SHARKPUNK - Stories with Bite!

Had he still been alive, today would have been Peter Benchley's 81st birthday. (And just in case you're wondering why this is of significance, check out the quote below.) So it seems like the perfect occasion to remind you that a few years ago I edited an anthology of short stories called Sharkpunk.

Sharks - the ultimate predators, masters of their watery domain, a world that is entirely alien and inhospitable to man. So many aspects of the shark are associated with humankind's most primal fears. The tell-tale dorsal fin slicing through the water, the dead eyed-stare, the gaping jaws full to unforgiving teeth, the remorseless drive to kill and feed...Inspired by such classic pulp movies as Jaws and Deep Blue Sea - as well as such ludicrous delights as Sharknado and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus - the stories contained within are rip-roaring page-turners and slow-build chillers that celebrate all things savage, pulp and selachian. Covering the whole range of speculative fiction genres, from horror and Steampunk, through to SF and WTF, these are stories with bite! Come on in. The water's fine...

You can pick up your copy of Sharkpunk here, and it's also available as an audiobook from Circle of Spears Productions, that you will find on Audible.

"I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me." 
~ Peter Benchley, author of Jaws

Thought for the Day

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

~ William Faulkner, author

Thought for the Day

"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots."

~ Umberto Eco, author

Thought for the Day

"I Learned Today: Over 80% of published authors stop after three books. About 10% of published authors make it to six books. And 5% make it to twelve."

~ Mark Chadbourn

Thought for the Day

"You are never truly locked down with a book. Books give you room to exist beyond the reality you're given. Reading makes the world better. It is how humans merge. How minds quietly and deeply connect and expand. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape. Reading is love in action."

~ Matt Haig

Thought for the Day

"Each night when everyone is asleep I stand at the computer, tired, uninspired, and not wanting to work. But I open the document anyway, find my place, stare at it a bit, and then I start getting ideas. And then suddenly I'm not so tired anymore.."

~ Peter V. Brett

Thought for the Day

"Books are the mirrors of the soul."

~ Virginia Woolf

Thought for the Day

"A lot of people think that you wait to get creative, and then get to work. But more often than not, the truth is you get to work and then get creative."

~ Peter V. Brett

Thought for the Day

"Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't."

~ Neil Gaiman

Thought for the Day

"Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy."

~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Thought for the Day

"After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."

~ Philip Pullman

Thought for the Day

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thought for the Day

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Thought for the Day

"My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read."

~ Abraham Lincoln

Thought for the Day

"I usually have a vague idea of what the ending will be, but I never plan out how I'm going to get there; the fun part is finding out what happens along the way. And quite often the ending changes once I work out what the story is all about."

~ Philip Reeve

Thought for the Day

“Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self.”

~ Rosemary Sutcliff

Thought for the Day

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

~ C. S. Lewis

Thought for the Day

“I opened a book and in I strode. Now nobody can find me. I've left my chair, my house, my road, My town and my world behind me."

~ Julia Donaldson

Thought for the Day

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

~ C. S. Lewis

Thought for the Day

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”

~ Rosemary Sutcliff