Pete Sutton's Blog, page 38

Guest post from Nathaniel Danes

Nathaniel Danes is a self-diagnosed sci-fi junkie and, according to his wife, has an over active imagination. Mostly blind, he writes to create universes where he has no limitations. He lives with his wife and daughter in the Washington, DC area.
Author Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nathaniel-Danes/1528587637363979 Twitter: https://twitter.com/nathanieldanesWebsite: www.nathanieldanes.com Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/nathanieldanes

Book Links: Amazon (Pre-Order): http://www.amazon.com/Last-Hero-Nathaniel-Danes-ebook/dp/B00NI5UGPI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1410517044&sr=1-1&keywords=the+last+hero

Bookgoodies: http://bookgoodies.com/a/B00NI5UGPI

Nathanial has dropped by to talk about his book - The Last Hero
Contact with a race of pacifists convinces mankind to lay down its weapons and keep the peace. The last Medal of Honor recipient, Trent Maxwell, trades glory for the comforts of a family after the U.S. Army disbands. All that ends when an alien menace attacks the New Earth colony, which forces a crash mobilization. Trent finds himself reactivated and traveling through space to distant worlds, in order to stop this new enemy. During the century long journey of death, love, and loss, he also deals with the law of relativity that wreaks havoc with his daughter.

Excerpt: Trent knelt down where Anna could throw her arms around his neck. She pulled against him tight and started crying again. Tears rolled down his face as he whispered, “I love you more than you can understand. I’m sorry.”Her cries downed out his soft words.                         After a minute, Trent summoned all of his strength to break free of her hold. Standing, he shared a look with Madison. She wrapped him in a loving, warm hug.   This time she did the whispering, “Remember what I told you. Make them pay.”He pulled away, nodding as he placed his hand on Anna’s sobbing head. “I’ll see you both again someday. I promise.” The words bound him to a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep. 

The Last Hero, I had to write it
I never thought I'd write a book. Heck, for most of my life, getting beyond page three of any school writing project felt like a Herculean task. I think the difference between now and then, is my writing doesn't feel forced, it's like the story is there, I just need to get it out. Maybe that's the difference between writing what you want as opposed to what you have to.
Thinking about it now, it almost feels as if The Last Hero grew organically rather than having been written. My over active imagination, love for military history, science fiction addiction, blindness, failed military career, daughter, and more were filtered through my fingers onto the page. It's a nexus where several pieces of my life came together. Believe me, that sounds far easier than it was.
I've always used my imagination as an escape hatch from life. As far back as I can remember I'd bolt from mundane situations in my mind, transporting myself to excitement and adventure. I'm sure most kids do this, but I've never stopped. Today, I do this as a coping mechanism. I'm losing my sight to a genetic disorder, reason for my failed military career, and I find it relaxing to drift off into worlds where I don't have that limitation.
These fantasies were always content to live inside my head until I read The Forever War. That classic sparked something inside me. Science fiction has always been my preferred genre for TV and movies, but as far as books go, I used to only read military history. After stumbling upon The Forever War everything changed. I couldn't read enough military science fiction and those stories in my head started to become restless.
I also can't understate the importance of my daughter's birth in helping to shape the story in my first novel. There are a select few things I truly love in his world, my wife for one, so the feeling isn't foreign to me. However, I honestly wasn't prepared for the body blow of raw emotion, of pure unconditional love, I felt the second I held my baby girl for the first time. From then on, I couldn't imagine a universe that she wasn't a part of, where that incredible connection didn't exist. Her presence in my life enriched and brought depth to my fantasy worlds. She brought meaning and purpose to them.
Literally bursting at the seams, I had to get the stories out. So, I started to write and write, then I rewrote and rewrote. Before I knew it, a few years had passed and I'd written four books. Finally, I decided to try and get one published. Fortunately, Solstice Publishing saw fit to give me a chance and agreed to release the The Last Hero.
If you read my book, I hope you enjoy it and can feel the passion that went into its creation. It will be the first of many, I don't have a choice, the stories have to come out.
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Fundsurfer Funded!

Whilst I was away (surely you noticed?) our Fundsurfer met its funding goals and all systems are now go!

We are finalising the text (all the stories are edited and we're just filling in the fiddly bits) and the art and are now talking to the publisher about the esoterics of getting a book published (lot's of things to sort out - like choosing between B & C formats and getting an ISDN amongst many other things)

It's exciting seeing this idea come alive slowly but surely and I'm really looking forward to seeing it in the flesh, which will now definitely happen due to all our lovely funders. Each and every one of them, from the lady who gave us £2 in the pub to the guys that pledged for the £200 reward, and everyone in between, deserve a massive thanks.

