Well, you know musicians and their propensity for keerrrrrrazy highjinx. Somehow last Sunday (for reasons now forgotten) my bandmate Phil ended up playing some evolving little riff for about ten minutes with a tote bag^[1] on his head.

I’d like to be able to claim we were using some Eno-esque oblique strategies to come up with new ideas, but it would be more honest to confess we were mostly just mucking around…

Writing about music

We’re nearly back up to full throttle at TDP, so I’ve been writing more reviews. This year so far has seen an unprecedented number of submissions from unsigned bands, which is excellent – people getting off their arses instead of waiting for a label to come knocking is great news. However, some of them would be much better off working on their music beforehand…

Those of you among the Twitterati may have noticed that I’m now contributing #SoundBytes – 140-character album reviews – to Outshine, Jetse De Vries‘ Tweetmag. This is, incidentally, my first pro (and paid!) column of any sort, so I’m rather chuffed about it! My reviews go out every Tuesday evening (European time), so do tune in.

Jetse has managed to convince no less a luminary than Lucius Shepard for the movie reviews column on the Thursday slot; that’s one hell of a name to share a masthead with, I reckon.

Album of the week

Nothing particularly award-worthy reviewed this week (though the best of the rest would be Chickenhawk‘s eponymous début of stoner-spazzcore), so I’m going to recommend an old favourite in the form of Devin Townsend‘s Terria, one of the man’s more thoughtful solo side-project efforts. Because, sometimes, all you need is a bipolar be-skulleted Canadian guitar wizard.

Townsend seems to be one of those artists you either love or hate; I’m happy to fit into the former camp, having seen him perform live both as himself (i.e. fronting The Devin Townsend Band) and as frontman for the ridiculously heavy and unhinged Strapping Young Lad. If you’re into metal and you’ve not tried his stuff before, follow those links to Last FM and have a listen. I defy you to be indifferent.

Writing about books

Ah, the magic of procrastination! Having reached a particularly tricky bit of my Mind Over Ship review, I engaged the displacement engines and battered out a little review of Ehsin Masood’s Science & Islam, a History. In summary: decent little introductory text to a subject that’s much bigger than you may realise.

A little breathing space in the reading schedule has seen me start off on Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky. Enjoying it so far, though Kenyon moves POV in mid-scene from time to time – although it’s always clearly signposted, it’s not a style I encounter often, and as such it can be a bit jarring. But so far it’s a strong story with a good premise, blending a sort of Greg Bear meets Greg Egan sf future with a science fantasy world set in the dimension next door; promises to get more interesting very quickly.

Freelance

The first fortnight of freelancing has been staggeringly unglamorous, largely involving clearing down a backlog of administrivia and catching up on daily tasks disrupted by my jaunt Northwards last week. But things are limbering up, and the daily schedule is starting to look a lot more manageable as I whittle away at it all. Now, if I could just mend my sleep-deprived^[2] bodyclock and get up at the same time every morning, I’d be rocking in the free world…

Now there’s a bit of temporal space, I can start on a few of those ‘someday soon’ tasks that have been sat in my Remember The Milk inbox for months… things like skinning my portfolio site and making it something more than a newly-installed honey-jar for spam-bots, f’rinstance.

Futurismic

I’m pretty happy with things at Futurismic at the moment. The increase in output over the last few weeks (facilitated by a new approach to pre-planning posts the day before) is showing traffic dividends already, which is great news.

My interview with Bruce Sterling went up to much less fanfare than I had hoped, but seems to have been well-received by those who read it. It’ll still stand out as a golden fanboy moment for me, though… at least until the day I get to meet Sterling in person^[3].

We’ve got a new story in the purchase process, too; another sober piece, but one I think folk are going to like, so keep ‘em peeled. In the meantime, Marissa Lingen‘s “Erasing the Map” is short, smart and thought-provoking, so why not take a ten-minute break and read it now, eh?

Creative writing

Oooh, look, a new FPB section! As much to keep myself informed as for the benefit of you lot, I figure I’ll keep a vague record of my non-work related writing output here as well. And as such I can report that, while story writing has not yet been achieved (thanks to the aforementioned bodyclock wreckage), I’ve probably written more poetry in the last month than I did in the preceding year. That’s not to say it’s good poetry, of course, but it feels nice to get the engines turning again, and it comes a little easier every time.

I’m wondering how much it has helped that I restarted journalling at the beginning of the year – just scribbling down an account of the day in a Moleskine before I go to sleep. It seems to have the effect of making me remember the ephemera of things a little more clearly, and enables me to map my thinking-over-time a little better.

That said, it’s all banal so far (with occasional flashes where something grabs my mind and runs off with the pen); the downside is it can reveal just how much of your time you spend doing effectively nothing. Hmm. The unexamined life, and all that.

