Well, would you believe it - I actually did some photography over the last seven days!

Of course, deciding what artistic merit it has (if any) must be left as an analytical exercise for you, the reader:

I’m a sucker for the underside of South Parade Pier, principally because I like industrial decay as an aesthetic … and nothing says “industrial decay” in quite the same voice as the rusting underbelly of a Victorian-era pier.

Plus there are lots of repeating shapes and surfaces, angles and lines and so on.

So, yeah. Rusty stuff FTW.

Writing about music

Not a whole raft-load of actual music-related writing this week, but a crazed flurry of organising for music-writing-related things to happen has taken place.

Which means I’m off to Southampton on Monday night to talk to the guys in From Autumn To Ashes, and on Tuesday I’ll be on the phone to those quirky chaps from British Sea Power.

Plus a clutch of CDs to write about, and other assorted tasks and jobs to do … as I predicted last week, I’m back up to breakneck pace again!

Writing about books

I sent off (and received a commented and edited version of) the first draft of my review of Debatable Space for Strange Horizons, and I’m planning to have that squared away by the end of this week.

I’m currently reading the ARC of Adam Roberts’ Swiftly. It’s a pretty good story so far, but one of the most terrible examples of typesetting I’ve seen in a long time, so I hope some considerable copy-editing has been done on it before it goes to press. I need this read and reviewed by the end of the month.

In the meantime, I need to get my thoughts on Stross’s* Halting State put together for your perusal right here on VCTB.

And there is a copy of Severian Of The Guild (an omnibus edition of Gene Wolfe’s Book Of The New Sun, a title I’ve been meaning to attack for a couple of years now) making its way slowly across the ocean from Canada, so I am informed …

… which I guess I’ll need to finish off before the Great Baroque Cycle Reading Group (or should it be Reading Cabal?) kicks off around March.

Writing about other stuff

There has been some, but I can’t go into details right now. I can say that it’s not freelance work as such, and that I should have a fairly big announcement to make once some things have become confirmed and sorted out.

For now you’ll just have to call me a big nasty tease. Or ignore the issue completely, of course - which I guess is more likely, not to mention sensible.

Books and magazines seen

No fresh materials this week, although my production-run hardback copy of Iain M Banks’ Matter turned up from Orbit. It’ll look lovely next to my signed ARC, I’m sure. :p

Speaking of IMB, you’re all doubtless looking forward to my interview/article in the imminent issue of Interzone, aren’t you? Jolly good, I thought as much.

Coda

There goes another week in the rock’n'roll lifestyle of the scruffiest man in science fiction fandom. Cheerleaders for health and common sense will doubtless be keen to know that I am still off the cigarettes (and still finding it easy so far).

However, they will be less pleased to know that I’m now heading off to obtain The Friday Curry Of Justice, which I’m told (by people who know such things) is probably just as likely as cigarettes to cause heart attacks in my future.

To those people I say: a man needs a vice or two. I’m not ready to become a Buddhist monk quite yet. If you hear a loud noise in the next few hours, it’ll be my arteries clanging shut joyfully.

That’s me done for the day, folks. I hope you all have a great weekend doing whatever it is you like to do*. Hasta luego, amigos.

[* Why no 's' after the apostrophe for Roberts, but an extra 's' for Stross? Couldn't say for certain, but I guess it's aesthetics - they just look right that way. Go figure.]

[** With the exception of arguing about Battlestar Galactica on the Eastercon Mailing List; because, frankly, there aren't enough hours left before the heat-death of the universe to waste them on talking about television***.]

[*** IMHO. ]

It’s a strange thing, blogging - often a largely thankless task, a genuine labour of love (or of egotism, in the opinion of some who may not be entirely incorrect). But suffice to say that, except for the industry bigwigs and AdSense farmers, there’s little reward for running a blog.

Indeed, all you can hope for is recognition, a little bit of kudos - which is why I was incredibly chuffed to discover that Futurismic is listed among PC Magazine’s 100 Favourite Blogs, alongside major heavyweights like BoingBoing, Gawker and Lifehacker.

