Naomi Clark and Rebecca J Payne will each have a short story in the upcoming January issue of Ethereal Tales.

Woe! Woe is me! For the first time in my life my precious, heartfelt words are out there in the big bad wide world and - ouch! What are you doing, firing such barbed arrows into my heart? Oh you scoundrel, how can you not like the story I slaved for months over, you must be a heartless beast, or at the very least, an idiot who didn't see the subtext that was staring you in the face...

I should have posted this ages ago! But since it's now less than a month until AFTERLIFE is released, I now have my butt in gear.

AFTERLIFE will be available from Damnation Books on 1st December.

Interzone #225 has gone to print featuring my short story "By Starlight". The issue will hit bookshop shelves and subscribers' doorsteps on 12 November.

FantasyCon was held at the Britannia Hotel in Nottingham again this year, from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th September. There were about 270 attendees, plus special guests - a good size for someone like myself who is just dipping a toe in the convention water (it was only my second "real" SF&F con, not counting RPG cons that I used to go back in the day).

A few months ago I had the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam for a weekend, primarily to see an old friend and also to look around the Colours of Night exhibition in the Van Gough museum. Unafraid as I was of looking quite obviously like a tourist by wandering around the city centre with a large map, I saw a strange cluster of looping streets like concentric horseshoes peeling away from one of the main canals, a swirling fingerprint in the heart of the city. "That's the Nine Streets district," my friend informed me, "where all the independent shops and artists are." Nine Streets? It all sounded rather... hellish to me, not out of any particular aversion to boutiques selling overpriced vintage clothing or conceptual artists, but because I'd recently been delving into Dante's Divine Comedy.

The good people at Unreality-SF.Net have just posted an interview with me. Interview contains the following three words: Spartacus, handicap, and chunks. Yes it does.

After the huge success of I DO, an anthology in support of Marriage Equality, we're delighted to announce that there'll be a second volume, I DO TWO, with a planned publication date of 14^th February 2010.

So I get up stupidly early this morning because I have to be at work for 8.30 to open up. I'm tired because sleeping on a bed propped up only by a box of vinyl records is uncomfortable. I'm irate, because it's Monday morning and there are no clean cereal bowls in the kitchen (I suppose that's my own fault for not washing up the night before, but whatever). I'm lethargic because the very thought of going to work saps all the energy from me.

But I pull myself together and head for work anyway. And then I get a flat tire halfway down Huntingdon Road, so I have to walk the rest of the way to work. I'm late. I'm unimpressed. I hate the world. Everything sucks, especially me.

And then I check my emails. And Damnation Books have offered me a contract for AFTERLIFE! Squee! Cue me going into panic mode, as I always do when these things happen, running out of the building with much flapping of hands and generally not believing it. I am SO stoked about this - I adore AFTERLIFE - it's one of my favourite things I've written, with some of my favourite characters - and I'm really impressed by Damnation Books, so this is awesome. AWESOME.

Gerard Brennan, co-editor with Mike Stone of Red Hand of Crime: the Irish Mythology Anthology, has announced the author line-up on his blog. Spot my name!