We have moved to a new site!
This site will remain open only so you can copy anything you need, such as critques. Do so quickly because the old Forward Motion boards will soon disappear.

Are you ready for the new site? You must create a new login, but the chat login will remain the same as here for now. Click here to join us at the new

Forward Motion for Writers

See you there!

---

Hi everybody.

I'm actually a returning member, but from so long ago that my account's been lost to either my memory or that of the site's membership database.

By night, I'm a very-slightly-published writer of short horror and speculative fiction - I've had odd bits in mags including the late, lamented Cthulhu Sex but have no pro sales under my belt.

Back in the what passes for the real world, I'm a technology journalist who occasionally moonlights in other fields. I currently write and edit for ExpertReviews.co.uk and Computer Shopper magazine (UK edition - there's a hilarious tale of swashbuckling trademark theft which explains why we're nothing to do with the defunct US mag of the same name), in addition to freelancing for other titles. My work has also appeared in Wired (UK, pseudonymously), The Sunday Times (entirely without credit) and a tech book which had a real ISBN and everything but has since sunk beneath the waves of memory to wherever it is that unsuccessful publishing projects go.

I'm currently on a shortish sabbatical, ostensibly because I actually want to get some writing done that DOESN'T involve motherboards, video games or arguments with PRs about why the products their clients send us for review really ought to be the same as the ones they propose selling to the general public.

I'm good at beginnings but terrible at actually finishing stories (I have several in a half-completed state), am brilliant at procrastinating (I'm doing it now!) and am trying to complete a novella about elements of my past that still scare the hell out of me.

Non-writing related interests include cat herding, cycling, powerlifting, RPGs of all forms, queer activism, death metal and hanging around with goths for so long that - despite my protestations about not being one - they chose me to lead them (trans: I admin a small gothic social group. It's fun. We go on walks and have picnics and stuff).

I've just realised that this reads distressingly like a less bullet-point-oriented version of my CV and that I should probably shut up soon.

TL;DR version: I'm here because I need a bit of a kick up the arse in the hope of getting some stories finished and - just maybe - not spending my entire writing career reviewing computer hardware, shiny though it is.