![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tomlloyd's journalLog in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more
| You are viewing tomlloyd's journal Log in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more | Explore LJ: Life Entertainment Music Culture News & Politics Technology |
 | |
|
Just to confirm, the cover for Ragged Man has now been released on the world - you can see if here and I think you'll agree, it's a good 'un! We likes it much. |
|
| |
|
Not ground-breaking news in itself, but now the title of the French edition since a translation of The Stormcaller apparently sounds weird. Which is fair enough, especially if it puts buyers in mind of the French version of Elric, but I wonder what the following books will end up being called... Book 2 should be something like Rojak - the smug minstrel, book 3 is easy enough I suspect, but book 4 might pose a few problems for reasons I can't go into yet, ditto Dusk Watchman! And on a related note, I'm told the excellent artwork for Ragged Man UK edition should be up on Amazon soon - the wonderful Larry Rostant having done a fine job yet again, several months ago in fact but until they had the MS in they didn't put titles on it etc. Come to think of it, maybe I should see the final version before it goes on Amazon... |
|
| |
|
Or is it just this country? I don't think so, because frankly all of the six nations matches this year have been just pathetic - really dull and bad play all the way through except for the occasional five mins where teams wake up and forget their orders to be as boring and useless as possible. Even the winners have been bad, just not as bad as the team they played against... But I went to Irish v Harlequins on Sunday and while I know some of the top players were in the England squad, oh hell Quins were poor. I mean really bad, not just unlucky and a bit careless, they could barely do a thing right for most of the match. In a situation like that you'd hope Nick Evans would still give them a fighting chance but the man often referred to as the no 2 fly half in the world kicked dead on penalties, passed without looking even vaguely in the right direction, and generally thought about as hard as an England fly half does. Is it something in the water than he's getting worse the longer he's in the UK? |
|
| |
|
Yup, that cruel dictator Lou Anders has persuaded me to engage in a Babel Clash with Joel Shepherd, a man I don't know personally (but I have read his excellent Sasha I'm glad to say) but don't see that as a reason not to crush him mercilessly with the power of my intellect. All because I have been a bit poor on my blogging recently... sigh. So, for all sorts of fun and the secrets of life the universe and everything, head on over to the Borders blog here for the next few weeks! |
|
| |
|
Yup, I've made it out of the Soviet gulag-themed funland that is Pontins Camber Sands - and after all my initial concerns etc etc, I have to say I enjoyed the weekend far more than my liver has! Any situation where I get to hang out with authors who're better-read, -informed, -intellectually endowed etc etc and chat to them and their publishers over many drinks, well that's got to be good. So much thanks to the SFX crew for all their work, all the lovely Gollancz crew for taking us out there and looking after us all weekend - particularly Jon Weir, Simon Spanton and Gillian Redfearn - and the Tor uk lot for inviting me to join them for dinner and meet new cool people. And I would also thank my agent but he prefers to mysterious and nameless, so I better not say anything more! Two things I have learned from the weekend, to my immense delight in both situations: 1) Dragons come from China - at least they do if you ask him very very nicely. The man's frighteningly talented but also a top bloke. 2) David Devereux has a big hairy twin, who's called Adrian Tchaikovsky - seriously, it's spooky how their cadence and style of speech is exactly the fucking same. Fortunately they're both really good guys so who can complain about there being more of those in the world? |
|
| |
|
So it looks like I'm off to Camber Sands at the weekend, just as soon as I find out where that is! A few misfires on the way to getting this organised - such as not being told/asked about attending but if the crowd of usual suspects are coming along I don't see how I can argue really! There might be a bit of booze involved, at least I bloody hope so. If anyone else is coming, do wander over and say hi - assuming my boss gives me time off short notice I'll be going on the Friday and I know there's a Gollancz author panel about middy, plus a Q&A on the Saturday. Not sure what else is scheduled at the moment really, but Pat Sharp's going to be the Dj and who could resist that?! |
|
| |
|
Email from my editor: I'm not sure I'm talking to you, you killed off X! Me: Snigger. Don't worry, it's all sunshine and puppies from there on. Her: You're lying, X has just bought it too. Ah wait, there is a puppy! Hmm. |
|
| |
|
I may have mis-remembered the quote, but when I saw today's coverage of the little bit of snow here, entitled 'FREEZING BRITAIN' in my head I heard Kent Brockman from the Simpsons cry 'A crisis so serious it has its own name and theme music!' Seriously, is it just that nothing at all has happened in the last week or can we not get the idiots in the news offices to let go of the idea that WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, FROZEN IN OUR HOMES - these people haven't even read Adam Roberts' book THE SNOW which has made me look at the walk from Balham to my flat in new light as one of the characters does it on top of the buildings because of the snowfall... Quite aside from anything else, I'm betting half of Scandinavia's laughing at us for the nation collapsing under a bit of cold weather that's far from the worst it's ever been here. Now I know they're not like all my friend Robin, but he's almost certainly judging us and with some justification on that front. Bearing