NaNoWriMo WinNer!

Whoohoo! I did it! They Feed On Flesh finally ended on 50,893 words and took my zombies from the initial outbreak of the plague (discovered in an unknown tomb in The Valley Of The Kings in Egypt) to Britain, then the rest of the world, onwards to Mars and finally back in time to another version of Earth.

Phew... the most I've ever written in one go and now I need to go lie down in a dark room for a year or two...

Anyone out there interested in publishing a zombie romp?

:-)

Just 5 days to go!

Well I've managed to get 41,307 words down in my NaNoWriMo story and have got five days left to get the other 8,693 so I might even do it! My zombies however have now left Earth and are on Mars (ran out of ideas on Earth) and soon they will be reaching for the stars!

Squid Attack!

RevolutionSF had a draw-a-squid competition to help promote Jeff VanderMeer's new book Finch. In a moment of madness I entered, but believe it or not I was one of the runner-ups with this magnificent beast:-

The winner and other denizens of the deep can be found here: RevolutionSF

Will I? Won't I?

Uploaded 32,333 words to NaNoWriMo tonight and have got ten days left to find another 17,667. Will I make it!

Mired in the mud of writer's block

Argghh!! I'm struggling... I've got 29,284 words written and uploaded to NaNoWriMo but I'm beginning to fizzle out, to get a stitch in the side of my inspiration. I'm hoping to get a second breath and plough on to the line but it will be close!

Halfway there!

Word count on day 15 of 30 is:

25,467

At this rate I might just scrape through!

A Cern Zoo Story - Fanblade Fable

D.F.Lewis (Des) has been writing a number of interesting and surreal short stories as a tie-in to his well-received anthology, Cern Zoo (Nemonymous 9) and all day I've had an idea rattling around my head for a short of my own set in his world. So, as a break from NaNoWriMo today and my zombie-fest of shorts I wrote one for Des and he's kindly published it on his website here:

The 90th Intervention Of Natural Webster

I hope you enjoy it and also Des' too

Word count on day 12 of 30

NaNoWriMo Word Count

17,957

Well, we're twelve days in to NaNoWriMo and I've managed to get 17,957 words done, that, in itself, is a record for me as I am a very slow writer and prone to getting distracted. The main problem for me now is keeping the pace up as ideas are beginning to dry up.

Estronomicon Sketchbook Edition

Steve Upham of Screamingdreams has a special edition Estronomicon out entitled The Sketchbook Edition. There are a couple of formats available but I quite like the Issuu one which is a page flipping version and can be found here: Estronomicon for those who prefer pdf then go here: PDF Version

I'm pleased to say I have a short story of mine in this edition.

It's called 'Man Of Stone'

Monday Word Count

NaNoWriMo Word Count

14,376

Saturday Word Count

NaNoWriMo Word Count

9,930

I've slacked off a bit over the last day or so, firework party and this afternoon

Wales play rugby against The All Blacks!

I can't write when that's on!

COME ON WALES!

Wednesday Word Count

NaNoWriMo Word Count

8,217

Word Count

NaNoWriMo Count

7,593

And I'm off!

Okay, uploaded my first couple of chapters to NaNoWriMo this morning along with the opening few lines of the first chapter. The site tells me that I've done 520 words, I'll need to do around 1,800 daily to reach the target... ouch!

If you want to check me out I'm here: They Feast On Flesh!

I'll try and update the word count at least weekly if not every few days, I've put a widget in top right corner of blog but it doesn't seem to be working. Either I've done it wrong or the NaNoWriMo site is overloaded!

NaNoWriMo HeRe I CoMe!

It usually takes me ages to write something a little longer than a short story, I am very undisciplined and envious of writers that can get up in the morning and write to order, each and every day. I have no self control, look! I'm blogging now when I could be writing! So, in an attempt to gain some discipline and kick the habit of procrastination I've enrolled in this year's NaNoWriMo event. That means starting November 1st 2009 I am going to attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in thirty days... yes, you read it right, thirty days. Okay, you can stop laughing now, I know it will be probably more like thirty months than days! But I'm going to give it a go.

