toby frost

It's Coronation Day! Well, not quite. But it's coming. This month we're tackling Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, the first book in the seminal Gormenghast series. Titus follows the birth of the titular character and the first eighteen months of his life, which culminates in a very strange, ersatz...

Well known for his Space Captain Smith novels, in this engaging and very readable caper (using that word in a positive sense) our very own Toby Frost presents a different, more refined genre comedy, which has plenty of laughs but even more by way of wit. Helen Frampton is a former childcare...

I've got a question for everyone who's read Up To The Throne and Blood Under Water. Are they "Giulia" novels or "Giulia and Hugh" novels now? In other words, if Giulia went and had an adventure on her own, or we had a flashback to her earlier life, would that seem "wrong" somehow?

Here's me and comedy writer Jon Pinnock discussing Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, which was something of an influence on the style, if not the subject, of the Space Captain Smith books. This is the first episode of a set of talks with comedy authors that Jon intends to do. It should be interesting...

My two fantasy novels, Up To The Throne and Blood Under Water, will be free on Kindle from tomorrow (the 5th of January) till Saturday (the 10th). I'm not quite sure how to describe them (crime/spy thrillers in a magical Renaissance, perhaps?) but in my correct and unbiased opinion they are very...

Every year I tend to write something vaguely festive and put it up on the website. Here's this year's story: http://spacecaptainsmith.com/for-zoom-the-bell-tolls.php?fbclid=IwAR1oc4CawOQPNdq3shiu2bVJt4tbhNjF0M7ZljGFfS3lHfLqMtD-CbfHLeA Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Not my collection of fantasy novels by other authors, but two signed copies of the fantasy novels I've written: Up To The Throne and Blood Under Water. My writing friend Keith has a couple of signed copies available on his blog, here, along with reviews of both books...

I've reviewed this on Goodreads, see link below https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3111347102

My review on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3058478786

My new book, Up To The Throne, is now out! It's a dark fantasy novel set in a magically-enhanced Renaissance, and tells of how one woman's search for revenge threatens to unbalance an entire city. It's available on Kindle, and the first chapter is free to download from my own website: Revenge...

Alright then, it looks like we're on! Thursday the 9th of November (that's two weeks from now) at 6pm at Forbidden Planet, Shaftesbury Avenue, London. You'll have to deal with me being there, scribbling on your new book and possibly reading at you, but otherwise it should be fine! Toby Frost...

The Pincers of Death, the sixth book about Space Captain Isambard Smith, will be out on the 9th of October. Once again, Isambard Smith takes to the skies to dish out justice and civilise the galaxy. But this time, he's got his sights on the greatest prize of all: Ghast Number One, the...

The Warhammer 40,000 novel I wrote, Straken, is now out in paperback. It's a tale of war, intrigue, space monsters, large killer robots, crazed preachers, dubious political officers, spaceships and explosions set in the far future. Plucked from a catastrophic war against the monstrous...

I am occasionally (ie never) asked what happened between the time of the Space Captain Smith books and now. Well, the short answer is that things got very bad before they got (arguably) better. This is a tale from that dark and twisted age, when bandits ruled the highways, existential angst...

For reasons that I can't remember, my friend Owen and I decided that it would be fun to make a podcast. And so was created Radio Charades, a rambling set of discussions about various geeky things, interspersed with complete nonsense about dinosaurs, films, robots and what would happen if George...

How can you not like a book that has the British Empire in space fuelled by tea; a war dinosaur instead of an elephant with a castle on its back instead of a howdah, a spaceship that’s seen far better days captained by Smith - personification of the idiotic British colonial officer – and crewed...

Well, it's that time of year again, and here is a story about Space Captain Smith - unusually, as told by his best friend and skull-collecting alien warlord, Suruk the Slayer. So here it is: http://spacecaptainsmith.com/InTheHallOfTheMountainThings.pdf Merry Christmas!

I have a short story in the collection Sharkpunk, which is being launched in Forbidden Planet, London, at 1pm on Saturday the 9th of May. Yes, this is an anthology of stories about sharks: in water, on land, magical sharks, ghostly sharks and, of course, sharks in space. So do come along if...

There are many ways of starting a book. A really good writer could probably start a novel anywhere, and with anything, and the force of their prose would carry the reader on. But, as with all writing advice, the safest thing to do is to maximise the possibility that the reader will want to read...

Space Captain Smith God Emperor of Didecot Wrath of the Lemming Men I'm going to post these three together. They stand alone but I really think you'll want to read all three once you read one. (There is another, see his Bibliography under his name) Captain Isambard Smith might be seen as a...