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.

I have the main edits back for Against Gravity. These are the general suggestions from the editor concerning the plot. There's no major changes required, but what changes there are, are going to take some time and effort, at least a couple of weeks effort, possibly more. It means I can put The Fracture to the side for one moment, and come back to it later to see how I feel about it.

Mainly, I need to tighten the middle section of the novel, since there's a little too much to-ing and fro-ing. This means trimming a particular character (not the hero)back a good bit. He appears at several points through the middle of the text, so it's going to take a little ingenuity to work the story around him if he exits the story earlier than I'd originally intended.

Editors are good for this kind of thing since it can be exceptionally hard to get a complete grasp on a book you're writing. It's like not being able to see the forest for the trees. When you're working on any one particular section of the manuscript, you can see that bit clearly. It can be easy to repeat yourself, at different points, and that's one of the main things you (or at least I) can catch myself doing.

Once this is done, and once Tor are happy with the changes, the next thing will be the line edits.

I ran into Tam today. I hadn't realised until recently he lived just a block or so from me. Exactly what Tam does I've never quite been able to discern, but he seems to own about five houses scattered around the city. When I first met him through a friend in the early '90's, he looked either like a roadie for the Rolling Stones or a particularly glamorous mugger. Nowadays, he looks like a middle-aged bicycle courier minus the bicycle. He's a very nice chap, but I still can't make out half of what he says, as he has a particular brand of Glasgow accent which is at times a little impenetrable.

The Glasgow West End Festival featured a live Saturday night performance a couple of weekends ago in the Botanic Gardens by Belle & Sebastian. I was in the area during the afternoon and saw the same thing I always seem to see performing at these things - a group of forty or so women bashing away at enormous drums with more enthusiasm than skill. I could go to Alaska, and I'd probably find them performing on an iceberg. Wherever I go, there they are. But I didn't stick around for B&S, having already enjoyed the experience at the Barrowlands a few years before during my days as a reviewer and designer for a music magazine and not being particularly blown away by what I regard as rather over-mannered fey whimsicality.

ALl of which brings me round to meeting Tam later that evening in a bar I have been known to frequent with other writers. He'd been in the park watching the band, and happened to drop in with some friends of his without realising I would be there. I mentioned I lived near him. He said something like 'Ayethasgoodnlldroproonsumtimnseewhatyruptonall' and I said, great.

So he dropped round this afternoon to ask me to give him a hand working a couple of Ikea wardrobes out of his van and into his flat. His flat is legendary, and I'd never seen it before. The front door is hidden behind a vast metal security grille that wouldn't look out of place in Escape from New York. Inside, is a dentist's chair next to the phone, all buried under tons of musty junk. Three thousand moldering copies of 2000AD are piled up on a ledge above the entrance.

In the living room is a Suzuki motorbike, a guitar, a settee dating from the early 80's, and the skull of a Water Buffalo. I learned today that Water Buffalo have very big heads. I was slightly disappointed, since Tam is in the process of doing the place up in order to rent it: I'd heard skulls of various types used to be everywhere in his home, mounted on small custom shelves around the hallway. Still, as skulls go, it was pretty impressive.

I got my first review. It was in a small publication called 'Outland', which is produced by Ottakars bookshops for their branches. In this respect its a slightly loaded review in that they're hardly going to sabotage their chances of selling the book if their reviewer happens to hate it, but at the same time it read like an honest review in that the review - similar to all the other reviews - came across as fair and balanced, rather than false and gushing in order to boost sales. Still. I liked what they wrote well enough to slap a brief quote up here, which you'll see to your right.

Last weekend I also enjoyed the annual Phil Raines and Craig Marnock joint birthday bash. As always it's an affair with an element of dressing up, and as always I turn up looking exactly as I would on any average Saturday night. I hate dressing up. It's just a thing. Still: excellent party.