I’ve thought about quitting Futurismic a number of times in the last year or so; I was reaching a point where being the only person with the available time to struggle with the old broken Moveable Type installation, just to make sure there were a few fresh posts every day, felt like head-butting a brick wall - only without the consolation of an audience that head-butting a brick wall brings (in this town, at least).

But now I feel immensely glad I stuck with it, and that I recently hired in my new crew of bloggers. Futurismic will probably never pay me one red cent, and I never joined in the expectation that it would. I joined because I liked what it was trying to do … and making it onto that list means that other people have noticed it, and that they like it too.

Once we get the fiction and columns up and running again (which promises to be sooner rather than later), we’re going to kick some serious arse, right across this here blogosphere. I hope all of you will be watching us do it, too.

OK, so I decided it was high time I tested the waters with Facebook. Many of you will know my stance on social networks being a time-suck that I cannot justify in my life as it stands, but I’ve heard enough well-reasoned contrary viewpoints that I’ve decided to give it a try for a month and see how it goes.

So, make me feel wanted - friend requests to Paul Graham Raven, please!

Actually, my motives are two-fold - this evening I’ve been upgrading my install of Wordpress to the latest iteration (always a lengthy and slightly nerve-wracking process, no matter how many times I do it without a hitch), and while I was waiting for the backups to download, I discovered Wordbook - a plug-in that will allegedly feed my VCTB posts directly into my Facebook profile.

This is a feature that I would have liked to have for MySpazz, but their API is locked up tighter than an emo-kid’s trousers, so little chance of that. But Wordbook promises to let me keep Facebook updated without having to actually, you know, update Facebook. Sounds like a plan. I’m a lazy bugger.

So, the plugin is activated and the accounts are set up - I guess we’re about to discover whether it works or not.

That said, there will probably be no more content apart from links here for a few days - I’ve written three articles and four CD reviews over the last two days, and the thought of writing anything more makes me want to cry …

Well, how about that - VCTB rides again. Looking at my sitemeter stats, it appears the server started working again at around about midday today … which is odd, because mine host is still moshing away in Germany. This is why I’m just a blogger, and not a fully fledged webgeek, I guess.

But hey - the site’s back again! You have no idea how much I was pining in its absence.

Actually, having said that, if you’re a regular reader you probably do know. I’ve considered professional help, but I’m worried that regular therapy would just cut into my blogging time.

So, back to business. Thanks to everyone who emailed with good wishes and light-hearted mockery, BTW.

OK, so here’s one of those memes that doesn’t involve you answering the sort of personal questions that the population of MySpace seem to find so incredibly important, and it promises to send some links back to you if you complete it.

These things remind me of chain-letters, to be honest, only without the veiled threat of gypsy magic or voodoo curses. But I’m going to do it anyway, because I was tagged by Chip, and he’s been a loyal reader here for ages - despite the fact that I have no idea what it is that he finds worth reading amongst the waffle and sf-nal pontification. Selah. So …

-Start Copy-

It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.)

Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general.

After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends!

Just think– if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already!

1. Look, read, and learn. ***
-http://www.neonscent.com

2. Be, EXCELLENT to each other. ***
-http://www.bushmackel.com

3. Don’t let money change ya! ***
-http://www.therandomforest.info

4. Always reply to your comments. **
-http://chattiekat.com

5. Link liberally — it keeps you and your friends afloat in the Sea of Technorati. *
-http://chipsquips.com

6. Don’t give up - persistence is fertile.
-http://www.velcro-city.co.uk

-End Copy-

OK, so the challenge for me is picking out ten people who I think care enough about blogging as an end in itself to take part in this … so, let’s try Gareth Powell, the SF Signal crew, Tobias Buckell, Jeremy Tolbert, Jason Stoddard, Paul Gilster, Sven Johnson, Jonathan McCalmont, Niall Harrison and Jamais Cascio.

I’ve made a quite deliberate effort to keep that list down to people who I read regularly, and who don’t blog for a living, but who do it because it’s a way of enabling their main job, or engaging with a community around a creative career.

Tally ho!

Rising star of UK science fiction Gareth L. Powell has started a blogging meme - every Friday he’s going to post a piece of flash fiction (under 1000 words) on his blog, and he invites you to do the same.

