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The Week In Genre Books - July 16 2015

Here's the first in a new series of irregular posts.  Whenever I feel like it and have enough time on a Thursday, I'll list some new genre (fantasy, horror, SF) releases out that day.  For the sake of simplicity, I'm focusing solely on 'trad-published' novels and, even then, the list will be far from exhaustive: mainly stuff on my radar.  Please feel free to quack about any egregious trad-pub genre omissions in comments!  Let's go: what's out today?

UNDER GROUND - SL Grey (...

Ten Years After 7/7: How Best To Live Our Lives?

On the morning of the horrific London bombings which we soon came to know as '7/7', I was in the centre of town and fortunate enough not to lose anyone close to me.  Nevertheless, the seventh of July 2005, 10 years ago today, feels like quite a significant event on a personal level, because it changed the way I thought about life.  Negatively in the short-term, but positively overall.  Which is obviously odd.

That morning, at about 9.10am, I travelled through London's public tra...

Treat The Script Reader As A Viewer

There’s a script note I’ve given rather a lot over the years – to myself and other writers – and yet it doesn’t get talked about all that much (except for this week, when a post by the mighty James ‘Sitcom Geek’ Cary reminded me to write this). Since launching my Script Notes service a few months back, I’ve applied this note to a fair number of the varied and splendid TV and film scripts I’ve received.
Don’t tell the script reader things which the viewer won’t see or hear onscreen.
It’s easy to...

British Fantasy Awards 2015: Jury Duty

Here's an unusually brief post to say how delighted I am to serve my third summer of jury duty for the British Fantasy Society's British Fantasy Awards 2015.  I'm handling Non Fiction in the distinguished company of Johnny Mains and Laura Mauro.

Over the last couple of years, it's been great to help hand gongs over to the deserving Pornokitsch and Speculative Fiction 2012, but now the process begins afresh. You can see the full list of juries here.

The lists of nominees will fol...

Blind Dates And Dialogue Writing

I enjoy the Guardian Weekend magazine.  Well, about 78 per cent of it, which is pretty good going on their part.  Lately, I've noticed a trend in one of the mag's regular features, which can unexpectedly inspire fiction writing and dialogue in particular.

The Blind Date feature sends two strangers for an evening in a restaurant, then quizzes them individually about the experience, placing their answers in two columns side by side.  One of the questions is What Did You Talk About...

Five Things I've Missed About Spooks

On Thursday May 8 2015, Spooks returns to our screens - but big screens this time, as opposed to TV where it first ran for 10 series.  Four years after the show reached its climax, the movie Spooks: The Greater Good is upon us.

Oh my God, I love Spooks.  Haven't seen the film yet, but you can bet that's happening soon.  So, why was the TV series so great?  Let's hack into my memory banks and exercise covert surveillance on the contents...

(Spoiler note: Never seen Spooks? &n...

Barry Newbery's Big Doctor Who Day Out

Back through the Time Vortex in 2007, I had the pleasure of writing a Doctor Who Magazine feature which covered designer Barry Newbery’s visit to Cardiff’s Upper Boat Studios, where Doctor Who was then being made.  Between 1963 and 1984, Barry worked on more episodes of classic Doctor Who than any other designer, starting with the very first story, An Unearthly Child.  On the day of our studio tour, the man was great fun and the experience was enhanced by the ever-galvanising presen...

Ghostly Green Screen: Hitting The Reader Where They Live

It's good to make the most of the medium in which you write.

Sometimes this means doing things which only your medium can do.

The unfilmable book.

The unbookable film.
I've always loved how prose fiction is a collaborative medium, between writer and reader.  An intimate kind of contract.  The writer divulges a handful of details – or a whole cartload, if they’ve had too much coffee and can’t stop themselves – then the reader almost becomes the production designer and creates t...

Grab Free Ghost Story - And Win Stuff!

Hey!  Throughout Easter 2015 (April 3-April 6 inclusive), my acclaimed short ghost story A Sincere Warning About The Entity In Your Home is free to download at all Amazon sites worldwide.

Yep, free as a bird.  It will cost you zero cash to own it on your electronic device (which doesn't have to be an actual Kindle, thanks to Amazon's free reading apps.)  And if you're a Twitter user, you can win a prize for helping me spread the word.

(If you'd just like to check o...

What Can We Learn From The Career Of Therapy?

Therapy? at the Brighton Concorde 2, March 31 2015"I got my hair cut in Brighton today, don'tcha know," Therapy? frontman Andy Cairns tells his audience at Brighton's Concorde 2.  "So, remember that.  Putting a wee bit back into the local economy."

Just over 25 years after starting out, Therapy? have released their excellent 15th album, Disquiet.  Arriving in the wake of a couple of their more experimental releases, it's a return to the kind of emotionally turbulent, alternative...