They Like Me, They Really Like Me...

Well, feck. THE POINT has only gone and scooped the Best Novella Spinetingler Award. Bloody marvellous!

Many thanks to all those who voted. According to the folks at Spinetingler Magazine there was only a few votes in it so every one actually did count.

I'd blather on a little more but I'm still pretty blown over by the whole thing. I'll say one thing, though... you could do a lot worse than to pick up a copy of all the nominees' novellas. I'm halfway through the list and they're all brilliant books. Probably why I'm still scratching my head over the whole thing.

Cheers

gb

Spinetingler Award -- Final Voting Day

Today is the last day that you can vote for your favourite novella in the Spinetingler awards. All info and links can be found below (basically a cut and paste job from a previous post). I hope you'll consider voting for my wee book, THE POINT.



I wanted to blog about this earlier but I had an assignment I needed to get done first. And it's now done, so -- DRUMROLL, PLEASE! -- my novella, THE POINT, has been nominated for a Spinetingler Award. Oh, yeah. The little book that could, just did. I'm frickin' dee-lighted. I'm also fully aware that a nomination is as far as it will go. Have a gander at this cluster-feck of insane talent and wonder at the confidence trick I played to get lumped in with them.

California - Ray Banks
Barracuda - Raymond Embrack
Everything I Tell You is a Lie - Fingers Murphy
Every Shallow Cut - Tom Piccirilli
Felony Fists - Jack Tunney
Follow Me Down - Kio Stark
Old Ghosts - Nik Korpon
The Point - Gerard Brennan
Shotgun Gravy - Chuck Wendig
Smoke - Nigel Bird

But hey, I don't mind losing to any one of those guys. All I want to do is go down swinging. So, if you have the time -- and you feckin' do or you wouldn't be reading this, would you? -- Go to the Spinetingler website and throw a vote my way. It only takes one click and you don't have to register for anything or agree to any dodgy terms and conditions. Just clickety-click and you're done. What are you waiting for? If you'd stopped reading a sentence or two ago, you'd be done by now!

Thank you in advance, kind souls.

P.S. Why not buy some or all of the novellas on the list? I know I will. They're there for a reason, like. Purchase links to all of them can be found on the Spinetingler site.

Catch-all Catch-up

I never did do one of those introspective end of 2011, start of 2012 blog posts. So this attempt to pull my thoughts together will serve as a belated one. It seems I had a very good year in 2011 when I list out some of the highlights:

- Generally enjoyed marriage and fatherhood
- Got accepted onto the MA for creative writing at QUB
- Took a demotion to allow more time for writing and family
- Saw the publication of my novella, THE POINT
- Warmed to my wife's fluffy puppy and now refer to him as 'our dog'
- Lost an agent and gained a publisher when I signed with Blasted Heath
- Began calling myself a writer

And 2012 is off to a great start with the official release of WEE ROCKETS and a Spinetingler Award nomination for THE POINT. But this writing malarkey is hard work. I finished my MA ssignments a few days ago and now I'm trying to muster up the enthusiasm to rewrite the novel I had hoped to have done before Christmas. It seems like a huge task right now and I'm feeling a little unfit for purpose. Hopefully I'll shake that off soon because self-pity irritates the hell out of me.

Anyway, in an attempt to shake myself up a bit I listened to a great Writing Excuses podcast about the Hollywood Formula and how to apply it to books. And in it, they recommended Ian MCDonald's latest science fiction epic, The Dervish House. And it reminded me of one of my highest points of the year that was enhanced by the attendance of one Ian McDonald. Here's a pic of me and Arlene Hunt at our joint launch at No Alibis, and in the background, to the right, you can see the award-winning science fiction great, Ian McDonald.



Yeah, man. It was a great frickin' year. And I need to work even harder to make this one top it.

2012 Spinetingler Nomination -- Best Novella

I wanted to blog about this earlier but I had an assignment I needed to get done first. And it's now done, so -- DRUMROLL, PLEASE! -- my novella, THE POINT, has been nominated for a Spinetingler Award. Oh, yeah. The little book that could, just did. I'm frickin' dee-lighted. I'm also fully aware that a nomination is as far as it will go. Have a gander at this cluster-feck of insane talent and wonder at the confidence trick I played to get lumped in with them.

