What’s that coming over the hill…?

Suddenly it’s February and where, not so long ago there seemed a glacial ice age to wait until The Moon King was published, now it’s within actual sight. On the horizon. And it’s coming my way. The words we’re all going to die!!! are constant prisoners behind my clenched teeth. Because this is the point when the […]

Annihilation Time

Pretty excited that the first book in Jeff Vandermeer’s new series of novels is published in February (4th in the US, 27th here). All three of the Southern Reach trilogy, as it’s known, will be published during 2014, which makes it perfect for readers for whom there’s nothing worse than getting sucked into a great […]

Read like a reader

I’ve been thinking for quite a while now about the difference in reading experience between readers and writers. To my mind, readers engage with a story in a pure way that eschews awareness of the mechanisms by which it is told and enables the imagination to properly bring the characters to life, to ride-shotgun on their […]

WFC: the shopping experience

The dealer’s room at this year’s WFC was one of the best I’ve seen in years. A VAST room, filled with books. The range of wares on offer from the pro and indy publishers, from the secondhand paperback sellers and the high-end collectibles dealers, was awesome. And for someone like me who for reasons of […]

WFC shopping list

One of the benefits of the awards reading stint was that I inadvertently didn’t buy any new books for several months. I know! Imagine! This of course must be rectified, and it so happens that the imminent World Fantasy Convention will be the epicentre for a conflagration of book launches. In addition to the two […]

Legs, home

So, the last two weekends with the Scotland Writers team were pretty amazing. Gothenburg and Vienna, two lovely but contrasting cities – tidy, calm, designed vs sprawling and historically stratified. Our hosts for both trips were hugely friendly, the hospitality excellent – whether it be the astonishing seafood platter in the Dubliner pub in Gothenburg […]

Fox in your pocket

Got something interesting in the post this week – the first in Fox Spirit Books’ new series of pocket anthologies. I’ve always been a sucker for pocket sized books, and this one comes in at exactly the right size, not only for slipping into a bag or a coat, but I reckon would fit into your […]

Errata

Fabulous to hear from Hal Duncan that he has a new book out. Errata is a collection of four novellas set in the landscape of his Book Of All Hours novels. They were originally published in a variety of locations, so Errata presents the first opportunity to read them all together. There’s even a rumour that […]

Making the words into a thing

This novel business is a piece of cake, eh? At Eastercon I had a number of conversations with Ian Whates about how Newcon Press are going to present The Moon King. There’s lots to talk about, and I’m lucky to have a super-enthusiastic publisher who takes the time to consult and explain all this stuff […]

Monthly : March

Reading long Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus) In SF they tell you that one of the great cliches is the Adam-and-Eve-on-a-new-planet story. You just don’t do it. Ever. Chris Beckett has, however, done exactly that, and Dark Eden is a simple, beautiful triumph of a book. His Adam and Eve are several generations dead, and […]