Michael Kelly / Keith Brooke

Post-Nemo bios are now pouring into Nemo HQ. And there is a number of corkers among them. It is true to say, I feel, that any writer's life must be either pre-Nemo or post-Nemo...

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MICHAEL KELLY:
"The Bluest of Grey Skies" (Nemo 3)

How I Am Getting On:
For the past three years I've been fiction editor at "The Chiaroscuro/ChiZine" (www.chizine.com). I've also placed a number of stories in some very fine journals and anthologies, including "All Hallows", "Flesh & Blood", "Surreal", "Alone on the Darkside" (Roc/NAL), and "Dark Arts" (Cemetery Dance). I've co-written a novel, "Ouroboros", and my first collection of short fiction, "Scratching the Surface", will be published February 2007.

What Difference (if any) Nemo made:
After it was revealed that I'd appeared in Nemo, I got a few e-mails from readers and writers familiar with my work saying that my contribution didn't seem typical of most of my work. Indeed, I was riffing off Rhys Hughes, who was riffing off Italo Calvino. It made me realize that fiction is an experiment. And that I shouldn't just settle for my "typical" stories. I need to challenge myself each time I sit down at the keyboard.

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KEITH BROOKE (aka NICK GIFFORD):

Embrace (Nemo 4)

How they are getting on:
2006 has been a good year for me, with two novels out in the first two months: "Erased" (written under my teen fiction pen-name Nick Gifford, Puffin, Jan 2006) and "Genetopia" (adult SF, Pyr February 2006; a
novel 15 years in the writing, and which is now picking up excellent reviews all over the place - it's good to be back!). To cap it all, the movie option on "Piggies" (Nick Gifford, Puffin 2003) has just been renewed and it looks like there will be a new 2007 edition of "Parallax View", my collaborative collection of stories written with Eric Brown. Outside writing, I stood for the Green Party in the council elections in May (coming a noble, erm, fifth), and we're currently pursuing our efforts to live a sustainable, yet relatively normal, lifestyle, as documented at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/kbrooke/shifting.

What difference (if any) Nemo had on their career or whatever:
To be brutally honest, I've been knocking around for so long that appearing in Nemo isn't going to make much difference to my career. However, it was a venue where I dearly wanted to appear: beautifully produced, with high quality content and the boldness to be different - so much better than some bland publication where every story's going to be okay (*those* are the publications that are truly anonymous, not Nemo!). I was thrilled to get in, and it's still a magazine I'm proud to tell people about.

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