So, last week a rather sweet deal came up on my local music forum. Now, I wasn’t really in need of a new guitar, but as any other musician (even one as half-arsed as myself) will tell you, need isn’t a factor that enters into the equation where new instruments are concerned.

Bargain prices* and extreme sexiness are, however … so I am now the rather happy owner of this:

For those who like details, she’s a Fender John 5 Triple Tele Deluxe. The chrome is a bitch to keep clean (especially with my “rest the weight on your pinkie” right-hand technique), but she plays beautifully and kicks out a great signal. I have yet to name her.

Writing about music

Stop press: the oft-delayed Ginger Wildheart interview finally went through! Literally just half an hour ago, in fact.

It was a bit of a hoopla job - transatlantic mobile-to-mobile phone calls are no picnic, and the man himself was in the waiting room of a tattoo parlour (where else?) but I actually have ten minutes of audible recorded conversation! What a marathon - but well worth it, though.

Other than that, nothing untoward to report - off to Cancer Bats tomorrow with SCG and one of my bandmates from Aeroplane Attack, though.

Album of the week

Another strong week, so I’m going to call it a tie for the top spot and you can choose the one that sounds more up your street, so to speak.

You can choose between Heavy Zooo, a surreal adventure with German down-tuned stoner-doom duo Beehoover, or the simple honest small-town punk rock of Cardiff’s Bedford Falls, whose début Savings And Loan is best described as sounding like Sugar performing Alkaline Trio songs. Or maybe the other way around.

You can also choose both, if you like. I won’t mind.

Writing about books

I FINISHED THE DAMNED SEVERIAN OF THE GUILD PIECE!

The really astonishing thing is that once it was finished and sent off, this huge psychological weight was lifted off of my shoulders - I hadn’t realised how much of an albatross of frustration it had become for me.

It was hard work, though; the sort of book I could write a dissertation on and still not say everything I wanted to.**

The Implied Spaces review is chalked in for Sunday, as is a chunk of reading time. I’ve been very sloppy on my reading recently; the easy excuse is to say that I’ve not had much free time, but I’d imagine the lack of reading has something to do with my lack of inspiration when I sit down to write. Hmmm.

Whether that’s the case or not, I need to read more. I have review deadlines, if nothing else!

Freelance

Well, there’s plenty to keep me busy, that’s for certain. A regular flow of material through the PS Publishing Newsroom means that I should have little difficulty maintaining a regular schedule over there … which can be bolstered in future with my various cunning plans! Muah-hah-hah!

There’s web development work within clear sight, and a few other things looming on the horizon which may prove to be mirages but might well be solid ground. One thing’s for certain - I need to get myself a hosting reseller account sorted sooner rather than later.

And as if I didn’t have enough to do already, I’m trying to think of a good pitch for the Clarkesworld non-fiction section - though this is more as a speculative exercise on my part rather than something I have decided I should actually commit to doing.

Futurismic

Business pretty much as usual over on Futurismic; I’m just getting our fiction buying contract looked over before sending it off to the first author we’re buying from with me at the helm.

Definitely going to take on more staff over there, though, as I’m struggling in the absence of two of my regular crew. So, let me reiterate the call:

If you think you’d be interested in blogging at Futurismic on a regular basis, please drop me a note using the Futurismic Contact page and let me know why you’d be good for the site.

Cheers!

Books and magazines seen

Big old batch of Orbit stuff today, including some fantasy stuff for my mother and yet another vampire-shagger from the queen of the vampire-shaggers (who must at least be admired for her prodigious output rate, if nothing else).

The only one that caught my sf-nal eye was Sean Williams‘ Astropolis 1: Saturn Returns:

The other arrival this week was the OMG-controversial ‘mundane’ issue of Interzone:

I’m curious to see if it will generate enough blogospheric hot air to raise the entire genre scene, Montgolfier-fashion, into the sky for a short period of time.

I just don’t understand why people get so upset about it. I mean, I understand the differences of opinion that lead to the upset, but all the wailing and gnashing of teeth … come on people, save it for Michael Crichton, FFS.

Coda

Well, what happened to summer? Three glorious days of sun, and now it’s all murky and overcast. I’m consoling myself with the thought that perhaps it’s a sign, and that Portsmouth will lose tomorrow, thus sparing me twelve months of PEOPLE BEING UNABLE TO SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT FOOTBALL***.

Still, feeling a bit more on top of things this week, with the exception of my fiction writing. Progress, it seems, is being made on most fronts, and there’s not much more one can ask for, really****.

But as for now I have things to be getting on with so that I can be out of town before the crowds tomorrow … which means that I’d best high-tail it down the road and fetch the Friday Curry For Valour And Great Justice right away!

Have yourselves a good weekend, ladies and gents. Hasta luego.

[ * Bought new earlier this year for around £600, cost me a little over £300. Zing! ]

[ ** That's not me volunteering to do so, however. I have many thoughts about The Book Of The New Sun, but I don't ever want to wade into them again on anyone else's time-scale but my own. ]

[ *** To be fair, they’ll carry on about the stupid game anyway, but the tedious way in which absolutely everything will be intimately related to the outcome of one particular ninety-minute interaction between twenty-two overpaid chumps and a pig’s bladder should they win will be almost unbearable. ]

[ **** Well, yes, of course there is; I mean things you can ask for and that you have some vague chance of actually receiving. ]

Postmodern life is a confusing experience; certainties are fleeting, if indeed they can said to exist at all. This may go some way to explaining the utility of maxims, mottoes and totemic utterances; the enduring (some might say increasing) ubiquity of prayer and of song.

When the maelstrom of meaning and identity becomes to much for me to bear, I repeat a short simple sentence, a sentence which revealed to me the one deep truth at the centre of all the shallow lies of life:

Mister Cheap is the cheapest.*

Writing about music

I seem to be having a run of bad luck with interviews of late; I was supposed to have a chat with Ginger Wildheart on Wednesday afternoon, but his phone was switched off. Hoping for a reschedule on that one … which will arguably be a reschedule of the one that went horribly wrong back in December. Rock’n'roll, kids!

