December 17 2022, 10:44
Daily words
These daily words are a prayer of sorts to gods I cannot name. [more...]
December 15 2022, 13:25
Digest
A digest of tweets shaped only with line breaks from two weeks in December. [more...]
December 14 2022, 22:05
Website updates
I’ve made some tweaks to the styles and layout of this website. I’m thinking about the future. [more...]
November 06 2022, 19:10
The future of my online shizz
I don’t know what to do for the best with my social media. Twitter is all I have. Zuckerberg is worse than Musk in many ways, so I’m not going to those places. Mastodon is not a replacement for anything, it’s a unique flavour of online community that will take effort from everyone who goes there. Blogs are the obvious answer, but who will have the taste for that these days? It’s effort. Twitter removed the work of posting and consuming, a bit like fast food, and now we’re all a bit flabby and useless, technologically speaking. [more...]
November 01 2022, 20:11
Image of a wave
In my notebook this morning I was thinking about how tempting screens are. Just having one near me makes me want to look. Today it was a wall of water, either a tall wave viewed from a ship at sea, or a tsunami from shore, I couldn’t tell. It was mesmerising. I was mesmerised by a photo of a painting of a wave on my laptop screen, but the overwhelming fear and awe it created in me was real. [more...]
October 31 2022, 19:30
The most important thing to do is
It’s Halloween. My daughter had friends around for a spooky-themed tea, and now they’ve gone out to ask for treats. The door knocking has begun. [more...]
October 30 2022, 21:27
Microblogging
I tweet way too much. Longer form pieces go here or on Patreon. Recording the podcast was fun, but not structured enough to stay interesting. I still write in my notebook every day, but recently that’s been less creative writing and more organising the job move. It’s been an amazing year for my software career, but it’s driven my writing practice into a ditch. However, I am still rolling that boulder of a novel up the mountain. [more...]
July 23 2022, 06:00
Kardomah
When I visit my father, I always love to walk around Swansea and get an early morning coffee. We used to come as a family when I was growing up, so with my existing morning coffee and writing habit, it’s a double comfort. [more...]
June 17 2022, 06:56
Trust your enthusiasms
After fourteen years in my day job, I am finally leaving. My new role is still coding, but instead of being in Higher Education I'm going to be a consultant with a subsidiary of a global corporation. The PRIVATE SECTOR. [more...]
June 12 2022, 15:14
ChillerCon UK 2022
ChillerCon emerged from the ashes of the Covid-struck StokerCon 2020, miraculously held together by the heroic organisers who dealt with cancelled hotel rooms, refunds, and much else I’ll never know about. [more...]
June 03 2022, 15:45
Kindness in retrospect
My internal critic says I’m being lazy, or disorganised, or just not up to the job, but kinder voices reassure me that there is a season for all things. [more...]
April 15 2022, 16:28
An oblique strategy
I’m in Wales with my dad today, Good Friday, taking him for a Covid test before he has a cataract operation Monday. He’s been waiting six years to get both eyes treated [more...]
March 06 2022, 09:01
Patreon: one month in
The initial idea for Patreon was to explore publishing short stories behind a paywall, to try to motivate myself to finish smaller pieces because there was an expectation, and to put a symbolic stake in the ground. [more...]
February 06 2022, 10:39
Writing short stories on Patreon
I’m thinking about what people might like to see in a writer’s Patreon, and what would be exciting for me to publish. [more...]
January 22 2022, 18:18
Films, dreams, fiction and writing
I’ve come to think that films are intrinsically linked to my writing practice, but I’m worried my film-watching habit is more of a distraction than an inspiration. [more...]
December 30 2021, 21:15
Farewell, 2021
As 2022 comes into view upriver, the final days of 2021 flow past, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to reflect on what I’ve read, watched and written this year. [more...]
December 05 2021, 13:52
The great adjustment
Between January 2018 and December 2021, I watched 569 films. I know this because I track the films I watch on Letterboxd. That’s a lot of films. [more...]
November 27 2021, 21:16
Keeping the story alive
I’m looking at my work-in-progress, and it seems to be asking how we got here. It’s a patient and wise creature. [more...]
October 31 2021, 18:28
In the Earth (2021)
A fascinating, horrible, blackly funny film about Covid, nature, group dynamics, and how humans exist in relation to other forms of life. [more...]
October 30 2021, 19:47
Ghostbusters II (1989)
To finish my parade of eighties sequels, I went with this, which I can remember seeing in the cinema at a birthday party. The chemistry isn’t the same, and Bill Murray is... unpleasant. [more...]
October 29 2021, 06:33
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Five years after the killings of Crystal Lake, a new camp has been created, and a killer again picks off the counsellors one by one. [more...]
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