Tomorrow I shall be at Live Age with Misha Herwin, Peter Coleborn, Susan Boulton and Ralph Alcock talking about publishing!
Our panel is at 3pm at the Mitchell Art Centre Broad St, Stoke-on-Trent ST1 4HG
Thin Value
Whilst away for the weekend at a convention I went out at lunch time to see what GF snacks could be bought at M&S as the hotel had nothing to offer for the wheat-sensitive. Continue reading Thin Value
IMDB Listed! (YAY!!)
It seems a very long time ago that I was involved in writing a Dr Who script for Reeltime Pictures, but we now have an IMDB listing for White Witch of Devil’s End!
It is official. I am a now screen writer! YAY!!!!!!
Team comprises Jan Edwards, Debbie Bennett, Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Suzanne Barbieri and David Howe and features the wonderful Damaris Hayman in a reprise of her role of Miss Hawthorne from the Dr Who story The Daemons.
I Am Waving – Honest!
Loose Women and Feta Cheese – by Barry Lillie
I arrived home from a morning in the office where I was split between my Italian colleagues and my English clients. Three and a half hours of swapping business style and language can really be quit…
Source: Loose Women and Feta Cheese
Stormy Weather for Spooks
Our Spooks 6X6 event went very well despite the weather and people braved the storm for a great evening of spooky tales. The lightning and thunder was surprisingly apt!
Left to right
Stephanie Hutton: Stephanie has published flash fiction and short stories online and in print, including work in Friday Flash Fiction, Ink in Thirds, Sick Lit Magazine, Spelk and Bacopa Literary Review. She recently won the Writers HQ Competition and is currently shortlisted for the Cardiff Review Short Story Award and longlisted for the Black Pear Press Short Story Competition. Her 6×6 story was called ‘Playmate’.
Peter Coleborn: Peter is a writer of weird and dark fiction with stories published in the UK, USA and EU. He is better known as and editor for the multiple award winning Alchemy Press with over forty titles published since 1999. He has also edited a great many publications for the British…
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Casting Stories Adrift
One of the oddest things about writing fiction, be that novels or short fiction, is that you never know where it will end up, or how it might return to you – if ever.
Threadbare – Real Time
Good words from Des Lewis for Threadbare – more reviews from Something Remains on Des’s review page
Water Rights and Wrongs
I go to the ladies only swim session purely because it tends to be less prone to lane-hogs who plough up and down with complete disregard for others and usually it is a pleasant swim.Real Time Review by Des Lewis
Des Lewis writing a real time review of Something Remains over at his Gestalt Real Time Review page! Keep up with the reviews story by story – day by day.
To the Library!
Beginning a new piece of writing is always exciting, especially in that dry period that, in my case at least, invariably follows a major project. Continue reading To the Library!
Does J K Rowling do Housework? — Misha Herwin
Does JK Rowling do Housework? The thought came to me while I was vacuuming the other day; does J K Rowling do housework? She must have done at one stage, before she became mega-famous and super-rich. A state of life many of us writers can only dream about. Years ago, to be a full time […]
Elder Things eBook
Going for a song…
Bargain books! – Alchemy hardcover titles on offer!
Some of The Alchemy Press’s limited edition hardcovers are going for a song via Amazon. Okay, not a song, as such … but we are selling brand new copies at a heavy discount. Now is a good time to buy the book you’ve been intending to read!
- Rumours of the Marvellous by Peter Atkins is now just £10.00 on Amazon.
- Where the Bodies are Buried by Kim Newman is only £5.00 on Amazon
- Swords against the Millennium edited by Mike Chinn is just £5.00 on Amazon
- Nick Nightmare Investigates by Adrian Cole is a mere £15.00 on Amazon
Don’t forget, these are all limited, signed hardcovers. And a warning: some of these books are in short supply so order them soon.
Forty years and still counting
Peter’s 40th Fcon anniversary!
This year’s FantasyCon is less than a month away and that has set me reminiscing. Out with the abacas (actually, I checked in Silver Rhapsody) and – ye gods – this will be my fortieth British Fantasy Convention. Yup, my first was FantasyCon 2 back in 1976! And you know what: I have, for my sins, attended everyone since over these past forty years, even the one-day events in Champagne Charlie in London. Is this a record? Can anyone else match this claim to fame (or is it infamy)?
It’s silly regretting not attending the first FantasyCon. It was a one-day event held in Birmingham and the travel up from Portsmouth, where I was then living, seemed a bit excessive just to meet some people I had only encountered in name through the pages of Dark Horizons and the BFS Bulletin. There was no internet, no online social…
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Forthcoming…
September (and into October) will be busy!
Continue reading Forthcoming…
Mapping your story – Penkhull Press
Peter Coleborn considers the value of maps. Perhaps you are writing a fantasy novel in which your characters travel across a fantastical realm. Or a science fiction story set on a strange planet i…
Source: Mapping your story
Pathways
Is the penchant for photographing doors and pathways something innate to all of us? Or just me? Continue reading Pathways
Cooking the Story Books
I spent yesterday afternoon editing a story for the umpteenth time, and Peter pointed out how my approach to writing was not unlike my cooking.
