Tim Major's Blog, page 11

New SF novella: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

I’m very happy to tell you that yesterday I signed a contract for NewCon to publish my novella / short novel UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, a Martian murder mystery.

Here’s the blurb:

Abbey Oma may be a fine Optic private eye, but she isn’t a people person. When she’s summoned from Earth to investigate a murder within a remote Martian settlement, her lack of social skills is as much an obstacle as the lack of clues. Could aye-aye robot Ai383 really have overridden its programming to kill a human scientist?...

Super Relaxed Fantasy Club reading

The Super Relaxed Fantasy Club were nice enough to ask me to do a reading – here’s the video, including an extract from Hope Island (available in the US now, and in the UK in 2 weeks!) and my lockdown reads. Bonus appearance of my favourite mug.

New story: ‘Red Sky at Morning’

[image error]Today you can read (for free!) my story Red Sky at Morning over on the Unsung Stories website. Its about a lighthouse keeper in the Farne Islands in the 1930s and monsters.

Unsung Stories has been on my publishing wishlist ever since I started writing seriously, after I read Aliya Whiteleys duo of astounding novellas, The Beauty and The Arrival of Missives. For a small publisher, their list each year has been of the highest quality, and precisely to my tastes, such as the recent novels Always...

HOPE ISLAND published in the US

HOPE ISLAND is published in the US today! Here it is, modelled by my youngest son, who I can assure you is nothing like the creepy (murderous?) children in the novel.

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The first reviews of the novel are starting to appear online, too. Starburst said theres a dash of John Wyndham and a soupcon of The Wicker Man in the richly-atmospheric latest novel from Tim Major, and To the Ends of the Word blog concluded that you should definitely check out this novel if your idea of horror is the...

Stories of Hope and Wonder

[image error]Ian Whates at NewCon Press has achieved the impossible and pulled together the most enormous anthology of stories in just a few days. Its available from today as an ebook, with all proceeds being donated to support NHS staff and other healthcare workers.

It really is enormous: 53 stories, 600 pages, 253,000 words of fiction. And the list of contributors is staggering, with giants of SF/fantasy and loads of terrific newer writers.

I have a story in there too: Like Clockwork, which is one of my...

The Best of British Fantasy 2019

[image error]So happy to say that Ill have a story in THE BEST OF BRITISH FANTASY 2019, edited by Jared Shurin and available in June from NewCon Press. O Cul-de-Sac! first appeared in my collection AND THE HOUSE LIGHTS DIM, published by Luna Press, and features a sentient house desperately concerned for the wellbeing of its peculiar new residents.

Congratulations to everyone included in the table of contents! It looks like a fantastic list, all round.

Another of my stories received an honourable mention,...

HOPE ISLAND available on NetGalley

[image error]Heres a new way for bloggers, reviewers, librarians and booksellers to read HOPE ISLAND ahead of publication Titan Books is now on NetGalley! Click here for all the details if you fit the bill.

HOPE ISLAND is described as:

[image error]A gripping supernatural mystery for fans of John Wyndhams The Midwich Cuckoos from the author of Snakeskins. Workaholic Nina Scaife is determined to fight for what remains of her family after her partner walks out on her. Relocating to the beautiful but isolated Hope...

The journey of a novel: Snakeskins

I hope youre all managing in these strangest of times. After the first two weeks of lockdown and homeschooling, my brains starting to come alive again, little by little, by which I mean Im writing again.

Ill have updates about my next novel, Hope Island, very soon but for now heres a turning-back of the clocks by almost a year, to my last novel, Snakeskins. The article below was originally intended to feature in BSFA Focus, but after a mix-up its now without a home, so I thought Id put it up...

HOPE ISLAND author copies have arrived!

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MACHINERIES OF MERCY to be reprinted

My young adult SF novel, MACHINERIES OF MERCY, was first published in November 2018. It’s about young offenders trapped in a virtual-reality prison modelled after a sleepy English village. It’s creepy and fun!

It was originally published by ChiZine. In late 2019 various revelations came to light about ChiZine’s business practices, which turned out to be… well, all sorts of awful. I won’t summarise them here – you can find various accounts by googling, or start with the Writer Beware overview....