This is the busiest time of the year for me work wise – effectively I do half my annual workload in from December to the end of February – which is one of the reasons why things have been quiet here over the last few weeks.

The good news is that I can see the light at end of the tunnel – two/three weeks and things should have settled. A couple of weeks sleep and I should be ready for Eastercon – speaking of which, so far I’ve only been asked to contribute to one panel, so this year will be less busy than last time.

The other thing is I’ve started to Twitter – martinmcgrath – addictive, isn’t it?

I’ve already Twittered the first two parts of my Epic Fantasy Twitter Trilogy – the third will be online tomorrow and then I’ll put it up here… and then I’m going to try integrating my Twitter feed with the blog, which seems to make sense.

I’m also planning some other, real content – I’ve started a little piece on Jo Walton’s Farthing trilogy, I’ve just finished reading Paul McAuley’s Quiet War (fantastic) and Ken MacLeod’s Night Sessions (excellent) and The January Dancer by Mike Flyn (neither fantastic nor excellent) and Wastelands (a compilation of post-apocalyptic sf – which was fantastic, excellent and neither in different parts). Now onto The Gone Away World – which I didn’t expect to be so funny – and Peter Crowther’s new short story collection about AI (the name of which currently escapes me). I’ll try to get (at least) mini bits on my thoughts on all these up eventually.

Posted February 20, 2009 Comments(0)

In the bible according to mamatas

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes. Don’t fix your hair. Just take a picture.
Post that picture with no editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable. Don’t go posting an eight megapixel image.)
Include these instructions.

Every day the space between my eyebrows and my hairline seems to grow…

I suppose I really should be doing something more productive.

And hey, brown used to be the new black.

Posted September 18, 2008 Comments(0)

So the past week or so have been a bit of a write off – insanely busy at work last week before discovering that a friend had died suddenly. I hadn’t seen him for a while, but I still felt like we had a lot of stuff still to do together and I’d just been trying to organise a get-together when the news arrived.

I still don’t quite believe it. The weekend was a horrible daze.

And, while it’s a minor matter in comparison, I’m dosed with something truly horrible which is making me feel like shit all day and stopping me sleeping at night in case I drown in my own mucus.

Yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself.

Posted April 30, 2008 Comments(2)

So I was over at Boing Boing, and they pointed me in the direction of this cute competition/meme on Mark Rayner’s blog – taking old adverts and giving them an sf makeover.

I couldn’t resist having a go – so here’s an old (and frankly distrubing) advert for Thorazine given a very slight twist (honestly, pretty much all I’ve done is replace “Thorazine” with “Carousel”).

Posted April 15, 2008 Comments(1)

Honestly, if the first episode of Iron Man Adventure on this Marvel website doesn’t tickle your geek nipples, you are officially dead to me…

Posted January 13, 2008 Comments(0)

So, that Christmas and New Year thing can really catch up with you, can’t it?

Woosh and a fortnight’s gone.

Anyway just to prove that this Blog isn’t dead, I noticed that the first two images from the Incredible Hulk movie are up (see Empire here)  and I was looking at the second pic, of Banner in the big seat thing, and I thought I know that images. And good bless Google and the random obsessions of fans everywhere, three clicks later I was watching clip 19 on this page.

Cool.

More posts soon.

Posted January 2, 2008 Comments(0)

Some blogs – the big, first division guys with things like regularly updated content and actual posts about things and, oh I don’t know, audiences – are today doing a mixture of chest-puffing and preening at the arrival on their doorsteps of advance copies of the new Iain M Banks novel Matter.

I’m not.

Not because I’ve got too much class to rub my readers nose in the fact that I’m more important than you and own things plebs like you could never possess. I don’t have that much class. If I could rub your noses in anything, dear reader, I would.

I’m not boasting or showing off because no one at Orbit considers me important enough to send juicy freebies.

I realise highlighting this fact risks revealing to my few (my happy few) readers that this blog is strictly Blue Square Conference North territory – but hey, let’s face it no one out there was deluding themselves any different, right?

I have to buy my own books.

But don’t think this is one of those posts where the nobody outsider attacks reviewers for taking free stuff and “selling out to the man, man”. It’s not. I’d love to have people send me free things

So no, I don’t have bloody copy of the new Iain M Banks novel.

Yes, I am jealous.

And maybe a little bit angry.

But I still have my dignity. (It’s not like I considered offering to both review the book and to pose naked in publicity stills with the book to promote the review.)

It’s not even that I really, really want to read the book (though I do).

It’s that I want to be sent it free. In advance. Before everyone else. So I can boast too.

Is that really too much to ask? Really?

Posted November 15, 2007 Comments(7)