Manic punk-metallers Cancer Bats are playing in Brighton next Saturday, so I’ll be heading along to that with fellow Fictioneer and Easterconner (and all-round top chap and good buddy) Shaun C Green.

I’ve heard great things about Cancer Bats’ live skillz0rz, so if you’re in the area why not drop by the show as well? It’s a matinee (midday till 4), so public transport will be fine.

Album of the Week

Hands down, no contest – the sludge-pop-stoner-rock of Meanderthal by Torche; if you like your music heavy and hook-laden with a side-salad of fun, this one’s for you.

Writing about books

[Please insert your own have-you-hired-a-parrot joke here. Suffice to say that I haven't managed my free time as well as I might have liked in the last week.]

Freelance

It’s been a busy week for me over at PS Publishing, with lots of fresh cover art to post on the blog as well as the production and delivery of my first e-bulletin newsletter thingy (which you should have received already if you are on the PS mailing list).

The learning curve isn’t too savage so far; the only shock to the system is another burden on my time management skills – which, as can be seen above, are still in need of the equivalent of a bodybuilding crash-course, which is exactly what they’re getting.

Maybe one day I’ll write one of those self-help books about time management for self-made businesspersons:

How I Made My Career And Learned To Prioritise By Taking On Way More Work Than Made Sense To Anyone!

Hell, I’d buy a book with that title.

Futurismic

We’re about to buy our first story with me as Ed-in-Chief at Futurismic, which means I have to get the contract and payment arrangements in place – tricky, but very exciting stuff!

It’s also high time I hired some new bloggers; one of the last batch has drifted away completely due to having things to do beyond the internet (hah! I mean, what’s that all about?), and the other two have real world commitments that mean they can’t post every day. I reckon I’ve got room for two or three more smart folk …

… so if you or someone you know might be interested in becoming one of the Futurismic blogging team, drop me a line via the Contact form on Futurismic itself. Cheers!

Books and magazines seen

The seemingly-perpetual F&SF subscription rolls relentlessly onward with the arrival of the June 2008 issue … which has one of the most uninspiring covers I’ve seen in a long while.

Held up against Murky Depths #4 (which slipped into the post-box mere minutes ago), I know which one I’d grab off the shelves first:

No new books this week, though a parcel is pending from Royal Mail** which I suspect may be my first care package from Pete at PS … boutique literary goodies await!

The Symposium

I took notes through the Gresham College “Science Fiction as a Literary Genre” symposium yesterday, which was an edifying event - as well as a chance to hang out with the critical wing of UK fandom. But thankfully Niall has a full report, which saves me the embarrassment of trying to make other people’s ideas more coherent by processing them through my own brain***.

[ Stop the press! This just in - Chris Roberson is jealous of us all for going, but makes some interesting points comparing Stephenson's talk to the recent Clay Shirky "cognitive surplus" presentation. Worth checking out. ]

Although arranged by Gresham College, the event was held at the Royal College Of Surgeons in a very posh part of London (suits and ties a-go-go). They have a skeletal sloth in the hallway, which made me think of playing AD&D with a rather irreverent DM:

Dinner afterwards with many lovely people who I hardly ever get to see in meatspace. I drank too much wine; put it this way, it’s a good thing I didn’t have to go to the day-job today, as I’ve been paying the price. But it was worth it; a great day out.

[fanboy]Oh, yeah – you know your ARC of the Subterranean Press reissue of Stephenson’s Snow Crash? Is it, er, signed by the author? Hmmmm? No?

BECAUSE MINE TOTALLY IS!!!1! [/fanboy]

Coda

And so it goes; I’ve had a two-day working week at the day-job, but I’ve not gained that safety margin on my to-do list I had hoped for. More discipline required, perhaps … after a concerted binge of just not doing anything but writing review for a day or two. I want a week’s headway; that’ll mean I’m able to get my weekends back to myself and restore that “work-life balance” thing people keep telling me about.

Speaking of discipline, a certain lady of note at the post-Symposium dinner last night recommended gym-work and weight lifting in response to last week’s exercise question; the lady in question can apparently bench-press a surprising mass.

As mentioned before, a public gym is pretty much out of the question for me, but I may take her advice and speak to someone whose job it is to answer such questions. Luckily my circle of friends includes a personal trainer****, saving me the embarrassment of phoning around until I find one who doesn’t intimidate me.

So, hopefully by this time next year I’ll be a slim well-organised freelance superhero! Or something like that … I’ll settle for a busy freelancer who still gets to have days off for Symposiums without having to panic about his schedule, and who can tuck into The Friday Curry without remorse thanks to a sensible moderate exercise regime.

And speaking of The Friday Curry … would you look at the time! Hasta luego, amigos.

And even though I was quite looking forward to scouring piles of junk for hidden gems, I can't get too upset about the withering away of an industry entirely predicated on misery. Sure, something else will replace it - but even so. ]

[ ** I couldn't pick it up from the depot because it doesn't have my name on it, only the ridiculous name of my domicile [[The Hall Of Mirrors]], so I have to settle for redelivery sometime tomorrow between 7am and midday … which, Sod’s Law states, will occur at 11:45am, with me having waited around the house unable to do my Saturday chores and shopping. Selah. ]

[ *** Like that's ever going to work; even my “what I've been up to” blog posts have footnotes. Oh, snap! ]

[ **** Guy in question has biceps bigger than my thighs. This isn't something I have any wish to emulate; I mention it merely for the OMFG factor. ]

So, the Clarke Award ceremony was the opening event of the Sci-Fi London film festival, which is why we had Darth Vader and an assortment of other Star Wars cosplay types hanging around as we made busy with chicken-on-a-stick and alarmingly strong (free) Russian lager:

Jokes were, naturally, plentiful.

‘Twas a fine night out, as I have mentioned already; when the podcast featuring myself and the good Professor Roberts being interviewed by Graham Sleight emerges, I’ll give it a listen and link to it provided I don’t sound too gormless.*

Writing about music

The Dreaded Press rattles on; CDs continue to arrive, reviews continue to be written. Every time I think I’ve managed to get well ahead of schedule something happens to knock me back again. It’s kinda Sisyphean … just with albums, and not a big stone.**

Album of the week

Another week with two strong contenders. HORSE the Band come very close with the Nintendo/metalcore mash-up of A Natural Death, but the prize goes to the fuzzy lo-fi LA pop of Nouns by No Age.

