News of the week

Books and Blogs

Some news for the week, a couple of things about what I’ve been up to and some noteworthy stuff from others.

First, my latest blog on Amazing Stories is called Cyberpunk’d and is up now.

Second, my YA steampunk superhero novel, The Mechanikals, is being released episodically , for free, over at Wattpad. I plan to put all the chapters in as fast as I can, time permitting. I hope you’d consider giving it a read, leaving comments or voting.

Podcasts of Note

Writing Excuses is an excellent podcast show  for aspiring authors. It’s presented in useful, bite-sized chunks of around 15 minutes an episode. The show hosts  leading lights in science fiction, fantasy and horror in  both  narrative and comic book format, Mary Robinette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler  and Dan Wells.

Tales to Terrify – the horror podcast on which I have had stories and for whom I have narrated work by others a couple of times – has been named 2013 Podcast of the Year by This Is Horror. Very well done, chaps and chapesses!

Recommendations requested

I’ve just starting running creative writing classes for Bulgarian teenagers who are learning English. The young people at the American College Arcus in Veliko Turnovo, Bulgara, range in age from 15 to 17. They are great students, and the reading aloud segment in the first week uncovered a few kids who are born actors. Keeping their enthusiasm levels going, though, will involve not just creative approaches to sparking their interest in creative writing, but finding things besides their set texts which will feed their imaginations.

At the end of each of my six classes in week one, I read aloud the opening passages of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians. The class loved them. One of my colleagues has asked for recommendations for other YA books her students might enjoy, so I’m looking for recommendations. They could be e-books, or books that are low priced (budget is a consideration). Free ebooks are fine – so long as they are good. I will, of course, recommend the school pick up copies of these two great books also.

Please give me your thoughts and ideas in the response to this post. Everyone who posts gets a free copy of the ebook version of my short story collection, Dr. North’s Wound and Other Stories.