I spent something like several hours on Sunday afternoon drawing little diagrams and typing up notes concerning how I want the technology of The Fracture to work before realising a simple solution made about 90% of it completely irrelevant. I don't mind that degree of wastage as much as I used to, since I've now realised that for every 100k novel, there's probably as many words - if not more - in notes, outlines, ideas, and excised scenes. It's still sitting at about 15k at the moment, but I've changed my working method a little since last time. Instead of simply blitzing through to the end and worrying about the details later, I'm trying to quite heavily revise and re-revise this initial chunk, primarily because it's allowing me to work out exactly how the novel is going to progress.

I just finished a couple of sf novels and needed a serious dose of reality, so I picked up a library book by the BBC journalist John Simpson, which makes for illuminating reading, given that much of it focuses around Simpson's experience of Afghanistan. In a roundabout way, it reminded me that I need a holiday. I know one or two people down in London, and I haven't really been away in a good couple of years except for the last two Eastercons, so the temptation to go down south for a long weekend is there. I might check out if there's any sf-related events or whatever happening down there to give myself an extra excuse to go. I am, however, very skilled at procrastinating, especially when it comes to actually doing things.

Worth reading: a short (very short - it'll take you five minutes at most to read it) by Terry Bisson on Electric Story. >link<

Only a couple of replies so far to my request for notification that you do actually read this blog, so thanks to Joe and Rory. I'll give it a couple of weeks and see if anyone else bothers responding.

I'm feeling remarkably chilled since I found out money was on its way to me. I blew the first chunk of the advance buying the house I now live in, and I've been gripping onto part-time work in the belief that if you're serious about writing, you should at least try and live on part-time work so you can spend more time writing. I'm still here, so I suppose it's worked, but it does feel a bit of a struggle at times. I now feel much more financially secure. I'll also be getting another chunk of the advance when the first book finally comes out in September.

I missed the transit of Venus, so I didn't get to see the second planet out from the sun passing in front of same, though I did see a clip of it on morning television. The Glasgow Science Centre is on my route to work, via a footbridge over the Clyde. They'd set up a powerful telescope just outside the front entrance so anyone who wanted to could step up and get a good view of it (the telescope, of course, shielded so whoever looked wouldn't have their retinas fried). Unfortunately, this being Scotland, it was grey, overcast, and a bit wet. Unlike the rest of the country. So nobody saw anything, unfortunately, including me.

I read in the papers that the BBC now have the go-ahead to build a state-of-the-art Scottish hq a few blocks from me. This pleases me mightily, since I'm hoping it'll keep property prices healthy, and might make the area move up in the world a little bit. I know SMG, a local media group, are considering a similar move. The whole project constitutes a stupendous financial and architectural rejuvenation of the old dock area of Glasgow, in effect custom-building a new financial district and centre of commerce. There's a lot happening here, although I suspect it'll be close to the end of the decade before it's all finally finished.

I tripped over this highly entertaining piece on slush piles, and why authors get rejected >>link<<. I've got a considerable pile of them from short fiction magazines. I don't know how many publishers knocked my first book back: my agent knows the answer to that one. A good few, I'd say. But then, nobody actually bought the first book I'd ever written; they bought the one I wrote after that.

I suppose at this point it's worth saying something about that first book, Touched by an Angel. There's bits of it in Angel Stations - bits of the background really - but apart from that, they bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever. WOuld I like to see that first book eventually published? I'm not absolutely sure that I would, to be honest. It was a first book, the kind of thing you write - in retrospect - as practice, to learn how to write a book. I haven't re-read it in a very long time, and maybe I'll change my mind when I get around to reading it again.

I remember workshopping the first 20k of it with GSFWC, writing the rest of it, and in the next draft completely excising the section I'd workshopped and replacing it completely. ALmost a quarter of the manuscript, but it had to be done. I still have that 20k and I read a bit of it recently. Pretty rough. What I replaced it with was far better. The moral of which, I suppose, is that I learned early to be hard-headed about my own writing.

Another thing I've found is that the more you write, the more your ideas about what you want to write change. I'm happy enough to write solid sf for Tor, but as you do, I feel an occasional hankering for other things. Not even necessarily things vastly different from what I'm already writing; just ... different.

I'm happy. I received confirmation today that the next chunk of my advance - for Against Gravity - is winging its way towards me.

