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.)