I'll keep you up to date with what happens.

Nunslinger Review

Nunslinger Stark Holborn




The true tale of how Sister Thomas Josephine of St. Louiis Missouri, began to cross the Overland Trail to Sacramento, California with the help of one Abraham C. Muir … So starts a remarkable set of books, first serialised and now collected together in one volume for your delectation. The books recount how Sister Thomas Josephine becomes the “Six-Gun Sister”, a fugitive, running from the law, the bluecoats and the church in civil war era United States. She is waylaid on her way to the promise of a new life in Sacramento California when her wagon train is attacked by Indians. There she meets Lt. Carthy, a handsome cavalry officer and Abraham C Muir a mysterious drifter, two men that fate ties her to. Spurred by a desire to do good in a difficult world Sister Thomas Josephine embarks on a set of adventures that will keep you turning the pages.

There is some beautiful writing here, very evocative and you can almost smell the sweat, leather, beans and coffee that pervade the book. Because it was a serial it does of course feel episodic, but this is a bonus as you can rest between each novella length adventure or gorge on the whole thing as the regular cliffhangers draw you ever onwards. Full of memorable characters and places this is a must for any fan of the Western and a great place to start if you’ve never explored the genre before.

Overall – Great Western which ticks all the boxes and yet also manages to feel fresh. It also has a beautiful cover

Crowdfunding a book

Regular readers will know that I've been running a Fundsurfing campaign to get the North Bristol Writing Group anthology published:



https://www.fundsurfer.com/project/no...

We have gone over 50% and we have 22 days left - so we need a big push for the last three weeks!

I'd like to publicly thank everyone who has pledged so far but ask that if you haven't pledged to please do so. The minimum pledge is £1 which is less than a cup of tea in most cafes and £5 gets you the ebook and £10 gets you a copy of the physical book both of which will have your name in for being a supporter. There are plenty of other rewards so please do check out the link above.

I've also been interviewed about it over on Judy Darley's excellent SkyLightRain blog -

Interview with Jonathan Oliver - Editor of Dangerous Games

Jonathan Oliver is the multi-award winning editor of The End of The Line, Magic, House of Fear, End of the Road and Dangerous Games. He’s also written a couple of novels and a bunch of short stories. He lives in Abingdon with his family and their cat.

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We asked Jonathan a bunch of questions about the latest anthology Dangerous Games


UK: 9781781082652 | 4th December 2014 | £7.99
US: 9781781082683 | 4th December 2014 | $7.99

Available in paperback and ebook

In a world ruled by chance, one rash decision could bring down the house, one roll of the dice could bring untold wealth, or the end of everything.

The players have gathered around the table, each to tell their story—often dark, always compelling. Within you will find tales of the players and the played, lives governed by games deadly, weird, or downright bizarre.

In this anthology of the weird and the macabre, multi-award-winning editor Jonathan Oliver brings
together a diverse collection of voices from some of today’s finest writers, to create an original and fresh collection that’s unlike anything you’ve read before.

Dangerous Games features new works from Hugo award-winners, brilliant new talents and best-selling authors, including: Chuck Wendig, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Lavie Tidhar, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Paul Kearney, Libby McGugan, Yoon Ha Lee, Gary Northfield, Melanie Tem, Hillary Monahan, Tade Thompson, Rebecca Levene, Ivo Stourton, Gary McMahon, Robert Shearman, Nik Vincent, Helen Marshall, and Pat Cadigan.


Roll the bones at your own risk December 2014…





Tell us a bit about the book, who's in it and what's the idea behind it?

This is my fifth anthology for Solaris and, like the ones that have gone before, it is a themed collection. The theme here being games – so, there are tales about the players and the played, exploring the reason we play games and what games do to those that play them. I’d been toying with the idea of doing something on this theme for a while, and I’m a gamer myself (mainly tabletop RPGs, but also videogames) so it seemed a natural choice. As for who is in it, there are a range of familiar and newer names, it was great to be able to work with up-and-coming talent like Tade Thompson and Nik Vincent, but it was also good to work with folk I’d previously published like Robert Shearman and Helen Marshall. I’m very proud of the range and depth of this anthology and, though I say it myself, there isn’t a weak story here.

