Step 1
Be a voracious reader. Easy! During the school holidays I paid two visits a week to the local library. Once I had exhausted the possibilities of the children’s section I was able to borrow more using my father’s tickets. With them I was able to read H Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, H G Wells and others ‘too advanced for children’.

Step 2
Discover SF. Also easy. Among the authors I borrowed were Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein and Wyndham. They, and many others, captured my imagination as no other genre did. I haunted the three bookshops in Edinburgh that had American imports and the yellow spines of DAW books began to dominate my collection. I even used my pocket money to subscribe to Astounding/Analog. Sadly the collection hasn’t survived

Step 3
Start thinking ‘What happened then?’ Not difficult. I often found myself dissatisfied with the ending of…

So, despite being in a sort of hiatus in terms of writing, mostly because I have been working with my writing group to develop some ideas more thoroughly, I have managed to submit to an anthology… and it came out recently. The details are below. I submitted a story about Rachel Drake getting very irritated at not being told the whole plan in a game of international diplomacy…

Authors: Brynn Burke, CJ Hartnett, D. A. Lascelles, Rose Satin, N.L. Hoffmann, Orchid Raine, Iris Sweetwater, Maggie Lowe & Mila Raphael 

Wordle used to be a web-based utility, a web toy that allowed you to paste in a piece of writing to make a word cloud. The more frequently a word appeared in your text, the bigger it appeared in the word cloud. Yes, it’s a pretty utility, but also massively useful for a writer. We all tend to have words that we overuse, but we don’t always recognise them. Cut and paste your text into Wordle and your overused words stand out like a rhinoceros in a flock of sheep. Frequently used common words like ‘the’, ‘and’, or ‘but’ don’t show up, of course.

Wordle is a Java applet. Because web design and technology moves on, the online Wordle web toy no longer works for most people, so the Wordle folks have offered a desktop version for both Windows and Mac. You can download it here http://www.wordle.net/. I’m running…