Tony Richards's Page

I've been silent on Wonderlands for quite a while now. And the simple reason is, other things in life have all got in the way, coming together as they do. So far the last couple of weeks I've attended: a bbq; an old friend's birthday celebration; a BFS Open Evening, with author Tim Powers as the special guest; the closing down party for the Fantasy Centre, Islington, London (see my personal blog); and the former editor of Cemetery Dance magazine, Robert Morrish, was in London for a few da… Continue

There’ve been several discussions on Wonderlands so far about the bad guys who inhabit our type of fiction. I’ve contributed to a couple of them, but thought I’d broach the subject from my own perspective. And the moment I did that, something occurred to me that never had before. I started out by trying to think of bad guys in short stories … and pretty quickly realized that there aren’t too many. Human bad guys, I mean. Supernatural ones don’t count.

Think about it for a moment. How many true… Continue

In the most recent issue of Cemetery Dance magazine, British horror editor Stephen Jones repeats his assertion that 'almost no one reads books any more.' In fact, he repeats it at length, opining that, because of competition from the visual media, mass market books will go 'the way of the vinyl record,' reading will revert to being 'a gentleman's pursuit,' and there'll only be the independent presses left to pander to it.

Now, I've known Steve for more than twenty years. He generally goe… Continue