Books and magazines seen

Another mailout from the BSFA appeared last week, including the first issue of Vector not to feature a review by me for quite some time, if memory serves. Still plenty of other good stuff in there, though, most of which (along with Focus) I have yet to read the bulk of.

The last fortnight has seen the arrival of the mass-market paperback of Iain M Banks’ Matter (bringing my total to four different editions, only the promo ARC of which has actually been read), and the final bound ARC version of Toby Litt‘s generation ship story Journey Into Space (no, I still haven’t gotten round to the spiral-bound galley they sent a while back; it’s in the TBR queue).

Genuinely new titles appearing in the last fortnight include the arrival of a new title from Icon Books (literally the day after the Science & Islam review, which felt a little spooky). This one’s a lot more beefy – Atomic: the First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-49 by Jim Baggott.

Looks fascinating; also looks immense (550 pages plus, medium font). So many books, so little time… a sentiment that applies equally to this week’s other new arrival in the form of a limited edition (#204 of 555) ARC of China Mieville‘s new title, The City & The City:

You can all be jealous now. The time will be found to read that book very soon, I can assure you.

Coda

So, yeah; a busy fortnight that included a four-day jag to Manchester by train (miraculously avoiding any snow-based snarl-ups), the ordering of a kick-arse new computer (which has yet to arrive – guessing on Monday) and purchasing of a second-hand Wacom Bamboo tablet (cheers, Jasper), one pub quiz, two band rehearsals, one live gig (The Confederate Dead at The Cellars in Eastney; one of our better local bands), a lot of hours at the keyboard, and a distinct lack of opportunity to sit and panic about the future. Which strikes me as a pretty decent start to this whole freelance malarkey… though it is only a start, and I need to be building up momentum sooner rather than later. Onward and upwards, eh?

Anyway, the weekend’s here and I’ve got stuff to do – and I’ll bet you have, as well. So let’s bid each other a good weekend and get to it, shall we? Yeah, why not!

Take care, folks.

[ ¹ - The tote bag in question is used by our bassplayer to carry his pedal board. That's just how rock and roll we are, yo. ]

[ ² - The ongoing upstairs neighbour issues are, er, ongoing. ]

[ ³ - This will no doubt be a horrible melange of fawning and gibbering on my part, despite my hopes that I'd be calm, erudite and incisive. Looking at how Sterling made my emailed questions sound naive without even trying to, however, I can confidently predict that, face-to-face, he'll make me seem (and feel) about two foot tall should the opportunity ever arise. ]

Yeah, so I’ve used this one before, but it’s appropriate and a favourite, so nyar.

Why a slippery slope? Because I just cut my connections to the world of conventional employment; as of 4pm today, I am a full-time self-employed freelance. The slippery slope could be to self-determination and contentment; it could be to penury and the lamentation of my own hubris.

It’s up to me to make sure it’s the former.

Writing about music

Things are starting to pick up at TDP once again, with four reviews published this week. I’ve got another new writer on board (who handled the Architects album review, and who should be working away on a report from their live show this Tuesday just gone), adding to the cadre and providing me a specialist who is more likely to grok some of the more extreme and cutting edge forms of metal than myself. Which means he’ll be the one to endure the illiterate abuse of teenagers who’ve just seen someone call their favourite band generic or average…

Album of the week

No contest this time out; Old Money by Omar Rodríguez-López (the guitarist chap with the big mop of helmet-hair from The Mars Volta) is pretty much everything you’d expect. A mental mish-mash of high-paced prog weirdness, and no guitar tone left un-effected – put on your seatbelt before listening.

Writing about books

Regular readers will have noticed the first of my ‘reading journal’ entries earlier in the week, and I have notes on Interzone #220 to turn into another one sometime soon. No ‘proper’ reviewing has been committed this week, though I shall be taking a concerted leap into the Mind Over Ship piece over the weekend.

Futurismic

It’s been a busy and successful week over at the Big F. Two items got a link back from the Double-Boing (although, typically enough, they were the posts that I threw in as flippant filler; I’m evidently a poor judge of audience interest), and The Adam Roberts Project’s first headline appearance has generated a brisk comments thread and plenty of interest from elsewhere. These sort of things make a webzine editor a happy person^[1].

Freelance

So, yeah, this is where it’s all at now. Sailing the seas of self-employment, a one-man privateer with a letter of marque and a whole bunch of over-extended metaphors… or something like that, anyway.

Now the moment is actually here, I feel kind of strange – part terrified, part Zen-master calm. I’ve thrown myself into the maelstrom; now all I have to do is learn how to swim without floats, and from there it’s a short (hah!) step to surfing with the finesse and élan of a buff and tousled Aussie beach-bum.

Yeah, so, these metaphors: I haz dem. My mind’s in an odd place right now. Good, but odd.