This isn't your first anthology - did it present any new challenges?

The challenge is really in keeping the anthologies fresh, but really that’s virtually no challenge at all, as there are such a great range of writers of short fiction at the moment, and there’s also a great upswing in the amount of non-Western authors writing in English, which brings more and varied voices to the world of genre.

How did you go about choosing the contributors and/or stories?

Again, it’s about keeping a mix of the new and established, and here I also approached writers who I’d previously worked with on novels, but were less well known in the world of short fiction. So we have Hilary Monahan’s first published short story here and also stories from the novelists Libby McGugan and Ivo Stourton. I have people I love working with again and again, but I’m always keen to look for new and emerging talent.




You also write & edit novels - do you prefer the long or short form, how do you feel about flash fiction?

I like both, though I think the perfect short story is far more attainable than the perfect novel. You can also do things in short fiction you can’t necessarily achieve in the longer form. For my own writing, I do steer more towards the short form, but I have a novel idea on the go at the moment. I don’t have a great deal of experience with flash fiction, but I’m certainly not adverse to it.

What do you think makes a good short story?

It’s a case of I know it when I see it. So many things make a good short story, it’s hard to pin it down to just a few. I can tell you some of my favourite short stories: “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke, “The Next in Line” by Ray Bradbury, “The Guide” by Ramsey Campbell, just to name a few. I also adore the short fiction of Ursula Le Guin, and Sophia McDougall is also doing stunning work in the short form.

What are you working on at the moment? (apart from this interview of course)

Starting to pull together the authors for the next anthology, which is going to be very different to what has come before. Some very exciting names on board, so watch this space. As always, beavering away editing novels, and writing when I can find the time and the energy.


You've  worked with some of the most exciting names in SF&F is there anyone you've not yet worked with that you'd like to?

The obvious answer is Stephen King, as I grew up reading his books and I’m a huge fan. Actually there’s a few deceased authors I’d love to have worked with – so, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Angela Carter, Robert Aickman, Robert Holdstock, Shirley Jackson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman to name but a few. In terms of current authors – I hugely admire Joe Hill’s work, and Lauren Beukes is doing stunning work. Also a big fan of China Mieville and Jesse Bullington.





Who are you're currently working with that you think we need to be reading?

All of it, naturally! Okay, a few things that should certainly be on your radar. The Awesome by Eva Darrows is out next year in Spring from Ravenstone and it’s hands-down one of the funniest, wisest YA books I’ve read. I’m also really pleased to have acquired Paul Meloy’s first mass market novel with The Night Clock which is out next October. If you’ve never encountered Paul’s work before you’re in for a treat. He was one of the very first authors I asked for a novel from when we took over Solaris, and it’s taken him pretty much the best part of six years, but it’s been well worth the wait. I’m so very lucky to get to work with a whole bunch of amazing writers. Really very proud of our lists.

You mention you play games yourself - which are your favourites?

Every week a bunch of us gather for an evening of tabletop roleplaying. At the moment it’s the West End Games version of Star Wars, but we do play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons too. Call of Cthulhu, however, will always be my favourite RPG. In terms of videogames, I adore the Bioshock games, and loved Fallout 3.

In one sentence what is your best piece of advice for new writers?

The trick is, keep writing.
Many thanks to Jonathan for taking time out to answer our questions - keep your eyes peeled for that anthology and grab it when it comes out!

The Joy of Cross Genre-ing a guest post by Erik Williams

Erik Williams: Website / Twitter
Demon:Amazon/ Barnes & Noble / Powell's/ IndieBound

Erik Williams is a former Naval Officer and current defense contractor (but he's not allowed to talk about it).  He is also the author of the novel Demon and numerous other small press works and short stories. He currently lives in San Diego with his wife and three very young daughters. When he's not at his day job, he can usually be found changing diapers or coveting carbohydrates.  At some point in his life, he was told by a few people he had potential.  Recently, he told himself he's the bee's knees.  Erik prefers to refer to himself in the third person but feels he's talked about himself enough and will grant your eyeballs the freedom they deserve. 