Writing about books

Hahhhahhahhahhha! Hah ha ha. Er.

So - none, then.

I know it’s a familiar refrain, but I’m scheduled to finish some reviews this weekend; the extra length of said weekend should hopefully make it more probable that I do so.

Freelance

Things are gearing up to cruise velocity for me with PS Publishing, which is good. There’s a lot to take in, and it’ll be a while before the routines settle for me, but I’m pretty confident I can get things running smoothly and then work on enhancements before too long. So, yay me!

Y’all are subscribed to the PS Newsroom feed, right? Of course you are!

Next on the agenda will be contacting my individual clients and working out the minutia of our working relationships … in other words, doing our best to minimise paperwork and other tedium on both sides. It’s all fun and games, this freelance stuff, y’know.

Books and magazines seen

The latest Obsessed With Pipework magazine arrived this week, as regular as the turn of the seasons. For high-quality home-grown contemporary poetry without the excess of middle-class angst and handwringing that can plague the form, this should be your first stop.

One fiction title, but it’s not genre - the Little Brown people*** have purloined my address from the Orbit gang and sent me James Miller’s Lost Boys. It looks intriguing, but I doubt I’ll find time for it any time soon.

And one non-fiction title from Prometheus Books: The Coming Convergence by Stanley Schmidt, which looks like it could be pretty interesting.

Again, the time caveat applies here, but I’m considering farming out Futurismic reviews to other people … if you’re interested, please drop me a line.

Out and about

Another literary engagement appears on the calendar next week in the form of a symposium at Gresham College featuring none other than Neal Stephenson as keynote speaker - “Science fiction as a literary genre”.

They’ve sent out proper paper invitations and everything! This promises to be a super day out in the Big Smoke, and a nice preliminary to the getting-ever-closer Masterclass2.0. Genre lit-crit FTW!

Mobile computing corner

So, I just have to take this opportunity to say how awesome my new Asus Eee PC is.

It’s totally freaking awesome.

It does everything I’ve ever needed a laptop to do, and is no bigger or heavier than a hardback book; it has no moving internal parts, and can thus survive being toted in a normal bag.

It’s small, it’s black, it’s pimped out with extra RAM and it’s running Ubuntu. I’m likely to go on about it for weeks to come, frankly. This is what mobile computing is all about … and seeing as how I can read PDF files on there quite easily, I think I’ve found my ebook solution.

So you can shove your iPhone in your pipe and smoke it, frankly … I sure hope that proprietary operating system tastes nice!

Oh, and if you’re thinking of getting one yourself, EfficientPC is the place to go for one all tricked out to your personal specifications. Good personal service and prices from a small ethical company. Recommended! I’ll be getting my next desktop from them too, I reckon.

Coda

Seven days done, yet again. This relentless acceleration shows little sign of abating, but that’s all good. To use an athletic metaphor, I think I’m getting past that pain barrier that running enthusiasts talk about - settling into my stride, as it were.

On the subject of athletics, though, some advice would be appreciated. By way of explanation, a snippet of dialogue between myself and Amiable Drunkard From Downstairs:

Me: Hey, man.

ADFD: Awroit, me old … gor, int you put on weight since you stopped smokin’, mush!

Me: Ha ha. Yes. THANKS, then.

Now, this coming from a man who is hard pressed to notice when he’s left the building without remembering to put a shirt on in the middle of winter suggests that my fears are quite correct - quitting smoking has lowed my metabolism, and I’m gathering some extra around the middle at a frightening rate.

I don’t eat badly; I cook for myself a lot, don’t eat a lot of meat, rarely get a takeaway more than once a week. My diet is not a problem (though I might want to look at aiming for smaller portions). No - what I have to face is that it’s time for me to get a proper exercise regime.

This is, quite frankly, a horrifying thought.

For an assortment of reasons (mostly psycho-social) I am pathologically allergic to all team and/or competition sports, and the thought of going to a gym is utterly repulsive. This narrows my options considerably.

So, what can I do? Your suggestions would be appreciated. Running doesn’t appeal, because it’s a dull thing to do in a city and takes too much time. Comments from Gareth P have made me consider swimming - something I was lucky enough to do a lot of as a child, thanks to living overseas in a hot country - but there must be more options. Please share!

Of course, the cessation of a certain weekly tradition would probably help curb my weight-gain, but as I said earlier in the year I’m not becoming a puritan. If I can’t balance eating food I enjoy with staying fairly healthy, then I’m afraid I’m going to opt for just becoming a fat bastard. I remain convinced, however, that compromise is more than possible.

And it is in that spirit of gastronomic endeavour that I shall venture forth to fetch the afore-mentioned Friday Curry Of Justice. Though I might ask them if they can make it a little drier than usual … every little helps, I guess.

So, have a good long weekend, folks - hasta luego!

[ * So, don't hold your breath. ]

[ ** I'm not immortal, either. But other than that, the similarities are uncanny. ]

[ *** How imperialist does that sound? lol ]

So, the boot took a turn on the other foot. As you may or may not already be aware, ILLUMINATIONS got reviewed over at The Fix Online. And while it’s far from universally lauding the work, the review does us all the highest courtesy possible - it takes us seriously.

My fellow authors all seem to have reached the same conclusion; the level of detail gone into more than mitigates any ego-bruising from the details themselves. It’s like being a martial arts neophyte given a thorough working over by the grand master of the dojo; painful, but extremely educational.

And Alvaro Zinos-Amaro pulled no punches, as is only proper. The reviews of my own stories mostly told me what I already knew, but I’m very happy to see that the ones that got the most respect were the ones I was most confident of. The duration of the FFF experiment thus far coincides with the duration of my career of actually finishing any fiction at all, and to have any of my material pass muster after so little time is more than I might have hoped for.

[ To be honest, I was far more embarrassed to read of the "numerous typographical mistakes afflicting this anthology". ]

So, as it’s fashionable among author types to air their negative reviews at the moment, here are the comments made by Mr Zinos-Amaro on my stories from ILLUMINATIONS, complete with links to the original pieces as published here on VCTB.

