Hello Autumn

Summer is over and Autumn is here. The nights are getting darker, the leaves on the trees are turning glorious shades of red and gold, and a new school year has started for my kids (including my youngest starting full time school). This transformation makes me wonder how time is slipping by so quickly, and I’m not just talking about 2025.

When I set up my website I included an email address so people could contact me directly. Naively, I thought this would just be people with a genuine interest in my stories. “Oh sweet summer child, how wrong you were.” Since the publication of Writers of the Future Volume 41 in the UK in June 2025, I have received a deluge of unsolicited emails from people offering marketing services which are, frankly, just scams. This blog post shows some of the emails I received and the varying amount of effort gone to by scammers to try and convince me I should take them on. Some are quite amusing, if only because they are woeful. I blame AI, which scammers are harnessing to appear legitimate. FYI: I have not fallen for any of these scams.

I was interviewed by Wayne Blinko (W.A. Blinko) on the Sci-Fi Fans Podcast this month, and it was a lovely chat. We talked all about being a writer, what inspired my Writers of the Future winning story, “The Stench of Freedom”, and whether Star Wars is sci-fi or fantasy. And, in a sign of truly how small a world it is, we discovered a connection between us through our mutual football teams, Swansea City and Wycombe Wanderers, and how they are linked to my writing journey, which I talked about in a blog post last month (How to write a Writers of the Future winning story). If you’re interested, you can watch the interview below and also consider subscribing to Wayne’s podcast for more interviews with sci-fi writers and general sci-fi chat.

Well, WOTF41 has only gone and won another award! This time, it’s the NYC Big Book Award 2025 in the “Anthology” category. I’m very proud to have a story feature in an Amazon best-selling and, now, multi-award winning book. If I had any champagne in my house, I’d pop it open. Perhaps I’ll do so figuratively instead.

The noble art of analysing a rejection and deciphering how close you were to (or not) to an acceptance.

This month, I submitted 4 stories and received 5 rejections, including three rejections on the same day—savage! Truly, it was one of those days that really tested my perseverance in trying to be a writer. But, one of those stories has already been resubmitted and I have my fingers crossed for a better outcome.

While I studied law at university, I must have read a dozen John Grisham stories, if not more, and this is my favourite (and it’s got nothing to do with the fact the main character is called Joel either). I even discovered John Grisham wrote the book “Skipping Christmas”, which was adapted into one of my favourite Christmas movies, “Christmas with the Kranks”! As a story teller, he has never let me down. Although, since I qualified as a lawyer, I have had an aversion to reading legal thrillers in my spare time, so it has been a few years since I last read one of his books. However, there were many times over the years where I’ve been in an airport or train station and seen one of his books and thought, “why not, I haven’t read that one before”, and happily passed away a long journey immersed in one of his thrillers.

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What I’ve been reading: I’ve been reading Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. A few of this year’s Writers of the Future winners recommended this book to me. It’s about a teenage girl, Sophie, who, after offending the dreaded Witch of the Waste, is put under a spell turning her into an old lady. This transformation actually gives her the chance to be free, in that she can speak more openly and it encourages her to leave her dreary existence in her deceased father’s hat shop. Sophie tries to find someone to undo the spell (which she is unable to tell anyone she is under) and seeks help from Howl, a mysterious and feared wizard Howl who lives in a strange moving castle on the moors outside her town. Cue, magical shenanigans. It’s a really easy read, it’s fun and it’s magical and sweet and (though I have not seen it), I’m told it was adapted into an awesome anime film of the same name. There’s even a little Welsh rugby ‘easter egg’ in it, where the characters step into a ‘different country’, to find themselves wearing very odd clothes (read, modern), including Howl wearing a red hoody with ‘Welsh Rugby’ on the back. That made me smile. It’s a book I’ll be sure to recommend to my children when they are old enough to read it.

What I’ve been watching: I watched ‘Ghosts’ this month on BBC iPlayer. It’s about a young, penniless couple who surprisingly inherit a Manor House. After a near-death experience, one of the couple is able to see the ghosts that haunt the Manor House, who are all persons that have died on the grounds of the house and appear in the manner of their death. The ghosts include a caveman, a Romantic poet killed in a duel, a ‘witch’ burned at the stake, a headless man (his body and head most often appear separately), a scout master with an arrow through his neck, and a disgraced politician who walks around without his trousers on. It’s a comedy written and performed by the ensemble cast behind ‘Horrible Histories’ with heart-warming moments but mostly well-timed jokes, silliness, and generally just great fun. There’s a US version of the programme which we may turn to next.

My wife sent me this meme and it properly tickled me.

Spaghetti bolognese is probably my go-to dish when I cook dinner, and I probably make it at least once a week. Chuck in some red onions and mushrooms, our home grown courgettes, a tin of chopped tomatoes, some herbs, maybe spinach if I’m feeling like we’ve had too many treats that week, but then…how much spaghetti? I still don’t know. There’s four of us in the house, and my kids are 5 and 4, but the amount I cook is enough for a small army. I could probably Google it, I guess, but where would the fun be in that?

Until next time, keep dreaming.

Joel