The story I have in mind is a zombie one, the working title is

'They Feast On Flesh'

and it's hopefully going to be a compilation of individual stories with an anchoring thread running through them all. Then in the final chapter I hope to have them all tie together... we shall see!

If you're interested in my progress or just want a laugh at my pitiful attempt at reaching the 50k target then you can check in on me here:

They Feast On Flesh

A cloud of madness - SF Novella now available

I've had a SF novella floating around for a while and a few people wanted a printed copy of it so I thought I'd have a go at doing it myself and the results are much better than I expected!
Amazon now offer a POD service via their sister company Createspace. You write your masterpiece, convert it into pdf format and upload it to their site. You have to be very careful to stay within the parameters that they require or they bug you with emails explaining that your file isn't 'quite' right... yeah I had a few *cough*
Then you have to design a cover (which I gave up on as my graphics looked like a five year old's) and so I trawled the web for something suitable. I found what I wanted on deviantART , an abstract design of a comet (the story is about what happens when Earth encounters a possible KT-Extinction Event - like the one around the time of the dinosaurs) the artist is Jan Mullins an Australian lady who kindly did not ask for payment (who, however, will want a share of proceeds if the book is turned into a film by Spielberg)

*please insert your flying pigs here*

Thanks Jan!

So, once you have your pdfs sorted out and Creatspace no longer bugs you with emails saying that you dpi is too low etc, then you are ready to apply for a proof. Mine came last week and I was thrilled with the quality (well, of the production at least, my readers will have to decide on the story... ahem...) and gave them the go ahead to commit to print. Within hours the ebook version was available here and a few days later the print one went live here.
At the moment the only drawback I see with the system is that it is only Amazon.com who do all the printing and stocking of titles, awkward for UK customers, but from what I can understand they will be extending into affiliate countries in the future.
So, if you like end of the world scenarios, comets, mad killer robots, Navajo Indians then this might be for you!
You can always read the first two chapters here and see what you think.

Free SF Short 'To sleep, perchance to dream...'

Here's a free SF short of mine called:
To sleep, perchance to dream...
it's about brane theory and the large hadron collider

Open publication - Free publishing - More short story

Peter Tennant @ Black Static

Just had this remark made about my little robot story, 'The Cone Zero Ultimatum' which features in Cone Zero (currently still in the running for best anthology of 2008 over at The British Fantasy Society), by Peter Tennant the editor of Black Static:

Stories by Bob Lock and Stephen Bacon in Cone Zero were among the very best I read last year

Wow that is such a great accolade to receive from someone as accomplished as Pete. Many thanks Pete! And congrats to Stephen too!
The full review can be found here: Peter Tennant Case Notes

Neal Asher's 'Orbus'

I've been fortunate enough to receive a few Neal Asher books, courtesy of Chris Teague of The British Fantasy Society on the understanding that I will write reviews on each one. As one of the books was a limited edition of only 240 uncorrected proof copies of 'Orbus' his new Spatterjay novel you can imagine how pleased I was!
I was even more pleased when I started reading it and more than satisfied. much more, when I finally finished it (in almost one sitting!) as it is a great romp of a book and a must-have for any Asher fan.

A more comprehensive review should be over on the BFS site shortly but if you like nasty giant crab-like aliens, that are particularly prone to eating humans for lunch, quirky battle-drones, space battles and a SF tale with twists and turns aplenty then watch out for September 4th for that's when Orbus should be in the shops.

Review at Sfcrowsnest of Cone Zero

Geoff Willmetts over at Sfcrowsnest (one of the biggest and best SF sites on the web) has done a great review of Cone Zero and even better than that he's picked out a few stories from the anthology which he thinks works for him and one of them is my own The Cone Zero Ultimatum. Here's the link to the review: LINK

But basically here is what he said:

'Cone Zero Ultimatum' is a future where the AIs of future household appliances seek their own freedom in something resembling 'Watership Down'. It was only towards the end that I noticed the similarity. Most of the time, though, this story speeds along with some funny dialogue and funny AIs as they seek release from oppression from their flesh owners. The ending could have been sharper but its author shows great promise.

Cool! Thanks Geoff!