In “Alex in Hinterland,” the titular Alex spends time in the Hinterland on a talking, tangible Cloud, against the advice of his peers. What he discovers was not readily apparent to me, though I did get a sense of the story’s implications. The writing seemed somewhat diffuse and the piece as a whole not particularly sharply etched.

A vastly evolved emergent intelligence decides to baptize itself with the name “J” after the square root of negative one. I have no objection to hard SF density, but I’m not sure the profusion of technical terminology in this tale generated a convincing sense of what forces might be at work or helped to maintain the reader’s interest. This tale is weighed down by too much detail and a not particularly inspired ending to achieve what I think it sets out to.

When the Old Lady Evans passes away, the kids are finally able to steal into her house and discover what an “aristos” [sic] keeps for the purpose of entertainment, which may be nothing less than “The Last Bird.” I found the attention to detail and imagery engaging, and though the ending was predictable, the last sentence captured an ironic note that fit snugly within the emotional context of the piece.

In this parable of sorts, talking household appliances worry and fret about “The New Arrival.” This tale, consisting primarily of appliance banter, feels underwhelming, and the ending may be too smart for its own good.

The child narrator of “Daddy in [the] Stone” recounts a weekly Sunday visit to the family’s senescent, mentally frail father. This slice-of-life contains poignant observations and tactfully addresses a delicate but everyday subject. I wasn’t convinced by the narrating voice, which felt like an adult speaking as a child, but there’s enough worthwhile material here for me to recommend it nonetheless.

The young Fentus completes his initiation ceremony and learns some “Secrets of the Faith” shortly thereafter from one of the Order’s priests. The themes, dialogue, characters, and style in this tale offer nothing new, nor do the particulars of their combination. This is all retread material, and the last few sentences augment, rather than diminish, the effect of overall cliché.

The “Alien Abduction” at hand in this tale entails what one might expect. The unfortunate lack of anything new (including the ending) and less-than-stellar writing (for example, the repetitive use of “restrained” and “restraint” in consecutive paragraphs) will likely end up abducting the reader’s time and offer little in exchange.

James and Alex present an optimistic re-evaluation of “Sturgeon’s Law” and consider how it might apply to their “scavving”-based existences. I found the premise entertaining and the characters appropriately depicted for the dramatic purposes in play. As a result, the tale falls in the ten percent margin of Sturgeon’s Law for this reader.

The “physically disadvantaged” narrator of “Oh, For the Life of a Sailor!” joins the Navy, and his decision opens up an unexpected door into his future. Well-realized details help sustain the sense of plausibility in this implausible scenario, and the narrative rhythm helps move things along swiftly.

So there you go. It’s interesting that the subject of “Daddy in the Stone” was misinterpreted; the child’s father is meant to be a holographic recording in a gravestone, rather than a mentally frail shadow of his former self. There’s a lesson in itself; you don’t want to over-do the telling, but nor do you want to under-do it.

Overall, my takeaway points from this review have been twofold.

• Firstly, I need to write far more regularly and less hurriedly (which isn’t exactly news).
• Secondly, I don’t naturally lean toward the sort of story that makes a good flash piece (which isn’t exactly news either).

So, I think I’ll be focusing my efforts on longer pieces for the foreseeable future; I’ve proved to myself that I can finish stories worth reading, so now I think I need to write some that I consider to be worth sending out for publication. As my time is limited, that means I’m going to surrender time that I’d normally devote to meeting the weekly flash deadline in favour of making sure I knock out 500 words a day on something more substantial.

However, I’m hoping that once my authorial muscle is a little more developed through regular exercise, I’ll be better able to produce quality flash pieces on a regular basis as well as the more weighty work. Hell, maybe one day I will - Jay Lake-like - be able to seemingly toss the things off without a thought!*

In other words, I’m stepping back from the front line, but I’ll be back.

Oh, I still have some dead-tree copies of ILLUMINATIONS for sale, by the way … so if you’d like to secure a copy of this fine volume of super-short stories and simultaneously support the National Society for Prevention Of Cruelty to Children, please drop me a line!

[ * Note to Jay lake and anyone else - I know damn well he doesn't just toss them off effortlessly. It just looks that way because he's practiced like Sisyphus and nailed the process. The man's an inspiration. ]

Digging in the Flickr crates for photographs this week. Here’s part of the big war memorial on Velcro City Common; I may well have posted this image before, but it’s one for which I have a great lasting affection - it’s the wallpaper image on my mp3 player:

Normally I’d just grab the camera and get a photo of one of my plants or something. The main reason I didn’t is that my camera’s battery has completely exhausted itself, and I’d only just realised. Good job I didn’t have a gig to shoot, wot? Speaking of which …

Writing about music

A busy week, in that seven albums in my for-review stack are due out next week, so they all needed to be covered this week. Plus the live reviews from the Pilgrim Fathers show … phew!

Album of the Week [OMFG new FPB feature!1!!]

It’s a tough call on a strong week. Short Circular Walks In The Hope Valley by Pilgrim Fathers is excellent, but not quite as good as the live experience … I think it has to go to Body Language by Monotonix, which packs a lot of rock’n'roll fun into six short noisy songs.

Writing about books

No offence to my editors, but book reviewing has been relegated to a low echelon of priority this week. When things need to be put off, you put off the things that you can. In other words, the Wolfe essay remains unfinished.

In fact, now I come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve even read any fiction at all this week, except a brisk spool through a couple of potential slush survivors from the Futurismic stacks. That’s a simply horrifying thought.

Long-term readers will doubtless be unsurprised that I utterly missed the boat for the Baroque Cycle Challenge. I really quite fancied doing it, too, but life got in the way. Selah.

Futurismic

So, did you catch Jonathan’s first column at Futurismic about neuroaesthetics and book recommendations? Some interesting stuff there, all wrapped up in Jonathan’s inimitable curmudgeonly style.

Freelance

I managed to clear a huge lump of administrivia and filing over the weekend, which was probably the most daunting component of my newly-acquired portfolio of clients. I now have bookmarks and logins and passwords stored and backed up, and have a much better feel of the scope of things.

I’ve even done a few of my first jobs … mostly uploads of one sort or another, nothing major, but it feels good to be, y’know, working. Actually doing it. Yay!

