Voices From The Past

This here Voices From The Past thing is an ebook anthology, crammed to the very gills with genre fiction.  I've written a rather unpleasant horror story called The Screams Next Door for it, along with a whole host of other writers.  Here's the full list of tales and their authors:

Another Kind of Lightning by Alasdair Stewart

Ascension Day by Alastair Reynolds

The Lab Gang by Andrew Smith

Master of the Game by Bill Willingham

Just Do It by Cavan Scott

The Maharajah’s Star by George Mann

Dr Wormhole by J. Robert King

He Loves Me Not by Jacqueline Rayner

The Screams Next Door by Jason Arnopp

Shuttle by Jasper Fforde

George V by Johnny Mains

Success by Joseph Lidster

The Wisdom of the Ages by Juliet E. McKenna

A Pot To Piss In by Kaaron Warren

Twisted by Lee Harris

Beauty Will Come by Mary Robinette Kowal

Mustn’t Grumble by Maura McHugh

Receipt of Fern Seed by Maurice Broaddus

750,000 of Your Friends Like This by Mur Lafferty

A Map of Lychford by Paul Cornell

The Curious Package by Paul Magrs

The Runt by Robert Shearman

The Chaos Exhibition by Scott Harrison

The Victim by Scott Sigler

On The Road Again by Stuart Douglas

Never Go Back by Susan Murray

In Leon’s Room by Thomas Fletcher

The God Confusion by Toby Hadoke

Looks good, yes?  And it'll look even better when I tell you it costs a mere £0.99 from H&H Books.  That's right - 99 pennies, or $1.59.  That's mad.  Couldn't even buy you a half in a pub.  Mind you, there's an option to pay £2.99 if you'd like to give more to the hospital. 

Surely, when I tell you that 100% of the proceeds are going straight to the London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, you'll now have this filed away in your brain under Must Buys.  You can grab it from the launch day of April 30 onwards.

Here's the page for order details.  Cheers!

UPDATE May 5: it's now for sale on Amazon UK.

Christmas Comes Early

Things I love:

1) Christmas.
2) Doctor Who.
3) Me, writing stuff.
4) Me, getting published.

All four of these things are combined in one glossy, hardback book this festive season, with the publication of Big Finish's Doctor Who Short Trips: Christmas Around The World. It's my first published slice of officially-licensed Who fiction, so extremely significant and joyous for me. The physical book arrived this morning, and I've been holding it in my hand like some kind of precious topaz.

Oh, did I not mention? I didn't write it all. Lord, no. It's a short-story compilation, to which I've contributed the story Christmas Every Day. I was delighted when editor Xanna Eve Chown allowed me to write a Fourth Doctor (that's Tom Baker, to the Who layman) and Leela story: I had a ball creating a brand new mini-adventure for that classic duo.

The hardback book's theme, as you'd expect from its title, is the ways in which Christmas is celebrated around the globe. Of course, I had to be awkward and set mine on another planet entirely, but it's good to be different. The tome opens with a lovely map of the globe, indicating the times and places of each story. I'm in the good company of 19 other authors - including TV's James Moran, former Who script editor Andrew Cartmel, Simon Guerrier, Eddie Robson and Rebecca Levene - so it's splendid value for money. So far, I've only read Moran's top-notch tale. Why? Because he threatened to "brain" me with a "porcelain bog seat" if I didn't. He's a proper thug - people don't realise. Besides, I'm saving the rest of the stories for Christmas, as is only good and proper.

Christmas Around The World is out December 15. You can see full ordering details on Big Finish's site. Go on, spoil yourself. It's (almost) Christmas.

Ho ho, and furthermore, ho!

Christmas Is Coming

I'm back from the flurry of guns, booze and barbecue that was Austin, Texas, and my brain is slowly recovering. For now, take a look at the just-released cover of the Doctor Who short story collection, Short Trips: Christmas Around The World, for which James Moran and I have written compellingly tremendous tales. And no mistake. Oh, and new Sarah Jane Adventures is on BBC One, right now!

Do This Now

There I was, having a browse over Laura Anderson's cyber-gaff, as you do, when I saw she'd entered a competition. Waterstone's What's Your Story? competition to be precise. I hadn't heard of it.

