Sunday 26 January 2020

Twitter Twatter #74

September 2019 on Twitter































Thursday 23 January 2020

Black Squadron Too

I've trawled through posts that I drafted but for some reason didn't get around to posting. I plan to rectify that over the next few months.

I took this photo for Adam and Joe's Black Squadron. I have no memory of it or the stimulus they provided to inspire it.



For those intrigued, here's an explanation of Black Squadron.

Monday 20 January 2020

Twitter Twatter #73

August 2019 Twitter












Friday 17 January 2020

Insecure Writer's Support Group Twitter Pitch 2020

I took part in the Insecure Writer's Support Group Twitter Pitch on the 15th of January 2020. The idea is that writers turn to twitter to pitch ideas and any prospective interested parties can like them and then begin a conversation about what to do next.

The only rules were you could post once per hour per manuscript and you didn't like anything unless you were an agent or publisher.

I decided to pitch two ideas:




The hashtags at the end of each pitch were to detail the genre and intended age group. I chose #CO (contemporary), #SF (sci-fi) and #AD (adventure) for the genres. I was tricky for the former pitch, since although definitely a science fiction idea, it is very much a soft science fiction. I have no intention of explaining the science behind the fiction. For the latter idea, I should probably have included #F (fantasy). That wasn't my biggest hashtag related mistake, however, I decided that the age groups I expected to be interested in these stories to be #YA (young adult) and #MA (which I completely made up). In my haste to post the first pitches before the end of an hour I intended to write #MG (middle grade), but ended up with #MA which depending on your opinion is either Middle Age or Middle Adult.

I managed to post each of them seven times before I had to surrender to the need for sleep. Damn my time zone. My pitches received three comments, 39 retweets and were liked nine times. Sadly, none of the likes were from agents or publisher, but instead other writers, a friend and in one case a Ugandan orphanage charity.

I was encouraged that people wanted to spread the word on my behalf, but disappointed that none of those people were necessarily in publishing. Either way I am determined to spend this year working on both ideas.

Tuesday 14 January 2020

Carruthers Ten Years On: January 2010

January 2010 on the Carruthers blog. This is the month that the blog reached 600 posts and we hit number one on the Noostar chart, whatever that was. It was also the month that I drew a fish.



I clearly did this one just for myself, although by this point I was pretty much doing all of it just for myself. I like this discussion of what to call the decade that has just ended.

For this one I recycled the joke from an adlib I was pretty proud of when I introduced our mime sketch on stage. I've used this joke on something else since as well, because I'm a hack. I also like this one and this one about Houdini too. In a somewhat bizarre move, I copied and pasted the entire text of The Railway Children into a series of posts, that I was able to accompany with photos like this:

Saturday 11 January 2020

Twitter Twatter #72

July 2019











Wednesday 8 January 2020

Insecure Writer's Support Group #1

I'm new at this. I've been meaning to join in with the Insecure Writer's Support Group for years and never gotten around to it. Well, that changes now.

It's hosted by Alex Cavanaugh, T. Powell Coltrin, Victoria Marie Lees, Stephen Tremp, Renee Scattergood, and J.H. Moncrieff. So, thanks to them.

The only thing I'm currently insecure about is time.

There is never enough of it. Since my son was born there has been so little time. You know that having children means that your life will change, but you'd be a fool to think you could predict how it would change. I knew there would be more calls on my time, but it never occurred to me that I would have almost no time. Last year, I got a job writing for a website, but when I started my son was a largely immobile babe-in-arms. As the months have progressed, he is now an inquisitive little boy who can crawl at speed, pull himself to standing and make quite complicated vocalisations, whilst armed with an increasing number of teeth. All of which is brilliant, but means watching him is a far more involved endeavour than it was nine-ish months ago and therefore there is less time for anything else. I take some pride in the fact I haven't missed a deadline, although I have come closer than usual. I feel some guilt that inevitably he is being ignored in some small way in order to make that possible. I should stress that he isn't being left unsupervised, he is always with a capable adult.

Each month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group poses an (optional) question and here is this month's: What started you on your writing journey? Was it a particular book, movie, story, or series? Was it a teacher/coach/spouse/friend/parent? Did you just "know" suddenly you wanted to write?

I've always wanted to write, initially lots of unfinished short stories as a child, followed by comedy scripts and sketches in my mid-teens and scripts for comic books in my twenties, but I've surprised myself by moving increasingly towards prose and non-fiction as well.

Saturday 4 January 2020

The Year Ahead

So I made my own predictions for the year ahead, but science fiction has made many more. It comes with the territory. If you set things in the future, the future has a habit of catching up to you. It's easy to see that in the science fiction of the last forty years or so, 2020 has sounded suitably futuristic and provided a shorthand for in the near future rather than the far future.


I wrote this about science fiction's predictions, depictions and assertions about 2020.

Wednesday 1 January 2020

My Predictions For 2020...

For four Earth years, I have been predicting the annum ahead with perfect prognostication.

Allow me to present a preview of the year to come. Here are my predictions for 2020:

  • After years in the wilderness, Atlantis will finally win Eurovision.

  • The recently-elected Conservative government will privatise laughter.

  • The Leaning Tower of Pisa will be renamed the Fallen Tower of Pisa.

  • The Carmarthenshire village of Bancyfelin will inexplicably win Miss Universe.

  • November will be optional.

Happy New Year.