But hey, The Big Project finally went live, as announced earlier today! Plus people have lots of work for me to do, of varying types. It’s rather a relief to now have the time to think about doing them. It will be more of a relief when yet more requests come in further down the line; the eternal hustle starts now^[2].

Books and magazines seen

Another blank week on the new books front. Not a bad thing, but still somehow disappointing. Maybe I like the attention; it’s nice when the postman actually has to speak to you. Nice for me, anyway; the postie always looks a bit discomforted^[3].

Coda

So, this week’s coda is not just the coda to a seven-day passage, but to a nearly-two-year composition, and marks the end of one suite at the same time as ushering in another… (See? Metaphors. Beyond my control right now, I’m telling you.)

People keep asking me how it feels, and I really don’t have an answer. Liberating but petrifying is about as close as I can get to summarising it. After years of saying “yeah, that’d be cool, I should do that sometime”, I’m actually doing something about chasing my dreams. So all you lot get to watch the highs and lows of some guy biting off more than he can chew… or (more hopefully) mumbling around a big but manageable mouthful for a while. I hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

Anyway, I think I’ve earned myself a Friday Curry; hell knows I may not be able to afford one for a while to come, so I might as well give the world of employment a decent send-off.

I hope you all have a great weekend, too. Peace…

[ ¹ - Unlike anonymous emails from people saying "I expect you're going to gloat over Realms of Fantasy shutting down, because you're a c*nt", which are incredibly depressing. And completely real, too. ]

[ ² - Feel free to plug me to anyone you know, loyal readers. I'm not proud. At least, not in that respect. ]

[ ³ - It's his own fault; if he turned up a bit after 6:30am, I'd probably answer the door wearing more than a towel. ]

Bit of a confusing title, no? But it’s about the only way to sum up what’s happening in the images below:

For them what knows Velcro City, that’s the outside of Parmiter’s on Albert Road. For them blessed ones what don’t know, this is what passes for high humour in this town, and hence merits being recorded by the medium of digital light capture. Yes indeed.

Writing about music

Easing back into the reviewing schedule, and sent out the first few outsourced titles of the year last weekend, so TDP is gradually ramping back up to deliver solid critical justice to the world of rock music for the year 2009.

Also, I may accidentally have found a new recruit who can not only write reviews but take awesome photographs. Woo-hoo for serendipity – the internet is a wonderful thing!

Album of the week

Well, it’s an easy decision as I’ve only written a review for one new CD this last week (though another is half-done in note form). But even so, I suspect Tundra by Enablers would still have made a strong showing in a busier week; post-rock meets spoken word in the great desolate outdoors… with whiskey and paranoia. Think of a more southerly Slint. Good stuff, though pretty dark in places.

Writing about books

Well, the Mind Over Ship review is maybe half-done^[1], but I found out that I have a month longer to finish it than I thought. This is excellent news in some respects, as it means I don’t have to squeeze it in to the coming week, which promises to be pretty insane. It’s also bad news, as my mind has now flagged it as ‘priority: non-immediate’, which means the odds of me adding to it within the next seven days are very low. Selah.

I’ve been reading about philosophy and literary theory this last week, and my brain’s a bit tired of it, so it’s time to switch to fiction for a while. And as I have no pressing review titles in the fiction pile, that means I might be able to choose one that I (gasp!) just fancy reading for its own sake. What a weird idea…

Freelance

This week’s freelance output feels like it has chiefly been expended in emails and administrivia. The trouble with the digital paper-pushing side of the gig is that when you do a huge amount of it in a short space of time, it still feels like you got virtually nothing worth doing accomplished. Not exactly a motivating sensation; the lesson here is for me to keep on top of this stuff on a day-to-day basis as far as possible.

Futurismic

All is well over at Futurismic, with the exception of some unexplained server slowness (not my fault this time!) and the ongoing screwedness of the Feedburner stats (which, as some cold comfort, appears to be bothering a lot of other people besides myself).

I’m in the process of sealing the deal on next month’s story, and next week sees a new column by an eminent figure of science fiction writing and criticism… an introduction will appear over the weekend, so keep an eye open, won’t you?

Books and magazines seen

None, nada, zip, zero, zilch. Given the rapid influx of music for review^[2], though, that’s probably no bad thing!

Coda

Well, I got my leaving date on Tuesday – as of publication of this here post, I have five days of employment remaining! They’ve decided that there’s no need to keep me on for a transitional period, and so I’m a free agent as of the start of February.

Having that knowledge – and knowing how close it is – has made the whole thing a lot more real, and hence a lot more scary. But it’s a good kind of scary; the sort of scary that you got when you were about to jump out of a tall tree or off a large wall when you were little. Maybe it’s like the feeling you get just before leaping through the door to do your first parachute jump… but as I’ve yet to have the pleasure of that experience, I can only approximate it. Selah.

