Today is a very special day!
After seven months of hard graft in partnership with co-editor Dave Schofield I’m pleased to say that Cutaway Magazine is now available for sale.
From the shiny colour cover to the slightly experimental, sometimes genre, often literary content, I can’t describe how chuffed I am at how the magazine has turned out!
This week sees the launch of ‘Rocket Science: Science Fiction and Non-Fiction’ a collection of hard science fiction stories and non-fiction essays on near-future space exploration. I have a short story featured in the anthology and I’m still reeling from the positive review we received on Friday in the Guardian with my story being picked out for a mention . . .
The strength of the collection is that the best of the stories – and the standard is very high – are about the human condition. Standouts include Craig Pay’s “Incarnate”, a harrowing account of a mother and father’s response to their cloned daughter’s desire for suicide on Titan; “A Biosphere Ends” by Stephen Palmer, a complex and moving examination of ecological breakdown on a Martian colony; and Deborah Walker’s poignant “Sea of Maternity”, about the conflict between motherhood and scientific ambition on the moon. Superb.
Ian Sales has done a fantastic job of editing this anthology. I can’t wait to read the other stories and articles. Copies available to buy here.
Since I returned from my trip to Hong Kong my mind has been buzzing with ideas for new stories. Here’s some short fiction (or perhaps rather more of a travelogue) I’ve just had published with Female First, an online magazine . . .
http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/books/Bamboo+Curtain-233211.html
The submissions window for cutaway magazine closed just over a week ago, so a couple nights ago I met up with fellow editor Dave Schofield to finalise the last of our acceptances. It still feels strange to use a word like ‘editor’!
This is part of an ongoing process that started back in January. We didn’t want to hang around until the end of the submissions window to start reading, so we got busy as soon as they started to arrive.
OK, I have to be honest, Dave was much more at this proactive than I was! But starting to read this early meant that we were able to send out six acceptances back in February before the submissions window had even closed.
To round off the year I have a piece of fiction called ‘Doctor’s Surgery’ about to be published in Structo magazine issue #7.
I’ve just received my contributor copies, so it should be available to buy in the next few days from the Structo website or from Rough Trade East in London, The Albion Beatnik in Oxford, good old Cornerhouse in Manchester, the Gallery in Milton Keynes or Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Or how about a subscription? Structo is a gorgeous magazine chock full of nifty fiction with an interesting newspaper format. A literary and visual treat all rolled into one.
‘Doctor’s Surgery’ is a rather experimental piece. Pure dialogue. No tags. Let me know what you think if you get the chance to have a read. Merry Christmas everyone!
