Thursday, January 26, 2012

Oh there you are...

So it's about time I got back on this particular horse, I think.

Through a combination of factors, I took a bit of a break from the whole writing affair, and it's hard to see that as anything but a good thing. Now I've returned to the fold and already I'm enjoying it a lot more than I was when I decided on the time off.

So what's been going on? I started writing again in November, having got the kick up the arse I needed to get moving. Blame Richard Salter, the editor who commissioned my first ever piece of fiction, and who got in contact with me to ask if I was interested in pitching for his new anthology, World's Collider. It's a shared-universe collection that revolves around a disaster with the Large Hadron Collider, published by Open Casket Press and featuring a slew of top scribes. Full Table of Contents is available from Richard's website. However, for all the news about the anthology (including announcements of interviews with all the authors) your best port of call is the official Facebook page. Go on, Like it.

That was back in July, but by the time I had my idea ready - and felt ready to write it - it was the end of the year. Mercifully, Richard's reaction to the story has been positive, so it's on to edits in the next few weeks.

At about the same time as I was writing for World's Collider, I had two more stories hit the shelves. The Rule of Three is a sci-fi horror piece I sent to Black House Comics on spec, and which was picked up for issue three of the company's After the World anthology.

Meanwhile Morrigan Books released the international edition of its Scenes From the Second Storey collection. If the name rings a bell, that's because I edited the Australian edition with Amanda Pillar a year or so back, a book of which I'm very proud and which bagged a few awards and nominations in the last twelve months.

The international edition puts me on the other side of the fence - writer instead of editor - and includes the story Temptation, about a woman who ... oh that'll be giving it away. The book's currently available as an ebook only (I believe) and you can order a copy from the publisher's website.

And most recently, I've received confirmation that my story Sound and Fury has been picked up for inclusion in Damnation and Dames, a paranormal noir collection from Ticonderoga Publications. Edited by Liz Grzyb and Amanda Pillar, it promises to be packed with hard-boiled supernatural loveliness, judging from the Table of Contents.

If that seems like a fair amount to have happened since my last post here, I have to balance that with the knowledge that very little new writing has been done in that time. I'm pleased to say that's changed now, with some new projects taking off in the last month or so. One has the potential to be very big, either as an achievement or the proverbial car crash... but I'll get into that next time.