Next on the agenda is to get deeper into the PS Publishing stuff. Watch this space!

Books and magazines seen

Nada, none, zilch, zero, zip. One of those weeks which, serendipitously, leaves me feeling less guilty about the looming height of my to-read pile, simply by merit of not making it grow any bigger.

Out and about

Hey, it’s the Arthur C Clarke Award ceremony next Wednesday … and yours truly has not only an invitation but a corresponding afternoon off from the day-job! w00t!

So, my scruffy self will be hob-nobbing with the sf-nal great’n'good, and (since the unblogged life is not worth living) Twittering live from the event, too*. Only one thing’s for certain … Brasyl is not going to win.

Do come and say hello if you’re there as well!

Coda

So, there you go - a week of catching up from a fortnight of complete bedlam. As is often the way, I find I can judge how stressed I was at a particular moment with the benefit of hindsight and a look through my notebooks … the last few weeks are not pretty ready, suffice to say!

Plus I now have a nice little cold sore developing. Damn things always appear once the stress is actually over and done with. Meh.

But enough of all this - I hunger. I hunger, in fact, in a manner that can only be satisfied by foodstuffs well-seasoned with cumin, chillies and cardamom. There is only one palliative for the hunger of the righteous - and that is The Friday Curry For Great Justice.

My friends, I bid you a good weekend. Hasta luego!

Set the controls for the heart of the stash! Here’s the keyboard guy of wig-out psych-rock space-cadets Pilgrim Fathers. He’s evidently not down with the whole “standing-up” thing:

T’was a good show on Wednesday night, with Pilgrim Fathers and the oh-so-controversial-no-really Gay For Johnny Depp* supporting the staggeringly good 65daysofstatic.

However, it seems that when I get sent to interview an act something bad happens to them - Pilgrim Fathers caught a flat tyre on the motorway that afternoon, and only arrived at the venue an hour before doors. Needless to say, the interview is being rescheduled …

Writing about music

The second week of full-time day-job mania has meant keeping up with The Dreaded Press has been a strain once again, but here we are at another Friday and I seem to have survived with deadlines and sanity (marginally) intact.

Album of the week was probably the audio insanity of iots by flu.ID - be warned, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Writing about books

I have, somehow, managed to crowbar a first draft of the Severian Of The Guild review into my schedule this week**. The challenge will lie in making it plain that, while I personally found the crescendo of Biblical allegory to be incredibly wearisome and off-putting, I’m not the sort of person who thinks religious themes have no place in literature at all. Hoping to go over it a second time this weekend.

Finished reading Walter Jon Williams’ Implied Spaces last weekend; will be squeezing a VCTB review out as soon as schedule permits.

Freelance stuff

As some of you may have already noticed, the other aspect of my expanding freelance duties has been announced - I’m the new webgeek and online publicity personage for PS Publishing! Thanks to everyone who has already sent their congratulations, it’s very kind of you. I have an awful lot to live up to as I step into Darren’s shoes.

Of course, I’ll feel a lot more like I’m actually doing these jobs once I get back to having the time to get started on them*** … but still, yay me! More details on this when (a) I have them and (b) I can think straight.

Books and magazines seen

The Yen Press manga imprint continues to baffle with their polar-opposite themes; one book on raising an autistic child, the other a sniggering smutfest of obvious gags about a demon and a sexually-stereotyped Japanese schoolgirl who have accidentally swapped bodies. Go figure.

Also from Orbit comes a new Jeff Somers novel, The Digital Plague, as well as cookie-cutter vampire-shagger number fourteen from the high queen of vampire-shaggers … fourteen books? Empirical proof that quality and popularity are completely unrelated properties, if such were needed. Will nobody think of the trees?

I’ve been given an interesting non-fiction title for a long-deadline Vector review: Love And Sex With Robots by David Levy.

Promises to be an interesting read, that’s for certain. Robot-shaggers > vampire-shaggers.

Coda

Well, I’m exhausted. A fortnight of full-time work plus all my other commitments has worn me out thoroughly, and if it weren’t for the amazing ability of caffeine to prop up the otherwise unconscious, I’d not have made it through at all.

I was under the (sadly erroneous) impression that I had this coming Monday off work, but it turns out that isn’t the case - it will in fact be my final full day before my colleague returns from her holiday. Still, I can manage just one more day … though I feel I’ll be doing a whole lot of sleeping this weekend.

It’s either that or have some sort of breakdown; much like the ILLUMINATIONS episode, I’ve been gamely skating along the cliff-edge of my ability to cope under pressure, but I know that I need to rest properly or risk the consequences. I’m aware that learning (and testing) your limits is a good thing, but from where I’m sat right now I could do without it … at least for the next six months or so while I settle into the new regime of the freelance****.

But I’ll not complain - things seem to be going pretty well, and if hecticness is a symptom of positive change then I guess I can live with it. It’s just that I’ll live with it a bit better once I’ve had a long lay down in a dark room.

Anyway, enough of my jabber - I can’t think of anything entertaining or interesting to say. I’m going to take my aching shoulders and itchy eyes around the corner to fetch another Hard-earned And Much-anticipated Friday Curry Of Justice before steeling myself for a weekend of catching up with all the little things I’ve had to let slide this last fortnight.

I hope that you have a good weekend yourself … hopefully one blessed with weather somewhat less rotten than today’s, too.

Hasta luego, amigos.

[ ** I honestly can't remember writing any of it, which is quite scary ... but there it is in my Google Docs account. Home espresso makers are dangerous things, kids. ]

[ *** SRSLY. Sixteen hour days have been killing me. ]

[ **** So why do I still crank out a few pages of blather for FPB every week? Because routine is an anchor for sanity, basically. This actually relaxes me, and I can do it piecemeal. ]

OK, so I’ve been pretty bloody busy since well before the new year began, and I’ve fallen massively behind with my compiling of writing advice links.

Or rather, I haven’t. I’ve been steadily compiling them in Google Notebook (which is a great tool, especially when used with the Firefox plugin), but the emphasis is on the “piling” … there’s about twenty of the buggers sat in there, taunting me from their position of safety-in-numbers, saying “hah - no time to post us, no time to write, you suck!”

