Month: February 2018

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#AmNotWriting – It’s Snowing

It only happens a day or two in every few years, but when it does it’s always glorious. The temperature drops and out of the dreary overcast of the normal British winter sky comes the snow.

In that magical way of fresh snow, for a day or two even the ugliest of districts is transformed into a marshmallow wonderland. The bare trees are lined with cotton wool and a white carpet lays a gentle hush over the inner city streets.

A benign hysteria grips the neighbourhood. Within hours, everyone has scoured their homes for the sledge that has been shoved into the cellar and neglected for a year. Failing a sledge, tin trays, the tops of wheelie bins, bits of plywood; anything that can slide down an icy hill is pressed quickly into service.

Aaaand….all at once, south east London is transformed into a Dickensian tableau.

Or maybe it’s Breugel. Anyway, I’m not writing. Gone sledging.

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Q & A with CL Rose

The marvellous CL Rose at Filles Vertes Publishing has just put up on her blog a Q&A she did with me a short while ago, to tie in with the publication of Fifty-One.

Here’s a short extract:

Q: What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring authors?

A: I’ve spent most of my life thinking the great SF writer Robert Heinlein had three rules of writing, and I’ve tried to follow them. I remembered them as:

  1. 1. Write
  2. 2. Put it on the market
  3. 3. Keep it on the market.

Recently I discovered he actually had two more – finish what you start, and don’t rewrite except to editorial order. I’m glad I didn’t know about that last one: I think rewriting is hard but important.

Raymond Chandler

Q: If you could meet any author, dead or alive, who would you want to meet and why?

A: Raymond Chandler. His prose style is often imitated but, while it seems simple, it’s deceptively hard to do well. Although he lived in California, he went to school in south London, so we’d have things to talk about other than Philip Marlowe.

You can read the whole interview on CL’s blog.

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Special Delivery

Postie’s been today, and delivered a most exciting package!

These are US paperbacks, to fill a gap until the UK version hits the streets.

You can get yours (physical or electronic) from:

Filles Vertes Publishing (buy from here and help an independent)
Amazon US
Amazon UK

And now also Google Play

 

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Valentine’s Day – Is it all that?

Maybe that should be Valentines’ day (apostrophe after the ‘S’) – because Wikipedia tells me that there was more than one St Valentine matryred in Roman times, and honoured these days with roses and heart-shaped chocolate.

Whatever, I confess I haven’t taken St Valentine’s Day too seriously in the past. Not since that time I booked a romantic meal for two and arrived with Laura at the restaurant to find they had hopelessly overbooked. (We bailed out and went home with a bottle of champagne and takeout fish and chips, all consumed in bed!)

Did I mention I loved the cover?
Courtesy of Kate Cowan, Broken Arrow Designs

But now – to my surprise – I have a romance novel, published only two days ago, so maybe I need to treat this festival with respect.

All right, I admit it’s a romance novel between a man born in 2010 and  woman who dies in 1944. And there’s time travel, and flying bombs. But nevertheless, there’s a love triangle and romance in there!

It’s a been a strange and hectic couple of days since Fifty-One was published on Monday. And there’s no end in sight. As a writer, what I really want to do is hide away and write another book. But there are promotion duties to be done!

If you haven’t encountered Fifty-One yet – whether you’re seeking a Valentine’s treat or not – you can get it here:

Filles Vertes Publishing
Amazon US
Amazon UK

And you can still enjoy the book trailer. I do!

And I’d love to know what you think.

[Main photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash]

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Fifty-One – Publication Day

Out now – Fifty-One from FIlles Vertes Publishing

Also available at Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Enjoy the trailer (did I mention that I do?)

It feels like it’s been a long road to get here, but Fifty-One is now published.

I looked back over my emails, and it’s almost exactly a year since Myra Fiacco at Filles Vertes Publishing sent me the publication contract, and we embarked on the publication journey, conducted largely by email and Skype (me in London, Myra in Idaho).

It was a lucky chance that brought us together. Myra liked a tweet I posted during a PitMad Twitter pitch party in December 2016, and – despite FVP not looking for science fiction – I sent her a query.

(The Tweet, by the way, was “He’s born in 2010, she will die in 1944. Stranded in wartime London, can he save her without wrecking the future?” Still a pretty accurate pitch for the book.)

After a year of editing, rewriting, cover design and back and forth over this and that, there’s now nothing more to do to change the book. It’s out there, and I need a good sleep (before I engage in an orgy of promotion activity, obviously!).

I’d love to know what you think of it. And I’ve got this idea for a sequel…

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My first eligibility post – 2017

I confess it feels almost un-British to draw attention to my own work, but it is the season when people are considering what’s eligible for various awards.

I’ve not had much out in 2017, while slaving in the book caverns. But – hey – if not me, who?

So, for your consideration, I humbly offer:

When I Close My Eyes (Interzone #271, July/August 2017)

Interzone 271

I was pitifully proud of this, and so pleased to get my first story in the UK’s premier SF magazine. It’s my ‘hardest’ SF story yet – with a bereaved astronaut trapped by a rockfall in a cave on Titan, encountering some fragile but peskily well-organised Titanian aliens. (But he’s helped out by a ghost, so it’s not that hard SF!)

It’s eligible for Hugo and WSFA awards (and BFS – but I’m not canvassing!)

How to be Invisible (Cold Iron – Ghost Stories from the 21st Century, IRON Press, UK June 2017)

coldiron

You’ll have to search this out, but I was pleased to get a berth in an intriguing collection of ‘modern’ ghost stories, published by the small but enterprising Iron Press, from England’s chilly but beautiful north east. The story concerns a man who quite literally fades away from shame and guilt.

Eligible for Hugo and British Fantasy Award.

 

There you go. This time next year, I hope to be pestering people about my forthcoming novel, Fifty-One. But that’s not (quite) out yet!