Here are links to some recent blog entries on this site: 12 May 2013 Bomber Command memorial – the most recent entry. ‘In June 2012 a permanent memorial was created to the RAF Bomber Command campaign of the second world … Continue reading
We are now only a few weeks away from the release of my next novel The Adjacent (to be published by Gollancz on 20th June), so it’s time to mention a debt. The background for a section of the book … Continue reading
The Explorer is the second of James Smythe’s novels to be released within a few months. This UK publication is datelined 2013 although it is copyrighted 2012, perhaps from an earlier US edition. Could this be a first novel, or … Continue reading
With writers almost universally using computers, books have been getting longer and longer. When I began publishing in the 1970s, a full-length novel was usually between 70,000 and 80,000 words, but shorter novels often appeared. During that period word-length was … Continue reading
All the spare copies of The Affirmation and The Quiet Woman that I had for sale have now gone to their better places, and I have no more. Thank you to all who ordered, and I hope the books have … Continue reading
An unexpected find: a handful of first editions of some of my older books has come to light, and as storage space is always at a premium in this house without cupboards I would be more than willing to sell … Continue reading
My Christmas present to myself was a copy of John Fowles’s novel The Magus, which I re-read over the holiday period. The copy was a well-preserved UK first edition, which I bought not all that expensively from the Fowlesian specialist … Continue reading
A bad book provides a variety of temptations, prime among them being just to ignore the thing and put it away in the Oxfam box. Bad books are usually written by incompetents, so are bad in uninteresting ways, but occasionally … Continue reading
Gollancz have come through with a cover design for The Adjacent. I am left wordless (for a change), but keep staring at it. The book will be published in June 2013. The artist who created this image is Brian Roberts: … Continue reading
“Science fiction is the cockroach in the house of books: it survives on scraps and never goes away. Occasionally, as in the work of HG Wells and JG Ballard, it becomes sublime.” (From the Guardian, 19th November 2012.) This comment … Continue reading