Still, as mentioned above this week has been pretty relentless, and filled principally with the sort of work that is little fun to do. So it’s a relief to be here at the gates of the weekend, with a clear run at tackling some bigger things over the weekend before hunkering down to my final week of working for The Man. w00t!

But on that note, I have things to finish up before I can relax this evening, so I hope you’ll excuse me getting the hell on with them. Have a great weekend yourselves.

[ ¹ - or half-written, at least; the paring away of excess flesh will be a lengthy operation subsequent to the initial full draft. ]

[ ² - not to mention the imposing Ballardian architecture of the ever-growing TBR pile. ]

I’ve got a vague obsession with industrial and/or safety signage; having passed this one a number of times on my way to and from work recently^[1] I thought I’d grab a snap because, taken out of context (say, by an alien who couldn’t read the words and didn’t culturally associate green with safety), it could be quite sinister.

Imagine that the label read ‘extermination point’. See what I mean? Sinister.

Yeah, OK, so I’ve been working a lot this week.

Writing about music

Still very little action on the music reviewing front, as there’s still a few weeks before the promos on my shelves are due for release and I’ve been taking advantage of the slack in my schedule to do other stuff. Next week, however, we’re back in action.

It’s very interesting to note that since the beginning of this year I’ve had more review requests from obscure or unsigned bands through The Dreaded Press‘s contact form than I did in the whole of last year: eight already, compared to three in twelve months. The times – and the industry – are a-changin’.

Speaking of music reviews – it looks like I may be starting to write for a rather different and unexpected venue some time in the near future. More news at eleven…

Album of the week

No fresh material to plug this week, so I’ll mention that I’ve been rinsing Saturnalia by The Gutter Twins in the last week or so. I got a copy last year and liked it well enough, but it’s not until you really get to know it that you realise how staggeringly awesome it is. Mark Lanegan’s vocals and lyrics are always a winner, but the addition of Greg Dulli’s wailing angst is simply inspired. Moody, dark but strangely redemptive – thoroughly recommended.

Writing about books

Nothing complete, but the assemblage and collation of notes, post-its and scribblings on Mind Over Ship is proceding slowly but steadily; I intend to get the bulk of it done this weekend, during the course of which I hope an underlying theme for the review will emerge…

Freelance

As announced earlier in the week, Alex Bell’s new website – or The Project Formerly Known As t’Other Project – is now up and running, and I’m very chuffed with it indeed (as is its owner).

The Big Project is still on hold pending customer input, but lots of little things have popped up to keep me busy in the last few days^[2], and there appears to be a raft of new work looming on the horizon, too. Which means it would be really helpful if I could actually get a solid termination date at the day job… just sayin’.

Starting to put some new plans in action over at PS Publishing, too, the most visible and interesting of which should be our new monthly competition in which you can win free special edition books. How do you enter? You just have to sign up for the newsletter emailing list; easy as that. Go take a look!

Futurismic

Last week’s hosting woes appear to have been successfully cured by the caching plugin, so that’s one major worry (and potential expense) out of the way.

Gareth L Powell‘s guest-post series on marketing has aroused a little polite ire, but rather less than I expected it to; whether that’s a good thing or not, I remain undecided. I think I was hoping for a little more lively debate on the matter, but I can only assume that no one has ever felt quite as patronised by an F&SF renewal notice as I have^[3]. Selah.

Oh, and it looks like we’ve just decided on February’s piece of fiction, too! So it’s all go, especially with my efforts to double my blogging output over there; do let me know what you think, if you’re following along.

Books and magazines seen

A good haul this week. First, magazines – we have poetry from Obsessed With Pipework, and what has to be the most deliciously-covered Interzone I’ve ever seen:

I know that’s hardly an original statement at the moment, but the fact that so many people have pointed it out as an outstanding art/design combo has got to be a positive sign. I wonder how much of it is down to the layout breaking out of the usual vertical grid, and how much to the artwork itself? Whichever – it’s a stunner, and there are stories by three friends and one hero on the ToC. Can’t ask for much more than that.

And now, books. True to their word, Pyr have sent me the first and second volumes (Bright of the Sky and A World Too Near) of Kay Kenyon‘s The Entire and the Rose series to fill in the gap in front of the third volume that I got before The Holiday Season.

So now I have a whole trilogy to add to my “oooh, I would really like to get on and read that” pile^[4]… as mentioned before, that concrete day-job termination date would be a very comforting thing to have right now. *sigh*

Props where props is due, though – Pyr make handsome books with a consistency that a lot of their bigger rivals can’t seem to manage.

Coda

A hectic but productive week, all said; didn’t quite meet all my targets and goals, but I got pretty close and I’m pleased about that. Onwards and upwards, and all that.

