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Continue reading →: Capricorn at the human scaleI’ve shown you the wheel of Capricorn at a high level, and a map of Ossi, the sector in which Pod lives with his friends. Now I want to show you more of the human-scale geography. The best way to illustrate this uses some original sketches I made when I…
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Continue reading →: Navigating CapricornImagine you’re a resident of Capricorn, living in Ossi sector like Pod and his friends in Between Two Worlds. How do you know where you are? How do you navigate? You might be thinking: hang on, this book is set in the far future on a massive generation ship full…
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Continue reading →: Capricorn in more detail: a map of OssiI love a book with a map. I enjoy inspecting maps closely before I start reading, and guessing which parts are purely decorative and which parts are significant to the story. Unstable Orbits nearly had a map. The geography of Ebeham, the town in which the book takes place, is…
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Continue reading →: The geography of CapricornIn the Pod of Capricorn universe, Capricorn is a generation ship — a colony wheel — that’s been travelling for thousands of years across the stars. (It’s also the name of the AI that runs the ship.) When writing Between Two Worlds and its sequel, I knew I’d need a…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #8<- Progress report #7 Haven’t done one of these posts in a while! Between Two Worlds This is the book formerly known as “AXIS book 1”. It’ll be published on September 1, 2026, for Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback. I haven’t yet decided whether to record an audiobook. The manuscript…
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Continue reading →: Between Two Worlds: meet PodPod is the protagonist and narrator of the Pod of Capricorn series – both Between Two Worlds and its sequel. In Earth terms he’s in the second half of his teens, but they’re not on Earth, and the word teenager is not part of the Capricorn Basic vocabulary. It’s not…
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Continue reading →: Capricorn Basic, or How I created a dialect of English and then wrote 160,000 words in itIt started with ent. No, not Tolkien’s trees. I’d been writing the first draft of the then-untitled Between Two Worlds in standard contemporary British English. And then a character — probably Pod, the protagonist and narrator — said something like “I ent sorry.” (I know, it was me doing the…
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Continue reading →: Between Two Worlds: behind the titleWhy did I choose Between Two Worlds as the title for my next book? My favourite titles have layers: multiple meanings that you only truly comprehend once you’ve read the book. The title The Pauline Conversion, for example, is a literal biblical reference to the conversion of Paul the Apostle,…
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Continue reading →: The inspiration for Between Two WorldsAs the release of Between Two Worlds comes closer, I thought I’d write a little about the background and inspiration for the book. As I’ve mentioned here before, the idea poked into my consciousness as an opening exchange of dialogue. I can exclusively reveal that the first lines I wrote…
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Continue reading →: Between Two Worlds: the cover
Here’s the cover for Between Two Worlds: I love it. Expect to see this image everywhere on this site and across socials before too long. The cover shows a stylised view of two figures walking along the tread of the wheel — the inside surface where people live and work.…
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Continue reading →: Pod of Capricorn: what?
Between Two Worlds is book 1 of the Pod of Capricorn series. Which might make you wonder: Who or what are Pod and Capricorn? Explain! Let’s dive in. Who or what is Capricorn? Capricorn is a generation ship. It’s an enormous colony wheel that’s been travelling for thousands of years…
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Continue reading →: The title of the next book is…Sometimes titles come easily — they can inspire the book, like Till Undeath Do Us Part. Sometimes they emerge only after the book’s first draft, like Unstable Orbits. I’ve had my next title in mind for a long time — since I was scribbling the first draft in longhand on…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits discount week
It’s the first anniversary of the release of Unstable Orbits. I know, I know. Tell me about it. To celebrate, I’ve temporarily reduced the price of the Kindle book to 99p in the UK, and 99c in the US. For one week only! This deal ends on Monday 22 June…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #7<- Progress report #6 Unstable Orbits Audiobook The Unstable Orbits audiobook is now available on Amazon, Audible and Apple Books. See the Unstable Orbits book page for links. In the next few weeks the audiobook may also start to appear on more platforms. Here’s where the audiobook has been submitted…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits audiobook releasedI’m thrilled to announce that the Unstable Orbits audiobook is now available for purchase on Amazon and Audible (Apple Books/iTunes will follow). [UPDATE, 14 May 2026: now available on Apple – links below] As is the way with these things, there are multiple marketplaces. These links work at time of…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #6<- Progress report #5 Unstable Orbits To coincide with the completion of the audiobook (see below) I’ve revised the blurb/description. Here’s the new text (the email version of this progress report omits everything but the tagline, so you’ll have to open the post in a browser to read it –…
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Continue reading →: Public domain icons: book, headphonesAs I write, I’m waiting for various deities to review and approve the Unstable Orbits audiobook for sale. It’ll appear “in the next ten days” on Amazon, Audible and Apple Books (in the Audiobooks section), assuming all goes well. I’ve been putting together some promotional graphics to spray across socials…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #5
