About this Site
My name's Jonathan Pinnock. I lead a dual life. In one half of this, I run a software development company called Jonathan Pinnock and Associates. If you've come here looking for that, here's where you need to go.However, if you've come here to find out about the other half of my life, as a writer of fiction and non-fiction, you've come to the right place.
If, on the other hand, you've arrived here by accident whilst searching for Japanese Tentacle Porn, I suggest you try using a different search engine.
If you'd like to contact me, my e-mail address is jon AT jpassoc DOT co DOT uk.
Books
Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens was published by Proxima Books in September 2011.
The Scott Prize-winning short story collection Dot(.), Dash(-) will be published by Salt in 2012.
Sep
19
Blog Tour, Day 19
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Today I make a long-overdue return to Flash Fiction Chronicles, the sister blog to Every Day Fiction run by the lovely Gay Degani, who was a staunch supporter of Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens during the serialisation. For some reason, I gave into an irresistible urge to praise the work of Dan Brown in this post. Well, what are you going to do about that then? Eh? Eh?
Sep
18
Blog Tour, Day 18
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Today’s port of call is Lev Parikian’s Runny Thoughts. I bumped into Lev on Twitter a while back and have been enjoying his banter ever since. Besides, you have to be impressed with someone whose one-line bio consists of “Conductor, writer, cricket lover, foodie”. I owned a baton once, you know. Used to conduct LPs in the privacy of my own room. That’s normal, right?
Anyway, my guest post on Lev’s blog is worth reading just for his intro with the innovative alien spelling of my name. Lovely attention to detail there.
Oh, and I can now announce one of the things I was invited to the other week. I’m going to be one of the guests at next month’s Firestation Book Swap. I am so looking forward to this, because I’ve wanted to be one the guests ever since I first went to one a year ago to the day. Mind you, I will have to be on my best behaviour because my fellow guest is none other than John Harding, whose “Florence and Giles” is getting rave notices from all and sundry. I’ve just bought a copy to get myself up to speed, and I’m really looking forward to reading it – looks terrific.
Sep
17
Blog Tour, Day 17
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Today my host is Rhonda Parrish, the editor of the very wonderful Niteblade magazine. This seemed like a good opportunity to say a few words about the unsung army of small press magazine editors that keep the hopes of us struggling writers alive.
Oh, and that signed copy in the picture is on sale in WHSmith in Bath. Be quick, though, ‘cos everyone’s going to want one, aren’t they? Of course they are 
Sep
16
Before we go any further I really would like to draw your attention to the picture on your left, which does indeed show my book on display, face out, in a section of Waterstone’s in Bath entitled “Celebrating Jane Austen”. I should perhaps add that this was not my doing; it really was like that when I went into the store.
And I should also mention that if anyone out there lives in or near Bath, those copies are also signed with my new tentacle signature™, so they will be worth £1000s one day. Probably on the same day that £1000 will buy you a couple of gobstoppers, in fact.
Moving on, today the Grand Blog Tour reaches Kirsty Stanley’s place. Kirsty is the lovely lady who took over the management of Slingink when it looked as if that forum was about to close and has been running it ever since. The Slingink Eurofiction competition (now renamed the Slingink Scribbling Slam) was the source of some of my earliest successes as a short story writer, so I was really pleased when Kirsty stepped in to keep it going. In fact, the Slingink Scribbling Slam has just started up again – there’s still time to register, and I strongly recommend giving it a go.
Today’s interview is a little different from the others so far, in that Mrs Darcy gets a few questions as well as me. The answers are a little surprising, to say the least.
Sep
15
Blog Tour, Day 15
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Today we drop in on my old Verulam Writers’ Circle chum K J Bennett. K J (Kevin to his mates) is the author of the highly entertaining and frequently hilarious web serial Pike’s Quest, and I strongly suggest you take a look at it. After reading my interview of course. Priorities, priorities…
Sep
14
Blog Tour, Day 14
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And today I’m visiting the Parallel Oonahverse of the lovely and ever so slightly bonkers (but in a good way) Oonah V Joslin, prolific short story writer and editor of Every Day Poets. Here I attempt to describe Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens in various ways including – at one misconceived point – verse. It does not go well. In fact, you’d probably be better off reading one of Oonah’s own stories which, quite by chance, appears today in Every Day Fiction – how about that?
Sep
13
Blog Tour, Day 13
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… in which we take our campaign into potential hostile territory, Jane Travers’ Jane Obsessed with Jane blog. The clue is in the title. Of course, what Jane doesn’t know (until now) is that I stalked her. Well, not really. However, when I started serialising Mrs Darcy on the web, I set up a Twitter account called @RealMrsDarcy (it’s still there – follow her!), the purpose of which – well, I wasn’t really sure, but I knew it would be of some kind of use to me.
