Jonny Nexus

Jonny’s blog – life, writing, rants

An Announcement

For those of you who’ve been wondering when I’d next have something out… Wild Jester Press is pleased to announce that it will be publishing the next novel by English humour SF/F writer, Jonny Nexus. If Pigs Could Fly is the first book in the West Kensington Paranormal Detective Agency series, featuring offbeat paranormal investigator Ravinder “Rav”…

Jan 2, 2015
A Twitter Account For Brighton

A little while ago I started1 following @ireland and @sweden on Twitter. Both are examples of what are termed Rotation Curation: Rotation Curation, also #RotationCuration, is the concept of rotating the spokesperson on a broad scoped social media account. Such a scope can be a location, a country, an organization, a group, and so on. The concept…

Nov 28, 2014
English is Stupid #1

One of the “charming eccentricities” of the English language is the way that verbs can be irregular. Regular verbs can be changed from present to past tense by adding “ed” to them. Lift, becomes lifted, kill becomes killed, and so on. But with irregular verbs, it’s pretty much anything goes. Sometimes, the vowel within the…

Sep 24, 2014
David Cameron’s Constitutional Crisis

“What we have is what I always wanted, which is one single question, not two questions, not devo max, a very simple single question that has to be put before the end of 2014 so we end the uncertainty.” – David Cameron, October 2012. * * * “If we get a No vote, that will…

Sep 19, 2014
Scotland and Me: A Personal View

Firstly, to get the big question out of the way, if I was Scottish, I’d vote yes. Not because I’d think it will be easy. I don’t. I think it might be quite hard – worthwhile things usually are. I’d be voting yes because ultimately I’d rather be a citizen of a small democracy of…

Sep 9, 2014
The Parable of the Regency Anti-Slavery Campaigner and the Regency Health Freak

I’m a vegan, and here’s the thing: people who, for perceived health reasons, follow a plant-based diet and then refer to themselves as vegans – when they’re not, not really – kind of annoy me. Why? The Parable of the Regency Anti-Slavery Campaigner and the Regency Health Freak Imagine it’s the 1810s. Slavery is legal…

Aug 7, 2014
Why Writing Doesn’t Always Work As A Hobby / Pastime

Imagine an artist who paints as a hobby. Every now and again – weekends, or holidays, perhaps – he’ll head off with his watercolours and find a spot and paint. He might sell some paintings; others he might give away as presents. He doesn’t feel like a failure. And no-one thinks of him as a…

Feb 3, 2014
Introducing Selene

For as long as men had looked up at the heavens, the Moon had been a dead world of desert-dry dust set beneath a windless void. On the 5th February 1971 that changed, utterly. When men of today look into the night sky they see a blue-green marble wreathed in clouds, the greatest enigma in the…

Jan 20, 2014
Introducing… The ExplainTo Bear

I have just had the greatest idea I will ever have in my entire life. Ladies, gentlemen, those who’d rather not say, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, I give you – the ExplainTo Bear! I’m a programmer, and in programming – and I suspect many other professions – it’s a truism oft repeated…

Jan 13, 2014
Journalistic Intelligence: Too Much To Ask?

Yesterday, I was reading John Inverdale’s column on sports in City AM. Inverdale is a supposed sports journalist who recently, famously, nearly lost his job with the BBC by making sexist comments live on air about new Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli. So I wouldn’t necessarily expect him to be the sharpest tool in the journalistic…

Jul 23, 2013