Well, I’m not having that. So let’s offload - call ‘em out by author and/or website, sergeant!

Jim “Justice” Van Pelt

[ Long-time readers will know well my admiration and respect for Uncle Jim; no one tops him for quality friendly writing advice. Most of these are from his LJ feed, but the top one is from the column he does for The Fix.]

• “Sometimes the best bump I can give my writing is to get out of the house. A retreat is great, of course, but packing up my laptop and heading to the bagel shop or library is effective too.”
• “Is there such a thing as a “great” title, or do titles begin to look great because they’re married to “great” stories?  After a while, we can’t imagine the story being titled anything else.  Which comes first?”
• “While we walked, I was reminded again of the challenge and importance of writing with the landscape where a story takes place in mind.”
• “Writing the conclusion to a story can be hard!  First off, the whole story has been leading to this last page, so the sense of responsibility to the story and to the reader is huge.”
• “At any rate, I have a bunch of mini-units to talk about aspects of short story writing.  One that we covered last night was mood or atmosphere.”
• “I become insanely sensitive to repetitiveness in my sentence patterns, and I’m convinced that every reader will see it too.  I sometimes stare at my prose in despair. So, I go to the literature I love best to wash out my ears and to let me hear the rhythms again.”
• “My stance on all writing rules, from the nuts and bolts of grammar to the other much discussed rules of fiction writing (like staying attached to only one point of view, or “show, don’t tell, which I discussed earlier in Every “Rule” Has Exceptions), is that the only rule that matters to the writer is “Does it work?”"
• “Fortunately, your body which needs the oxygen doesn’t know if the breath that produced it was made while not thinking, or if it was the result of conscious effort. Your readers won’t be able to tell the difference. You can write crap consciously or unconsciously, just as you can write effective stuff both ways.”

Luc Reid

• “Don’t Worry: The Characters Don’t Believe It Either”
• “So here’s my advice to you: if you’re serious about writing and you currently only write  every once in a while, perhaps because you really, honestly don’t have the time (or just because you like to relax), try instead–just for a month or two–writing every day.”
• “Writer’s Block: Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself”

Jay Lake

• “Having just hammered 30,000 words out of the manuscript, I can say yet again that killing your darlings is hard sport.”
• “Developmental Anatomy of a Book“

Jeff VanderMeer

• Evil Monkey’s Guide to Creative Writing: Tips for Beginners - “(1) An early sense of entitlement is deadly to development. Don’t posture and preen well before you have any right to do so. (In fact, don’t ever.) Them that do rarely develop as writers, although some of them may become widely published over time. They just never recognize they suck.”

Paolo Bacigalupi

• “After today, what I really think is that I’m a dogged writer. If I polish the turd long enough, eventually something shines. It’s really my specialty. Going after a story again and again until finally I figure out how to spin crap into gold.”
• How to write a short story - by throwing away a short story - “I wrote a novelette last week. The interesting thing about it was that I literally had no idea what I was doing.”

Neil Beynon

• “As has been alluded to a few times recently, I have been experiencing more than my fair share of writer’s block, that all pervading paralysing fear that the ideas will dry up and not a single interesting sentence will be transmitted to the page.”

Write To Done blog

[ Some of these are more focused on non-fiction, but still useful. ]

• “How to Disagree“
• “How to Write Conversationally“
• “Research Sources for Writers: A Guide to Backing up Your Words“
• “Clean Up Your Narration: Four Tips For Fiction Writers“
• “31 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing“
• “Short Stories: The Art of the Start” - “While revision is important for the entire short story — you should rip it apart and massage it and mold it until you have it right — I recommend paying special attention to the first paragraph or three.”

io9

[ OMG!!!1-post-not-about-Heroes-or-Torchwood shocker! ]

• Steal This Pitch: 8 Unstoppable Rules For Writing Killer Short Stories - “Short fiction is the “garage band” of science fiction, claims Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, so it’s time to step on that fuzzbox and thrash as hard as you can without knocking over your mom’s weed-trimmer.”

PickTheBrain.com:

• George Orwell’s Five Rules For Effective Writing - “If you want to be understood, if you want your ideas to spread, using effective language must be your top priority. In the modern world of business and politics this is hardly ever the case.”

WordWise:

• Verb Your Enthusiasm - “… a brain-imaging study conducted at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, showed that the brain’s motor cortex responds to merely reading action words like active verbs. Verbs, in other words, stimulate readers, kickstart their imagination, draw them in, compel them to think.”

Yes, some of these are hideously old. Doesn’t mean they’re any less useful, though.

Now, I’m off down the road to talk to an H P Lovecraft-inspired band called The Sword. Enjoy!

We return to the original meaning of FPB because hey, look - one of my cacti has started to flower!

Looks like it’s the only one that will do so this year (my Christmas cacti haven’t even hinted at a late budding, worse luck), but one is better than none.

The weird bit is that this particular cactus is the one that has suffered the most from being knocked over and generally battered by bad circumstance, and came to me after having been sat in a Fratton garden for an entire British winter … the bad-boy just keeps on ticking. Respect, innit?

A bonus photo for those of you of the opinion that plants aren’t a sufficiently manly subject (even spiny phallic plants): here’s my growing collection of sound-mangling boxes through which I run my guitar.

I think the collection should cease growing for now, because the overdraft has suffered terribly. That said, I still need a delay pedal … hmmm.

Eastercon

So, if you’re wondering “why no pictures from Eastercon?”, the answer is simple - I just didn’t take any. I was far too busy watching or appearing on panels and hanging out with great people, and I’m afraid I don’t feel a jot guilty*.

Even listing just the highlights of the weekend would take a considerable amount of time, but it would be remiss to not mention:

• celebrating The Friday Curry with the Third Row Fandom crew, plus Shaun C Green and Paul “twice Hugo nominee for a Doctor Who script” Cornell
• China Mieville’s staggeringly good Guest of Honour speech
• Neil Gaiman’s relentless aura of nice-blokeness
• the Friday Flash Fiction workshop, and meeting all my fellow Fictioneers
• the embarrassing yet hilarious Sex & The Singularity panel
• Ian Sales falling off a chair
• Ian Watson telling me a story about kidney stones that will stay with me for life
• drinking, talking and getting lost in hallucinogenically similar corridors

Great stuff - many thanks to everyone who helped make it such a great event, both those I met and those I didn’t.

