The lonely writer starving in a garret  long ago got wi-fi and hooked up to the big wide world, but even before then my creative career was being spurred, inspired, nurtured and all sorts of other words by the guys I’m about to mention. So in no particular order:

Gavin Inglis is so multitalented he would be extremely annoying if he wasn’t such a thoroughly nice lad. Writer, performer, musician, MC extraordinaire, and general comer-upper with original thoughts, we have a lot more to hear from him…
Bram Gieben is a similarly multitalented sort of chap, who’s just had his unpublished crime novel nominated for the CWA Debut Dagger Award. Go Bram! His Weaponizer magazine site is well worth a look, and not just because he’s had the good taste to publish me in an issue. His musical side can be found at Black Lantern Music.

Mark Allan’s alter ego is Isaac Brutal, and I’m proud to be part of the vast, sprawling Brutal musical family tree. He even lets me play various instruments in the band now.

Andrew J Wilson is another long time friend and collaborator. An accomplished performer, raconteur and writer, Andrew’s day job as an editor takes up more time than he or we would choose.

Jane McKie is the owner of Knucker press, and the poetic conscience of Writers’ Bloc. She has won both the Scottish Arts Council new book of the year for her first collection, and the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition. She’s also a good friend and mentor to my own poetic output. In fact, without Jane’s enthusiasm, I suspect I’d have given up on writing poetry years ago, so blame her…

In future years it may well be my main claim to fame will be that I shared a sauna once with Hannu Rajaniemi. A self-declared metrosexual, he is also a renaissance man of many parts, both maths genius and rising star of the sf scene. He’s so famous already he has his own Wikipedia entry. He is also an insightful critic and thinker on all things to do with story-making.

Jack Deighton is also kept far too busy by his day job. The author of a fine sf novel, A Sonof the Rock, Jack is a truly original talent.

Kirsti Wishart is a rising star of Scottish fiction, as well as being a fellow Fifer. We expect great things of her.

Charlie Stross needs no introduction to anyone who knows anything about sf at all. A multi-award winning and shedloads of novels-selling eighth wonder, his blog is a polymath meander through, well, just about everything there ever was.

Lee McGowan is a Scot living in Brisbane. He writes about many things including football, and said many kind things about my football fiction (see my chapbooks page for links to his football blog).

My esteemed colleague Mike Melville is behind the Manic Pop Thrills blog. He is also that rare and precious thing – a non-musician who likes music so much he actually puts on gigs of alternative, indie people that make interesting noises with their instruments. For that alone his blog deserves a look.