Spread the Word: Case Closed

I was delighted to be commended in Spread the Word’s crime writing competition, run in partnership with the C&W Literary Agency. The full announcement is here with details about the contest and the selected authors. I was particularly interested in the winner Liz Cornell’s legal murder mystery, which sounds brilliantly written and I hope I can read a published copy of it one day soon. 

It has been a while since I did one of these updates. Over at Shiny New Books there are reviews of books that have interested me over the last couple of years:

– Skylark, Alice O’Keefe‘s novel about the spycops scandal;

– RV Raman’s country house murder mystery, A Will to Kill;

– My Monticello, by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson;

– Kalina Pickhart’s novel of the Maidan, I Will Die in a Foreign Land;

– The recent epic of family and capitalism, Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor;

– Priya Guns’s gig economy barnstormer, Your Driver is Waiting;

– Southern gothic mystery The Kingdoms of Savannah, by George Dawes Green;

– Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Update: The Bookseller reports on the prize.

The Writer’s Wife

My story of this name appears in the ‘Abandon Hope’ issue of Vamp Cat, a wonderful zine that takes its name from one of Terry Pratchett’s best subplots, in Witches Abroad: ‘Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.’

I’m proud of this story, but admit the idea of the trapped muse has been done before – most famously by Neil Gaiman in his Sandman episode ‘Calliope’. The Wiki fan page for that tale notes ‘Though the story of ‘Calliope’ was not criticized for unoriginality at the time of its release, its concept has apparently become a very popular one since; a list of overused story ideas at Strange Horizons included ‘Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.’

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my take on this old myth.

There are also several reviews for Shiny New Books, from the spring and summer:

Civilisations – Laurent Binet

Greenwich Park – Katherine Faulkner

The Absolute Book – Elizabeth Knox

A History of What Comes Next – Sylvain Neuvel

My favourite of these was The Hard Crowd, a collection of essays by Rachel Kushner, whose novels I discovered a couple of years ago. The Mars Room is probably her best book, but her whole back catalogue is worth reading – and the essay collection the best thing I read this year.

Tomorrow Belongs To Me

A couple of new things, on a similar theme: first off is a new story called ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ published today by fascinating new online journal Clover & White. I’ve also written about Philip Kerr (no longer with us, o discordia) and his last novel Metropolis, at Shiny – and if you haven’t read any of his Bernie Gunther books, don’t worry, Metropolis is a good one to start off with, and you have a lot of fine reading in front of you. Enjoy!

Lantern Season

This story appears in issue 3 of the very fine Guttural journal.

Also, over at Shiny, I’ve reviewed Sue Prideaux’s phenomenal biography of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Triptych

This is a vampire story – the first story I have written featuring vampires, I am quite proud of it, albeit that dozens of outlets turned it down before the fine people at Yorkshire zine Idle Ink published the piece today.

Over at Shiny I have also reviewed The Good Mothers, Alex Perry’s compelling tale of how dissident women took on the fearsome N’drangheta mafia.

Depth Change

This story of mine is now up at the fabulous Your One Phone Call zine.

And over at Shiny, I review Imogen Hermes Gowar’s startling Regency tale.

London Magazine Essay

I am amazed and delighted to have come second in this award. The essay took a lot of thought and care and I thought I might (just) be shortlisted – but to be on the podium of such a prestigious award was way beyond my expectations.

I think the winners will be published just in print in the February/March issue of the magazine.

And at Shiny, I have also reviewed the phenomenal American War by Omar el Akkad.

Weather With You

My story of this name appears with the good folks at HCE Review.

And over at Shiny, I’ve (unexpectedly) turned royal correspondent to review Craig Brown’s fabulous biography of Princess Margaret.

Step Nine

My story of this name is now available at Storgy.

Also, over at 3:AM, I reviewed Lauren Elkin’s marvellous Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London.

RA & Pin Drop

I’m honoured and delighted to have been longlisted for the Royal Academy and Pin Drop Short Story Award 2016. Here is the full longlist.

Over at 3:AM you can also read me on John King’s new, somewhat ridiculous EU dystopia – and King responds to me in an interview with Andrew Stevens.