in mind that we're all going to die as the country implodes under the weight of snow, I decided last night was the right one to book tickets for Avatar. Needless to say the wife was delighted to get home from work and be dragged through the icy streets to watch a movie that meant she only got into bed after midnight on a school night. However, I'm glad I did - for a film that was entirely predictable and contained the dumbest name ever (unobtanium, seriously, fire the script editor for thinking that wasn't a joke by the writer) it was greatly entertaining and looked gorgeous. One of those movies that, like Hero, you'll feel silly if you watch it for the first time on the small screen. I'm also pleased to see that the great Joe Abercrombie himself (I have to describe him that way, he sells more books than me and Gollancz is a cruel hierarchy) agrees with me on both Star Trek and Avatar - whatever the rest of the world thinks, we're clearly right. |
|
| |
|
Having already had a synopsis for Dusk Watchman that Orion have seen (and maybe liked, but probably only cared that I had a plan for the final book) my brain has been refusing to even think about it for months. Just the nagging feeling that I should be planning this book as soon as I ended book 4 has made me stressed and exhausted, as I knew it would frankly. As a result I've been carefully ignoring it until my contract states I need to start working on the book (rather arbitrary but it happened to fit what I wanted) and it's a relief that last night I actually got a coherent thought on the subject - a long way from getting the book finalised but gods I'm glad something's started to move on the subject and I've got revisions of the synopsis planned. First step's always the hardest the say, though frankly it's the several hundred thousand that follow I'm more worried about! |
|
| |
|
A late one, for me - being specifically mentioned by Liz from My Favourite Books blog when she and Mark were guest blogging at The Book Smugglers and talking about their highlights for 2009. Considering how some people are rather vocal in how much my books bug them, it's nice to have others go the other way and properly enjoy what I do! |
|
| |
|
I couldn't let my last post be the one that stayed up for Christmas, so all the best Christmas cheer to the lot of you! Am out in the sticks with my family and all's good here - looking forward to my first Christmas as a married man. It's really weird being here at Christmas without there being a dog in the house and feels very wrong - thinking back, it's possible I've never once had a Christmas here without a dog around and only once in my life been away for the holiday - but all in all I couldn't be luckier in life so I'll try not to complain! At any rate my parents will be picking up the newly-named Spider on the second of Jan and hopefully it won't happen again for another 30 years. My lovely wife is upstairs drifting off to sleep and there are so many presents under the tree they're taking over the hall; I hope you're all as happy as me, or at least will be soon. |
|
| |
|
Yup, some cunt has again hacked my website - they've deleted most users by the looks of it and changed my username and password so I can't do anything, or reply to the people who'd posted there. Don't think they've deleted large tracts of teh forum this time so hopefully things will be recoverable. |
|
| |
|
That only comes occasionally but is lovely to get all the same - I was at a Christmas concert with my wife, sister and her boyfriend last night. What we hadn't realised is that they were also expecting us to sing carols as well, so the packed church dutifully plodded through them (admittedly this was St Martins in the Fields so there were a good number of people singing), some not singing and the majority of us giving it a reasonable go. Then of course there's my lovely wife, standing out along the crowd by singing the descant parts of the carol all by herself and at the end being applauded by the pew in front of us. |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
At midnight I finished the proofread of the Ragged Man and have handed it in, tea and medals all round. Something else worth pointing out - which I may post a photo of at some point - is that I've been sent two large posters advertising Stormcaller and Twiglet, each with cool cover art! Ok, so they're the Czech editions and I can't even pronounce the titles, but they're still brilliant! |
|
| |
|
No Mr assistant person, the contract hasn't been signed off. This is why - because your lazy cow of a boss has produced a contract of such spectacular laziness that she's ignored the last 14 months of negotiations between our companies - quite aside from fucking failing to read the parts of the negotiation that she didn't like and making stuff up. I'm sure you do want it expedited, but having pre-emptively complained about me to the boss because I don't just agree to the ridiculous crap you come out with and demanded I be kept on a short leash, she's somehow assumed that means I'm not going to bother reading the contract because the scary lady was mean to me. Fuck you and all your imcompetent whining colleagues, why don't you actually employ someone to do this job rather than continuing with this half-assed crap produced by people who don't actually know what they're talking about? |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Nice - Ryan Jones is out so Wales get to have two real flankers on the pitch and Andy Powell doing the thing he's good at, being big and simple. My only problem with this week's rugby is the fact I'm not going to watch it all live! Ireland v South Africa and the first half of Wales v Australia is all I'm going to manage - pesky wife and her whole 'you have to leave the flat sometimes and speak to real people...' bah. |
|
| |
|
No, not me, that'd be far too much like proper publicity work for me... But I will be attending the signing for others at Forbidden Planet tomorrow - If you see me there say hi! |
|