Cross genre novels?  I guess you could say all genre novels, in some form, are a cross genre novel.  I mean, there is no such thing as a pure horror novel.  Often there are elements of historical fiction (like Interview with the Vampire), or crime and mystery (like Falling Angel), or even military fiction (like my recent novel Demon). 
The point is, genres overlap.  They always have.  However, there are that stand out more than other. You can see them practically bleeding multiple genres, and with awesome results.
So, here are five cross genre novels worth your time:
Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin.  I was going to list Martin’s Fevre Dream here (historical fiction meets vampires on the Mississippi) but Dying of the Light just sticks out more as a cross genre whammy of a book. It’s got blood magic, the resurrection of the dead, the world coursing toward apocalypse, while at the same time being a “hey, we’re getting the band back together” story.  It’s equal parts horror and strange love letter to 70’s era rock.                                                                                                                             Song of Kali by Dan Simmons.  Simmons has really delved, in recent years, into a lot of historical/horror fiction but, for me, Song of Kali is still his best.  It’s got horror!  It’s got mystery!  It’s got the most unflattering travel journal of Calcutta you’ll ever read!                                                                                                                            The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers.  When you think about it, Tim Powers is probably the greatest cross genre writer ever.  You can take his whole catalogue and throw it up here.  But I’ll stick to what is probably his most popular book.  Time travel, Victorian London, murder, Egyptian mythology mixed with sorcery, people that might be immortal, disfigured crazy people living in the London sewers, oh and duplicates of people.  Yeah, try classifying this book under a single genre                                                                               .                                                                                 VALIS by Philip K. Dick.  I don’t even know how to describe this book.  Sci-fi meets religious thriller?  Modern thriller meets philosophical exegesis?  Or simply a fantastical autobiography (I mean, Philip K. Dick is two characters in this book: the narrator and Horselover Fat (which is the German translation of “Philip” and “Dick” respectively).  No matter how you cut it, it’s a strange book but also fantastic.                                                                                                                                                             A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.  You might say, “Hey, this is dystopian fiction. It’s not cross genre.” I respectfully disagree.  This is more than dystopian fiction.  You could also call it a psychological thriller.  A horror novel.  Hell, you could call it social commentary meets sci-fi meets crime.  However, to me, it is also an early rendition of the modern serial killer story.  I don’t say that because Alex is a serial killer (he isn’t).  I say that because he is absolutely a person who has an anti-social personality (a key ingredient in serial killers).  The novel’s examination of his personality (and attempts to alter him) is just as effective as any rendered in Thomas Harris’s novels                                                                  .Many thanks to Erik for the interesting post!

Thoughts on Interstellar

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Spoilers definitely ahead.

"So you're the guy who hates films?" - That was the comment I got when I was introduced to a friend of a friend. Perhaps I should start crowing about films I like as much as ranting about films I hate? I'm passionate about my likes and dislikes.

Interstellar though? It's another hate, and let me tell you why.

Although there were a lot of science errors that wasn't the reason I walked out of the cinema with almost an hour left of the film to play. It was down to the implausibility & unbelievability of the plot, the lack of characterisation, the clumsy childish script and it was just plain dull.

It's supposed to be all emotional, but without putting the work in to make us care about the characters all that emotion on screen just leave you cold, seems like annoying whinging rather than pulling at your heartstrings, like Nolan obviously wants to.

The film starts with a Death of Grass plot - although set firmly, and only, in the USA - the situation in the rest of the world is not discussed but the US is a dustbowl with corn being the last viable crop. There is an anti-science thread, the government hide the fact they are spending money on a space program, the world needs "farmers, not engineers" (although it seems McConaughey's character Cooper, as a former astronaut, is the only local who can fix the robotic combine harvesters and everyone still drives everywhere).

Anyway a "ghost" communicates with Cooper's daughter Murph - duh wonder why it was her chosen? a set of co-ordinates which leads Cooper to the remnants of NASA who are about to launch a mission through a wormhole where Twelve brave explorers have previously gone  to find a new home for humanity. Queue an extended homage to Kubrick's 2001 which lasts until they get to the wormhole.

Apparently Cooper is the right man for the job of piloting the spaceship (it's just like riding a bike apparently) and he readily agrees although on the actual mission his fellow crewmates keep giving him the exposition in a "another thing we didn't tell you before we blasted off into space" dialogue. Clumsy. One of the things they didn't bother to tell him was that the potentially habitable planets were orbiting a black hole. Still he's only the pilot.

After all the hype that this was the most accurate black hole in the history of cinema it's a bit odd that this is where the director decided to ignore the science the most. Discarding even basic planetary orbital dynamics and using the theory of relativity was OK until you think about what being so close to that gravity well would actually do to the planet, never mind the people.