Writing about music

The Dreaded Press rolls on, with a bit of a gap for the bank holiday weekend. No live reviews or interviews lately, though I’m off to do one of each with Brit rockers Brigade this very evening.

The inward flow of albums has seemingly levelled out at a pace I can stay on top of without too much panic, and I’m gradually integrating TDP tasks into my daily regime.

I was very chuffed to find I got a link-back from Wikipedia for my review of the spectacular album Board Up The House by Genghis Tron - Wikipedia links give great SEO justice, and they’re like gold dust in the early stages of a site’s life.

Hopefully that’ll nudge me up a PageRank next time the updates go through.

Writing about books

As I explained at great length to a few people at Eastercon, the final phases of Book Of The New Sun became progressively more infuriating to read.

The biblical mirroring is a lot easier to stomach in the earlier stages, but the fourth book cranks the proselytising up to eleven without the benefit of the story moving well to keep it interesting.

Still not completely finished, but once I’m done I’ll not run short of things to say in the review, that’s for certain.

Meanwhile, roaring my way through the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol. 2, which isn’t a bad selection at all, from my perspective.

For those who’ve read it already, I can say that I’m about two thirds through, and my favourite piece (as well as the one that has stuck with me constantly since reading it) is the shortest one.

The book needs to be finished and reviewed with the pending batch of print reviews for Interzone - by the end of this week, in other words.

I loves me a good deadline, I does.

Futurismic

I’ve got the next new piece of fiction for Futurismic in hand, ready to be polished and unleashed next week. I’ve also got a second non-fiction piece ready to roll, a one-shot guest column in the pipeline and a potential new columnist in the offing as well; all great news there.

What’s not so great is that it’s high time I started going through the old posts that were created on the previous CMS and adding tags to them. One of those “a little bit every day” jobs, I guess - you have to take the rough with the smooth in this publishing business, y’know.

Other freelance type stuff

Waiting on some details and confirmations, but there could be some great news in the pipeline in this respect. Watch this space.

Books and magazines seen

Well that’s it, I’m officially baffled. April’s F&SF has arrived, after I’ve ignored any number of renewal slips.

I think maybe their database has me down as a life subscriber or something, becasue I’m positive my sub must be over by now. Still, free fiction isn’t something to complain about. *shrug*

Nice apocalyptic cover, BTW:

No books have come in the post, but it would be churlish not to mention the titles I picked up at Eastercon**. I came away with:

• A Good Old-fashioned Future - Bruce Sterling (short story collection; I have most of these titles in other volumes, but I seem to be veering toward the idea of becoming a Sterling completist. Fanboy is as fanboy does, I guess.)
• Deconstructing The Starships - Gwyneth Jones (Cons are a great place to buy critical works, because you’ll rarely find them cheaper, even second hand. This has been recommended to me often, so I’m pleased to have a shiny new copy of my own for the bargain price of £11)
• Tourniquet - Kim Lakin-Smith (by the much-better-looking other half of the BSFA webmaster … )
• Roadside Picnic - Strugatsky Brothers (keep hearing people bigging this book up, and there it was in old-school paperback for just £1 …)
• Appleseed - John Clute (a novel by the critical legend, highly recommended by Shaun)

ILLUMINATIONS

Still pig-in-mud happy about the Friday Flash anthology. My mother’s copy arrived by post at her house yesterday, so she phoned me and squee’d a bit, which was a lovely moment.

I still have hard-copy versions available and will gladly sign them for purchasers; don’t forget you can get the PDF version for a donation of your choice at the Odd Two Out website. I can’t sign those, though, and they’re just not as totemic …

Coda

Well, that’s more than enough blather to make up for a missing week, I think. And anyway, I’d best get on - I need to grab and eat The Friday Curry (regrettably minus the Third Row gang and other fandom types this time) before trundling off to The Pyramids to do this interview.

And so with little extra ceremony I shall bid you all a good weekend - hasta luego, amigos.

[ * The absence of last week's FPB should make it plain that I didn't make much use of the laptop either. As it happens, I'm going to sell the thing and swap it for an Asus Eee, so if you're in the market for a laptop with a decent spec and one careful owner, give me a shout. ]

[ ** I'm actually rather proud of my restraint - as anyone who's been can attest, the Dealer's Room at a con is like a finely tuned machine for extracting money from sf/f fans. ]

The lighting at the super little Brighton venue The Freebutt isn’t very conducive to photography of bands in action.

Well, it would be more truthful to say that the combination of my low-end equipment and beginner shutterbug skills weren’t up to the task of capturing Dead Meadow performing without using the Auto Mode.

But unmoving objects are easier to deal with, and Dead Meadow’s silver-finished Ludwig drumkit (with psychedelic oilwheel projections on the kick skin) made a rather charming subject, if I do say so myself. I really must get around to buying a faster lens, though.

Writing about music

As seen above, I had the Dead Meadow show to write about, which also featured local psych-out heroes (and lovely chaps) You’re Smiling Now But We’ll All Turn Into Demons.

All in all, a great gig and night out with friends, and The Freebutt is now on my list of fantastically non-corporate venues that I wish were on the end of my street.

Writing about books

I’m still wrestling with the Wolfe; I got to a stage where it felt like I was reading fifty pages and fining myself closer to the front than I had been before, but I’m now into the last quarter.

It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s colossal - and I’ve not had many chances to just sit down and blitz the bugger. I will defeat it this weekend, one way or the other**.

Futurismic

Everything seems to be ticking over fairly well at Futurismic at the moment; last time I checked we’d had 2000 click-throughs on “Uxo, Bomb Dog”, and I expect there’ll be more in a long tail (arf!) to come.

Next Monday sees the return of our non-fiction columns, or at least the first of them; I’ll keep you posted.

ILLUMINATIONS

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it?

Editing ILLUMINATIONS in a tiny timeframe was one hell of a task, but strangely exhilarating - not to mention further proof that I tend to perform at my best (or at least at my most focused) when under pressure.

