Sleeping Beauty and the Last Spasm of a Rotting Corpse In the last ten days, something remarkable has happened. Thanks to your amazing help and generosity Return to the Galaxy, my debut sci-fi novel, has been shooting up the Space Opera charts and became the #3 Space Marines: Bug Hunt title in the UK. As I write it has 23 reviews, 22 of them 5-star, including one that reads: “Not John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War — better.” If you're already one of the readers who bought, downloaded, reviewed, or...
9 days ago • 16 min read
Why is the Galaxy Silent? It’s one of the most haunting questions in science. Given the age of the universe and the sheer number of Earth-like planets, intelligent life should have emerged not just once or twice, but millions of times. Some civilizations could have had a billion-year head start on us. We should see something. Hear something. But we don’t. One of the most unsettling explanations is known as The Great Filter What Is the Great Filter? The Great Filter is a theoretical barrier, a...
15 days ago • 5 min read
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope." (Your normal science article is at the bottom of this email. This week I’m looking at the next stage in human evolution. We could be about to change what it means to be human. The article is called - Designer Babies, Super Soldiers, and the Next Stage of Evolution) Winner of the London Book Festival 2025 First Runner Up in the Los Angeles Book Awards 2025 Winner of The Pinnacle Book Awards Gold Medal Winner of a Literary Titan Silver award...
18 days ago • 6 min read
Emergency notice! Stop Press! After nearly two years of work, Amazon unexpectedly cancelled the pre-order for Return to the Galaxy with just five days to go to launch. It was a software fault in their systems. No warning. No appeal. Just gone. Almost a hundred pre-orders have gone to cyberspace heaven, and for data privacy reasons they can’t tell me who had pre ordered the book, so I can’t apologise to you properly.Initially, they blamed me and banned me from doing any more pre orders for a...
25 days ago • 5 min read
These Are the Scenes They Said You Shouldn’t Read Before Bedtime Secret Chapters of Book 4 Revealed Below! Brandon didn’t email me personally (I wish!), but I did read an article where he described how he stays creatively sharp by working on several books at once. He might be outlining one, editing another, writing the first draft of a third, and marketing a fourth. The constant rotation, he says, keeps the ideas fresh and the momentum strong. To my surprise, I realised I’d been doing the...
29 days ago • 11 min read
Ten Ancient Inventions That Flunked The Future (4 minute read) In my forthcoming novel Return to the Galaxy humans find the tech of zero gravity which transforms society. Pre-Order Return to the Galaxy Now for $0.99! In my last article I looked at a near future invention – nanobots. In this article I thought I would look back at some astonishing near misses. Technology the ancients had and didn’t develop fully. If you've ever yelled at a sci-fi character for missing the obvious, don’t be too...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
From a Kitchen Drawer to the Stars! Hi Reader, If you’ve ever visited my website, you’ll know that I was born in the east end of Glasgow, and spent the first few weeks of my life in a kitchen drawer, as my older sister occupied the only cot my family could afford. Now I travel the stars creating exciting, fast-paced science fiction stories. If you’ve read Honeytrap, Star Lords, School Trip, Chasm City, or Tough, then you’ve already stepped into the galaxy I’ve been building quietly for the...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
She Was Meant to Be Background. She Had Other Ideas… Hi Reader, Readers often write to ask who my favourite character is, and where the creative part of the process starts. Well, I’ll let you into a secret. If you’ve read Return of the Star Lords, you’ve met her. Her name is Kya. She was originally a side character in my third book, Seek the Galaxy, but she was so fierce, funny, and full of courage that she demanded her own story. That story became Return of the Star Lords, the first piece of...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
I Still Believe in Hope I want to try something different today.No alien theories. No analysis of the solar system.Just a quiet message about the future, and why I think we still have good reason to hope. It’s easy to feel like the world is falling apart.War, politics, climate, conflict, division. It can wear you down.You look at the news and think: How are we going to make it through the next five years, never mind fifty? But when I look past the headlines, I see something else.Something...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read