As mentioned before, I spent most of last weekend seeing an old friend, which was a lot of fun. In the name of honesty I should confess that I had a couple of glasses of wine as a result – which put a minor ding in my teetotality pledge for the year – but it was a special occasion, and I’ve not had any alcohol since (despite going down to what was possibly the most anarchic pub quiz ever presented on Wednesday night).

And here we are at the end of the cycle again, which means it’s high time I got myself something to eat before cracking on with the handful of tasks I need to have done before I can relax for the evening. So, on that note, I’ll wish you all a good weekend – take care, folks!

[ ¹ - I varied my route slightly to stave off ennui - walking can be a bit tedious, and I still haven't fixed the puncture on my bike. ]

[ ² - It feels like a sort of administrivia whack-a-mole game some days, to be honest. ]

[ ³ - Hey, phone-call from the fifties for ya - they want their marketing copy back? KTHXBAI ]

[ ⁴ - This pile is a subset of the "to be read" pile, which is sometimes more conveniently described as "my flat". ]

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce the launch of a completed project, namely the new website of fantasy author Alex Bell.

Alex seems very pleased with it, and so am I – it’s definitely the ‘prettiest’ site I’ve built yet (for values of ‘pretty’ where x = ‘kinda moody in a feminine mode’), which was partly due to having the fabulous Kustaa Saksi artwork to work from for the colour scheme.

Go take a look; all feedback is appreciated!

OK, so they’re only cameraphone jobs, but I actually took some photos this week. Here’s the nearly-complete oval tower thingy at Gunwharf, which I rather suspect the current economic climate will prevent from filling up as rapidly as the developers had hoped.

It’s unusually po-mo for Velcro City architecture (supposed to look like a ship’s funnel; see what they did there?). I miss the big crane that used to be stood next to it; I’ve always had a weird thing about cranes. Not a fascination, as such, just… I dunno, they make me think in odd ways. *shrug*

Writing about music

Still in the stages of getting the flywheel spinning at TDP; regular output restarts next week. As a result, there’s no album of the week, but the single I reviewed by History of Guns suggests they might be worth looking into if you like a bit of nasty industrial with goth overtones^[1].

Writing about books

No concrete output on the book reviews side of things, but I finished David Marusek‘s Mind Over Ship last night, so I have plenty to be getting on with. The problem is it’s such a complex novel that I have no idea where to start… but it’s a fabulous read, so there’s plenty to say. The challenge will be to make the review coherent, methinks.

Freelance

After Monday’s announcement, you can imagine it’s pretty much all go in this department, and you’d be about right. The Pretty Big Project is still on hold while the client finishes their side of things, but that means t’Other Pending Project is very near to completion indeed, and should see the light of day within the week.

Meanwhile, other enquiries and requests for work are coming in, and the day-job have announced that they’re still keen to have me build their website as a contractor once I’ve worked off my notice. This is all very good news indeed. Thanks to everyone for all the well-wishing, be it here, on Facebook and Twitter or even in meatspace. Your confidence in me is scary and inspiring at once.

Futurismic

Not such great news on the Futurismic front, sadly. Oh, there’s been nothing wrong with the site content – Mark Ward’s “Roots” is our first story of the year, Jonathan delivered what I’d happily describe as his best Blasphemous Geometries column so far, and I’ve been knocking out quite a bit of bloggage this week – but the dreaded spectre of hosting problems reared its ugly head once again.

[ Non-geeks - skip this next bit. SRSLY. ]

An email from my hosting provider yesterday afternoon told me that Futurismic was spiking the CPU usage on its shared server up to 80% peaks with a single PHP script. Now, I know WordPress is a notorious CPU hog, but this just doesn’t compute: Futurismic currently gets less than 1,000 uniques a day, and the 1,800-odd RSS readers all collect through Feedburner, which means there’s no PHP load from there.

I’ve now removed one spam-trapper and installed a caching plugin, but the latter is supposed to help sites with 10k daily uniques survive a Digg rush without falling over, not sites an order of magnitude smaller from simply handling normal search engine traffic. It’s not like there’s even that heavy a load of plugins calling the database… sheesh, I dunno.

Anyway, trimmed loads of stuff back, and they’ve reinstated the site to its normal server, so hopefully that’ll be the end of the matter for a good long while. That said, I’m looking around for other alternatives so I’m prepared for the worst… I may just have to bite the bullet and go VPS or dedicated for Futurismic, as uptime there is mission-critical. Selah – the fun begins! That was four hours of my life I’ll never get back.

[ OK, you can look again. ]

Books and magazines seen

I got all excited about a big box of stuff from Orbit, but it all turned out to be Stuff I’m Not Into (as is so often the way of things). However, a rather spiffy non-fiction number has appeared – Ehsan Masood’s Science and Islam: A History.