There was very little corrective editing to be done - except a few massages and tweaks of punctuation - as we decided to leave the stories essentially the same as they had been when first published on our respective sites.

However, getting everything into the same format and typographical layout was quite a mission for someone who’d never had to do such a thing before. And then there was the real challenge - deciding on the order for the stories.

We decided to go with a sort-of thematic ordering rather than the obvious chronological alternative (or the clunky grouped-by-author option), which mean yours truly had to read them all through, tag them with themes and tropes, and attempt to assemble them into a sequence that made sense.

I can now reveal to the world the incredibly high-tech manner in which I handled this process:

Yup. Whole lotta index cards.

Anyway, as this didn’t happen this week, I shouldn’t be talking about it in FPB, should I? I’ve just been itching to waffle on about it, though, and it’s hard to stop now that I actually can. Eastercon attendees, beware!

Books and magazines seen

Thanks to the charming and erudite John Joseph Adams, I’m now receiving books from Night Shade Books - these made up part of my bumper post day from earlier in the week.

There are two of Liz Williams’ “Inspector Chen” novels, which I sincerely hope to make time for; Liz Williams being one of those authors who I was utterly uninterested in until I heard her talk about her work, and in whom I become more interested with each successive encounter***.

The other Night Shade title is the lushly-jacketed Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams:

“A novel of the singularity”, according to the front cover. So many intriguing books, so little time - I demand my Modafinil, damn you!

Also in the postbox this very morning was Interzone #215, featuring my reviewing team’s round-up of 2007 (ooooh, the controversy), as well as fiction from Greg Egan and personal favourite Rudy Rucker. Not to mention the big bug-critter on the front:

Coda

Bloody hell, this year’s flying past. This time next week, I’ll be at Heathrow for Eastercon … in fact, only two more days of work and a career development course in London to go before my long weekend starts. Just goes to show that keeping busy seems to be the best cure for mopiness and general winter blues, at least in my case.

Easter is turning into one of those nexus points in life, actually; the con makes it a landmark point in my fandom social calendar, of course, but this year there’s been the additional crescendo of putting together ILLUMINATIONS with the same target date, and this week my boss at the day job departs for maternity leave.

I’m slightly amazed I’ve survived, to be honest; there was a point about a month back that I seriously thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew and would end up paying the price. But here I am, still sane and still working. That said, I think I now know where my limits lie.

And speaking of limits, this seems like a good place to define one for this week’s FPB. It’s high time for a cold refreshing pint of lager while I wait for The Friday Curry Of Reward … which will be all the more solemn an occasion due to having to suspend the tradition for Eastercon next week …

… unless anyone can recommend a good curry house in Heathrow and has no other plans for the Friday evening, that is?

Anyway, enough blather. Have a good weekend, folks. Hasta luego.

[ * Auto Mode gets the job done, but results in photographs which [unsurprisingly] look as if their subject has just had a very bright light go off in front of them, which isn’t ideal. It annoys the performers too, natch. ]

[ ** I'm serious this time; I'm gonna nail that sucker. ]

[ *** In other words, I suspect she may be able to write fantasy that doesn't make me want to break things, and I really should give her the opportunity to prove me right. She was interesting at Eastercon last year, and at Picocon the other week. ]

Yes.

Yes, I can.

I have been spending money I don’t have on things that make loud noises.

You may tell me this is unwise. You may tell me this will not endear me to my neighbours. You will be ignored on both counts, oh yes.

Writing about music:

Work continues apace at The Dreaded Press; this week’s recommended listen is I Am The Golden Gate Bridge by Creature With The Atom Brain.

Scuzzy whacked-out junkie rock’n'roll with a big helping of weird - think Butthole Surfers on a bong-binge.

Writing about books:

Still ploughing through the Book of the New Sun, meaning I’m falling behind on the Great Baroque Cycle Reading Project (not to mention other titles to be reviewed).

Some sort of concerted binge effort may have to occur this weekend; I’ve already had to concede that if I continue analysing the book as I read it, it’ll be well after Eastercon before I finish.

There’s just too much symbolism, and I’m getting hung up on trying to decode it all. Time to treat it like a normal* reader, I think.

Writing about other stuff:

In addition to today’s Friday Flash piece, I sent another one (a New Southsea story, as it happens) off to a magazine called Pseudonym.

It’s not a paying market, nor a science fiction market, but it’s one of those labour-of-love arty/designy type of magazines run by a friend of a friend, and they asked really nicely for something, and they said I could send fiction rather than non-fiction, so … I figured why not.

I quite like the resulting story, and will probably post it here in weeks to come.

Futurismic:

I’ve been really chuffed with the responses to “Uxo, Bomb Dog”, and with the resulting traffic at Futurismic.

I’m also pleased to have discovered Project Wonderful, an ad network that lives up to its name and which will be discussed in greater detail here some time soon.

Books and magazines seen:

Just the one this week: Murky Depths #3 has arrived, like some spectre of guilt intent on reminding me that (surprise surprise) I still haven’t read the first two.

Still, things should settle down at the end of the month**, so I can get some backlog-clearing done on the reading front.

Coda:

This week has been mercifully relaxed by comparison to the last. While the above may not seem a catalogue of triumph on the achievements front, I’m quietly happy with the fact that I’ve done everything that needed doing.

I’ve also succeeded in getting up early every day - which really does wonders for the old productivity, with the side effect of making you almost physically incapable of typing by 10pm.

The universe giveth, the universe taketh away … still, I feel like I’m making progress with things, and that’s good enough for me, thank you very much.

There’s been no gig-going this past week, but I’m off to Brighton tomorrow night to see the superb stoner-bluesmen Dead Meadow supported by local wig-out psych-rockers You’re Smiling Now But We’ll All Turn Into Demons, which promises to be a great night out … provided there are no embarrassing invisible guestlist incidents, of course, so fingers crossed.

But those are bridges to be crossed when arrived at; the current span stands between my empty stomach and The Friday Curry Of Self-congratulation And Righteousness, and so I shall step forth on the path to culinary adventure!

Have a great weekend, folks. Hasta luego.

[ * For 'normal', substitute 'sensible'. ]

[ ** How many times have we heard this one before? ]