Blog
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To the Stars and Back: An anthology tribute to Eric Brown
In May 2023, our friend Eric Brown passed away after a battle with cancer. Eric was a wonderfully talented author whose body of work – in science fiction, children’s fiction, and crime – was filled with humour and humanity, as Eric himself was. I first met him at an Eastercon many years ago, and as… Continue reading
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Website update
We have given our website a revamp! Although most of it was behind the scenes, we’ll be gradually checking older posts to edit and remove old links, so please bear with us if some links are not yet working and if you see anything that needs fixing let us know! You can get in touch… Continue reading
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Geeky Sewing Bee: The Prisoner inspired cushion covers
A couple of years ago I made a Village resident-style cape as part of a Prisoner-themed cosplay outfit. I chose a red/blue/yellow/brown colour scheme to match those seen during the chess match in the classic episode Checkmate. The remnants of the brightly coloured fabric have been knocking around in a drawer for a long time,… Continue reading
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News from Time for Cakes and Ale!
Hello Listeners! We’ve recently migrated our podcast to a new hosting service. If you already subscribe to our mothership podcast, Time for Cakes and Ale, your feeds should automatically update. If you subscribe through an app, it might be worth refreshing our feed too. We look forward to bringing you even more of our podcast… Continue reading
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Cakes & Ale Episode 29: Interviews from Eastercon 2019
We’ve just returned from Ytterbium, a.k.a Eastercon 70, the annual UK science fiction convention. During the convention we had the great pleasure of chatting to a wonderful range of con-goers to create a snapshot of the kind of conversations you’d hear down at the bar, from writers to publishers, fans, reviewers, academics and con-runners. We… Continue reading
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Magic and Enchantment in Literature at the British Library
The British Library runs many courses in connection with their exhibitions. To accompany the current smash hit ‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’ exhibit, several fantasy fiction-related events have been run and in January I was lucky enough to attend the study day on Magic and Enchantment in Literature. There were some very informative talks… Continue reading
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Cinematic Time Capsule
In our study is a tartan cardboard box containing hundreds of ticket stubs I’ve kept over the years, mementoes of movies, concerts and plays, dating all the way back to the summer of 1999. For the longest time I’d thought that must have been around the time that I decided to start keeping them, and… Continue reading
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Survival Tips for NaNoWriMo
It’s almost here! Evening comes early, and the green summer shades of my village are overthrown by waves of red and gold. Children in dressed as ghosts and ghouls go trick-or-treating around the houses and fireworks light up the night skies. It must be time to write a novel. I first tackled NaNoWriMo in 2005.… Continue reading
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Episode 19 – NaNoWriMo 2017
Before NaNoWriMo 2017 kicks off, we are joined by Cambridge Municipal Liaison Ian Rennie to talk all about the annual 50k novel writing challenge. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, sees hundreds of thousands of people all over the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November.… Continue reading
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Notes from the Twin Peaks UK Fest Q&A session
Below are some snippets of the Q&A session that closed the 2017 Twin Peaks UK Festival. Comments are largely paraphrased – we had to scribble down answers as quickly as possible, so it’s not a perfect transcript and is certainly not definitive! At the Q&A were cast members Sherilyn Fenn (SF); James Marshall (JM); Amy… Continue reading