My Mighty Column

If I've been lax about posting here recently -- which I have -- it's because things have been moving swiftly in various directions at once.

On the writing front, I've been given a fiction commission which (as usual) I can't talk about yet. It's a longish piece, though, longer than the short fiction I've had published recently, and it involves working with two authors I respect enormously. At present it's all secret planning and secure online fora, but I'm impressed with what we've come up with so far. More on that when an announcement's made.

What with this and the imminent job (starting the day after tomorrow now, rather terrifyingly), my attempt at an S.F. spy novel, A Fetter for the Mind, is having to go on the back-burner for a bit.

In more immediate news: for ages now, all the cool kids I know (well, Helen and Andrew, anyway) have had monthly columns with Christian Aid's webzine, Surefish. Now so do I.

I wanted to call it "Divine Invasions", but they've gone with the rather more self-explanatory "Science fiction author Philip Purser-Hallard looks at faith in an increasingly futuristic world". As in the Greenbelt festival blogs I've written for Surefish in the past, I will be banging on about religion a bit, so if that sort of thing annoys you you may prefer to stay away.

Here's the first instalment. I've promised them I won't write about Philip K. Dick every month.

I'll be linking to future updates from Peculiar Times, so expect a great many double-entendres involving the word "column" in future.