One of the aspects I enjoy most about the writing life is collaborating with other creative folk. Sometimes that collaboration is explicit, as when I’m kicking around ideas with my good friend Tony Hughes, who paints the covers for my ebooks. Other times, it is discovering how someone I don’t know interprets my work. Podcasts are case in point. Last year, Paul Cole produced an atmospheric five-part serial from my Everest story ‘The English Dead’ for his Beam Me Up podcast. Today, the award-winning StarShipSofa has released issue 424, which contains Nikolle Doolin’s wonderful rendition of my Mars-set SF story ‘First and Third’. To hear Doolin’s take on my characters was a mind-opening experience for me. I always had a view of how Masie (in particular) should sound–and Doolin has nailed it. Whereas Joe sounds a little different to what I had in mind, but actually a lot better. In truth, I reckon Doolin has created the definitive version of ‘First and Third’–and I am hugely grateful to her for doing so.

(Now, if only I could find someone to publish the sequel to ‘First and Third’… Any takers for ‘Second and Seventh’ out there in editor-land?)