As part of the 60th Anniversary celebrations The Guardian is running a series of soundbite interviews with people closely associated with the show throughout its long run. My anecdote’s in there, in the first group of a dozen. I gave a little more than was needed… I could say it was to give flexibility in…

Busy, busy

The Scarred for Life project began as a series of (two) hefty volumes surveying “the dark, scary pop culture of the 70s and 80s”. Then it became an online presence, and now it’s a podcast series in which a weekly guest brings along three traumatising memories from their childhoods to share with host Andy Bush…

Bluedot festival is on 20-23 July and plays host to some of the biggest names in science, comedy and music. This year it’ll be headlined by Grace Jones, Roisin Murphy, Pavement, Leftfield and a special Thursday Opening Concert with Max Richter and the BBC Concert Orchestra at the iconic Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire” On Sunday…

On Thursday, July 13th at 7pm EST (that’s midnight in the UK, so it’s lucky I’m a nightbird) I’ll be dropping in for a live-streamed chat with Brandy Schillace and The Peculiar Book Club. Regular membership and all past YouTube shows are free. While some of the club’s events are for VIP subscribers only, this…

Four novels, four linked stories in a shared Northern landscape, playing variations on a theme of flawed good versus complex evil. Though it was never my intention, some were inclined to read it as a deliberate move to leave my horror/fantasy roots behind and claim a piece of the mainstream. It wasn’t, but no matter.…

Last week I heard a story of an American producer looking to recruit a European writer to work on their project, taking care to disguise its origins but betrayed by their email address. Duh. On this International Day of Solidarity, here’s a blog post that I wrote back in November 2007 during the last WGA…

Here’s the cover for July’s Target volume. It will comprise the restored text of the Warriors Gate novelisation (previously exclusive to audio), the continuing story of Romana and Laszlo in The Kairos Ring (first time in print), concluding with a new piece The Little Book of Fate. More on the background to the project in…

Classy and approachable, it was actor, theatre director and TV continuity anchor Charles Foster who kickstarted my career. When I joined Granada in 1975 he was already one of the station’s defining voices and within a couple of years, as the Presentation Department moved to in-vision links and local news, he became one of the…