Save Stage Lighting

In 2020 a new law will come into place across Europe which aims to make lighting more efficient.  This is a Good Thing.  Tungsten bulbs have, in the past, clocked in ridiculously high wattages for absurdly low outputs, and given that large swathes of everywhere are in danger of being flooded by man-made global warming in the coming decades, every little helps. I mean, regulating industry properly would be great too, but hey… The technology of lighting has leapt forward in the last ten years by leaps and bounds, and this is reflected in theatre and gigging too.  LED is…

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MCM Comicon London 2018

Comicon!  Let’s all go to Comicon whooopeeee!! This year it’s happening 25th-27th of May at London Excel, and I’m going to be there with all of these fine fellows talking about books, and adventures, and generally chilling out.  Come along and say hello!

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84K – New Book Soon!

Just a reminder to all and sundry that the next book, 84K, is out in less than a month in the UK and US in papery form and audiobook!  It’s the story of what happens when everything can be bought, including justice, and how much life is worth. You can read more about it here (I’m not as good at pitching my stuff as my editor is, damnit) as well as buy copies for friends, loved ones and random strangers in the street….  

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May 3rd Local Elections

GUYS!  THE LEAST GLAMOROUS ELECTIONS IN THE UK ARE HAPPENING ON MAY 3RD! So not-glamorous in fact that I probably didn’t realise I could vote in them until I was maybe 21, 22 years old?  (I was young and foolish.)  Local elections across London and large areas of England!  Get yea out to the polling station on May 3rd and vote for your local council.  Sure, they won’t be on TV much, but you get three of them for every local ward (for example, my local area has 16 wards across 2 boroughs and 48 councillors to 2 MPs) and…

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6 Inches of London Snow

Day 0. The weather report says snow is coming.  Some of us still remember when this was a regular thing, but that was 20 years ago.  Transport for London starts issuing warnings.  Not “don’t travel” just, “expect disruption” because they know from bitter experience that it’s not enough to say “there might be snow”.  If you want to avoid the irate emails, the snarky tweets, the furious interviews from shuttered platforms with local news, you gotta say “it’s gonna go wrong”.  Somehow that makes everything already better. It’s the same with the ad campaign on the underground.  “You plan for…

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Recovering

In December of 2017, I walked into a door.  This was not my intention. This was a few days before Christmas, and though I’ve had more spectacular black eyes, the lump on my head took a week or so to go down. I was also struggling to use words after 5 p.m., falling back on sitting mutely at the kitchen table and occassionally making grunting noises.  Short-term memory was having a bit of a pisser, and everything seemed extremely hard.  “You can do this,” I would mutter under my breath, going to buy a pint of milk.  “You can do…

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