HOLLY ICE

Snow and frost is on the horizon in England for tomorrow and the day after but I have two great books to keep me occupied as part of the alpha swap I've set up with two other writers. They'll be reading my prequel novella to the Courage Colony books Fatal Glitch over the next few weeks while I read their books. I was hoping to get three alpha readers on board for this first round of feedback on Fatal Glitch but two is great to start me off and should give me some usable feedb

2018 was a big one for me. It was the year I left my full time job to focus more on my writing career. I'd realised that the full time job was too mentally demanding and left me too tired when I got home to make much progress with my writing. Last December, I decided I wanted to change my focus going forward and that the best way to do that was to leave full time work. This was simultaneously a terrifying and invigorating step but, from the beginning of February, I was workin

It's been a busy month between work and NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This year I managed to write 50,739 words on my sci-fi prequel to the Courage Colony books, Fatal Glitch. It's an extremely rough draft with a lot of padding on one hand and some scenes which will need to be fleshed out on the other. In other words, the rewrite is going to take a while... but I'm still celebrating! I'm also pleased that twice this month I managed to write over 5,000 words in one

A lot has happened over the last few months. First, by the 24th June, my fragile first draft of The Approach had faced the firing squad of my alpha readers, and I had their feedback in hand. That makes them sound mean – they weren't, but they were honest, and it seemed like the book needed a fair bit of work, particularly in acts two and three. Between the four alpha readers, I had around 400 in-line comments to sort through, and pages of summary comments. I guess, in context

What's to come... The final edit is done, the lights are dimming, the website to record this phenomenon is almost complete. This horror novella is coming... The experiment has begun. The next few months will bring a series of images created by Daniel Tyka and short extracts from the novella to go with them. The website will soon be launched to feature the book and images on a dedicated URL. Be ready! The Details... A timeline will be put together between me and the publisher,

As the title would suggest, this novel is still in the editing stages. There are 29 chapters currently, and I’m working on chapter four. There were a lot of changes toward the start of the book to improve interaction between the characters and improve the pace of the plot. Sometimes I think I need some sort of countdown to mark off each chapter as they’re done! I can see now how some writers struggle to let go of their work; it can be easy to nitpick at a piece long after you

Overview This project is now in its final stages. We have a front cover (which we’re keeping under wraps for a few more weeks yet – sorry!) and the final third of the story is back to me for editing. Once that is done, the piece gets one more edit as a whole, and we’ll be working toward publication, with a much better idea of a precise publication date. The Artwork I’m in love with the front cover and I think it looks really good. We have both a black and white and a colour v

My Mailing List is a form for you to subscribe (for free!) to receive updates about my new releases, as and when they are released. I work exclusively on fiction currently and span a number of genres from crime and spec. fic. to romance and literary. Subscribers receive first notification of any new pieces to be published by me or featuring me (for instance novels, novellas, short stories and anthologies). That means they are notified before my website is updated, or facebook

Everything is coming along nicely with The Russian Sleep Experiment novella. I finished the first draft of the part 3 at the end of the Chistmas holidays - around 2 weeks ago - and yesterday I sent my edit of this section to the publisher for their edit. It feels like everything is coming together! The publisher and I have even seen a rough first draft of the front cover and the composition and atmosphere is already striking. I can't wait to see what the artist comes up with

It's a bit early for new year but I think celebrations are still in order! Today I checked my twitter feed, only to find I have been listed on James Everington's website. He has listed me as one of his favourite 93 odd short stories of 2014. These are stories which "impress [...him] enough to make a note of it in the first place, and then still seem as impressive when [...he] whittled the list down for this post." I am so honoured to be included and am happy to see that two o

Those who have read my Upcoming Releases page know I've been working on a Novella which follows and extends the story of The Russian Sleep Experiment. Yesterday I finished editing part II. It needs one final read through and then I am on to writing the final third of the story, where minds get twisted without the obvious chemical influence of Gas 76-IA. (Fictional) researchers, prisoners and civilians will be and have been harmed in the making of this narrative. I have tried

Thanksgiving doesn't mean much too me, being British, but it did bring a great, 50% off deal on web hosting to my inbox. I took full advantage to make this site and bought a domain name as well! As much as I've enjoyed using my wordpress blog to speak about writing and reviews, I wanted to have a few, easily accessible, stationary pages. I also wanted more freedom to add my own code and develop the site (especially in terms of adding a form to subscribe to my new mailing list