SF writer Gary Gibson

Against Gravity word count: 6,361.

Just finished writing at half past twelve at night. Got a little caught up in watching Paramount Comedy channel - they put Spin City, Dharma and Greg, and Seinfeld on all one after the other, which is nice, but ... kind of kills the writing impetus. Still, The Book Group is on just now, so I was straight on to Channel 4 for that. Brilliant. Made up for it by writing out of guilt just now, got a good bit done.

I had been going to stick to ten straight chapters, then it occurred to me a nice thing to do would be to alternate present day events with details of what happened to McCowan in the past, at the start of the Big Bang, when he loses his wife and daughter. I also upped the personal tragedy by giving his baby daughter an autism-like disease of the nervous system - in fact, now that I think of it, it makes sense to give Draeger something very closely related to it. Nice one; ties things together very nicely, since I'd been looking for an ailment for Draeger to make him incompatible with the biotech.

Still don't know what to think of what I've got, though. I'll just have to workshop it when the time comes and just see how people react. And I've absolutely no idea how they will.

Great. If I have any one character flaw, there's the one about never remembering anybody's birthday - in the sense of, never being able to remember the exact date, ever. My mum, my dad ... even my girlfriend.

I was looking at the website earlier for the 2003 Eastercon sf convention. I haven't been to one in a couple of years, almost everyone i know is going, and i might have the chance of having some intelligent conversation when i'm not cringing at the sight of egotistical supermarket shelvers wearing cod-mediaevel gear and answering only to the name 'sire'. Ok ... that may be a bit cruel, but conventions can be a touch embarrassing in that respect, at least as far as i'm concerned.

So it turns out the first day of the con, a friday, is the same day as Mandy's 21st ... arse. So obviously I'm not going to go. I don't mind, I get to spend time with my girlfriend. But I _am_ thinking about going down for the rest of the con, though I'd have to leave probably pretty early in the morning on the saturday to get down there in any reasonable time. Still, better than nothing.

Again, I feel silly saying this because I'm nowhere near having anything even resembling a book contract, but I have it in my head - quite possibly erroneously - that going down to a con will in some way advance my cause, or at least help people remember my name in case i _do_ manage to sell a book. And it's the nearest thing I'll have to a holiday this year, how sad is that ...