California - Ray Banks
Barracuda - Raymond Embrack
Everything I Tell You is a Lie - Fingers Murphy
Every Shallow Cut - Tom Piccirilli
Felony Fists - Jack Tunney
Follow Me Down - Kio Stark
Old Ghosts - Nik Korpon
The Point - Gerard Brennan
Shotgun Gravy - Chuck Wendig
Smoke - Nigel Bird

But hey, I don't mind losing to any one of those guys. All I want to do is go down swinging. So, if you have the time -- and you feckin' do or you wouldn't be reading this, would you? -- Go to the Spinetingler website and throw a vote my way. It only takes one click and you don't have to register for anything or agree to any dodgy terms and conditions. Just clickety-click and you're done. What are you waiting for? If you'd stopped reading a sentence or two ago, you'd be done by now!

Thank you in advance, kind souls.

P.S. Why not buy some or all of the novellas on the list? I know I will. They're there for a reason, like. Purchase links to all of them can be found on the Spinetingler site.

Spinetingler Rocks

Check out this post on Spinetinger. The mighty Brian Lindenmuth gives THE POINT a high recommendation, which fairly put a spring in my step for the day.

Nigel Bird (interviewed here yesterday) gets the same treatment. With the kind of prices our publishers are charging, why not pick up both and see if you agree? You know you want to.

Pulp Press

Trestle Press

Best Week Ever!

Well, maybe not the best week ever. This kind of stuff doesn't surpass the births of three wonderful kids, or marrying the girl of your dreams in Cyprus (I'm a very lucky guy in the family department). But in terms of writing achievements, this is the kind of week that's up there alongside signing with my agent, Allan Guthrie, working with so many of my favourite writers as a co-editor, publishing a novella to Pulp Press and those ever-important nods from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in the form of SIAP awards.

This week I wrote 'The End' on a manuscript that's taken over a year to get close to right (from planning to writing), received my contributor copies of The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8 and found out that Requiems for the Departed has been nominated for a Spinetingler Award. So frickin' sweet.


If you want to vote for Requiems for the Departed, click here.

If you want to pre-order The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, click here.

If you want to read a recent article about me and my writing, click here.

And as if things couldn't get any better, I've read the first few chapters of Adrian McKinty's Falling Glass today. Why the hell did I wait so long to crack open that one? Well, I'll tell you why. As with all of McKinty's books, I knew I wouldn't have been able to put it down once I started it. It was already hard enough to open that damn manuscript I was working on every night after the kids went to bed (every night? Really, Gerard? ed.). I didn't need to make it even easier to slack on it. (Shut up, ed. gb.)

Criminally Good Magazines

Okay, crime fiction magazines, e-zines, web-zines, whatever. It turns out there’s more than a handful of them out there. After a previous post in which I yapped about a lack of venues for crime fiction short stories, constant reader, Colman Keane, emailed me to subtly hint I should dry my eyes, and to point me in the direction of some of his favourite websites. He’s a good lad. Spurred on by this generous time donation, I web-hunted a little more and found an additional few of them myself.

So, I’ve decided to gather the links and collect them all in a wee sidebar. Look to the right and scroll down a little. When I’ve finished the first draft of the current novel-in-progress, I’m going on a short story kick with an aim to go guerrilla on this scene. All out proliferation! Watch me fail miserably with interest, indifference or sadistic pleasure, why don’t you?

And in the meantime, why not check the sites out? If you’re a reader, spend a little time reading. If you’re a writer, check out the up-and-coming competition. Some of these markets pay and some don’t. They all publish crime fiction in some shape or form. I’m not advising writers to give their work away for free, nor am I advising against it. Your work, your call. But feel free to comment on the paying vs. non-paying market if you feel strongly either way. I’m not particularly passionate on the topic, but I prefer to send my short stuff to paying markets.

If you know of any other magazines that I haven’t mentioned, drop me a comment or an email and I’ll add them to the little bunch. Alternatively, if any of the links are dead or the 'zines are dying, I want to hear about that too.