Thoughts · of · a · mumbling · fantasist

How several phonecalls yesterday fortunately didn't go:

Me: Hello, Atlantic Books.
Me: Sorry, still in the meeting.
Me: Ah, you're calling from the Daily Mail, that explains why you're acting like an arrogant bitch, sorry, I should have realised.

Fortunately, it ain't a train! The second draft of Ragged Man is in and it's in the hot sticky hands of readers before being delivered, which is as much a relief as always. I've now hit the point where I'm kinda mentally exhausted and feel a pang of depression at the very sight of prose appearing on my screen! It's weighed in at 213,000 words, which is kinda large but I assume will be trimmed down by the magic of the red pen and end up about 200k, which was how long Twiglet was. Only question is what I do now...

Well, yesterday the answer was 'absolutely nothing except play Gears of War 2 and revel in the surround-sound my Xbox now possesses.' I admit this probably can't continue forever, but since the wife's away on a shopping weekend and Saturday's meant to be solid rain, I'll probably only pause for rugby matches!

It's interesting to note how bad-tempered I've been recently, something that of course took me a while to equate with struggling over the deadline... Some of this has been justified (those fucking incompetents at Wigmore Sports who've sold me a third set of useless strings in six months and have now lost my business after eight years), other bits less and barely even making sense. Most likely the lack of sunlight isn't helping, but that's what the big white light in the study's for, I just have to remember to use it. Fortunately I've been able to avoid taking it out on my perfectly blameless wife (she's still talking to me at least) but it does leave me hesitant to jump straight in to Dusk Watchman until I've had a bit of time off.

The problem with that is I've not really worked out the plot of Dusk Watchman and at some point that's probably going to be important. There's probably a certain hesitancy to actually jump into the final piece of the series, but my main problem is I want a break. The short stories that I'm hoping to do something with in the next few months and get out before Dusk Watchman aren't much of a break since they're still part of the series, but God I could do with writing something different for a year before returning to DW. It's not going to happen because I don't sell as much as George RR Martin and can't afford to leave such a big gap, but it'd be nice - quite aside from the fact Moon's Artifice and the other novels of the Empire of a Hundred Houses are jumping up and down in my head, screaming for attention like excitable toddlers. If I could shut them up for a few months even, that'd make a difference, but most likely parents of toddlers say the same thing! ;0)

I'm going to have to do a more involved post about the last book in a series and all the problems and challenges etc it represents, but I think that should wait for when I can get my thoughts in some sort of order. I do actually have a good few points I'd like to make on the subject, but it'd end up as rambly as this so gimme a few weeks! Now if I could only get an assistant in the office I might actually be able to get a handle on the world again...

If hearing me talk is your idea of amusement, I've just done an interview with the eminent Michael Stackpole on The Dragon Page Cover to Cover podcast which you can hear here in which I talk about the voices keeping me awake at night (not the wife) among other things.


In other news, second draft of Ragged Man is done, now I just need to check through the second half of the print-out (discovering along the way the editing on screen is a rather hit-and-miss affair - note to budding writers out there, print it out and read it like a book before you send it to anyone, that's how you're brain's used to seeing text. I always try to print a typescript out on A5 size paper and read it that way before it goes to anyone). After that it's just a question of checking consistency of dialogue and then slacking off for a few months until the edits come back! Woohoo, Xbox here I come!

From Brent Weeks' Babel Clash on the Borders blog - which I've only just read... This made me laugh.

Yup, it's an interview with me at Tor.com - full of the wit and wisdom you'd expect from a mumbling fantasist, questions asked by the eminent Lou Anders!

Have included me here in their list of top books for the fantasy reader. It's an interesting selection, with Steve going mainly for the biggest names of the genre, and Nick plumping for the young guns - of which he's including me in. Interesting to note that three of the four were published in the same year by Gollancz, since there's Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie as well. Certainly can't complain about the company I'm keeping there!

Tony Blair, what a man. The more I read about his religious views the more I think he wasn't just George Bush's bitch when it comes to invading Iraq but a driving force behind the War of Terror and even more complicit than his mentally deficient mate.