<- Progress report #4 Unstable Orbits I’ve paused all direct promotion via social media or advertising for now. I spent most of 2025 standing on virtual street corners honking my horn, and it’s time-consuming as well as not being my natural habitat, or particularly effective. I’ll resume when the audiobook…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #4
<- Progress report #3 I’m happy to report that I reached my unofficial goal for the end of 2025: recording all scenes of Unstable Orbits for the audiobook (pending re-records), and completing the major overhaul of AXIS 1. Still a lot of work to do for each, though. Unstable Orbits…
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Continue reading →: Book reviews 20252025 was never going to beat 2024’s total of 104 books: I had my head down finishing, releasing and promoting Unstable Orbits and revising the next book, codenamed AXIS 1. I’m surprised I reached 62 books for the year. As usual I posted reviews to Threads, Bluesky, Goodreads and StoryGraph.…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #3<- Progress report #2 Unstable Orbits Kindle Unlimited Possibly in response to the last progress report’s pitiful chart showing 1 page read, I’ve had a flurry of page reads. Enough to push me past one thousand total page reads for the year (across all books). A milestone, albeit a tiny…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #2
<- Progress report #1 Unstable Orbits Kindle Unlimited A great/awful feature of Kindle Unlimited is a count on the author dashboard showing the current number of pages read. On social media I regularly see authors proudly posting their latest milestones: seven figures total, or six figures read this year, etc.…
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Continue reading →: Codename: AXISI wrote back in January about “the new book” as I called it then. I’m now calling it AXIS, because everyone loves a codename (it’s not the actual name). The one-sentence pitch I posted was: An excitingly original, high-stakes queer adventure set on a far-future colony wheel in space, where…
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Continue reading →: Progress report #1
This is the first in a regular-ish series giving you an insight into my life as an indie writer and publisher. I’ll show you what I’m working on, and how I’m progressing (or not). Unstable Orbits Now on Kindle Unlimited Since the release of Unstable Orbits — across Amazon, Apple…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits ads experiment: the resultsThe Meta ads experiment with Unstable Orbits has concluded. In this post I’m going to present actual numbers, so you can see how much money I spent and how much I can expect to receive in royalties. A later post (not sure when) will delve into specific ad creatives. Summary…
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Continue reading →: Experimenting with adsI’m in the middle of an experiment with Unstable Orbits. For the first time, I’m trying out advertising — on Meta. UK users of Facebook and Instagram, if they have certain attributes (they read Young Adult ebooks, etc) might see an ad for the book. If they click on the…
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Continue reading →: Typos are inevitalbeI read a lot of books, both self-published and traditionally published. Almost without exception, every book has mistakes. Typos, or formatting glitches, or grammar issues, or factual errors, or semantic snafus (such as characters given the wrong name), or story problems (plot holes, people doing things they would never do…
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Continue reading →: Unstable AudioI’m going to create an audiobook for Unstable Orbits. First of all let me empty a can of highly flammable caveats on that: I’m going to attempt to make an audiobook for Unstable Orbits. I’ve never done this kind of thing before and there’s a fair chance I’ll make a…
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Continue reading →: Adventures in spacetime: dating Unstable OrbitsUnstable Orbits is contemporary fiction. It’s set in today’s world, with ubiquitous smartphones in every pocket or bag and a pointed reference to ChatGPT. Contemporary fiction naturally ages, morphing over the years and decades into modern and then not-so-modern historical fiction. My previous book, A Room Full of Elephants, was…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits: available nowThat’s another book in the can. Unstable Orbits is released. And now the peculiar, hot-cold mist of loss and achievement descends. The todo list becomes light on what’s inside the book, and heavy on what’s outside. I hover beyond the edge of my comfort zone like Wile E. Coyote about…
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Continue reading →: Meet the chaotic orbits of Nate’s life
If you follow me on Tiktok, Instagram or Facebook, you’ll have seen these. The amazing cover for Unstable Orbits shows four characters from the book: Nate, Luke, Preston and Elias. I thought it’d be fun to put together some promotional graphics showing their likes, dislikes, hates, heroes, and so on,…
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Continue reading →: ONS survey excludes gender
The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) invited me, along with no doubt thousands of others, to take part in a survey called Shape Tomorrow. In the words of the ONS: Some other choice quotes from that page: “Taking part in this study is your chance to help us understand…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits: scene 1Advance Review Copies of Unstable Orbits will be squishing through the cables to their recipients in a day or two. Just 15 days until release! If you missed out on an ARC copy, then here’s the first scene of chapter 1 as a teaser. To read the full chapter 1,…
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Continue reading →: On the meaning of DoneIn software companies there’s always a debate about the meaning of done. This isn’t (just) because software engineers can be pedantic nerds (I say this with love and affection, because pedantic nerdery is often a required attribute for good engineers). It can be because the business needs/wants to track progress…
