The Sony Vaio arrived, and it's a wee delight: it's exactly what laptops should be, but aren't - light, portable and small. And just the right size for writing on the move. It's tiny, but not too much so. Not bad for a hundred quid including postage.

I have one or two small quibbles still to be cleared up - the ebay seller specified it had a floppy disk drive: it doesn't. There's an external available, but it wasn't in the box. I'm not really concerned, since no one uses floppy disks anymore, but there is the all-important usb slot for memory sticks. The guy also slung in a small, compact case as well as a usb 4-way hub, so again pretty good for the money. I haven't had time yet to check out the available battery life, but I'm not expecting much anyway on that front. It also has a firewire port, which is good - means it should also work nicely with my external hard drive I use for back up.

waiting, waiting

Still waiting for the laptop to arrive, thanks to the vagaries of Royal Mail and the fact I won the bid over a bank holiday weekend. Managed to slam in a few details for the Stealing Fire synopsis during a break at work, which is horrendous right now; I'm the only designer there, and they really need more people to cope with the amount of work coming in. I've already passed up on continuing to do design work for the local bed company I was freelancing for for a while, since it's not really compatible with important fun stuff like writing books.

It's worth reiterating: Tor are behind the new book and releasing it in hardback largely due (it seems obvious to me) to the amount of time I was quite literally forced to spend working on it last year. I've slacked off on the writing front this year - no surprise there, given the circumstances - but I feel the need to pick up the pace a little. Before I start on book two, I really need to be clear on what's happening in book three. I have a couple of key points - including the very end - but they need firmly placed in a well-structured outline before anythign else.

Word up if you're a reviewer - I hear pre-release preview copies of Stealing Light are out and about, although I haven't received mine yet.

pros and cons

There was a convention on in Renfrew (of all places) this weekend, but I never made it through ... too deadbeat on Friday, and ended up going out on the Saturday with a friend through from Edinburgh in an abortive attempt to see a Seattle band called Modest Mouse, except they were sold out. I did get a text from H/al that he and some others were at a Rocky Horror showing in the West End's cinema, and I thought about going along, but a general air of fatigue post-flu attack drove me back to the south side instead.

To my surprise, I've just about finished the synopsis for Stealing Fire this afternoon. It's still sketchy in the way these things are, but it's got that feeling of more-or-less cohesive that makes me think another week of occasional polishing, and it's just about there.

Arse. I just can't get any writing done. Part of it is, as I interminably tell people at any opportunity, having been stuck indoors for most of last year, any time I'm at home thinking about writing, I'm thinking a hell of a lot more about running out the front door for the nearest pub/gig/party/other person's living room at the speed of light.

So I bought another laptop.

If you were a laptop, you wouldn't like me. Bad things happen to laptops who spend time near me. They get ... hurt. The cold, dead evidence is lying in a cupboard a few feet from this computer.

The basic idea is with a laptop, I can fanny around in coffee houses like the rest of you 'writing my novel'. Preferably on Saturday afternoons, maybe in Mono, or Stravaigin's, or Offshore, or any one of a number of places. I won an Ebay bid for a Sony Vaio with a six gig hard drive for just about a hundred quid, so assuming it isn't a lemon with springs sticking out of it, the sheer guilt alone of spending the money will drive me to leave the house and do some actual work. Because that way, I won't be so scared of writing to my agent and admitting that where the new synopsis is concerned, I still ... haven't ... finished it.

A recent email conversation

Scenes from an email conversation.

From: Jim Steel
Remember the story that I wrote after you said that you "wanted to die horribly while eating my own intestines" (in one of my stories)? Well, (NAME OF MAGAZINE) have just got back to me asking for a rewrite - mostly to bring it down from 10,000 words. The only bit that they specifically asked to be cut was the bit with you in it. So that's either a good or a bad thing from your point of view, but it is definitely a something.

From: Gary Gibson
To: Jim Steel
I may be forced to quote this verbatim on the blog.

From: Jim Steel
To: Gary Gibson
No problem - I would be grateful if you could blank out the name of the magazine until I get a definite rejection, though - just in case it scunners my chances.

From: Jim Steel
To: Gary Gibson
This just gets weirder. I emailed (NAME OF MAGAZINE) saying that I was more than happy to do a rewrite, and I filled them in on how your character came about. They loved it and now want me to keep your character in and add an author's note explaining the backstory. So you'll get a free plug if it gets published, and I've now got to think of a different way of chopping wordage out of it. There's just no justice in this world.

From: Gary Gibson
To: Jim Steel
Just remember to mention the name of the new book. And when it's published (October).

From: Jim Steel
To: Gary Gibson
Well... it is your birthday, after all. Happy Birthday!

From: Gary Gibson
To: Jim Steel
It's the best birthday brutal, meaningless birthday murder I ever endured.

From: Jim Steel
To: Gary Gibson
I'd better just confirm. The new book's called 'Lighting Steel', isn't it?

From: Gary Gibson
To: Jim Steel
It *could* be called Lighting Steel. And it *could* be printed with authentic non-voluntary Steel blood mixed in the ink.

Hey ... how come Stephen King never thought of that?

friday night is all right for writing

One of the problems with working full time is it kind of kills the writing. Not only that, but after spending a very substantial chunk of last year stuck indoors and completely incapable of so much as walking out my front door without suffering agonizing pain, I now find it almost impossible to stay indoors once I do get home from the new job. Combine that with a variety of social engagements and excuses not to be in, and actually sitting in front of the computer and finishing the synopsis for the follow-up to Stealing Light starts to look like a remote possibility indeed.

If I'm not hanging out at a friend's house, almost certainly somewhere in the West End, I'm off to some gig or other, or out in the pub with other people, or at a party, or at a screenwriting group or ... you get the picture. Stay in? Write? Excuse me, I did that last year. Twenty-four hours a day, in fact, for the better part of six months. And it's sunny out there. Nonetheless, I've forced myself to finally, finally get somewhere near finishing the synopsis for Stealing Fire, as it's probably/maybe going to be called.

I had occasion recently to meet several people who worked in the Glasgow branch of Borders about the same time as me, some years ago. Many of them I hadn't seen since then; an annoying number of them are now also published novelists, annoying because I don't feel special any more, dammit. So it goes, I guess. In particular there's Simon Biggam and David Cunningham. The former is edited (so I gather) by Gillian, who used to be the events manager at Borders before heading south for a couple of years to work in publishing. That's not to mention the actors and artists who also made up a substantial part of the Borders staff.

I got a request from a chap at the screenwriting workshop, Kolin Ferguson (who was involved in the production and shooting of a Scottish Bafta award-winning short called Scene) to forward the script of Personal Jesus to him - and now he's forwarded it to several directors he knows. Whether any of them like it or not is another matter, but I'm still immensely grateful for Kolin's support - he's working on producing and shooting a short of his own, a comedy crime thriller set in Glasgow. I've read the script, and I've got a feeling it's going to beat even Scene, which was very, very good.

At the same time, an enquiry came through from another source about the script. I'm sort of curious to see if this one works out, but it's still too early to be anything but annoyingly vague about it. Let's just say I always thought Personal Jesus could work really well as an animation and leave it at that, until I have more - if anything - to report.