Firstly, another apology. I've been neglecting this blog. It's been a busy few months. 2017 seems to have flown by. I logged back into my account to realise just how long its been since I sat down and wrote something here to give people an idea of what I'm up to.
Crises and Conflicts A title that sounded like my life at times in 2016! My short story, The Last Tank Commander was included in Newcon Press' Military SF anthology that was published last year. In February 2017, I was approached by Baen Books editor David Afshariad with a request to republish the story in Baen's The Year's Best Military Science Fiction and Space Opera series. I was delighted to accept this and the book (volume three of the series) will be out in June this year. 

You can find Crises and Conflicts on the Newcon Press website, here.





Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game After a successful Kickstarter, finishing in March, the Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game has been in development. The main book is due out this year and I've had the opportunity to contribute material to it and to the resources page on the EDRPG website. During the crowdfunding campaign, I wrote a selection of short stories that provided GMs with adventure hooks for their players. These are featured on the EDRPG website.
Writing a draft of the main book's lore material was an interesting revisit of the work I completed in 2013. The constraints of page allocation and additional information we now have with the game having been released for three years meant trying to encapsulate and edit down all that material for a different output was quite a challenge. 

You can find the EDRPG website, here.

You can find the Adventure Hooks short stories, here.
Penguin Books I've recently written the reader's guide for the I am Number Four series on the Penguin Books and Random House website. This was an interesting research challenge as I looked into the diffuse setting and collection of writing across film, audio, short stories and novels by different writers writing under the "Pittacus Lore" name. I'm hoping to write a bit more on this in a follow up piece.
You can find my reader's guide here.



Phoenix Point [image error] As mentioned in an article on Rock Paper Shotgun, I'm now working with Julian Gollop and Jonas Kyratzes on the background material for Phoenix Point, Julian's next game. We meet online on a Wednesday morning to go through the world material and highlight the writing content opportunities. 

You can find my first short story, set in the world of Phoenix Point entitled The Old Man of the Sea, on the Phoenix Point website here.




The Commemorative Clarke Award Anthology
This year at Eastercon 2017, Newcon Press and the Clarke Award ran a short story competition to be included in an anthology to be published in December 2017 that celebrates the 100th birthday of Arthur C. Clarke. Stories in the anthology will be from Clarke Award winners from previous years and from the competition winner. Just before the British Science Fiction Awards, my short story The Dancers was announced as the winner of the competition, which means my work will be alongside stories written by the very best science fiction writers in the world. I'm incredibly humbled by this and also incredibly excited!This year's Clarke Award winner will be announced in August. I'll be going to the ceremony where, apparently, I also get a little trophy celebrating my win!

Find out more about the Clarke Award, here.
Bucks Creative Writing Anthology After the successful launch of the first Creative Writing anthology of student work, entitled - The Door in late 2016, the second anthology is proceeding on schedule.
Last year we had a small selection of stories from the first year group on the course. This year's anthology promises to be a lot bigger, with writing from students in the first and second year of our degree. The submissions have been edited and proofed over the course of the year and will be an excellent publication from new writers.

In the first anthology, I included my short story, Five Kinds of People. I'm currently working on a new story for the next anthology, provisionally titled The Foreboding Sense of Impending Happiness.

You can find the first anthology on Amazon, here.

Learn more about the new anthology and its contributors, here.


The Forever Man I first completed a draft of my novel, The Forever Man in 2008. I've been working on it ever since, with some breaks as I developed other stories and learned my craft.
For a long while, The Forever Man was a book I didn't know how to fix and improve. I'd been given some excellent editorial feedback by a professional editor and reading through it, I wasn't sure I was a good enough writer to apply the necessary changes.
However, in late 2015 and early 2016, I revisited the novel, took it to pieces and put it back together again. Eighty-nine thousand words got edited down to seventy-two thousand words before an additional twelve thousand words were written to re-balance the story. The result, I think is much better. 
The Forever Man will be launched by Luna Press at Fantasycon 2017 in October of this year and available straight after. This is my first time working with Francesca and Rob, who I first met at the Nine Worlds Convention in 2015. They've been absolutely brilliant with me and I'm very pleased and proud to be working with them.
You can find out more about Luna Press, here.

You can read about The Forever Man, here.
The BFS Journal 17 The latest edition of the BFS Journal went to the printers during March 2017. This new edition is a great collection of critical writing on Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction and should be with members shortly. If I was to pick a theme for it, I would say its quite nostalgic and reflective, which I think is a good moment for the society as we look forward to this year's Fantasycon and look back at all the amazing people who've been members of the society over the years. 

This will be the first edition that I've edited that doesn't include a critical article from me. I'm afraid I just didn't have time to write anything other than the editorial, some reviews and the interviews.  

Going forward, I will sorting out the REF2021 compliance for the journal, so the academics who are writing for us get the best possible impact and status opportunity for their writing.

If you'd like to find out more about the British Fantasy Society, you can do so here.

Lavecon 2017 This year will be the fifth year of Lavecon! We're returning to the Sedgebrook Hall Hotel in Northampton a little earlier than previously scheduled. We're also running a banquet evening on the Friday of the event where characters from the Elite Dangerous universe can meet up and socialise. Tickets for hotel rooms at Lavecon sold out in forty-eight hours this time around, so the convention looks like it'll be bigger and better than ever.
More information can be found on the HWS Events website here.
Nine Worlds [image error] In 2017, I'm a content producer for Nine Worlds. I've been attending the convention since 2014 and spoken on panels and given presentations and talks in the past. I'm a big believer in what Nine Worlds attempts to do as a convention and its a privilege to work with the team behind it.
You can find out more about Nine Worlds, here.









Worldcon 2017: Helsinki [image error] My partner Karen and I are attending Worldcon 75 in Helsinki this year. This is the World Science Fiction Convention.  I've submitted a request to present content at the event and am hoping they can squeeze me in.
You can find out more about Worldcon Helsinki, here.Fantasycon 2017 This year I'm also the chair for Fantasycon. This is the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society and the event that hosts the British Fantasy Awards. 
HWS, the team behind Lavecon are organising this event for the weekend of the 29th of September to the 1st of October in Peterborough. 
You can find out more details here.





So, as you can see, its been a busy year so far!