What the Dickens

Our mutual friend

Tony Healey, over at Fringe Scientist, is trying to get a Charles Dickens reading relay off the ground to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. It involves voting for the Dickens book that you'd like to read (or re-read), then joining a chain of readers who will read the book, sign the inside cover, and then post it on to the next person in the chain.

Not a bad idea, eh?

Read more and sign up here: http://fringescientist.com/2012/02/14/what-the-dickens/

Distant Machines

My collection of three definitely speculative fiction and probably vaguely science fiction short stories, Distant Machines, is now available as an ebook from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk:

• Distant Machines on Amazon.com
• Distant Machines on Amazon.co.uk

I think it's also available on the .fr, .de, .it and .es versions of Amazon as well, but it's in English so they probably don't care and hencely and thusforth I'm not shouting about it. It's not that.I'm being all Luis Suarez or John Terry (allegedly) or anything. Some of my best friends are .fr/.de/.it/.es etc etc.

And I know I said this in the last post that I wrote about it, but I want to point out again that the fantastic cover was designed by Tony Healey, who runs Fringe Scientist.

Also my short story The Restoration Man is still available for free from all the Amazons - grab yourself a copy before tomorrow when the promotion ends. Get it here if you're a .commer and here if you're a .co.uker.

The Restoration Man breaks free for a week

I enrolled my short story The Restoration Man into Amazon's KDP Select programme. This has two benefits: firstly it means that the short story appears in the Kindle owners' lending library, which enables people to lend it to one another; and secondly it provides me with the opportunity to make the title available for free for up to five days.

As such, I have made The Restoration Man free for one week:

• Download The Restoration Man at Amazon.com
• Download The Restoration Man at Amazon.co.uk

So if you've been put off by the hefty price tag (99c or 79p) then now's your chance to grab yourself a copy.

**UPDATE** 

Unfortunately the free week is up. Sorry. 

Distant machines drawn by a fringe scientist

Over the last few days I have been putting the finishing touches to a collection of three short stories, which I shall be putting up onto Amazon, Smashwords and other places in the near future. The stories are all set in the not-too-distant future, and they touch on subjects such as genetic manipulation, a world without oil and "designer euthanasia". If you're a genre-obsessive then you'd probably call it "speculative fiction".

One exciting thing about it is that my fellow Kindle All Star and not-too-far-away-neighbour Tony Healey has designed me a fantastic cover for it, which you can see just over there.

It's fantastic. I love it. He's managed to capture the feel of the stories in the anthology and translate the main themes into a visual style that I like (not an easy task, as I am monumentally fussy).

Meeting people like Tony has been one of the many unexpected benefits of being involved with the Kindle All Stars project. You can find Tony at Fringe Scientist.

Anyway, if you'd like to receive an advance review copy of Distant Machines then please get in touch and let me know...

You have won second prize in a synchrotron contest

A little while ago I mentioned a competition being run by the Diamond Light Source, which as you all know is the UK's national synchrotron facility. 

At the time I said that I couldn't say anything about my story because it was being judged anonymously and I didn't want to prejudice the judging process. Well, the judging is now over, and it turns out that the judges have impeccable taste because my story, The Pélissier Scroll, was selected as the second place winner.

The story is about an academic's lifelong passion to uncover the mystery of an ancient scroll, and is intercut with the mythical narrative behind the fragile, ancient parchment that he is using a synchrotron beamline to decipher. The judges described it as "beautifully written and pacy", and although I think I could have done with about 500 more words to play with (there was a 3,000 word limit) I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

The full results of the competition, as well as my story, are available here on the Light Reading website.