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There's a plan A - a spaceship that requires a manipulation of gravity to work. And Michael Caine's character has been working on an equation for the last forty years that will get it to work. There's a big reveal later on that the only way to make the equation work would be to get information from beyond the event horizon of the massive black hole around which some of the planets the explorers have found orbit.

There's a plan B which is to seed the new world with frozen embryos and Adam and Eve it. Matt Damon plays a scientist explorer that apparently later turns out to be a bad guy (I left very shortly after his character was introduced) and apparently Cooper is the one who communicates with his daughter, and therefore his own earlier self, the co-ordinates, which send him off to save humanity by communicating with himself in the past to go off and save humanity by communicating with himself  in the past to ... yeah it's a paradox even though this isn't a time travel film. There is a discussion of relativity, because it seems that if you go down to one of the planets each hour on that planet is 7 years back on Earth.

Anyway the plot bollocks isn't the real reason I hated this film, although I'm less likely to excuse it because of the poor scripting and characterisation.

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Nolan's agenda was showing, a lot, as he artlessly hammered you with it, again and again. But it's confused, because you know at the same time he's obviously criticising the way NASA is funded he is also telling you that science is dumb (in a death of grass - it's our own fault sort of way) and later in the film basically hitting you over the head with his main message. We shouldn't (apparently) use logic and reasoning because what your gut tells you is much more important, because "love" transcends time and space and is the fifth dimension. Yep that's right at the heart of this film is some seriously woo hippy nonsense.

I'm so glad I walked out whilst he was still setting up this crass message. You see Cooper chooses a rational path at first (there may be other characters in this film but they pretty much have zero agency and it's all about Cooper) which turns out to be wrong.

Apparently after Matt Damon exhibits why "the best of us" is a stupid, cowardly jerk (yes it's another brilliant scientist being dumb trope). The film jettisons any pretence of being scientific, rips off Kubrick's 2001 a bit more and Cooper enters the black hole.

Anyway that's after I left so not sure I can criticise the last hour of the film. I'll concentrate on why I walked.

It was dumb. It was lazy. I failed to engage with any character, although everyone else only existed to orbit Cooper's gravity. It was dull. Nolan spent far too long setting up things that could have been better told in narrative summary and frittered away some interesting stuff in narrative summary which would have been better in immediate scene.

I can cope with the dumb if the movie entertains me. Hell I go to Bad Film Club every month and watch 'aweful' films and enjoy them. However the key difference (apart from sobriety) is entertainment. The film was just boring, as well as nonsensical. And to me, that's unforgivable.

Interview with Stark Holborn

Small time liquor bootlegger, purveyor of Penny Westerns and author of Nunslinger.Stark Holborn is an enigmatic character with a six-gallon hat and a past shrouded in mystery. Nunslinger is Stark’s first published work.We at Bristol Book Blog caught up with Stark and Hornswoggled an interview whilst Stark was busy breaking in a fractious Equus Ferus right here in the Mild, Mild West:
For anyone that hasn’t read them can you tell us a bit about your books?
Despite its pulpy title, Nunslinger is a traditional Western: it was originally told in good ol’-fashioned, penny-Western, serialized format – only with ebooks – with installments spread across the year. The Complete Series paperback is a collection of all twelve novellas.
They tell the story of one Sister Thomas Josephine, a young Visitandine nun who sets out from St Louis, Missouri towards a mission in California. When an attack on her wagon train leaves her stranded in Wyoming, she finds her faith tested and her heart torn between Lt. Theodore F. Carthy, a man too beautiful to be true, and the mysterious grifter Abraham C. Muir. She ends up being falsely accused of murder and goes on the run… you get the picture! While it’s packed full of Western-style adventure, it also has a more serious side. Sister TJ is a complex protagonist who constantly finds herself coming up against murky morality of the frontier and its inhabitants.

