Blog

Upcoming horror event Cambridge Waterstones, Wednesday 28th October 18:00 - 19:30

7/10/2026

I'll be chairing "An Evening of Horror with V. Castro, Dan Coxon, and Matt Hil"l at the Cambridge (UK) Waterstones on Wednesday 28th October from 18:00 - 19:30.

from the site: "Join us for a haunted evening of cursed objects, ancient ruins, and eerie worlds as authors V. Castro, Dan Coxon, and Matt Hill discuss their horror short stories with author and Arthur C Clarke Award judge Tiffani Angus. Book signing to follow."

We will be discussing the anthologies Unhallowed Gifts (ed. Dan Coxon), and Unearthed (ed. Dan Coxon) and Dan's collection Come Sing for the Harrowing.

More info and tickets here

Fantasycon in Glasgow schedule

8/9/2026

Fantasycon runs 9th-11th October at the Glasgow Crowne Plaza, and its programme was just released. Here is where I'll be and what I'll be doing:

Friday 5-6pm: Time Travel Narratives: Our panellists discuss the pros and cons of including time travel in your work

Saturday 3-4pm: Book Launch (More info to come on this one!)

Saturday 4-5pm: Workshop - Writing Folk Horror: Linking the Chain

Sunday 11am-noon: The Structure of Short Stories: A short story can deliver just as much joy as a novel but do they function differently? Our panellists look at the structure and function of shorter fiction

Sunday noon-1pm: Fantasy Reading (I am still deciding what to read from)

LA Worldcon Virtual Schedule

1/8/2026

I can't go to LA for Worldcon, but I'm part of the virtual program and will be running workshops and talks online. You can get a membership & more info here: https://www.lacon.org/

All times are London UK time:

Clarion Presents: Writing Horror at Home (aka The Suburban Hellscape of Technology: Writing Horror at Home), 27/8/2026 at 6.30 pm (running nearly 90 minutes): I’ll take you on a journey into the development of the subgenres of suburban horror and techno horror and look at how they evolved side by side and even overlap. The workshop will culminate in an activity that’ll get you started creating a whole new horror story.
A Cottage Garden Conundrum: Fantastical Garden Re-Creation, 29/8/2026 at 2 pm: I’ll discuss how the English cottage garden style represents a nation’s pursuit of identity during the long nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Through paintings, poems, and even clothing, this talk explores the history of the English cottage garden style and how it's based on a fantasy idea of the past.
Clarion Presents: Writing Folk Horror - Linking the Chain, (workshop) 29/8/2026 at 5 pm: I’ll introduce you to the history of this fascinating subgenre and how it can be broken down into a series of elements that create the “chain” to help you better understand it and even write it. The workshop will culminate in an activity that’ll get you started creating a whole new folk horror story.
Virtual Table Talk, 30/8/2026 at 3.30 pm: Come along and chat about subgenres of SFF/H, writing history (including historical fashion!), choosing writing workshops & university writing programs, the paths to publishing, fantastical & haunted gardens, women in apocalyptic fiction, and loads of other fun stuff!

Cymera: Had a Blast as Usual

9/6/2026

This past weekend (well, more of a week!), I was in Edinburgh for the SFF/H book festival Cymera. It's one of my favorites, and the organizers get the best authors on the panels, and I end up with a TBR pile that is threatening to take over my life! I even got to be in the audience for Stephen Graham Jones's interview (the man can write a book in 2 months; I love his stuff yet want to throw him in the sea!).

I went up to Edinburgh a few days before the festival started to run the inaugural Masterclass. We set this up for newer writers to help them get more experience in critiquing, help them learn how to stat editing their own work, and give them information on the publishing industry. I think it went pretty well, and I am interested to hear from the participants on their experience. Then, on Friday before the convention even really got fully going, I ran a workshop on Folk Horror and then another one on Writing Witches. I ran the latter one twice last year (once online), and sold out both; this one was packed, too. Seems writers can't get enough of witches! So by Friday at 4 I was pretty well wiped out, and then everyone showed up and the festival actually began. I took it easy and just went to panels and hung out with friends, which was fab.

If you can go, I highly recommend it. You can find more info on this year's festival here.

New Pod/Video cast about Spec Fic for Newbies full of opinions, info, and a few shenanigans!

16/2/2026

Val and I are gearing up for the release of Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 3 (the third and last of the SFfN writing guides), and last week we sat down with Daniel Willcocks from The Writer's Chair podcast (also a video cast). Daniel asked us questions about writing, about the Spec Fic for Newbies series, and about our lives as writers. We laughed a lot and made lots of faces, and now you can see it, too! Just mosey on over here or find the podcast wherever you listen to/download podcasts.

Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 3 is coming soon!

