Total: 4-hours approximately
(4:15pm-6:00pm Friday and Saturday,
The Harry Preston Room, Radisson Blu Hotel)

Regrettably, Mort Castle has had to withdraw from World Horror Convention 2010 and sends his sincere apologies to everyone who signed up for his Creative Writing Workshops.

However, we are delighted to announce that acclaimed British author Paul McAuley has agreed to take over the Creative Writing Workshops on the Friday and Saturday afternoons.

"McAuley is one of the best" —The Independent

"McAuley matches the best of his American rivals for zest and scope" —The Guardian

"A crafty and inventive writer" —Locus

"McAuley is part of a spearhead of writers who, for pure imagination, hipness, vision and fun, have made Britain the Memphis Sun Records of SF" —Mark Thomas, Mail on Sunday

"Usually you get ideas or voice. With McAuley you get both—in spades. Without question, the most exciting of Britain's new-edge writers." —Michael Marshall Smith

"Paul McAuley's balanced grasp of science and literature, always a rare attribute in the writer of prose fiction, is combined with the equally rare ability to look at today's problems and know which are really problems, and what can be done about them." —William Gibson

Paul McAuley has been writing for most of his life. He worked as a research biologist in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and is now a full-time writer and has published seventeen science fiction, thriller and crime novels. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award; his fifth, Fairyland, won the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Awards. His other titles include Secret Harmonies, Red Dust, Pasquale's Angel (winner of the Sidewise Award), the three books of Confluence (Child of the River, Ancients of Days, and Shrine of Stars), The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, White Devils, Mind's Eye, Players, The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun.

He has also published a Doctor Who novella, The Eye of the Tyger, and over seventy science-fiction and horror short stories, as well as editing the anthology In Dreams with Kim Newman. His reviews and articles have appeared in numerous periodicals, including Interzone, Crime Time, The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, T3 and Wired UK.

Paul McAuley has given talks about creative writing and the freelance writing career at a number of universities, and teaches a short workshop course on science fiction and fantasy writing at London's Kingston University that accommodates everyone from beginners to devotees of the genres. During the two sessions at WHC 2010, he will lead class discussions and exercises about good work habits, getting from idea to story, research and plausibility, world-building, interactions between character and narrative, and revision and preparation for publication.

To find out more about Paul McAuley, you can visit his blog at unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com