Matt Dovey's Blog, page 3

Awards Eligibility 2016

It is that time of year where, across the globe, writers are chasing their brain weasels into cages, pulling up a lectern, and nervously presenting their awards eligible work for 2016. So ignore the plasters on my fingers (the weasels were a bit bitey) and instead let me direct you to The List of Things What I Have Written This Year What I Think You Might Like, Iffn It Please You, Thank You Sirs and Ladies and All Inbetween and Outside Those Narrow Gender Definitions.

New Story: Quartet of the Far Blown Winds @ FFO

Quartet of the Far Blown Winds is a story about distance, loneliness, and the vast empty reaches of space. It's about the Fermi Paradox, and my answer to it.

Homebrewing the Easy Way

Homebrew wine is way easier than you think it is. I mean, you can go down a rabbit hole on it, buying specific varieties of yeast and carefully measuring the specific gravity of the must at particular times, or you can just chuck everything in a demijohn whilst loudly declaring "eh, I'm sure it'll be fine". This is a post on the latter technique, from first principles.

Anatomy of a Golden Pen: Conflict

It took me an embarassingly long time to work this out: conflict is everything. Do you know what happened to the first story I wrote once I worked it out? When I first focused on deliberately working it into every paragraph? It won WotF. If you only ever take one piece of advice from me, take this: you need more conflict.

Podcast: Squalor and Sympathy

Happy days! My first ever audio production is available today as PodCastle episode 427, brilliantly narrated by Louise Ratcliffe with a proper Lancashire accent. If you're here from PodCastle, then firstly--hi! Thank you for remembering to look me up after you finished listening. That's quite something, and it means a lot. The artwork mentioned in the show notes is on the right, by the incredibly talented Adrian Massaro. It honestly gave me shivers the first time I saw it.

Anatomy of a Golden Pen: Research

Being a writer, I'm full of self-importance and arrogantly believe everyone wants to read pages and pages of nonsense from me. As such, I'm going to start a series about my Golden Pen story from Writers of the Future volume 32, Squalor & Sympathy, dissecting it from various angles. First up: all the historical accuracies and references in the story.

Living the Dream: a WotF32 recap

Kobo Writing Life very kindly asked me to pen a guest post covering my experiences of the Writers of the Future week, and being me, I ended up writing 3000 words, so it had to be split in two. Both parts are up now: Part One and Part Two. You can read the opening to my Golden Pen winning story, Squalor & Sympathy, and then trundle over to wotf32.com to buy the anthology from your venue of choice.

#WotF32 Giveaway

Let's do a #WotF32 giveaway. All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter in the next week--between now and launch day, May 3rd 2016--and I'll pick a name to get a signed copy on launch day. Anywhere in the world. That easy--I just want your email address, and I don't even ask you to type it twice to check your spelling. I actually couldn't make it easier. For reference, I have had that mailing list for two months and not sent a damn thing out on it. This isn't a lot of spam you're signing up for.

WotF Golden Pen winner 2016

So this happened. Not only that, but my illustrator, Adrian Massaro, won the Golden Brush award--the first time in contest history that one story has won both awards.

Shortlisted for the James White Award 2016

Absolutely delighted to announce that I've been shortlisted for the 2016 James White Award for best new writer, supported by the British Science Fiction Association and Interzone. The winner should be announced around 18:00 GMT on Saturday 26th March at Mancunicon; the prize is publication in Interzone, which is huge--it's pretty much the only British SF magazine left standing, and is one of the most respected and reputable venues in the field. Suffice to say: I am full of excitement.