Welcome;

Welcome!

It struck me that I spend a fair amount of time on bluesky waving pompoms and waxing lyrical about my favourite SFF books, and it’d be nice to have somewhere to put down some thoughts in a slightly longer, more considered form. Thus this newsletter-slash-blog.

The final prompt to do this was that, due to a series of unexpected circumstances related to my previously mentioned pompom waving, I’m a judge for this coming year’s Crawford Award. That means reading quite a lot of new books this year as a matter of necessity, and having reasonably coherent thoughts on them to share with the other judges. I thought I might as well share those thoughts a bit more widely.

What can you expect?

The aim - and we’ll see how long I stick with this - is every month or so, both on the site and in your inbox if you subscribe, I’ll write a couple of short-medium reviews of SFF work I’ve read or re-read over the preceding two weeks. I’ll aim to make one of those a new book (released in the last 2 years; sometimes I’m a little slow on the new hotness) and one a backlist book I think is worthy of continued attention. I’ll also have a bits and bobs section where I’ll include links to interesting stuff I read, short thoughts on media other than books, and the like.

What’s with the name?

My brain insists that basic structure of what I’m trying to do here - one review of a new book, and one of an old book - is the same as the old rhyme about what you should wear at a wedding. That being the case, the only way my brain would let go of that thought is if I made the site name the completion of the rhyme.

So; welcome to borrowed and blue, where I’ll serve you something old and something new. I hope you find something interesting here.