"We face an aggressive secular attack from without. We face the threat of extremism from within ... Those who scorn God and those who do violence in God’s name, both represent views of religion. But both offer no hope for faith in the twenty first century. "

Oh good, I'm being lumped in with terrorists. Yes I'm very anti-religion, no I don't think that means I should be considered on the same scale as Al-Quaeda and all religions should team up against us.

If someone could explain to me why Quins keep dropping the ball just before the line, it'd be appreciated, I'm getting a bit tired of watching it now!

Just a small cheer that Twiglet is out in the Czech Republic, with artwork done by Raymond Swanland, the original of which you can find here! His pics are certainly worth checking out, he's done some of the more recent Glenn Cook covers which I've liked, and is possibly doing more in the future. The Twiglet one has the name of a Cook series attached to it, but I can't see whether it's a future one or one that wasn't used.

It's hard to disagree with the sentiment here that the Booker should be celebrated, but who actually gives much of a crap about the books that get shortlisted for it? I know I don't have the most high-brow tastes in fiction so maybe it's just be, but it's likely I'll only be vaguely interested in one of the six on any given short-list, and it's rarely the one that wins.


Am thinking for the Booker to be more celebrated it needs to be more, well, relevant. We've such a long history of crowing literary  snobs in this country (the sort who hate genre fiction and refuse to call it literature) that to win accolades within it you have to fit a fairly specific set of criteria to be 'their' sort of book. It'll be interesting to see how Wolf Hall does since it's the favourite, but it isn't her usual sort of Booker style novel. For a start it's actually one I'd want to read... So, it might be that it'll win, be the greatest novel in history and I'll be full of shit, yet again!


More seriously, am not saying they should be considering my sort of novel, but when it's all run by people who are all terrified of not conforming to the prevailing, reactionary wisdom of literary society. It's almost as though they've never really greww out of the school-yard mentality where the bookish types are terrified to show anything that the other kids might mock them for. One of the many things I like about my office is that one of my bosses is as highly respected a literary editor as anyone in the country, but he's one of the VERY few who reads speculative fiction as well as being the most ferociously well-read person I know. He doesn't really have criteria beyond the book being one he likes, buys mainstream thrillers in the Dan Brown vein, is Neal Stephenson's editor and edited the last Booker winner. That might not work with the corporate culture of today's publishing, but I wish there were more of 'em out there!

One of the BBC's twittering morons interviewed Gordon Brown this morning, it was painful to watch. Unless this is part of some carefully orchestrated pro-government campaign that I think is frankly beyond their collective intellects, you've got to wonder whether anyone's going to beat these idiots with a stick until they realise they're not proper journalists, they're not even close. Now journalists can be a self-righteous bunch of twats at times, desperately caught up in their own self-importance and the crucial nature of their work to the continued functioning of existence, but quite a few of them are (a dwindling number according to ex-journos I've met) actually trained to do the job properly.

Seriously, how hard could it be to do maybe ten mins research and slap Gordon Brown down live on TV, making a career for yourself in the process most likely? Instead the twittering moron (one of the female ones this time, but that's happenstance and is as close to a distinction between them all as I'm willing to make) decided to make what sounded pretty incoherent points, ignore what he was saying, talk over him, and refuse to let him answer - all the while vibrating with some weird sense moral superiority. The net result was that he looked patient, sympathetic and intelligent by contrast, didn't have to answer any real questions because she wouldn't let him speak and she looked like the inept fucktard she is.

He almost lost it by smiling at one point which made horror crawl down my spine (and reminded me of the American Dad episode where a wolf howled every time Karl Rove's name was invoked) but overall this unelected idiot of a PM whose tenure as Chancellor seems to be more of a screw-up every time I hear more details about it and only avoided total chaos by an economic boom that was nothing to do with his work, ahem, remember to breath, came out the better in a perfect opportunity to ask him one or two real questions and have read up enough to discuss the answer sensibly. But she didn't, so the world grew a little bit darker and stupider.

