Tag: Robert Heinlein

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New Story: Sort Code in Fantasy&Science Fiction Magazine

In the past five years, I think I must have submitted every story I wrote to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Mostly they have been swiftly rejected, but I’ve persevered. F&SF is one of the last ‘legacy’ publications in the field. It started in 1949 and was a key publication in the genre, home to authors such as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and James Tiptree, Jr. It serialized classics like Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.

So, I’m thoroughly delighted that F&SF have seen fit to take my latest offering, ‘Sort Code’, which is in the latest edition, out now.

‘Sort Code’ is, in the words of editor Sheree Renee Thomas, an ” unusual love story/time travel/afterlife story.” It features Dickens and Wordsworth, and ends in a version of Lyme Regis in England that Jane Austen didn’t quite envisage.

Here’s a taster, and to read the whole thing (and the many other great stories in the mag), you can check out the magazine’s website, or try other sites like Amazon

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Q & A with CL Rose

The marvellous CL Rose at Filles Vertes Publishing has just put up on her blog a Q&A she did with me a short while ago, to tie in with the publication of Fifty-One.

Here’s a short extract:

Q: What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring authors?

A: I’ve spent most of my life thinking the great SF writer Robert Heinlein had three rules of writing, and I’ve tried to follow them. I remembered them as:

  1. 1. Write
  2. 2. Put it on the market
  3. 3. Keep it on the market.

Recently I discovered he actually had two more – finish what you start, and don’t rewrite except to editorial order. I’m glad I didn’t know about that last one: I think rewriting is hard but important.

Raymond Chandler

Q: If you could meet any author, dead or alive, who would you want to meet and why?

A: Raymond Chandler. His prose style is often imitated but, while it seems simple, it’s deceptively hard to do well. Although he lived in California, he went to school in south London, so we’d have things to talk about other than Philip Marlowe.

You can read the whole interview on CL’s blog.