Things Of The Week: 3rd June 2016

Not too many Things this week.

My main two activities have been working on Devil's Highway, and working up a list of my available stories for my agent. He has a meeting in a fortnight or thereabouts which he'd need it for, so I wanted to get it ready well in advance to make sure it had everything he needed.

So I finished it today: about a hundred stories, novelettes and novellas, including existing and forthcoming collections. (There's another hundred or so stories that are officially 'retired', i.e. "hell, no, they will never see the light of day again!" and thirty-odd others which may be usable after some rewriting (or should alternatively be slung out and started again from scratch.) Complete with word-count, publication history, story summary and content warnings for sex, violence, abuse, or, in the case of one story, for 'nun-on-dragon action'. (Not that there was anything explicit or triggering in it, but would you have been able to resist the temptation to write that?)

Devil's Highway has been a harder ride - there is a huge amount of stuff to type up. I wrote part of my crime novel via dictation, but I'd forgotten that I'd actually written somewhere between a third and a half of the thing on my laptop before spraining my wrist and being forced to record. The typing up is becoming such a slog that I've been thinking I'd be quicker writing the rest of the book from scratch using my notes! (If you remember, my outline was something like 30,000 words long.)

I made some stabs towards that today, but my main problem was fear. I was afraid to try, convinced it would all go wrong...

...at which point, Facebook Memories actually did something useful, by throwing up this excellent post by Gareth L. Powell on the very subject of The Fear. It came in very handy in getting me back in the saddle. The work goes on.

Graham Masterton - Lowdowned here and interviewed at length here and here - has a new book out: Living Death, the latest in his excellent Katie Maguire series of crime novels...

DS Katie Maguire is at a loss. Last year, she and her team destroyed the biggest drug trafficker in Cork. So how is the city's drug trade at an all-time high? Meanwhile, a spate of violent attacks which leave victims severely disabled has brought confidence in the Garda to an all-time low.

As Katie investigates, she realises that the two cases might be connected. Someone is using brain-damaged victims to smuggle drugs into the country. And the only way to find out more is to go in undercover...

As ever with the Katie Maguire books, Living Death promises to be funny, engaging, gripping and unsparing. So well worth your time there.

With summer on the way, I found myself listening to an album that suits the hot sunny weather very well - A-Lan-Nah, the Canadian singer Alannah Myles' third album.

Myles is best known for her biggest hit, the sultry '80s rock ballad Black Velvet, and a helluva song it is too. But it was the only real standout track on her first album, Alannah Myles. Sod's law being what it is, her second albums, Rockinghorse and A-Lan-Nah, were a huge step up in quality, but far less successful. Her voice has grown in range too - bluesy, tender, and a raging rocking howl, sometimes on the same track.

Anyway - hard to pick a favourite song from this album, so here's one of them: crack open your wine/beer/tipple of choice, chill out in the garden with the one you love, and listen to this.

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The Lowdown with... Gareth L. Powell

Gareth L Powell is an award-winning author from the UK. He is the author of the novels Silversands, The Recollection, Ack-Ack Macaque, Hive Monkey and Macaque Attack. In 2013, his alternate history thriller, Ack-Ack Macaque won the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award for Best Novel. The book has since been published in Japan (as Gunmetal Ghost), and has inspired a comic strip, fan art, graffiti murals, and at least one tattoo. Gareth’s short stories have appeared in a host of magazines and anthologies, including Interzone, Solaris Rising 3, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. One of these stories came top of the 2007 Interzone readers’ poll for best short story of the year. Since then, many of his shorter works have been brought together in the collections, The Last Reef (2008) and The New Ships (coming 2017).

1. Tell us three things about yourself. 

i) When I was a teenager, I had coffee with Diana Wynne Jones. I won a competition at school. She read a short story I had written and sat down with me to give me some feedback. She was merciless but inspiring, and I still have the handwritten notes she gave me.
ii) My writing desk faces west.
iii) I once kayaked the covered rivers that run beneath the centre of Bristol.

2. What was the first thing you had published? 
When I was at school, I had some poems and flash fiction stories published in various fanzines (this was in the days before the Internet). Later, when I started writing seriously, I had a few short stories published in a Welsh literature magazine, and then some science fiction stories published on websites. Eventually, Interzone picked one up and the rest, as they say, is history.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?
That's like asking which of my children is my favourite. I suppose the novel Ack-Ack Macaque is the one that most people associate with me. It's certainly the bestselling of my books, and it won the 2013 BSFA Award, so I guess I'd have to pick it. That said, I'll always be fond of The Recollection, as it's the book I'd been wanting to write since I was about twelve, and I threw all sorts of personal stuff into it, as well as talking spaceships, weird alien worlds, and apocalyptic space battles.

4. …and which makes you cringe? 
I published a short chapbook of poetry while at university in 1992. Looking back now, it's definitely cringe-worthy.

5. What’s a normal writing day like? 
Usually I rise at 6:30am. I see my wife off to work, get the kids ready for school, and then write until they return at 3:15pm. I have an office in the back of the house, with a view of the garden, and I sit at the desk and drink decaffeinated tea while trying to put thoughts into words. Sometimes, if things are going particularly well, I'll carry on writing in the evening, after the kids have gone to bed. But now they're getting older, they're going to bed much later, so I don't get so much peace and quiet in the evenings.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’s never read you before pick up first? 
If you like space opera, pick up The Recollection (Solaris Books, 2011); if you prefer something a little more earthbound, try Ack-Ack Macaque - it's a near-future thriller set in a world ever so slightly different from ours.

7. What are you working on now? 
At the time of answering, I am currently working on four novels. I've just submitted one to my agent, so I'm gathering notes towards a potential sequel. At the same time, I'm writing a thriller, another space opera, and something else which I can't talk about. Suffice to say, there's lots going on behind the scenes.

SFX Weekender!

Hello...

I'll be at the SFX Weekender in Pontins Prestatyn Sands Holiday Park next week, courtesy of those lovely people at Solaris Books.

Next weekend, of course, is also the official launch date of The Faceless, so if you're dying to get hold of a signed copy then you know where to come.

And if you have an urge to hear me talking (more) shit (than usual), I'm on a panel on Saturday 3rd February at 3pm: "We're all doomed! Is the path to humanity's salvation revealed in science fiction?" I don't know that much about science fiction, although I have a couple of WIPs that creep over its borders (probably into its toxic wastelands, knowing me) but I have done the odd apocalypse in my time. Will I find anything remotely useful. relevant or interesting to say? You'll have to come to the panel to find out...

After that, from 4pm onwards, I'll be signing copies, alongside my Solaris stablemate Gareth L. Powell, from 4pm on the Saturday.

The rest of the time, I'll be in the bar, or pottering around. Come say hello.