It’s the book that accompanies the BBC series of the same name, apparently, and looks to be very interesting indeed. The best thing about the day-job has been the interest in history it rekindled in me, and the confluence of science and religion with history is always a winning combination – one of the reasons I enjoy histories of philosophy, despite struggling with a lot of the works of the philosophers themselves. The chain of human thought is much easier understood as a narrative rather than discreet snapshots… or it is for me, at any rate.

Coda

So there we go; first full week of the new year, and it’s been as hectic as all hell. It’s also featured a head-cold which is now mostly shifted, but which added a layer of challenge to the first half of the week.

Still, proud to say I’ve been free of booze’n'fags since New Years, and with the exception of yesterday’s webhosting debacle (stressful events beyond my control are always the worst, for some reason) I’ve not really missed ‘em either – this is a good sign. Sadly, the money I might have saved in the process has been spent on Sudafed, Lockets, fluorescent tubes and a new light-switch for my kitchen; at least frugality gives one the flexibility to respond to disasters, eh?

Still, it’s flippin’ Friday, and I’m almost done. I’m seeing an old friend and popping out for a meal this evening, so I’m a mere hour or so from the uncanny experience of relaxing for a while… I hope you all find a similar segment of calm over the weekend. Take care!

[ ¹ - Anyone who creates a song entitled "Vernon Kaye Must Die" deserves some sort of award, IMHO. Though it's a bit of crap tune by comparison to the more recent stuff. ]

OK, so I can at long last officially announce what a few of you have known for a while (and some more of you have guessed). Today I went in to my day-job and gave them my notice to terminate my employment with them as of 1st February 2009. From that date onward, I will be a full-time freelance.

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m quite insane; hell knows I’ve thought it a number of times in the last few months as I’ve considered my options, and the economic outlook at a global scale hasn’t helped dispel that feeling. Leaving the safety of a regular (and very enjoyable) job for the white-water rapids of full self-employment? And doing so at the gates of what is being described as the biggest recession in nearly a century? I must need my head examined.

And yet… and yet. The last three months have been progressively more crazy; as more work has arrived, I’ve run up against the one limit I can’t hack or work around – the limit of hours in each day. Sure, it’s nice to be earning more than you need, but you can miss having a life beyond it. Something had to give.

So I’ve put in my notice – which was rather tough to do, considering I only found out today that our director died of cancer over the holidays – and I’m making the mad leap. This is why I’m not drinking this year: I need to be financially flexible, I need to be healthy, and I need to be productive. I’ve done my budgeting; it’ll be tight at first, but I can survive if I cut back on crap I don’t need.

And what I’ll lose in income I’ll gain in time – time to create, time to enjoy. I want to be able to play guitar every day without watching the clock; I want to be able to write for an hour a day without staying up an hour later than I should to do so; I want to be able to read books for my own satisfaction, as well as for review.

So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to work, and create, and think. I’m going to pare away the junk and clutter in my life and in my head; I’m going to Viridianise myself. I’m going to stop dreaming about the life I’ve always wanted, and I’m going to chase it down with a big pointy stick.

So, welcome to my new life. Doesn’t look too different right now, does it? But who knows what’s just around the corner…

Thanks for listening.

PS – Many thanks also to all the people who’ve said supportive, encouraging or – in some cases – derogatory things (yes, that means you, Norris), or who’ve sent me work or helped me learn stuff. I owe you one, so make sure you call it in some day.

[image courtesy Dazzie D]

Gah, curse this miserable season. The few moments of sunshine there have been this week have occurred when I have, perforce, had to be indoors. As a consequence I’m grumpy and my bodyclock is still wrecked… and I’ve not been out taking photos.

So here’s a group portrait of Aeroplane Attack, the band in which I make loud squalling noises with a guitar, as taken by our drummer Rusty Sheriff.

That Converse sponsorship deal^[1] is really working out well, despite Rusty’s insistence on rocking the Adidas. As an additional bonus, here’s the equipment with which I make the aforementioned noises:

Lovely. The temptation to deploy the thing at full volume at home in recent weeks has been difficult to suppress. Lucky for my neighbours that I’m a nice bloke at heart, eh?

Writing about music

The TDP slow-down has become a full stop, near as dammit. Waiting for a review from a friend to post early next week, and then I shall be putting up the webzine equivalent of the “Gone Fishing” sign for a week or so.

Album of the week

Not that there’s many to choose from, this week’s top pick is Satya by My Sleeping Karma. Buddha-flavoured psychedelic/stoner space-rock; music for, ah, sitting still to. Yes.

Writing about books

No sustained reviewing has been committed this week, though I’ve been taking notes on Melko‘s Singularity’s Ring (which I finished last night, as it happens).