It's challenging people to offer very short stories indeed, limited to 600 characters (that's right - not words, but characters.) Intriguingly, you not only create the words, but can style them onto a cyber-postcard using a basic-but-fun online software suite. The stories then appear online in a gallery, and will be judged.

When I submitted my postcard, featuring a story I'm calling Marbles, there had already been 3754 entries. So the odds are quite poor. But this is one comp where it really isn't about the winning. This was a fantastic exercise.

My first draft of Marbles clocked in at almost three times the number of characters it needed to be. 339 words, 1742 characters. It was then a real challenge to condense it down, without losing the story or the clarity. Whether or not I succeeded is hard to say, but it was great fun and instructive. Marbles finally clocked in at 102 words, 590 characters.

The deadline's tomorrow. Good luck to Laura, and anyone else who's entering.

Christmas Comes Early!

Announcement! This is me, announcing the announcement! And the announcement, announced by me, is: I'm going to have a short story published in a new Doctor Who short story collection, published by Big Finish. It's called Christmas Around The World, and all the stories have a Christmassy theme, which the more astute of you may have guessed from the title. What with it containing the word "Christmas". Dead giveaway, that. Oh yes. Here's the sleeve of last year's compilation, Short Trips: The Ghosts Of Christmas.

The extra special part of this announcement? One of the other authors is a devilishly handsome young rake and fellow scriboblogger called James "James Moran" Moran. You may clickyclicky on his name to check out his hot blog action. Good lord, sirs and madams - we're both in the same book! It's like being in the same boat, but it's a book instead of a boat. Obviously we are both thunderously excited about this, and have been shrieking at each other like a couple of schoolgirls for several days now. We'll let you know when it's released - but all the clues are pointing towards it being somewhere in the region of Christmas time. But for the sweet love of the festive baby Jesus, don't say I told you.

October Rocks!

In fact, I'm going to start calling it Rocktober. Only in private, mind: no need to boycott this blog in protest. But it's only just struck me how downright cool October is, on a professional level. I'm writing the full-length ASK script, a short film will hopefully be made from another script of mine, and at the end of the month, I have a short story in a hardback collection to be published by Big Finish.

Titled Bernice Summerfield: The Missing Adventures (Bernice is a kind of feisty, female Indiana Jones invented by Paul Cornell, if you haven't had the pleasure of her company), the book is a special 15th anniversary tome and it's a real honour to be in the company of writers like Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch - men who toiled over late 80s Doctor Who. What's more, it was edited by Rebecca Levene, the experienced writer/editor/genius who once oversaw Doctor Who's Virgin Books range. My story's called Prime Five and sees Bernice becoming the very unwilling subject of a new military experiment, unleashing much mayhem. Rebecca wanted a somewhat slasher movie-esque tale, and I was only too happy to try and deliver just that, although it also ended up reminiscent of The Terminator in some ways.

Oh, and thanks to the Script Factory I've won a ticket for Steve Buscemi's masterclass on October 19 as part of the London Film Festival. If you fancy it (and let's face it, the man's a legend), the ticket hotline is 020 7928 3232. See this link for full booking details.

Tell you another reason why it's so good that October rocks - helps keep my mind off the impending Red Planet Prize results. Keep busy, people: busy is good...

Bits 'n' pieces

Just signed up for a potentially interesting free event: the Freelances' Fair at BECTU (Broadcasting Entertainment Cinematograph and Theatre Union) on June 29. Thanks to the ever-informative Lianne for what American folk might call the head's up.

I've got a short story included in a hardback compilation this October. Published by Big Finish, it's entitled Bernice Summerfield: The Missing Adventures and edited by the wonderful Rebecca Levene. For anyone unaware of the central character, she's a kind of female Indiana Jones in a SF world and was created by Paul Cornell. My story's called Prime Five, and will sit very proudly alongside contributions from such noted authors as former Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel, former Who writer Ben Aaronovitch, Eddie Robson and Peter Darvill-Evans. Big Finish have recently issued the full list of authors and story titles which you can see here.