SF writer Gary Gibson

Well, I was thinking about going through to edinburgh tonight with mandy to see something called writer's bloc perform, but it looks like it isn't going to happen. Partly because I have a horrendous amount of work to do on the edits for my first book, partly because I feel rough as shit, and partly because they're having the thing on a Tuesday evening, which would mean dashing through a couple of hours after I get home from my part-time job, dashing back to the train station before I missed the last train back to Glasgow, and then getting home maybe some time after midnight. Originally someone had been going to take a car through (being pretty much the only one out of all of us, ie the Glasgow SF writer's circle who can actually drive), but they had to pull out.

I could go through, but I have a certain persistent allergic reaction thing which has been going since about two minutes after I was born that's been acting up recently, and if I went through I'd probably not enjoy myself too much. Next time, someone with a car might actually be able to make the trip through, and that makes things an awful lot easier. However, the irony here is that it was my idea to go through to a Writer's Bloc spoken-word performance. At least this way I get to hear reports about how the night actually goes.

There are ulterior reasons for going: the sf writers in Edinburgh and Glasgow have largely existed in entirely separate circles of influence and contact, rarely getting in touch with each other. Going through to see some of them do something like this makes sense to me. Over there, they have Iain Banks, Ken Macleod, Charles Stross, and several others. We have Richard Morgan, who wrote Altered Carbon (never met the guy, though), Alisdair Gray, and ... myself and Mike Cobley. Bringing these disparate groups of writers, I'm hoping, might result in some form of creative cross-pollination, a meeting of minds separated by only a short trip down a motorway.

Or, it might result in a group of largely middle-aged men sitting in a bar not really talking to each other. But you never know until you try ...

Apart from that, steadily ploughing on through the editorial comments and suggestions for Angel Stations. And let me tell you, there's a shitload of them. So all I can do is switch on the laptop and start tapping ...