I noted with interest that the synopsis for Angel Stations has disappeared from my page on Amazon UK (the link is on the left, under the picture of the cover). I browsed through the pages of some other authors, such as Tony Ballantyne and Jon George, and noticed there was no synopsis on either of their pages. Like I say, there was a synopsis on my page, and now there isn't.
This worried me enough that I even sent an email to Amazon asking about it. It's important to me, because anybody coming to my book via one of those 'people who bought this book also bought ..." type messages you get on Amazon isn't going to have a clue about whether or not they do want to buy my book, because they've got no idea what it's about!
On the other hand, I checked out an anthology by another Glasgow science fiction writer, Mike Cobley, Iron Mosaic, and he simply typed up the sleeve details and posted them up via the 'reviews' section, which is as good as anything. At least, then, you know what you're looking at, beyond a cover and a title.
I'm still working away on the edits, but at least I'm close to the end. I ended up re-line-editing the whole thing myself, because I felt it was necessary. Stuff that makes sense to you during one draft doesn't necessarily make as much sense during subsequent drafts. But it's feeling tighter, sharper. As usual, I've made my own changes and adjustments above and beyond the editorial suggestions.
Thursday evening, I was in Glasgow Ottakar's bookshop watching a question and answer session featuring four well-known Scottish genre authors: Richard Morgan, Miller Lau, Mike Cobley (again), and Grant Morrison, who's been a well-known writer for both DC and Marvel for a number of years. It went well, but at one point during proceedings I started wondering if what we all really need is some central repository called 'really interesting and incisive general questions we can draw on when we want to ask a writer about his work'.
Obviously, they'd have to be fairly general, but the fact is, despite being a novelist myself I still find myself pretty stuck when it comes even to asking questions of other writers during these events. I sat there, and all I had in my head was, 'urrr ... where do your ideas come from?' Not that I said it out loud, I hasten to add. But it's always the same at these things: it can be a struggle to come up with something which might actually be illuminating by way of a question.
Anyway, we all headed for the Counting House next to George Square, and Grant surprised me by remembering me - I used to be fairly heavily involved in the small-press comics scene in Glasgow in the early '90's, particularly a publication called Frankly, which I worked on with Simon Mackie, an artist currently living near London. I'd only spoken to Grant maybe once, something like thirteen years ago, so I was surprised that he did remember me.
I got another pretty decent review, this time in SFX magazine, which was nice. I'm keeping my eye out for others.
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