Freelance

The Pretty Big Project still awaits some final choices and finishing, so that’s on the simmer ring for now; T’other Project is proceeding slower than I’d like, principally because my brain is so damned slow at the moment that I can’t concentrate on anything properly and keep making a lot of silly mistakes as a result. Still, getting there slowly.

Lots of other little updates for other clients, too; it’s that time of year, I guess.

PS Publishing

I expect you’ve probably noticed the announcements over at PS Publishing regarding some of our plans for the company’s tenth anniversary, but I might just mention there’s more where that came from. Keep watching the skies!

Futurismic

Also having a bit of an unintentional slow-down over at Futurismic at the moment, partly because it’s a struggle to find anything genuinely newsworthy in amongst the OMG Ten Best [X]!!1 lists and silly season stories. But so it goes.

Books and magazines seen

Just the one incoming title of note this week, namely an ARC of Mind Over Ship by David Marusek.

I went totally doolally over Marusek’s début novel Counting Heads when it came out, so I begged and pleaded with Niall to let me take this one on for Strange Horizons; Niall evidently can’t stand to witness a (theoretically) grown man debase himself in such a manner, so he caved in and got it sent over from the States. w00t!

Coda

Ludicrous how fast the week has passed, especially when compared to the productivity levels achieved… I suspect I’m partly ursine in origin, which would explain my imperative desire to curl up somewhere warm in early October and sleep through until mid-March, at which point to wake up and raise merry and energetic hell with the world in general. I have yet to find an employer sympathetic to this particular lifestyle pattern, however. Selah – at least you are spared my verbosity by the gloom, eh?

But here we are: it’s Friday, and The Allegedly Festive Season is next week. This year is almost done, and it feels like I only just started it! Still, it’s all just arbitrary temporal markers, innit? Now, I need to get some food going on before cracking on with some work… have a great weekend, girls and boys. Hasta luego!

[ ¹ - No, we're not actually sponsored by Converse. But we'd quite like to be sponsored by Mosrite, Electro Harmonix and Devi Ever. Just so you know, like. ]

Haven’t been out with the camera, so no new snaps. Hence digging in the Mexico crates again; I may even have used this one in FPB before. Frankly I’m that tired that I don’t really give a damn. So: ruined columns at Chichen Itza, Mexico.

Lovely. If I was there now it would be warm. I would also not be living downstairs from a mentally unstable man who is currently (quite unintentionally) wrecking my bodyclock and making my life an unliveable catalogue of tension and misery. It’s been a long week; signs suggest it will be an even longer month.

Rant over.

Writing about music

The TDP slowdown is almost complete; I have a scant handful albums waiting to be reviewed, and most of those have January release dates. This is a good thing.

Album of the week

This week’s favourite wasn’t reviewed by me, but I took a copy of it before sending it off to Duncan, and I’m very glad I did. So, if you fancy a vaguely Anglicised tongue-in-cheek adaptation of late-career Kyuss with additional slide guitar and a vague obsession with amphibians, you’ll want to be checking out 2 by The Kings of Frog Island. Terrible name, great band.

Writing about books

No, not really; spare time in which I’ve had the ability to concentrate has not been forthcoming, thanks to the aforementioned environmental conditions. I have, however, been reading some books; this is progress of a sort.

Freelance

Lots of little jobs this week, various adjustments or additions or uploads for various client sites. Nothing very exciting, but hey – it’s all billable stuff.

The Pretty Big Project now awaits final aesthetics’n'features feedback before I add the final touches, but I’m hoping that’ll be done and dusted some time next week (all bar the inevitable and planned-for post-launch tweaks, natch).

Lack of time and mental coherence has prevented me from making as much progress on T’other Project this week, but I’m hopeful for good results from a lengthy work binge over the weekend.

Futurismic

Things are trundling on much as always over at Futurismic. The hot thread of the moment is probably Jonathan’s latest column about the successful marketing of sf-nal classics (or lack thereof), so feel free to pitch in if you’ve not already.

Books and magazines seen

The folks at Pyr have once again dispatched me an ARC over the waters; this time it’s Kay Kenyon‘s City Without End:

Never read anything by Kenyon before (except a few short stories), but I’ve seen people speak highly of her work. Have to see when we can squeeze this one in… though it’s the third of a trilogy, so maybe not the best place to start.

Coda

Yeah, so, this week has been pretty rubbish, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. Statistically speaking, next week should be better; it is rare that I’m as hopeful of finding truth in statistics as I am right now.

But enough – the weekend is here, and I have things to do. First and foremost among those things is the purchase and consumption of The Friday Curry; I shouldn’t have one really, but I need something to cheer me up a bit. Here’s hoping everyone’s weekend is better than the preceding week – take care, ladies and gents.

I’m running pretty short of Berlin photos that I’ve not shared already (cue sighs of relief all round), but having done little or no photography in the last few weeks I am obliged to rummage in the crates once again. So, how’s about some Moorish retro architecture in the form of Berlin’s Neue Synagoge?

