Andrew Hook's Blog, page 18

Why This Old Punk ♥'s Taylor Swift

Christmas 2012: my partner asked for an extra present, the new Taylor Swift album, "Red". I wasn't keen on the purchase for two simple reasons: I thought Swift was some kind of mediocre pre-packaged popstar and my partner has control of the car CD player. Nevertheless, being the good guy that I am, I bought it for her.

Christmas 2013: I am overjoyed to receive the first Taylor Swift album on CD, the last album to complete my Taylor Swift collection. I also have a Taylor Swift t-shirt...

Cover Art - The Immortalists

Just a quick blog post this Tuesday morning to reveal the cover art (by Iain Robertson) of my new novel, "The Immortalists", which will be appearing from Telos Crime in March/April. It's the first in a series of neo-noir crime novels featuring my PI, Mordent. Hopefully the first of many!

Drowning In Air

My short story, "Drowning In Air", has just been published in Strange Tales IV from Tartarus Press and as usual I'm blogging about the genesis of the story for those who might be interested. There may be spoilers for those who haven't yet read the work.

The story is set on the Japanese island of Miyake-Jima where - due to the risk of volcanic activity - residents are required to carry gas masks with them at all times and raid alarms sound should there be a dramatic increase in the levels...

A Knot Of Toads

My short story, "A Knot Of Toads", has just been published in Black Static #38 and as usual I'm blogging about the genesis of the story for those who might be interested. There may be spoilers for those who haven't yet read the work.

Several ideas for this piece came about whilst I was on holiday in the Lake District last year: the diversity of tourists at Ambleside, the line about Cumbrian female accents sounding like men would sound if they were women (not intended to be disparaging, th...

Fur-Lined Ghettos #4

The new issue of Fur-Lined Ghettos edited by my partner, Sophie, is now available. To celebrate we've redesigned the website, gone black on white instead of white on black. As always, we enjoy poetry, prose, short stories, dreams, automatic writing, essays, conversations, musings, fact, fiction, art, theory, nonsense and surrealism. We also enjoy you buying our magazine.

Issue four features poetry and prose from Tara Abrahams, Matthew Antonio, Jim Davis, Peter Cole Friedman, Howie Good, Shirle...

Interference

My short story, "Interference", has recently been published in Chiral Mad 2 and as usual I'm blogging a few comments about how the story came into being.

Chiralty was the theme behind the first Chiral Mad anthology published in 2012. My story, "The Perfection of Symmetry" was published in that book and I blogged about the story's journey here. It's worth reading that post as I quoted from Wikipedia as to what chiralty is all about as it's quite a complex idea to get your head around. When I sa...

My Writing Year 2013

I thought I'd do a quick blog post as to my literary achievements during 2013.

Early in the year I completed one novel begun at the tail end of 2012, an SF-apocalyptic future thing titled "Body And Soul". And today I've just completed a new novel, "People I Know Are Dead", which is another crime pulp neo-noir featuring my irascible PI, Mordent. This year I've sold two other novels featuring Mordent, "The Immortalists" and "Church Of Wire", to Telos Moonrise for publication in 20...

The Best and Worst of 2013

Well, it's that time of the year when everyone is doing their 'best and worst of' lists, so here is mine. I'm going to list the books and movies I read/watched in 2013 and then pick my favourites. This isn't restricted to what was new in 2013, but what I actually watched and read - some of these items might be very old indeed.

Books:

I read the following in 2013:

Allen Ashley (editor) – Where Are We Going?
Williams Burroughs – Cities of the Red Night
Gus Van Sant – Pink
John Dickson Carr – The Holl...

Joel Lane

On Tuesday night, after I finally got our baby to bed, I returned to the living room to find the TV off and my partner, Sophie, telling me that she thought I should sit down. All kinds of things run through your mind at that point, but I certainly didn't expect her to quietly say: "Joel Lane has died".

Joel was a writer I had known through his work from 1994 onwards and had met and spoken to on several occasions from 2003 onwards. It's hard to understand how such an overwhelming sensation...

Kodokushi

"Kodokushi" is a story I've recently had published in the new PostScripts anthology, "Memoryville Blues", from PS Publishing, which also contains fiction by John Grant, Lavie Tidhar, Alistair Reynolds and Ramsey Campbell amongst many others. As has become common in this blog, I'm going to post about how the story came about for those who might be interested in the 'where do writers get their ideas from' thing. Naturally, this post might contain spoilers for those who haven't read the sto...