'Tis the natural cycle of these things, but over the last five weeks, two of my books have gone out of 'print' : Favor and Stay Tape are no longer for sale.

I must admit, it's a little sad to get the email saying that their time is up.

I'm not 100% sure what's going to happen with them - I'm toying with the idea of self-publishing them, Stay Tape probably on it's own, or with another Tawnholme story, Favor as part of an anthology of Halloween stories. Lord knows when I'll have the time to spend clambering up the learning curve to be able to do them justice, though!

Mostly, I really need to finish more things and submit them places, so my publications list is replenished and there are more stories out there in the world!

Rather than the better year I was hoping for, real life has found several news ways to dent my word count this year. I have actually written more this year than last, but a) that's a lot less than the year before that and b) 'written' is not the same as 'finished'. Must do better. *Will* do better.

Each year since 2004 I've had a story to share for Halloween, because it's a significant date for me. This year is no exceptions, although I'm posting a little early because circumstances will prevent me from getting online on the day, and I'm determined not to skip.

This year's tale is a Tawnholme story, which means it's a contemporary, roughly 'real world', story set in a fictional UK town, and I think it's a little smoky and a lot sweet - a good pair to 2007's Favour, in fact. Many thanks to Pen for last minute editing services; any remaining mistakes are entirely my own fault, especially as I've worked on this since she saw it last.

( Here Comes The Rain, by Alex Draven )

If you're interested in more, here's a list of the past stories.

Dream Come True (2004)
Thirteen Kisses (2005)
All Souls (2006)
Favour (2007) (for sale) & Soar and Raining Cats (2007)(free sketches)
Tradition (2008)
Everything changes (2009)
It’s not the dead that haunt graveyards (2010)

You'll find these and other seasonally appropriate snippets under 'seasonal : autumn' in the tags list

(If I was doing this as a promotional thing, I would have picked a less popular date, because there's an awful lot of fabulous fiction being released for Halloween - more of it every year - so, thank you, everyone who reads this, and twice thanks to those of you who let me know that you did.)

Pick a genre, and a location, and share some of your favourite books

Seven London Fantasy Favourites, in a roughly chronological sequence by setting:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Sweetmeat by Luke Sutherland
61 Nails by Mike Shevdon
Kraken by China Mielville

And you? Where would you pick? What would you pick?

jjhunter issued a speculative fiction fest challenge, to write a short story describing an ordinary day in the life for an ordinary woman and her family coping with illness somewhen in the future. It's quite a specific set of prompts, but it sparked off with the song I was listening to, and turned into this, which I post as it stands, as a rough sketch.

(It's a stand alone, although it could be the same world as these snippets, not least because it's inspired by music from the same source - thank you Deathboy, for your music as both band and individual!

*****

First of March

"So, here we are - the first of March and the sun's shining." Kal tilted the camera towards the viewscreen behind her, and smiled. The automatic polarisation on Ella's bedside viewer abruptly killed the contrast, but she could still see the light burst bleaching out most of Kal's viewscreen. "We made orbit right on schedule." Kal returned the camera to dock, and the light levels settled back down again. "I love you, lady. Have a good day." Kal touched two fingers to her lips, and blew a kiss to the camera, and then the screen went dark.

"Love you, too," Ella whispered, and flopped back in the unmade bed, allowing herself the luxury of a minute or two's silence to feel herself missing her wife.( Read more... ) so - what do you think?

The folks over at Brief Encounters Reviews - a review site exclusively for shorter M/M reads, of up to 20,000 words - are celebrating British authors and stories, with a series of interviews and reviews, and some generous give-aways.

I've contributed a couple of books to the swag bag, and answered my interview questions, and now I'm looking forward to seeing what their reviewer thought of whichever book they pick, as well as hearing more from my fellow authors in the UK.

Come on over and see what they're up to?

Every year since 2004, I've posted a story for Halloween, because it's a significant day for me. This year's offering is an idea that's been rattling around in my subconscious for years, which sparked against a recent visit to a local civil cemetery, to become this story.

It’s not the dead that haunt graveyards
by Alex Draven

( Read more... )

If you're interested in previous years' stories, here's the list:


Dream Come True (2004)
Thirteen Kisses (2005)
All Souls (2006)
Favour (2007) (for sale)
Soar and Raining Cats (2007)
Tradition (2008)
Everything changes (2009)

(plus, there are the two zombie stories. They are seasonally appropriate, but they do come with a 'you click on the link, you take responsibility for your own sanity' warning - the titles are terrifyingly accurate on these two - Zombie Incest Wrongness and the infamous necrophiliac plushy gangbang story)

(If I was doing this as a promotional thing, I would have picked a less popular date, because there's an awful lot of fabulous fiction being released for Halloween - more of it every year - so, thank you, everyone who reads this, and twice thanks to those of you who let me know that you did.)

I've just been updating some pages over at the GLBT Bookshelf wiki, and discovered that they've added some new category pages, including a set of geographical sets: Latino Interest, UK/European Interest, Aussie/Kiwi Interest, US/Canadian Interest, Asian Interest

There's not a huge amount listed on those pages yet, so if you're an author who uses the wiki, there's the opportunity to add your relevant titles while the lists are still short enough to be palatable, but for readers it's a little underwhelming.

I was lucky enough to get an ebook reader for my birthday a couple of months back (an Elonex 5" e-ink model, should you want to know that), and I love it!

It's really made me aware, though, of the benefits of having stories available to read in a variety of formats - I always used to jump for .html or .pdf files for reading on my pc or for printing out, but now I love the flexibility of epub goodness, and I imagine Kindle users feel the same way about .mobi

This weekend, I've been experimenting with using smashwords.com to convert my centaur short story, Fall, into a range of ebook formats. It seemed like a good candidate - long enough to be worth the effort of downloading for your device, and a story that's close to my heart, and that I'd love to get into as many people's hands as possible (which is why it's been a free read here for a while).

It's now available in epub, html, PDF, LRF (for Sony Reader), PDB (for Palm reading devices) and .mobi for Kindles, as well as here, under the 'centaurs' tag

It's free, and perfectly legal to pass around, although I'd love it if, should you want to give it to a friend, you'd give them a link to download a fresh copy, so I get some download figures to let me know that people are reading. http://bit.ly/FallDraven

As always, I love to hear from readers - comments, or twitter messages, or email are all good - so let me know how that works for you?

Someone posted a plea to authors - wow - that's a month ago already? Anyway - a plea to authors, namely


I am totally one of those authors, and I apologise, so this is my 'not dead, still plugging along' post.  Specifically, my day job is trying to take up all 26 hours of the day every day, which isn't leaving a lot of time or mental energy for writing.

The ideas are still coming, though, and I'm making lots of notes and scribbled pen-sketches that hopefully will come together into actual stories as soon as the pressure's off a little. I wish I could tell you when that would be, because that would make everything less stressful, but the available evidence suggests that as soon as I say 'work will get less busy in x days' the law of sod will roll into effect and make me a liar. 

I don't want to lie to you, so I'll make you no promises about the timing, just that I'll keep on keeping on, and eventually there will be more stories for me to share with you.