PSP Phone hands on

Phones are used as much for gaming as calling or texting these days, and you can't use public transport without knocking elbows with someone playing Angry fricking Birds. Hence, Sony's latest venture - the PSP phone, otherwise known as the Xperia Play.

 

This beast looks like a standard Xperia smartphone, except you can slide the screen up to reveal a familiar-looking gamepad underneath. It solves the problem of carrying a bulky handheld gaming machine with you, and allows you to play games such as Fifa instead of those damned infernal 'casual' titles.

 

We checked it out at a press event last night, and first impressions sadly aren't great. The racing game Asphalt stuttered on almost every turn, which as you'd imagine isn't too helpful when trying to overtake slow-moving traffic. The random Bruce Lee fighting sim ran more smoothly, but looks like a slightly polished PS One game and didn't exactly have our blood pumping.

 

There's still a couple of months before release, so maybe Sony can sort out the slowdown and produce a more exciting line-up of games, beyond recycling their (frankly tired) back catalogue. For now, it's back to Bejewelled...

Guilty pleasures

I've set myself a target of reading at least two books a week this year, and so far I'm doing okay, although I did cheat and read Hemingway's Old Man And The Sea, which is only 100 pages. That was a trippy book, not helped by the head cold that had struck me at the time, which threatened to liquidise my brains.

To compensate for that book's short stature, I'm reading my second Lee Child book in a fortnight ('61 Hours' if anyone cares). This one is 500 pages, while his other ('Gone Tomorrow') was around 550.

Despite the thickness, I'm ploughing through them like a tramp through White Lightning. They're so damn easy to read, and actually quite enjoyable. Main hero Jack Reacher (what is it with action heroes called Jack these days?) is likeable, in a don't-f**k-with-him-or-you'll-be-eating-your-own-arse kind of way. The plots are silly but fun, and Child does a good job of withholding information to build suspense.

Plus it never gets boring reading about dumb-ass terrorists having their skulls splintered apart.

If I could only breakthrough...

All budding novelists should know that the Amazon breakthrough novelist competition is open for submissions. They're only accepting 5,000 entries ('only' seems like the wrong word there, but hey ho) in the general fiction category, so best get a shift on if you want to enter. I threw Dead Dogs in, so various appendages are currently crossed. Hey, there's more chance of winning this than the sodding lottery...

Page Turner Prize

Got some great news today, folks. I've been shortlisted in Contact Publishing's Page Turner Prize.

I entered my novella 'Crack', a thriller set in a violent London estate, which I wrote around two years ago. There are only ten shortlisted entries, and the winner receives a three-book publishing contract with Contact Publishing.

If you'd like to check out a sample of Crack, I've shoved one up on Circalit. It's what hacky critics would probably describe as 'gritty', which means the characters use awful, repulsive language. Things like the F word, and yes, even the C word. I know, I'm a terrible person.

Super psyched about making the shortlist, shame that Sunderland couldn't boost my mood by caning Chelsea for a second time this season.

The story so far...

In 100 words, so I don't waste too much of my own life or yours:

Born, grew up, nerd at school, discovered alcohol, discovered projectile vomiting, toned down alcohol consumption, worked in retail, it sucked, switched to tech journalism, discovered alcohol again, won UK Author writing competition with first novel 'Bat Boy', wrote second novel, sent it to evil agents, pile of rejections, said 'f*** it' and played Playstation instead.

That's pretty much 28 years to date. I'm about to try the evil agents again with my second novel, 'Dead Dogs' - I'm a sucker for pain I guess. The book's a darkly comic tale about a Polish family who are persecuted after moving to Albania, narrated by a 14-year-old boy called Mikael. He's got a sick sense of humour, kind of like me, and I'm really happy with the way the characters and the story turned out. Now I just need to convince someone to publish the damn thing.

You can read a sample of Dead Dogs on Circalit.

Blog of an aspiring author #327,645

Greetings! This here's my first ever blog post, on my first ever blog. How terribly exciting. I don't know about you, but I feel just wonderful.

First off, hi, I'm Chris. I live in London, although I'm a mackem by trait - go Black Cats! I'm a wannabe author, like seemingly half the fricking populous of the UK at the moment (or at least that's what agents and publishers will have you believe). I've written two novels and two novellas, and if you'd like more info on them you can check-ch-check out this link:

This is the stuff what I've written already

I'm also a tech journo, writing primarily for What Laptop, as well as Future brands such as TechRadar. This basically means I play with gadgets all day, and drink all evening.

I used to post random crap on my website, but it was rather untidy, so now I'm gonna blight Blogger.com with it all instead. I'll try and post informative or at least vaguely interesting stuff up, but I ain't promising anything.