Novelist Steph Swainston, the writer of the Castle series of New Weird fantasies, has announced she's leaving writing. She blames the pressures of delivering a novel a year and being expected to do a lot of her own marketing via the Internet. She also blames the 'poison' of some Internet feedback to her writing online. Apparently she is planning to become a chemistry teacher.

Sad news. I enjoyed the interesting-but-flawed Year of Our War. I need to get round to reading the rest of her books sometime.