SF writer Gary Gibson

I've been playing around with MySpace recently (there's a link to my profile there on the right, just scroll down). For all its considerable faults, it's this year it seems to have really grabbed hold of a lot of writers. I was steering clear of the site for a long time because I thought it was primarily intended for teenagers - and largely, it is. But there's a very formidable community of genre novelists and the like on there, enough so for me to take the plunge and put a profile up a couple of months ago. David Louis Edelman has a fair bit to say about the site from a programmer's point of view on a recent blog entry.

I've become seriously addicted to www.youtube.com. No, sorry, it's too late for me. Watch this, if you can stand the cheesy eighties metalness of it all. Why? Why, you cry? Well - assuming you're not scarred for life by all the spandex and poodle haircuts, you might just spot a chap in the line-up who subsequently spent several years doing cover art for many UK sf book imprints, and has since moved on to doing installations for rather large fees (or so I understand). I couldn't possibly name the individual concerned - although he's an acquaintance of mine and several other people I know.

On the subject of youtube again: a spot of browsing has located segments from the South Park episode I mentioned recently - particularly Tom Cruise Still Won't Come Out Of The Closet and The Secret Doctrine Of Scientology.

Lastly, I recently had occasion to come across a site maintained by an Australian sf writer Simon Haynes. He's also a programmer - I haven't had time to fully check it out, but he's the author of what appears to be a rather nifty piece of software designed for the express purpose of planning out, organising and writing a novel. Worth checking out, since it looks like it might make the process of writing a book a touch less daunting if you haven't done it before.

Gee, you can tell I've got a lot of spare time on my hands right now, can't you?