Migrating to Squarespace

​I have been a writer for more than ten years, and have been blogging on livejournal, blogger and facebook for a similar amount of time, although my posting regularity and medium has changed over the years. I was also a daily blogger on the excellent Futurismic for a year, posting about science, technology and geeky stuff. 

​Over the last two years, I have had a lot more fiction publications, and am working on three novels, including one for a confidential project I'm very excited about. As my fiction career begins to get serious, I've realised that I really need an official site to represent it, and so I've migrated these seldom-read blogs across to my new website at TomasLMartin.com.​

I'm using Squarespace 6 to design and host my website, and have found the backend incredibly efficient and easy to use, although there are still some features I used to use in Wordpress that I understand are not yet operational (migrating posts, customised layouts, etc). I've dabbled in programming during my masters project (particle physics simulations using C++) and my PhD (atomic structure simulations using CASTEP/Fortran), but I've never been truly fluent at it. Squarespace allows me to make a good website without having to resort to that level of technical input (unless I want to). Here's to the new website!​

​Listening to:​ Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man in Babylon
Reading: Junot Diaz - Drown
Watching: Homeland series 2

Transtories now available as an ebook

Last year I had the pleasure of selling a story to Aeon Press' anthology Transtories, edited by Bristol SF author Colin Harvey. Sadly, Colin passed away before the book could come to press, but I think it's a wonderful collection that pays testament to his skill as an editor.

As well as my story 'Harmonic', it contains excellent stories by Rob Rowntree, Joanne Hall, Aliette de Bodard and Lawrence M. Schoen. The theme of the book was anything to do with words that begin with 'trans' - a syllable that means change, transformation, and other intriguing things.

My story 'Harmonic' tells of Ward, a young psychic boy growing up in a world where alternative realities slide past each other and crash into each other like tectonic plates, merging and mutating the people and places that live beneath them. When a particular violent changestorm threatens to rip him apart, Ward must do everything in his power to protect himself and the girl he loves.

You can buy 'Transtories' as an ebook from the Aeon Press website, Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.


Listening to: Lia Ices - Grown Unknown
Reading: Gareth Powell - The Recollection
Watching: Game of Thrones Season 2

What I've been working on

It has been a long time since I updated my writing-focused blog. Since I did, I have sold four short stories to various magazines, achieved two semifinalist and four honourable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest, and obtained a doctorate in semiconductor physics! Perhaps the latter explains my lack of concerted new writing on this blog and elsewhere.

Despite mostly writing a 80,000 word novel-sized thesis last year, I sold stories to Nature Futures, Digital Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and the anthology Transtories, although I was saddened to hear of editor Colin Harvey's untimely death prior to the release of the anthology, he was a great writer and a really nice guy.

In addition to my other writing work, my main focus for the last few months has been an exciting new project that I can't reveal anything else about! This secret project is a collaboration with a number of very talented people and I'm excited to show the world what we've been working on.

So this is mainly a post to say in true Granny Weatherwax style that I aten't dead yet. Plenty more writing to come from me, both here on the blog and hopefully in fictional form.

Listening to: F**cked Up - David Comes to Life
Reading: DMZ #11: Free States Rising
Watching: Homeland