It will probably come as no surprise that it’s not the original, but a close reproduction of the 19th Century building which was battered during the war and subsequently razed to the ground. If you walk along Oranienburgerstrasse after dark^[1], you’ll notice a quiet policeman on the street in front, in a little roped-off region.

If only my native country were so careful to dissuade people from remaking the mistakes of the past.

Writing about music

The Dreaded Press chunters along quite smoothly now thanks to my volunteer reviewers. As mentioned before, things are winding down for the season – only one album came in the post this week, where I would normally receive four or five – so I’ve got a chance to consolidate some headway over the holidays and think about new strategies for the site.

And maybe finally do that redesign which I’ve been meaning to do since I installed the current hackabout of a theme over a year ago…

Album of the week

I’m going to cheat by picking two albums, but as they’re from the same band and have just been reissued simultaneously, I figure that’s fair enough. The albums in question are Heaven’s End and Fade Out by proto-shoegaze noiseniks Loop; if you like raucous fuzz and saturated soundscapes, grab yourself a missing link from the history of the style.

Writing about books

Despite last week’s triumphant completion of the epic Steampunk review, I managed to crank out a review of Lou Anders‘ Fast Forward 2 anthology for Futurismic. It was quite an easy review to write in some respects, because there was something positive to say about almost every story. Apparently I’m the only person who ‘read’ Picacio’s cover art correctly… though I suspect a number of other people did, but simply decided not to mention it in their review.

There’s still a hefty backlog of books that I read months ago but still haven’t reviewed, and new titles in the queue, some with deadlines. Plus I’ve almost finished Nick Harkaways‘ The Gone-Away World, which I think will have to be written about simply by dint of being such a unique and interesting book (not to mention one I wish I’d gotten round to sooner). Thank goodness for upcoming holidays, eh?

Freelance

The basic engine and visual framework of The Pretty Big Project have been installed, and the client likes it very much. But they want me to do something with one of the subsections that I’m not entirely sure how to go about achieving… I think I have a solution, but it’s not going to be particularly elegant from the back-end. That’s Saturday’s job – some “suck it and see” code testing^[2].

Other freelance stuff is business as usual; lovely.

Futurismic

A new month means a new story at Futurismic – in this case the return of Jason Stoddard, putting his fiction where his mouth is and following his own Positive SF manifesto in “Willpower“. I really enjoyed it, and the comments so far (both on the page itself and at io9) seem to concur. I’d be interested in hearing any further opinions from VCTB regulars. Because you have all read it, right?

Books and magazines seen

A quiet week again – seems like the publishing industry is slowing down for the season, too. Then again, there could be a lot more reasons; my sympathies go out to anyone working in publishing at the moment, because I’ve experienced what it’s like to work in an industry where the axe is hovering over everyone. Here’s hoping things perk up sooner rather than later – for everyone, not just the publishers^[3].

So, this week’s only input is a long-awaited BSFA care package. Lots of good stuff in Vector this time, and a bumper reviews section (including my review of David Levy‘s Love and Sex with Robots). Some of the articles (not to mention the Elastic Press sampler) have already provoked some vigorous debate over at the BSFA forums; if you’re a member, be sure to drop in and share your thoughts.

Coda

I suppose it’s high time I gave some thought to what I’ll be doing over the Allegedly Festive Period, but I doubt it’ll be anything special. My mother’s visiting the south coast this year, so I’ll not be trekking to Yorkshire in the mobile purgatory of the National Express network again… *shudder*

Still, there’s time remaining for planning^[4]. In the meantime, the weekend has arrived, so I’d better make myself some food and get cracking with the free fiction round-up at Futurismic, hadn’t I? Have a great weekend yourselves, as best you’re able. Auf weidersehn!

[ ¹ - There are many good reasons to do this; great bars and restaurants, for example, in addition to many architectural marvels like the above. You might initially be as confused as I was by the preponderance of young ladies whose fashion sense seems to be grounded in the props department of a studio that made eighties hair-metal videos. It wasn't until one of them engaged me in conversation that I realised she wasn't waiting for a friend at all. Not a *specific* friend, anyway. ]

[ ² - Based on prior experience, that's about six hours of the day accounted for... ]

[ ³ - That said, I'm pretty alarmed by this slew of interest rate drops and tax breaks that are being announced over here in the UK. Are the Government postponing the inevitable, or simply spreading it out thinner over a longer period? Or are they making like Jack Bauer with a pair of wirecutters inside a device they don't fully understand? Guess we'll find out eventually, but I would feel a lot more secure had we buried our facile national nostalgia for the days of empire and joined the bloody Euro when we had the chance. ]

[ ⁴ - He said, with a confidence that might prove not to be borne out by events. ]