INTERVIEWER: …So the question going the rounds in the fictional-character or character-meta world right now is: Have you always been gay? THE FIVE: (exchange bemused glances) HEREWISS: I’m not sure…

(This material is imported from my Tumblr, where the questions first came up) Lately this concept keeps putting its head up over the parapet in one context or another, so…

We’ve been living in rural Ireland for a shade more than thirty years now, and the household’s online connectivity has been a bit of a challenge from the very start.…

(Above: the Five contemplate a Hugo Award, or at least something that looks like one) So it’s that time of year when nominations open up for the World Science Fiction…

(I was hunting around for the below quote from James D. Porterfield’s classic cookbook/research book Dining By Rail, and found that its original online location had vanished. This post appears…

(This post via Tumblr, where it originally appeared.)(And still does, here, but some people don’t care for the new data permissions on Tumblr, and who could blame them?) In a…

(ETA: This material is reposted here from its original location at Tumblr, for those who don’t care for the platform’s new T&C as regards data handling.) A question came in…

I am absolutely delighted to announce that I’ve been asked to attend 2019’s CrossingsCon — the third incarnation of the world’s only Young Wizards-based sf/fantasy/media convention — and everything’s come…

So nominations for the 2018 awards associated with the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, Worldcon 76, have opened up, and a lot of people have been posting and…

It’s a pleasure to be able to let everyone know that all three of the Feline Wizards books — The Book of Night with Moon, To Visit The Queen (published…

The recipe isn’t his, but I think of him whenever I make it (which is way too often. Not in terms of thinking about David Gemmell, but in terms of…

#FolkloreThursday at Twitter is looking a little serpentine today, and for some reason this old Swiss folktale came to mind. A good while back, more or less around the end…

It’s going to be an interesting day. (I leave aside the local confusion over whether to properly refer to this storm “Hurricane Ophelia” or “Ex-Hurricane Ophelia.” Never mind: here she…

So it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m going through my Twitter feed and suddenly I see one of those Tweets you really, really don’t want to ever see… and it’s already…

The revised New Millennium Editions of the “primary continuity” Young Wizards novels started coming out at our Ebooks Direct store in 2011.* The project took a while to complete, in…

I’m ridiculously happy to let everybody know that I’ve been chosen to be one of the Guests of Honour at the 2019 World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland. To…

…you’re tidying up some paperwork and you stumble across a (1999) printout of a novel proposal that you had completely forgotten about, including outlining, notes, and detailed timelining for the…

I got a few more of those plaintive emails the other day inquiring about whether I thought I was ever going to finish this series… and so it occurred to me…

I posted about Big Nick’s a couple of weeks ago on Facebook, and having had some requests from people to see the full menu — here it is. Looking at…

I sat doing some computer stuff over the first mug of tea today and found myself wondering: 65 years. How many days is that? And of course there’s a web…

This is our friend Kim Knight – Kimmie, or even Kimmiwinkles. Kim and her band of usual suspects were the concoms for the UFP series of Star Trek conventions in…

Just a note in passing: There’ve been times lately when people who’ve stopped by the Ebooks Direct store have left notes in their orders asking whether it’s possible to simply…

I collect recipes. Lots of them. I used to use the venerable Meal-Master software for this, but over time it’s gotten a bit long in the tooth. As a result…

First of all: why did I use the image above? Because I don’t like any of the stock art available for the term “hiccups”, and I do love Toothless and…