I hate reality TV shows. Their contrived drama, their oh-so-spontaneous-not-scripted-scripting. Most of the time they thrive on conflict, aggression and dehumanisation, turning people into objects to be mocked, scorned, sexualised or ridiculed. They hypnotise with suffering, or promise a lifestyle that is utterly unrealistic, promoting a consumerist obsession that devaules what people already have or… … long story short, I really hate reality TV shows. There’s perhaps only two exceptions to this. The first is the Great British Bake-Off, which manages to hit the two requisites of a) cake and b) a general theme of people rushing around trying to…

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If you are as bored of Brexit as me, look away! Unfortunately, there’s still a tonne of stuff to stay, including the regular cry of “oh God what’s our government doing now?!” With every week that goes by people get angrier and angrier, and the consequences of this are going to be felt in the UK for years to come. However there are a few specific things that I wanna poke at that just keep on bugging me…. 1. A second referendum is undemocratic. I get where this comes from, in as much as we haven’t really enacted the first…

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Well, I guess the subject-line says it all. Today the lovely people at Fantasy Hive revealed the cover for the Gameshouse (in English, ‘cos Germany is already all over this) which is being published as all three novellas in one book in May 2019. Shout out to Lisa Marie Pompilio for a beautiful bit of design!

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Thursday 14th March – I’m honoured and excited to be talking with Dee Lestari and Laksmi Pamuntjak at the London Book Fair as part of the British Council’s Indonesia Focus, in which writers celebrating the best of Indonesian literature discuss their work. I feel grossly under-qualified, and not a little bit intimidated by the achievements and awesomeness of the visiting writers; it should be grand. Saturday March 16th – at 7.30 p.m. I’m going to sit down with M.R.Carey at the York Literature Festival to talk about books, comics, stories and hopefully more yodelling (it’s a whole thing) as part…

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Ever wanted to spend a weekend at a martial arts seminar? Pack the arnica, you’ll need it. Day 1. 12 p.m.. Injuries: none. Actually, technically there’s still a healing scar across my forehead from when I hit myself in the face with my own palm stick two weeks ago. For the sake of my ego, I should point out that I only hit myself to avoid hitting a man 5 grades lower than me after he charged forward in a way that would have ended badly. Just saying. Heroic, sacrificial face-gash…. We begin with a warm-up. The drill is simple:…

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… I am, for the first time since… oooh… can’t really remember… sitting down and thinking about what to do next. Don’t get me wrong: I’m gonna write more books next. ‘Cos writing is awesome. And there’ll be more edits on the current book, but hopefully they’ll be far less intense. But I’m also at the end of a contract, and under pressure to write for TV and honestly, the sky is full of vasty possibilities. More Claire North books? Space opera? High fantasy? Historical drama? 6-part TV series full of cool lighting? Dunno. I’ve got an ideas list as…

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