I think I’ll have a go at this - deadlines are a great motivator, and I could do with a reason to kick my arse into fictional gear.

But never fear - no matter how fierce the competition, FPB will not lay down and die! Sure, there’s a place for free fiction before the weekend, but there’s also a place for some random hippy to blather on about his week after posting a photo of a houseplant …

Yes indeed, after a weekend of hard graft and staring at screens for hours on end, we’ve managed to get Futurismic back on its feet, as promised.

If you were subscribed to the old feed, some neat trickery should ensure that the new one reaches you automagically. If you weren’t subscribed to Futurismic’s RSS feed before, maybe you should consider becoming so?

It’s not just a paying market for short sf stories, but a fast-paced blog delivering bite-sized chunks of news that connect to science fiction, as well as a soon-to-be-revived non-fiction section with regular columns on the more down-to-earth aspects of futurist speculation.

We’re still working on the site theme, however, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t look the same next time you click through.

Well, I hope you’ve all had a nice long holiday weekend - even if the weather was as rotten as it was here in Velcro City. I hardly noticed, though - I’ve been busy.

One of the many things I’ve been doing over the weekend is playing around behind the scenes at T3A Space, the new-look blog-style website for TTA Press (publisher of short genre fiction magazines Interzone, Crimewave and Black Static). T3A is where updates and story acceptances for the TTA stable are posted, and over the coming months it’s going to grow into a content-rich site with lots of good stuff to read.

Andy (TTA’s head honcho) already had things looking sexy with an eye-catching theme (luckily - as, having seen VCTB, no one in their right mind would set me loose on the aesthetics of a website), but yours truly has been hacking about with the ergonomics and functionality. Upgrades include a working spam-free comments system, and lots of other behind-the-curtain search-engine friendly stuff. There’s still work to be done, but things are looking good so far.

I’ve also set the RSS feed for the site to run through Feedburner, which is a very easy operation but well worth the time invested. But if you click through, you’ll see the subscription counter sat at a lowly first-day count of zilch, zero, nada.

So, here’s the challenge - I’d like you all to subscribe to the T3A RSS feed, which I’ve made extra easy by linking to it there. You don’t even have to click more than once! Let’s see if we can’t get that counter to show something a little more impressive than zero by tomorrow, eh?

Via the indispensible LifeHacker comes a post from a guy who has managed to completely master his sleep patterns and free up more productive time in his day to day life:

“From 4-6 AM, I simply get a ton of things done. In fact, I’d argue that I get more done from 4-6 AM than I do from 8-Noon. No matter what I decide to do, it’s uninterrupted simply because no one else is awake and functioning. It’s purely a time for knocking out tasks (work or home related), reading, project work, planning, etc. It’s great.

My life was not always this way, I used to be the guy that stayed up late and woke up with barely enough time to shower before work. So, how did I change that? It’s actually pretty simple, I installed a regimen that I have now followed for years. On average, I believe that I have given myself an extra 5 hours per week or (do the math) an extra 10.8 days per year to get stuff done.”

Discipline appears to be the key. (Damn it, why is it always discipline, my Achilles heel?) I may experiment with this system myself - the idea of a short kip around lunchtime certainly has appeal, as does the notion of being able to bound out of bed in the mornings with the will (and ability) to get some work done …

I’m not expecting instant results, however. I’ve also got a whole lot of deadlines coming to a peak over the next few weeks (some of which involve actually getting paid for my work), I’m learning the Reviews Ed. ropes for Interzone, and I have to start reading up for the SF Foundation Masterclass next month … which is a roundabout way of saying that blogging may be a little skinny here at VCTB for a little while. Then again, I’ve said that before, and not really cut back much at all, so who knows! But I thought it only polite to mention it.

Hope you’re all getting done the things that you need doing!

If this post is supposed to be doing what I think it’s supposed to be doing, then it should be ranked as one of the finest and most subtle blog posts of the year. Even if it’s not doing what I think it’s doing, it’s still a clever piece of work and well worth the fifteen or so minutes it’ll take to read it. So, go do so.