Because I'm really dumb, I decided a trilogy wasn't enough for me and I came up with the crazy idea that a series of five would be better. I'm still a little unclear as to why that would be a good idea, but now I'm more than halfway through it, at least, doesn't sounds quite so horrific and scary. What it did do was increase the number of middle-novels I had to write which poses a few extra problems, so it's nice to hear that the very middle one didn't bore people at least! While SFX preferred book 3 to 2, Elitist Book Reviews were the other way around and could barely have loved book 2 more - which meant I was a little nervous about what they'd make of it. I may do a longer post about middle novels later, but I should probably sort my thoughts on the subject first since I think Lou Anders wants to do an extended interview on the subject.


You can read that here but it's great to note that they thought the last chapter alone would have been worth the cover price, but I suggest you read the rest first, it'll make a bit more sense...

"Thirteen pence in every pound spent at UK book retailers last week went towards a copy of The Lost Symbol" - The Bookseller


And almost no-one's making a profit on it...

So Monday evening was a new thing, tennis coaching down at the club for what's laughably termed the elite group. Laughably because I'm involved and I've basically never had any coaching or formal training in my life, just years of family members who were bigger than me hammering the ball in my direction!

Of course I spent most of the two hours just trying to actually focus my eyes after an afternoon of editing (staring at a fixed point for three hours straight and forgetting to blink) and half of the rest wanting to beat to death the smug keen kid who mistakenly thinks he's the best there because he's had years of coaching and is asking about local tournaments. However, the main thing I remembered was that I don't take instruction well. Maybe I've just never had a chance to get used to it, but learning from others has never been my strong point. When I'm knackered and don't really know what I'm doing in the first place, it's even harder!

It has been suggested in the past that I might also have a teeny tiny problem with authority. When I was at uni and told my mum (a rather reserved woman from a military family) that I didn't know what I wanted to do jobs-wise so I spoke to the army careers officer, she laughed so hard she couldn't speak for ten minutes. I certainly heard the words 'problem' and 'authority' in between breathless gasps of hysterical laughter, she was hinting at something certainly. I'm now halfway to my ideal job, in that I have to see 'real' people I'm not married to rather than book characters only twice a week and am left alone once I'm there. It appears I'm happier when I'm the God of the world I'm living in, so I'm starting to wonder if I've just wasted my money on the coaching... How does this whole actively learning stuff work exactly?

Part 42: The annual appraisal.

My boss: So, all going ok?
Me: Sure - you happy with what I'm doing?
My boss: Yup, questions?
Me: Nope.
My boss: Good, more money?
Me: Yes please.
My boss: Done.

Why in the name of all that's bat-winged and unholy, are papers racing to get their Dan Brown reviews out immediately and devoting so much space to it? Are sales honestly going to go up because people will be desperate to check out the most comprehensive review of a an author whose peers would be lucky to get two sentences in the same paper? People were always going to buy the bloody thing in record numbers and no lack of reviews (or even terrible reviews) were going to change that.

Or have I missed something?

Jeez, while I know most writers use facebook for professional purposes and it's fair enough for fans to want to add me as a friend there, it really gets on my tits when writers are so desperate to whore themselves around they start adding everyone they've ever heard of. Just like the Linkedin invite I keep getting from someone I've never heard of, why the hell would I want to be friend with a writer of bloody self-help rubbish whose only connection to me is that more than a year ago I used to work for her agent and once sent her a contract?

Even when I do know what I'm talking about it fails to work out! Having thought Del Potro was certainly good enough to win a grand slam and a good bet for Wimbledon, esp at 16-1, he then gets crushed the following day. Turns out I was right, just a couple months too early.

On another note, RIP Keith Floyd, the finest celeb chef around - not prissy about food, just huge amounts of enthusiasm and enjoyment which it's all about really!

After a lovely time in the Venice theme park! More will follow once I'm a bit more organised in my life but I thought I'd just mention that some places, including Amazon, are starting to ship the US edition of Grave Thief so if you want to stop being behind the discussion on my forum, get ordering! ;0)