Essays
Simon is a regular speaker at the Greenbelt Arts Festival, held every August Bank holiday weekend at Cheltenham racecourse. Eight of these talks are now online, along with the foreword to a short story anthology.
Foreword to Leaps of Faith - a foreword to a religious-themed anthology of science fiction short stories, first published in ebook format in 2004, and as a paperback with this foreword in 2008.
A thousand points of light - a talk about the Inklings and what we can learn from them about writing groups, from Greenbelt 2008
What makes a good story? - a talk about having to read nearly fifty novels in three months and what you can learn from that, from Greenbelt 2006
How to read Science Fiction - a talk for non-sf readers extolling the joys of all things spaceshippy, from Greenbelt 2006
Sex, Death and Christian Fiction - a polemic on the state of Christian fiction, from Greenbelt 2005
Where are we now? Sex, Death and Christian Fiction revisited - unsurprisingly, revisiting the ground (in 2011) from the 2005 talk to see if anything's changed. A chance to get cross all over again!
You're doing it wrong: how not to write a novel - a 2011 workshop on, well, not writing a novel. The workshop where we packed the venue to over-capacity and over-ran wildly. Oops.
Money flows to the author: making books pay in the 21st century - 2012's Greenbelt offering, discussing the ebook revolution, Amazon and piracy. Amongst other things.
What then shall we write? Truth, beauty and love - Less moaning about what we shouldn't do, and more of what we should. From Greenbelt 2015.