I am habitually terrible at writing blog posts in a timely fashion (I'm just as bad with the mailing list) and so I have not posted about all the stories I've had out lately. I've had a lot out in the last couple of months, some of them my favourite things. It's been a good year so far!

Here we go:

The John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer is awarded at Worldcon each year, alongside the Hugos, for the best new writer (defined as having their first professional publication in the preceding two years).

Muggins here is eligible for the first year, and so I'm in the 2017 anthology of Campbell eligible authors, Event Horizon 2017. It has 75 authors, 350,000 words, and some absolutely incredible stories. And it's free.

Particular thanks to Jake Kerr of Shirtsleeve Press, who stepped up to the mark at the very last minute and put this together in a fortnight when it became clear the previous publisher was dropping the task. He's volunteered his time and infrastructure to put this together and support the Campbell authors, and it's deeply appreciated.

It is that time of year where, across the globe, writers are chasing their brain weasels into cages, pulling up a lectern, and nervously presenting their awards eligible work for 2016.

So ignore the plasters on my fingers (the weasels were a bit bitey) and instead let me direct you to The List of Things What I Have Written This Year What I Think You Might Like, Iffn It Please You, Thank You Sirs and Ladies and All Inbetween and Outside Those Narrow Gender Definitions.

Quartet of the Far Blown Winds is a story about distance, loneliness, and the vast empty reaches of space. It's about the Fermi Paradox, and my answer to it.

Homebrew wine is way easier than you think it is. I mean, you can go down a rabbit hole on it, buying specific varieties of yeast and carefully measuring the specific gravity of the must at particular times, or you can just chuck everything in a demijohn whilst loudly declaring "eh, I'm sure it'll be fine".

This is a post on the latter technique, from first principles.

It took me an embarassingly long time to work this out: conflict is everything.

Do you know what happened to the first story I wrote once I worked it out? When I first focused on deliberately working it into every paragraph? It won WotF.

If you only ever take one piece of advice from me, take this: you need more conflict.