29/11/2025

And here's a look at the topics it'll cover!
If you're interested in pre-order info when it goes live, sign up for my newsletter:

A Sneak Peek at the Table of Contents for Vol 3 (coming Easter 2026!):

Space Academies
Superheroes
Terraforming Tales
Mad Scientists
Space Westerns
SF Procedurals
Meta SF
SpyFi
Searches for God in Space
End of the Universe
Dinosaurs
Archaeologists
Hollow Earth
Elves
Magic Schools & Dark Academia
Wizards & Sorcerers
Magical Realism
Anthropomorphic Fantasy
Fantasy of Manners
Swashbuckling Fantasy
Weird Fiction
Urban Gothic
Shapeshifters
Birthing Monsters
Alien Abductions
Fungal Horror
Bugs!!!
Kaiju
Deals With the Devil
Near Death Experiences

My most recent newsletter looks at the flaw in time management

10/10/2025

Time Management for Writers? It's ME Management

I like to be organized, but no matter what I can’t seem to expand the practice of having a day planner/phone/computer calendars that contain all my deadlines and birthdays and random events to the rest of my life, especially my life as a writer, into making me feel truly organized. I like to read about time management, different organizational styles, how our brains tend to deal with these things, etc., but reading about it and actually implementing it are two different things. And it finally dawned on me why…

Time Management doesn’t exist.

We can’t “manage” something that’s nebulous. Time just is. The disconnect between “time management” and the difficulty in doing it should have dawned on me much sooner than this because I used to teach time travel literature and time & narrative back when I was still a lecturer. Time travel narratives are some of my favorite stories, and thinking about how we put stories together—the choices we make with chronology, disordered scenes, pacing, etc.—is one of my favorite things to think about as far as writing. One of the most fun things to do in these classes while I was talking about how humans have thought about the concept of time over the centuries was to ask my student to come up with a definition for time that did NOT use the word time. You try it. It’s difficult because you need to explain the concept of time to define time. We can’t think outside that box, at least not without maybe being genius physicists, and even then I don’t think so.
Well, if we can’t manage time, what can we manage?

Sadly, there is only one answer, and it sucks: ourselves.

Time management is ME management. It’s managing my choices and habits, breaking out of ruts, and following the rules and processes I set to make me put my receipts away in a place I can find them later, get up at a certain time, actually get some damn exercise, and plan meals. It’s all the stuff we hate to do because it’s just so LIFE-y. And for writers, it’s also not just writing but finishing things, editing them, planning publication schedules, and setting up marketing (if we are self-pubbing) or learning the get-an-agent dance and everything else involved in trad publishing. It’s doing all of that without letting the LIFE-y stuff get in the way or using it as an excuse.

So no, sorry, there will never be more than 24 hours in a day (and boy do they go by quickly), but we will always inhabit our bodies during that time, and while we can’t add more hours to the day we can decide to do the things we know we have to do even if we don’t wanna. So then we can do the things we want to do. Because ME management isn’t only the daily LIFE-y stuff, it’s also the stuff that makes us happy and reminds us that a) this is it (there is no do-over) and b) life can be pretty damn fun sometimes.

Time management for writers: remember that you love to write so it’s not a chore but a joy (even when it’s not).
Go forth and practice ME Management. You’ll be a happier writer.

Want to subscribe to my newsletter? Add your email address here: https://buttondown.com/TiffaniAngus

Sometimes a meme says it all

22/8/2025

I'm a double British Fantasy Society Award finalist this year!

15/7/2025

Recently, I made the British Fantasy Society (BFS) shortlist for two awards!

Best Non-Fiction:
Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 2: A Beginner's Guide to Writing More Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
This means that the Spec Fic for Newbies series, by me and co-author Val Nolan, has made the BFS awards shortlist twice after Volume 1 was a finalist last year. Go to the Spec Fic tab at the top of the page to read more.

Best Short Story:
"The Oracle at Dairy" published in Trembling with Fear via HorrorTree.com, September 2024 (read it free here)
It's my first time being a finalist for a short story award, so I'm pretty chuffed. The story is a kinda twisted mishmash of the Oracle at Delphi and a nursery rhyme with a dash of helicopter parenting thrown in!

The awards will be announced at the combined British Fantasycon/World Fantasy Convention in Brighton over the Halloween weekend. For more info on that: https://worldfantasy2025.co.uk/

Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 2 getting accolades!

1/4/2025

Spec Fic for Newbies Volume 2 was recently shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association's award for Best (Long) Nonfiction! My co-author Val and I were well chuffed because Vol 1 was also a finalist in the same category last year. The BSFA awards will be announced at Eastercon in Belfast later this month.

Additionally, Vol 2 made the Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List (as Vol 1 did last year), which means it is on the voting list for the Locus Awards. EVERYONE can vote until April 15!

See the full list here: https://locusmag.com/2025/02/2024-recommended-reading-list/
Vote here: https://poll.voting.locusmag.com/