Damn, but that week went fast; time spent at Portmeirion always does. I didn’t get those plot walks I was planning on, partly due to the variable weather, but mainly due to bone-idleness on my part. Not that I was entirely slacking – over the course of the week I critiqued a novel, wrote a […]
I’ve finally completed the initial rewrite of Guardians of Paradise and despatched it off to my long-suffering beta-readers. Now I wait for a couple of weeks then go back and rewrite again, taking into account their comments, as well as tidying up what is still a somewhat messy ms. Whilst it took longer than I’d […]
A month today, Consorts of Heaven will come out in hardback and trade paperback. Two days after that, on the 23rd of May, I’ll be doing a signing at Little Green Dragon bookshop in Alton, Hants, from 1.30 to 2.30, after which I’ll be nipping over the road to the pub for a less formal […]
I can’t plot like Tim Powers. I wish I could, given some of the amazing books he’s produced, but the whole meticulous research, painstaking planning and detailed outlining thing doesn’t work for me. I did ask him how, given he knows exactly what’s going to happen (and when, and to whom) before he writes the […]
Eastercon was good overall, even if my usual tendency to party was somewhat curtailed by playing host to a stomach bug for some of the weekend and the need to get back to a hotel-cum-building site several miles from the con every night. My two panels went fairly well, though both were on the day […]
I live in a small town that’s more like a large village. It is the most middling of middle England and is definitely not a place for too much strangeness (‘don’t frighten the horses’). I am on record as being, to paraphrase a certain comedy show, ‘the only fortean in the village’. I was therefore […]
The first rewrite of Guardians of Paradise (1 of 2 I’ll do before I deliver it to Gollancz) is proceeding, albeit slowly. I’m at that difficult two-thirds point, and I knew when I ground out the first draft that the scenery around here was a bit sparse, and the plot a bit naked – points […]
Though I’m still waiting (a little nervously) for the first reviews of Consorts of Heaven, there are some new reviews of the paperback release of Principles of Angels around at the moment (the paperback being the edition with the entire plot laid out on the back cover, ahem). Gary Reynolds has posted a comprehensive review […]
I’ve now got my list of panels for LX2009, this year’s Eastercon. I’ve got a pretty light program this year, with only two official items, both on Sunday: "Start writing NOW" on Sunday at 11:00 – ‘Find out from some professionals why starting to write early will help you succeed in future’. and "Near-future, optimistic […]
Gary Reynolds’ Concept Sci-Fi website has a world exclusive preview of Consorts of Heaven online now. The book’s not out until May, but you can read the first chapter (which looks a lot like fantasy, but isn’t), right here.
The Scillies are one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. We were early enough in the season that there were hardly any other visitors, and although a lot of stuff was ‘closed for refurbishment’, there was one boat a day running to the ‘off islands’, which we took full advantage of. We were […]