 Tell us a bit more about the last book you wrote
Well now that’s a tough one! So happens that I write under a range of pseudonyms… can’t be that you’re asking me to give away one of my secret identities?
<Gosh darn it, no bushwacking Stark now is there?>
What did you learn about writing whilst writing the last book you wrote?
To be honest, writing Nunslinger has been the best lesson in fiction writing I could have hoped for. Due to the serialized format and the tight publication schedule, I think I worked out that I wrote something like 180,000 words in nine months. It taught me to write quickly, and more importantly, to make decisions quickly: more than once when a book wasn’t working, I went ahead and scrapped the whole thing and started again, even with limited time. It taught me to follow my instincts when it comes to characters and action, rather than trying to over-plot things. On a practical level, it’s been like writing, editing and proofing a novel twelve times, in miniature. Of course, it was made easier by the fact that I had an absolutely amazing editor (and editorial team) supporting me.  Do you have a set writing process, if so what is it?
I’ve been lucky enough recently to make writing a (mostly) full-time gig. Practically, it really depends on what I’m writing, but generally I work best in the mornings, before 2pm. If I’m on a deadline I tend to get up, brew a jug of coffee and get to work (that often means not getting dressed until after lunch: the postman has learned this now). In the afternoons I tend to review and edit and do “life admin”. If I’m on a really tight deadline, I’ll start writing again before / after dinner, if needs be. I don’t usually write after midnight. In reality, there’s probably only about 4 hours of intense writing time in all of that: the rest is staring, writing involves a lot of staring into space and making drinks of various kinds.  If I’m not quite so hectic, then I won’t work as much in the evenings, but mornings are always writing time.
Do you write a lot of short stories?
Increasingly! I hadn’t written many before, but now I’m in the habit. (Sorry – pun). I tend to write in scenes anyway, or chapters of not more than 2-6 pages. Short stories are a great medium for honing technique, especially in terms of developing characters over a short period of time.
Do you prefer the long or short form? How do you feel about Flash Fiction?
Short form merging into long form? Is that a cop out of that question? I get very jealous sometimes of poets and songwriters, at how they’re able to condense so much into a limited space. There’s a singer-songwriter called Anais Mitchell who writes the most wonderfully evocative, economical lyrics. (I listened to one of her albums on repeat when I was writing a few of the Nunslinger books). I haven’t tried flash fiction myself, but I guess the same rules apply? Which character in your books do you most identify with and why?
Sister TJ is the obvious choice, although a strange one: I’m an atheist and she’s… well, a nun. But in many ways her faith is based in her strong sense of empathy, her desire to try and make the world better in small ways –  to see and treat people as human – and that’s something I feel strongly about too.
Which bit of your writing are you most proud of?
Hmmm… It’s a funny thing, liking your own work. If I like something, then I always have the fear that it’s not very good. Usually, I’ll be cautiously optimistic, but very aware of the thing’s flaws. It so happens that two of the Nunslingerbooks, both which I detested at the time and saw me wallowing on the floor in despair, were my editor’s favourites. I didn’t see it then, but now, with a bit of distance, I agree with her. The things I thought made them awkward, or dull, were actually their best features. Overall, I think being satisfied with your own work is a dangerous thing: sometimes it’s the things you can’t see or don’t appreciate as an author that most interest other people.
Tell us a bit about how you got published? Did you go via a slush pile? Get an agent before a publisher?
Yes, the manuscript for my first novel was yanked out of the slush pile by my agent, Ed Wilson. I was pretty young and naïve, and had basically sent the thing out on a whim, because I thought: well, what’ve I got to lose? The novel wasn’t even finished! Anyway, he worked with me on that until it was, then we submitted it to publishers. There was some interest but it was just too weird for anyone to pick up. In hindsight, I’m actually really grateful for that. It meant that I had to put it aside, and start writing something else. My agent likes to remind me sometimes that he still has that original submission in his office, which makes me squirm…
In one sentence what is your best piece of advice for new writers?
Go and write; it’s like playing the piano, the more you do it, the better you’ll be.
 Many thanks to Stark for answering our questions!Bristol Book Blog is giving away two copies of Stark's book, the complete Nunslinger! Here: http://brsbkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/...

Book Giveaway - Nunslinger!

We've been very lucky here at the Bristol Book Blog to snatch a couple of copies of Nunslinger from under the noses of those varmints over at Hodder. Now these books are hotter than a desert full of cactus and tastier than baked beans and jerky, and you can get your hands on one before publication day.

All you have to do is recommend us your favourite book in the Western genre. Of course Bristol Book Blog likes recommendations so tell us the author, the name of the book and why it's your favourite Western and you could lasso a copy of this mighty fine lookin', (heck it's real goshdarn purty), book.

2 Lucky winners will be in the quick draw on Wednesday November 19th so get your thinkin' caps on and good luck pardners!

Urban Fantasy Magazine

The first issue of Urban Fantasy Magazine is out as a "pay what you like" download. I've written a few reviews for them, which will be in forthcoming issues. Take a look & download, pay what you like for the great content - https://portal.urbanfantasymagazine.c...