I thought it an odd analogy, but thinking about it he could have something there. Continue reading Cooking the Story Books
Something Remains launch
Something Remains & Private Lives of Elder things launch at Fantasycon-by-the-Sea 24th September 2016
https://www.facebook.com/events/1325216947502646/
Free From…
Free From Choc Chip Brownies bought today. For me it tasted like neat sugar and had all the texture of candy floss.
Something Remains
Peter’s thoughts on the making of Something Remains
At the 2013 World Fantasy Convention, held in Brighton, Joel Lane’s Where Furnaces Burn won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Due to personal problems Joel wasn’t able to collect the award in person. I had intended to visit Joel soon after, meet up for one of our irregular balti meals with mutual friends Dave Sutton, James Brogden, John Howard, Mike Chinn and Stan Nicholls, and to toast Joel for the win. Sadly, that visit to Birmingham didn’t materialise in time – for not long after the convention Joel passed away in his sleep. His death left a huge cavity in my life.
Last year, after months of sorting out the detritus of his life (in other words, clearing his house in preparation for its sale) Pauline Morgan mentioned the wealth of notes Joel had left behind. The notes were penned in his immaculate handwriting on all manner of…
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Alchemy anthologies
Alchemy Press titles Not to Be Missed!
Alchemy Press anthologies are available in print and eBook (Kindle) formats. Click on the titles for the relevant links — and fill your eReader with excitement, wonder, myth, horror and pulp heroics.
- The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic 2 (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 2 (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 3 (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- Kneeling in the Silver Light (Amazon UK / Amazon US)
- The…
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Walking Meditation for the Writerly
When walking to the High Street I sometimes (health allowing) make a slight detour through the church yard. It is a beautifully peaceful place whatever the season.
Gluten Free Sticky Ginger Cake
Ingredients
- 120 gms treacle (you can use 140 gms of golden syrup instead of the treacle and honey mix – but this will make a paler and in my opinion far less flavoursome cake).
- 20 gms honey (you can go the whole hog with treacle but this is my lip service to healthy!)
- 115 gms unsalted butter (or substitute olive or other spread – but butter works best)
- 115 gms dark brown sugar (you can use moist light brown but as with the treacle it does affected colour and to some extent flavour).
- 250 gms gf flour (you can substitute 40 gms with coconut flour for nuttier flavour)
- 2/3 tsp ground ginger (or to taste)
- 1 to 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or to taste. Use mixed spice if prefered)
- 1.5 tsp gf baking powder
- 1 tsp xantham gum
- 1 tsp gf bicarb
- 3 chunks of stem ginger finely chopped (you can use crystalised ginger, or better still the Buderim ‘naked’ preserved ginger, in which case and half dozen or so chunks (or more according to your preference)
- 2 tbsp stem ginger syrup (if crystalised ginger is used substitute with maple or similar ‘light’ syrup)
- 3 eggs
- 3 fl oz milk
Method
- Heat over to 180c (350f or gas4)
- Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin or 2 X 1 lb tins or deep tray-bake pan.
- Put syrups, butter and sugar in pan and gently melt together
- Sift all other dry ingredients into large bowl
- Add cooled butter/syrup and mix well
- Add chopped ginger, eggs and milk and mix well with wooden spoon. (Should be a loose mixture (but not runny) for best results. Add a little more milk if required)
- Pour into greased tin and bake for 50-55 mins – sponge should spring back when lightly touched. If making as tray-bakes adjust the baking time.
- Leave to cool for 10 mins before removing from tin. (Some people may like to add some water icing before storing but I prefer not as I think the ‘sticky’ top that forms after 12 to 24 hours is rather the point)
- Will keep in airtight tin for up to 7 days
I found quite by accident (I ran out of ground ginger) that blitzing some crystalised ginger to a paste is a great (if expensive) substitute for the powdered form but needs slightly more cinnamon or mixed spice
Audio Transmission
Way back last year I had a story titled ‘The Jamesian Conundrum’ included by the lovely Maxim Jakubowski in The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty: The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes’s Nemesis.
Books by Renegade Writers
Books written by, edited by, or includes work by group members. Click on the titles to purchase the books via Amazon UK: Something Remains edited by Peter Coleborn & Pauline E Dungate Pick…
Source: Books
Something Remains: A tribute to Joel Lane blog by Lynda E. Rucker
Last year, Peter Coleborn of the award-winning Alchemy Press contacted me about a project he was working on with Pauline E. Dungate that I couldn’t possibly have said no to: an anthology based on some of the unfinished work of the British writer Joel Lane. After Joel’s untimely death in 2013, his loved ones found that he had left a lot of fragments behind. Those of us working on the project were sent scans of the manuscript fragments to choose from, and I selected a fragment called “The Other Side.” What I had to work with were two handwritten pages, one partly notes and prose and the second all prose based on the notes of the previous. I used Joel’s second page of prose almost exactly as it appeared and built my own Lane-esque story around it.
It was an enormous honor to work on this and also an extremely…
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Ms Magneto On 6Towns Radio
Misha Herwin and I appeared on the Curtain Call show on 6Towns Radio on Saturday with hosts Becs and Rob – and as always we had a blast . Continue reading Ms Magneto On 6Towns Radio
An Italian Day – Barry Lillie
A friend once mentioned to me that her neighbour went to the market or local shop everyday to buy provisions for that day’s lunch or dinner. She told me that if she did a weekly shop then she’d sav…
Source: An Italian Day
