Come and meet the SkullDust Circle

I've been a little negligent with my blog this month, for which I apologise. Firstly work has been crazy busy/poorly, which is kind of fair enough (as I get paid for that stuff). Second there's a lot going down at the publishers meaning I've had to re-upload my Kindle book. Third, there's those three little people that live with me, whom I thought were hobbits but turned out to be my kids. Seems they like to spend time with me--quality time that doesn't involve me playing with my i-phone.

The final reason is that I've become part of a new blog. It's a writers blog, specifically its a group of us who've joined together to post stuff about our genres and writing. I thought it'd be good as I've tried to avoid droning on about my book on this blog, and the Roaring Mouse is to present others small-press/self-pub works.

It's called the Skull Dust Circle, and there are seven of us in the Circle (well, strictly its a septagon) and all of the guys on it are awesome authors that I'm flattered to be associated with. William Kenney and Gary Vanucci got the blog up and going. William is the author of In the Shadow of the Black Sun epic fantasy series, and is a superb artist as well. His own site is here. Gary is the author of the Ashenclaw books and their preludes, the Wothlanda series. His books have a very DnD/RPG bent to them, much like my own. His Eye on Ashenclaw blog is here.

Jeremy Laszlo will be familiar to those who read the Roaring Mouse as I interviewed him earlier in May. He has written three books of his awesome series Blood and Brotherhood Saga. His style is greatly detailed and great fun to read. His website makes mine look like its written on a chalkboard, and you can find it just here! Benedict Martin writes fantasy, and draws rather amusing cartoons on his blog. He's at this site. David Woods and Stefain are both new authors whom I have yet to meet, but am certain I'll be hearing more of.

So the site will be a place for us to talk about our work, fantasy and sci-fi in general, and post about topics of interest. I've posted two so far- one on David Eddings and his rules of fantasy (Fantasy by numbers) and one a re-post about anti-heroes in fantasy (anti-heroic fantasy).

Take a look over at the Circle if you get the chance. Cloaks of Elvenkind optional.

The Roaring Mouse

We are all readers before we are writers. Was that in an Abba song? No, maybe that was something about dancing before I could walk... but I digress. First and foremost to be decent writers (something I among many aspire to) we need to read. Not just our genre but everything... books, comics, magazines, cereal packets (got that one off the missus).

To this end I started reviewing books. First on Amazon and Completely Novel, then for Fantasy Book Review and finally I've decided for my own blog. But as this one is busy enough I've decided to run it as a parallel blog...

So, the Roaring Mouse...

Why the title? My remit is to showcase indie, small press and self-pub books as the rest of the literary world gets enough cyber-minutes from snarkier reviewers than I. Inevitably it will have a fantasy-SF bent, as I'm that way inclined, but I'll also shove in some horror and thrillers too. The title is a play on the comedy the Mouse That Roared, which we all recall as Peter Sellers in a variety of roles. The analogy is that small press and self-pub can carry the same quality and literary impact as anything the big publishers decided to carry and, indeed, are probably less likely to follow trends of twinkly vampires and magicians at school.

So please jump across to the sister blog and follow and comment and hopefully read!

The Roaring Mouse