Anyway, in those days, instead of Chris Hamilton-Emery’s alien as its icon, the account had Dave Weaver’s slightly friendlier steampunk-ish Jane Austen image. I used this to hunt down other Twitter folk with Austenesque icons (surprisingly easy to do once Twitter starts offering you similar accounts to the ones you’ve already followed, and there are an amazing number of them out there). Some of them ignored @RealMrsDarcy (boo) and some of them followed back (hurrah) and one of the latter was Jane Travers, who at the time had an even more luridly doctored version of JA as her icon. Jane, incidentally, has gazillions of followers on Twitter and has recently masterminded a rather spiffy charity recipe anthology, Tweettreats.
I had no idea whether or not any of these people would take any notice of the automatic posts from the serialisation that I was feeding through the @RealMrsDarcy account (or indeed the occasional half-hearted attempts at tweeting in character that I was posting), until I started getting the odd RT from them as well as the occasional comment, which was worth its weight in – well, not gold, but some sort of information equivalent . And then Jane Travers posted this on her blog, which was another of those points where I began to wonder if I might be onto something – even if she did use the “guilty pleasure” phrase that I might have mentioned at the Willesden Herald yesterday So, whether she likes it or not, she was one of the people that most definitely encouraged me to keep going.
Anyway, I thought it might be nice to drop in on her during my blog tour, and so it turned out to be, even if she did pretend to be a bit bolshie. I’m sure she’s a sweetie really.
Sep
12
Blog Tour, Day 12
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Today I drop in on the Willesden Herald blog and try to make excuses for not writing literature. Many thanks to Steve Moran (who was here not so long ago) for having me. I first met Steve when I cadged a lift from him back to Lewes railway station after Vanessa Gebbie’s book launch for “Storm Warning” – now that’s how to network, kids. The Willesden Herald team are currently trying to raise more money to increase the profile of the short story competition, so if you fancy contributing to a worthwhile cause in return for either a PDF, a physical book or even a souvenir mug, here’s where you should go.
In other news, I found out today that the daughter-in-law of the lady who used to babysit our kids when they were little has been recommended Mrs Darcy by a friend – how weird is that? And there’s another nice review of the book on Goodreads, courtesy of Cate Gardner.
Sep
10
Blog Tour, Day 10
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The blog tour moves relentlessly along, and today I drop in on Diane Becker’s Not Designed to Juggle blog. Diane is deputy editor of The Short Review and has an exceptionally modest bio in which she describes herself as “pretty flawed”. However, if you take a look at some of her work that she links to from her site, you may come to the conclusion that her only flaw is that she isn’t submitting enough stuff out there.
Anyway, in our chat we cover such topics as genre-bending, parallel worlds and time management. And possibly time travel as well. Many thanks to Diane for having me!
In other news, it looks as if we have a taker for the last available stop on the tour: none other than Tania Hershman, who will now be hosting me on September 29th. Woo hoo!
There won’t be a blog tour stop tomorrow. I hummed and haa-ed (how do you spell that? none of the possibilities look right) and I finally came to the conclusion that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 probably wasn’t the time to be prattling on about a frivolous book like Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens. Back on Monday, everyone.
Sep
9
Blog Tour, Day 9
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Today’s host is the journalist and short story writer Gordon Darroch. Gordon actually runs two other blogs apart from the writing one that I’m appearing on: this one, where he writes movingly and with much common sense about raising two autistic children, and this one, which is a showcase for his articulate and thoughtful journalism. As well as this, he’s consistently one of the wittiest people I follow on Twitter.
In my chat with him, I jabber on about the future of publishing (after all, since when was complete ignorance a barrier to having an opinion?), how Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens came to be written as a serial, and how a writer can make use of Twitter as a marketing tool. Looking at the last of these, I think I’m probably giving myself more credit as a marketeer than I deserve. Most of what I do on social networks is completely random – but I guess that’s kind of the point I’m making.
We also have a bit of an unexpected bonus today. Just over a week before publication, I went on a Twitter search for references to “Mrs Darcy” (as you do). This was quite interesting, throwing up as it did a couple of tweets from potential reviewers, one of whom seemed to be looking forward to reading it and who most definitely was not. I also came across a link to this blog post, which as you may imagine I found more than a little alarming.
Anyway, I took a deep breath, counted from 1 to 10 and engaged. Generally speaking, I work from the position that people are reasonable if you treat them as such (and yes, I know there are some who are completely beyond the pale, but generally speaking a bit of benefit of doubt is a good starting position), and so it turned out in this case. Marta was very nice about it and subsequently asked me if I fancied being interviewed and the result is here. I’m quite pleased because last Tuesday’s interviewee was none other than Kim Newman of “Anno Dracula” fame. So I’m in rather exalted company.
Finally, the blog tour slot for September 30th has now been nabbed by Jennifer Duke of the Bennet Sisters Blog, who I visited back in December not long after I’d heard that Mrs Darcy was going to make it into book form. So that will be a nice return visit.
And I still haven’t told you what I did on Monday. Or indeed about the three exciting invitations I’ve had this week – but I’ve been sworn to silence on those for now.