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Continue reading →: Parenting in Unstable OrbitsIn my post Discovering Unstable Orbits I mentioned the broad themes of the book — second chances, mental health, parenting, friendships and love — and how they were magically revealed to me only after completing the first draft. This is when writer becomes reader and discovers, often to their surprise,…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits: the cover revealed
Here it is! The very first look at the amazing cover image for Unstable Orbits, created by Mike at Blogshank with annoying interruptions by me. I’ll start plugging it in across this website, and Amazon, etc, and scatter it wildly upon the socials, but I wanted blog subscribers to see…
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Continue reading →: Discovering Unstable OrbitsBooks have wildly different origin stories. Till Undeath Do Us Part started with the title. Disunited started with the urgent feeling that a top footballer was about to come out (spoiler: nope). A Room Full of Elephants started with an odd vision of an elephant stuck in a bathroom wall.…
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Continue reading →: Navigating the changing landscape of publishingYou can think of the traditional publishing industry as a manufacturing production line. Manuscripts drop into a big bin at the start, and a succession of complex widgets evaluate and reject and poke and measure and tweak until finished books pop out of the end and into the virtual/real shops.…
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Continue reading →: Unstable Orbits: preorder success and cover insightsUnstable Orbits preorders started with a bang: for a while the book was top of the Hot New Releases list in Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Literature, and reached #9 in the bestseller list for Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Literature (these are for Amazon UK). But preorders have dropped…
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Continue reading →: Coming soon: Unstable OrbitsThe first of 2025’s releases is called Unstable Orbits. You can preorder it now for Amazon Kindle (and Kindle apps) at special earlybird pricing: UK USA Canada Australia Germany France Spain Italy Netherlands Japan Brazil Mexico India It’s fashionable these days to give a flavour of the book in the…
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Continue reading →: A paint pot full of elephantsYou may notice there’s been a design refresh around these parts. I’ve given the website a new template after years of long service from the old one, which has now been let loose in a grassy field to see out its days. The new template looks classier and more contemporary,…
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Continue reading →: Behind the curtain: how I wrote the new books by handThe books I’ll be releasing in 2025 both started life written in longhand on an iPad. In this post I want to talk a little about the processes I followed — different for each book — and how I’ve changed the way I write. For now, the 2025 releases are…
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Continue reading →: Old, new, and new new: a sneak peek at 2025The space year 2025 has arrived, and with it begins C21Q2. It’s been a while since I’ve released any new books, but that’s going to change. This year I plan to release two new novels: I’ll talk more about them in subsequent posts, but see below for exclusive details and…
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Continue reading →: Dancing for the robotThe default “For You” feed on Threads is algorithmic: it shows you what it thinks you should see, and is not chronological or completist. In my “For You” feed I see many posts related to writers and writing, because the algorithm has decided — based on who I follow, and…
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Continue reading →: Book reviews 2024And I thought 2023’s total of 48 books was going to be hard to beat. In 2024 I read 104 books – almost all queer, and most YA. Meanwhile I completed the first drafts of two new novels, about which you’ll hear more soon. As usual, for each book I…
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Continue reading →: Fixing common writing problems
As you might have gathered from my last two posts, I’ve been reading more than writing for the last couple of years. So far 2024’s tally is outpacing 2023 by some margin: I’ve just started reading book 48 of the year, which matches my total for the whole of 2023.…
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Continue reading →: Book reviews 2023
I think I’ve devoured more books in 2023 than in any other year. Almost all queer YA: a genre that didn’t even come close to existing when I most needed it. With two hours until 2024 smacks us in the chops, I know I won’t finish reading my current book…
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Continue reading →: Book reviews 2022
I’ve been reading a lot in the last few years. Since the start of 2022 I’ve been posting potted reviews of each book on Twitter and giving it an unreliable and inconsistent rating out of 5. Now that Twitter is even more of a raging bin fire than it ever…
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Continue reading →: Another gay footballer at last?
The older I get, the closer I come to losing it entirely at Pride — in a good way. I marched again this year, and the waters rose first somewhere along Regent Street, when the shockwave of joy and smiles and rainbows and goddamn whistles and acceptance and unrelenting positivity…
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Continue reading →: Anthony vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda
I turned seventeen in the spring of 1986. Days later Chernobyl’s nuclear power station huffed radiation across northern Europe, causing sheep to glow in the Scottish Highlands (subs: please check). At the time, the Soviet Union’s fresh, thrusting, young fifty-something leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was shouldering the tiller in an attempt…
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Anthony Camber 