The Silver Age Bookshop! (16 October 2006)

Wow. When it opened, www.amazon.co.uk changed my life. Now it's happened again - go and see the Silver Age Bookshop. Wow. It really is spectacular, and so easy to set up. Maybe we should publish some new books to sell in it! – SWT

The Dvorak Zine! (10 October 2006)

This comic was published last year, but I'm afraid I only just heard about it. It's very funny, and very useful.

Our company swears by the Dvorak keyboard layout!

Using the QWERTY layout, in comparison, is is a bit like typing with chopsticks stuck to your fingers - you can manage it, but why on earth would you want to bother?

And what's best of all is that your computer already has the Dvorak layout built in!

This well put-together comic explains the whole business very clearly. – SWT

November Spawned: a Novel Writing Handout (8 October 2006)

The original magazine is long dead, but the name lives on. We've put together a handout for this year's National Novel Writing Month meetings in Birmingham. It's nothing spectacular, but might prove handy. There are spaces for drawing maps, timelines, character faces, and a set of Xbox 360 style achievements to aim for. Have a look our novel writing handout. – SWT

October 7 – 24 Hour Comics Day 2006! (2 October 2006)

It seems to be the season for challenges! – SWT

The Launch of ShortsChafe 2006! (21 September 2006)

If you just can't wait for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) to get started, join me in  ShortsChafe 2006, the Short Story Challenge for Earthlings. It took me literally minutes to come up with that name. (I do seem to keep making that mistake.) The challenge is to write a short story every day. It doesn't matter when you start, but you have to do it every day from then on. Your final score is the number of consecutive days on which you manage to write a complete story of at least 600 words. – SWT

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #12 (11 September 2006)

Watch out, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #12 is about! One of my favourite issues ever, number twelve continues the greatness! The entire issue, news and reviews aside, is devoted to good old Newton Braddell, as he continues to make his dispiriting way across the strange world on which he has crashlanded. There's also, for the first time, an order form, in case anyone should want to subscribe, or catch up on their Silver Age history. Issue twelve - wow. It's really been going quite a while now, and it's even come out on time for two issues running. If we aren't careful, this is going to end up becoming a respectable publication. I just wish I'd picked a less embarrassing title for it. – SWT
 

Artsfest 2006 (9-10 September 2006)

I hope everyone from Birmingham has been out to enjoy the Artsfest this weekend. Free music, acting, dance - in fact, free performances of every kind - all add up to the one of the best weekends of the year. Some of the Silver Age Books team were there, in their capacity as participants in National Novel Writing Month, and met a lot of great people. It's a shame that Howard Phillips and the Saturation Point weren't invited to perform on the www.birminghamusic.com stage, but you can't have everything!
 

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #11 (31 July 2006)

Another month, another issue! Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #11 is now out, and for once TQF is out on time! What's more, the look and feel of the publication has been revamped, news and review sections added, and His Nerves Extruded given room to race to its thrilling conclusion. – SWT

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #10 (27 June 2006)

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #10 is out - we've made it into double figures!

I'm astonished, of course, to find it's still going - and what's more, that material is already in hand to keep it going for many issues to come - I'm currently working on issue sixteen, for example, which at the moment is intended to feature adaptations of various episodes of cult seventies tv series Space University Trent - but anything could happen between now and then!

This is another great issue, leading off with a venture into a slightly sweary Twilight Zone with John Greenwood's "Living With Mister Robot". Keen-eyed readers will probably have noticed that we don't really like to let an issue of TQF go by without robots (the only robot-free issues being #6 and #7, as far as I can remember), but why would we?

We also continue with the next instalment of His Nerves Extruded. His palanquinade brought to an unpleasant end, Howard Phillips confronts adventure on the far-off deadly world of Envia.

No Newton Braddell this issue, I'm afraid, but the inconclusivity will be back soon - issue twelve at present is planned as a Braddell special, packed with meanderings from cover to cover! All might change, but keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't! – SWT
 

Return of the Rocket eBook (16 May 2006)

I was really sad the other day to google Rocket eBook and to find so little trace remaining of the old grey wrist-wrecker - so just in case there is anyone other than me still wandering around, looking for material to fill its capacious 16MB of memory, we've set up a page in tribute and made the latest TQF available in the .rb format.  – SWT

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #9 (16 May 2006)

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #9 is now out! Another humdinger of an issue, it contains the first instalment of Howard Phillips' first ever finished novel, His Nerves Extruded, which continues the Saturation Point Saga begun in #8 with the story of his rise and fall in the pop world. In this novel, we leap forward a year or so – having recruited the first member of his new band, the drummer, Howard decides to take it easy for a while, and is paraded around the roads of England upon a palanquin carried by the most beautiful women in the world. Naturally, adventures ensue!

We are also blessed with another extract from the researches of Newton Braddell, which prove as inconclusive as ever! The story of giant robot Excelsior crawls forward a little more! And Ranjna Theaker has dashed off a dashing story of alien invasion to round out the issue, which pits odd little Gertrude against the might of the Thringrar! – SWT

November Spawned #4 (1 May 2006)

November Spawned #4 out now - finally! It took a long time to get it out - it was originally due for publication last November - but anyone who has read previous issues will be desperate to get their hands on this one. John Greenwood's The Foundling and Ranjna Theaker's Being an Alien reach their conclusions, while Steven Gilligan's The Ephemeral Homunculus reaches its last stop on the way to the literary limbo where unfinished novels live out their days.

Of special note is that the cover is made up of all the NaNoWriMo winners we could find from the UK – open it up and zoom in for a cavalcade of novel-writing heroes.

This will be the last issue for now, sadly, for the reasons outlined in the editorial – mainly that it was impossible to ask for submissions from Nanowrimo participants without looking and feeling like the kind of predator that often stalks the writerly prey that wander from the pack of such events.

Still, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction lives on! Ironically, that publication only began because I had more than enough copy already for the first year of November Spawned, and was looking for something to do with it. – SWT

Check Out the Tin Can Gallery! (27 January 2006)

When commissioning the artwork for the second Silver Age novel from Ranjna Theaker, we asked for a selection of pieces evoking its mood – only one could win the cover, but now, after a sort through our archives, all those pictures have been rediscovered and made available in a special Tin Can Brain Gallery. Just head to the bottom of the page. – HP