It is customary for each of my blog posts to begin with the phrase, "It's been a little while since I did a blog update.." and this post is no exception. Other than the odd piece of work, lockdown has pretty much drained most of my creativity and my get-up-and-go got-up-and-fucked-off about a year back.
But the old enthusiasm is returning, and I'm starting to get excited about writing again.
I'm a member of the Coventry Writers' Group, an organisation that has existed since the nineteen-fifties. As part of the celebrations for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, we've been working hard on an anthology book which has finally seen release.
It's called Telling Tales: Celebrating Coventry, UK City of Culture 2021 and features a wide variety of Coventry themed stories, poems and articles - all topped off by an original cover painting by the talented Hilary Hopker.
It's available from Amazon in both paperback and e-book format. My copy arrived earlier in the week, and it's a cracking body of work.
My own story - Moonlight Sonata - is set during the Coventry Blitz on a cold night in November, 1940 and tells the fictionalised account of an ill-fated Luftwaffe crew. It's grounded in reality, with the true story being somewhat fascinating.
Secondly, my new collection Contents May Unsettle is due for release from the fine people at Burdizzo Books on the 28th of May 2021, and is already available for pre-order for your Kindle or ZX Spectrum.
It's a collection of twenty short stories, some of which have been released in anthologies for other publishers, and others which are seeing print for the first time within these covers.
It's a collection - like Scenes of Mild Peril - that I'm particularly proud of. It's been expertly edited by the supreme talent of my good friend Lance Fling and features a foreword from M.F. Wahl, author of Disease.
As with Scenes, we've done a non-entirely serious promotional video which I'll be releasing next week. In the meantime, here's a collection of posters for a choice selection of the tales within... Click on an image to embiggen :)