is filled with writerly teenage vigor, and I use it to go dystopian in a world where failure to report an illegal act wins you the same punishment as if you were the perpetrator. And anything is illegal if those in authority choose it to be. Also goats. And ancient temples buried beneath desert sands. Thank […]