Stories and Longer Works

Things are moving steadily in all areas at the moment. In Short Story Land I've just done a "final edit" on The Transmuted Engine before sending it to my first reader for a serious critique. I'm looking at entering this one for the Aeon Award this year. I made the long-list with Juju in 2005 (see here) which made me very proud. (Juju went on to appear in the second print issue of Hub Magazine). I've also been working on a dark fiction piece called The Postal Worker, which is delving into some creepy new territory for me. It's very much in the tradition of "weird" fiction. Spiders of Suburbia has a strong start but I'm putting it on the shelf for the time being as I'm not too happy with the way the story's heading.

In Novel-Land I'm steaming across The Silver Sea, which is demanding mosty of my time right now (I'm actually thinking about it the moment I wake up, which is disturbing!) I'm bracing myself for a final-final edit of The Hotel Galileo before I start looking for a publisher. Trouble is, it's an odd-length--publisher word count is about 45k--and that's a hard-sell any time of the week. Looking at all options for this one, but obviously I would dearly love to see it published as a stand-alone volume, possibly the first in a series. Time will soon tell...

Imminent Publications
Halls of the Tollomai - Murky Depths #5, due early August
The Man Who Ate Planets - Best New Tales of the Apocalypse (Permuted Press), due September
Guardian and The View From the Bridge - From the Asylum Year 4 Anthology, due September

(Medea's Children which was due to be published as an ebook at Screaming Dreams has been indefinitely postponed due to publisher Steve Uphams's ill-health. My thoughts are with Steve and his family.)

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