What's Going On

Freddie Forsyth is dead. Author of The Day of the Jackal and more of that ilk. As dodgy a character in real life as any in his books. Like Jeffrey Archer, wrote thrillers for the home county set. End of an era – end of a profitable genre too, perhaps.

Hastings this am...

Thrilled to share that three of my stories have been shortlisted in 4 categories of the Aurealis Awards! 2024 Aurealis Awards Shortlist Announcement (Will do a proper post about it shortly)

Woke up to find a Chinese company who I’ve dealt with previously has successfully billed my credit card four times for goods not ordered. It’s a lot of money. Credit card company says – “wait for the good to arrive, then see if you can return them for a refund”. This is so wrong! All my morning will now be devoted to sorting this out

I entered my first-ever screenplay of my first-ever adaptation of my first-ever novel (The Panopticon). I didn't get into the finals, but I did get a lovely letter:

"We’re so sorry to tell you that your script was not selected for the final shortlist.

However, it remained after several stages of top choice votes and was then on the long list of the top 42 in this category so please be assured that your script was highly rated by our screenplay literary committee.

We really appreciate the high standard of your scriptwriting and wish you luck with this and all your future projects."

I doubled checked with a few screenwriting teachers and they told me that I can be very pleased. So that's what I'm going with today.
PS Given the quality of the writing of this rejection letter, maybe they don't know what they're talking about LOL

What people don’t understand about the London Book Fair is that, like other book fairs, it goes out of its way to prevent authors from “bothering” agents. I’ve never minded that at all, but let it pass. More seriously, it’s still very hard for new agents to just wander around and meet publishers. You would think that the whole point of a fair... wouldn’t you?

This dark ritual could have been an email.

My life. For days. It really is coming together...

I have won an Urban Writers scholarship to do their Six Month Novel writing online retreat. It runs from 10/3/25-7/9/25. The trouble is, now I have to do the work!! I proposed an eco/political thriller (so far from my comfort zone, I can't even see it on the horizon). But I'm really, really excited about it.