Inconvenience store

Waitrose. Website. Is. Rubbish.

I work pretty much half of my living online. Yet I can't even work out how to register on the site. Surely Ocado could have given the old grey-hairs at Waitrose just a smidgen of guidance on designing a decent ecommerce website. Idiots. I'm tempted to look at the LIDL site and compare the experience! Gah and indeed Fah!

We don't all have veggieboxes delivered direct to our door see, even if we try very hard to get them! How many exclamation marks? Aliya will be so proud.

Ooh, look, I made a meme. It's called 'Secret Vice'

Not as exciting as it sounds. Mine's Holby City.

I have respect for soap writers. They are much maligned, like soap actors in fact. Sure there are rubbish ones (yes, I'm so looking at you Hollyoaks). But for the main part they do a hard and dirty job.

But Holby City, oh, a diamond in the rough. Sure some situations are so absurdly contrived, but kind of brilliantly.

So, what's your secret vice? Erm, oh yeah, who to tag? Let's go with Ian, Nik, Alis, David and Fiona.

Sesame Street was brought to you...

In case you hadn't noticed, Sam Hayes is doing wonderful things with the alphabet and the writers' life over on her blog.

Good day at the office, dear?

Admittedly, been a bit busy at work lately, but things haven't got quite this bad yet.

Get outta town, buddy

I'm AWOL for two weeks and get replaced by a cheap computer. Charming.

Tis true, I have been reading Ian's novel, but the reason for my absence has been much more prosaic. Work. Lots of it. Big dents made. Chin up. Top lip stiff, what. Normal service resuming...

Talking of Ian's book--which he terms a 'technothriller'--it's interesting how many parallels can be drawn between it and ours. Both are set in modern day. (Well, his is in 2003, but you know what I mean), and both have something sciency and untoward going on. Though his science is probably a tad stronger than ours. And both have one naive young woman for a protagonist who has a complicated connection to a much haughtier and ostensibly more clued-up partner. And there are superhuman killings a-plenty. And both books dash about the globe as if it's much smaller than it is. All we need is a manifesto and by jove we have a movement, albeit an unpublished one.
No penguins in Ian's book though. Sorry, Tim.

Response times

Submission: Early February
Response: Late September

Professional magazine with staff.

That is all.

Responding to Aliya responding to David

The time-travelling one with the cure for malaria

An SF novelette called Skipping Stones, due for serialised inclusion in Farrago's Wainscot. This is the story's third acceptance. One of the other publishers turnedaround the decision to publish and the second one folded. This story was co-written with Ekaterina Sedia.

The novel condensed into a short story which is actually rather good

A proper, literary short story this one, covering the lifetime of a couple and its family.

The science fiction gangster book with Aliya

Kind of the purpose of this blog, if someone publishes it. 'Under consideration' at the moment

The story with Aliya

This one is called Overturned and is split into three viewpoints: a girl's fantasy, a crime caper and a relationship breakdown

The other story with Aliya

Another story that was accepted, sat on for about two years and then the publisher decided not to release the book. This is in a kind of 2000ad post-apocalypse stylee

And uncompleted:

The Novel

I've actually been making some more headway on this recently. Who knows, might have it finished before dead o'clock

The Young Adult

I lost the manuscript. I need to re-write the whole thing.

The science fiction rock musical

Not as bad as We Will Rock You sounds. It has shades of Christopher Marlowe, Mary Shelley, Alice in Chains and Creedence Clearwater Revival

There is more, but that's all you're getting for now.