You are the hero
I loved Fighting Fantasy books as a kid, and this wonderful MetaFilter post collates all the FF goodness you could possibly want from the internet. Meanwhile, this hilarious Tumblr collates many of the...
View ArticleWhy you can’t trust user reviews: sock puppets don’t just review books
Me, going on about the evils of the internet again… A big scandal’s kicked off in the world of books: big-name authors RJ Ellory and Stephen Leather have been writing fake reviews on the internet,...
View Article30,360 copies of Coffin Dodgers
It’s been a while since I shared figures about Coffin Dodgers, so here’s an update for anyone interested in the ins and outs of self-publishing. Total sales of Coffin Dodgers are sitting at 30,360....
View Article“Sprinkling the Internet on a bad business model does not magically make it a...
John Scalzi on dodgy ebook business models: This shit’s been around, my friends. It’s been around for decades, and writers groups and others who make it their business to warn aspiring authors about...
View ArticleI’d hate to see the unedited version
Traditional publishers promise quality: you can be sure that when you buy a real book it’ll be properly edited. Increasingly I’m finding that isn’t the case. For example, I’m reading the current Peter...
View ArticleOoh! I’m being pirated!
JasonW informs me that Coffin Dodgers is actually being pirated (as opposed to being listed on sites that don’t actually have it). It’s here if you’re interested, although the download links try to get...
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Sometimes workshops work
I’ve been pretty quiet about my fiction writing lately, and there’s been a good reason for that: I haven’t been doing any fiction writing. The sequel to Coffin Dodgers has stalled because the central...
View ArticleCrime fiction and series fatigue
This post is sponsored by Grammarly, the free online plagiarism checker. I’m a big fan of crime series. There’s something particularly enjoyable about opening the pages of a brand new book and...
View Article35,000 ebooks
I thought the new year would be a good time to post a wee update on book sales: to date, I’ve shifted 35,284 ebooks. That’s mainly Coffin Dodgers, which has sold 14,679 copies against 18,461...
View ArticleSelf-publishing vs traditional publishing, again
A superb post by Baldur Bjarnason: There’s this tendency among advocates to compare the absolute worst of the enemy with the perfect, best case scenario on your own side… [but] In terms of marketing,...
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The Night The Rich Men Burned
I’m a big fan of Malcolm Mackay, whose Glasgow Trilogy – The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, How a Gunman Says Goodbye and The Sudden Arrival of Violence – had me gripped through three successive...
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A quick word about words
Gendered language is weird sometimes. The comedian Frankie Boyle does a hilarious and uncharacteristically safe routine about the early French deciding which gender various inanimate objects were, so...
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“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to...
douglas adams inspired “Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy” H2G2 I started re-reading The Salmon of Doubt, a posthumous collection of Douglas Adams’ bits and bobs, a few days ago; I didn’t realise it was...
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Back to the day job
I don’t usually post links to my work because I do an awful lot of it, but it’s been a while since I’ve had the thrill of seeing my name on the cover of a book. Business Writing for Technical People is...
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Beauty and sadness in children’s books
One of the great joys of being a parent is reading to your children (or as is happening more and more often these days, having them read to you). There are more kids’ books to choose from than ever...
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Writing For Social Media, by me
The second of my British Computer Society books was published as an ebook today. The print editions of the series (there are four books in total) will go on sale in a couple of weeks. Here’s the info:...
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Oh, the places you’ll go!
I’ve written about my love of children’s books before, but I didn’t mention one of my absolute favourites: Oh, The Places You’ll Go! It’s the last of Dr Seuss’s books to be published during his...
View Article“It was my first taste of what it meant to have my freedom taken from me.”
Helen Taylor is the author of The Backstreets of Purgatory, which is ace. She’s a hell of a writer, a genuinely lovely person and the writer of this heartbreaking piece about being sectioned. We were...
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Hat’s entertainment
This is one of my new favourite things: it’s I Want My Hat Back, a children’s book by Canadian writer Jon Klassen. It’s just wonderful, a simple tale told with style and great wit. My son and I both...
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Read it in books
My life isn’t all glamorous launches and rock concerts, you know. Sometimes I’ll stay in and read a book, usually a music one. Here are a few recent reads: Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How...
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