Last night I finished the final tweaks on CONSORTS OF HEAVEN, which is the next book in the ‘Hidden Empire’ series, though not exactly a sequel to PRINCIPLES OF ANGELS. My agent will be submitting it to my publisher today at which point it enters the arcane and iterative process of editing and proofing ready […]
Fellow Gollancz author Suzanne MacLeod came up with the term ‘book birthday’ to describe the day you have your novel published. It’s one of the few life-changing events that Clintons don’t have a card for (yet). Anyway, from today I will be unable to walk past a bookshop without popping in to check if they […]
As well as the book signing in Alton on the 28th of this month (see below), I’m be signing copies of PRINCIPLES OF ANGELS at Waterstones in Lancaster (the King Street branch apparently). It’s at 2pm on Sunday the 22nd, and there’s also a Q & A session planned, which should be interesting as I’ve […]
Tomorrow I’m off for a few days holiday in the land that time forgot Isle of Wight. And I am not taking a computer. In theory I’m not doing any work at all, though in practice I’m going with one of my beta-readers for CONSORTS, so I’m taking a hardcopy of the mss in case […]
Forgot to post last week. No excuse other than being busy working on CONSORTS. I’ve developed an odd attitude to writing, though I suspect it’s quite normal once you start actually getting paid for doing something you’ve previously treated as a cross between a secret love and OCD. Now I feel guilty when I’m not […]
I’ve recently put another two stories up on the excellent site www.anthologybuilder.com. This service lets writers keep previously published stories ‘live’ and allows readers to create their own bespoke print-on-demand anthologies for a relatively small outlay (assuming you have the means to lay out in dollars). The first story, which appeared in a (now defunct) […]
I’ve just had confirmation that I’ll be doing (at least one) signing for PRINCIPLES OF ANGELS. Anyone who lives in (or wants to travel to) my neck of the woods would be most welcome to come to the Little Green Dragon bookshop, at the top of the High Street in Alton, Hampshire on Saturday 28th […]
Our break started with fellow Gollancz author Alex Bell’s small but perfectly formed launch party for her first novel, The Ninth Circle. As well as fine food, fine wine and fine company, this featured the largest chocolate fountain I’ve ever seen. Then off, happy but slightly hung-over, to Wales. Portmeirion was as marvellous as ever. […]
I’ve now reached the ‘Aha, so it is SF after all’ stage of Consorts of Heaven. Actually I’m hoping the reader will have spotted it’s SF long before this, even if the truth still isn’t yet obvious to most of the characters. Although I am an SF writer (despite being dubbed one of the ‘Three […]
I’ve been about three quarters of the way through the ‘Consorts’ rewrites all this week. That’s not to say I haven’t been working hard – I’ve (re)written the best part of four chapters over the last five days. However, I’m now reaching some of the more hastily written sections, which I’ve had to re-think drastically. […]