I've started editing the first chunk of The Fracture. I had a mild crisis over the past few days over exactly what approach I wanted to take to it, and I'm tempted to give it a bit of a 'new weird' sheen. What do I mean? It's hard to say, actually; it's just a vague sense of how I'd like the story to read rather than anything I can yet clearly put into words, but I'll try. The obvious thing to do is provide some explanation for how some purported alternate reality accessing technology would work, and in fact there's plenty of lucid theory concerning quantum wormholes revolving around just how you might do precisely that. What I'm considering is a fictional situation where I don't in the least describe the means by which people access worlds. It's an attempt to not do the obvious skiffy thing, and do something maybe a little bit different. Or maybe I'll chicken out, and do the straight-up thing. Or, as straight-up as an opening scene featuring a bank heist, wormholes, bottomless suitcases, and the Cheshire Cat can be.

Here's something I'd like to ask you. Who reads this blog? Something got me thinking along these lines quite recently, and it would be nice to know if anyone is reading this on anything even remotely approaching a regular basis beyond the two people whom I happen to know personally. It took me a bit of work, but I managed to get the comments on this blog working at last (I changed from my previous non-entry-specific external comments system to blogger's own, and had to do some tinkering since their comments system was optimised specifically for their new range of templates rather than my semi-homebrew variety).

If you can add a comment below to let me know that you do drop by, even from time time, I'd very much appreciate it.

I've decided to apply to the Scottish Arts Council for a writer's bursary. What this is, is a grant of anywhere between £1,000 and £15,000 to support writers, to contribute to the overall artistic merit of Scotland by providing the kind of support that allows authors to write full-time.

This is a good thing, of course, except that the awards almost always go to literary writers - not genre science fiction authors. I don't know this for a fact, and I'll never know if I don't apply, so I might as well apply.

I got thinking about this the other day when I read a post on the TTA message boards by an author called Laura Hird, and the name rang a bell. She's an Edinburgh author, and judging by things she mentions in her (linked to) web page, I understand she's supporting herself, to some extent, via one of these grants. I get the impression she's very much of a mainstream writer.

I know of two other authors who received these grants who are friends of friends. Alisdair Gray is one, Alex Benzie is the other - he's te author of a very well-received Scottish historical novel called This Year's Midnight.

Some people I've met are a bit uncomfortable with the idea that genre authors might find it harder to get such frequently desperately necessary financial support. Funnily enough, even though it might turn out to be to my detriment, I don't have so much of a problem, simply because the grants make sense if you take them as what they are: a lifeline to people writing what is, by some consensus, work of real literary value - which isn't the same thing as commercial value. Genre writers therefore would tend to get left out in the cold since they're seen as purely commercial by nature. Which is, of course, a vast oversimplification, but maybe it's better to draw a line in the sand than not to draw a line at all, and end up with a situation where nobody gets this kind of help.

I've finished the first section of the next book - about 12k. It involves movement between alternate realities, and I've spent a good few days not so much writing as trying to figure out exactly what kind of approach I want to take. I'm aiming for something that feels a lot more like Zelazny than the stuff I've previously written. One approach I'm taking - and I know some people I know will have a problem with this - is to not be in the least specific about how people move between the worlds. So that if there's an artifact that allows this to happen, to not describe it.

The reason for this is - I'm hoping - to create a strong sense of mystery. There are times when I enjoy hard sf, solid nuts and bolts stuff, but there's a lot to be said for things not necessarily being clearly spelled out. It's hard to get into words exactly what I'm working on in my head, and that's one reason my writing's been gummed up for the past couple of days. I'm also trying to use a simpler prose style, something very clear and lucid.

I spent Thursday wandering around Edinburgh with MJ, before going to the East Coast writer's group's regular event, Writer's Bloc. It's the first time I've been to one of these, even though they've been going for a while. I don't drive, so that makes it a little harder to get to and back from Edinburgh, which is one reason I don't often make it for this kind of thing.

The event was excellent, consisting primarily of people reading their work. Until recently I wouldn't have expected to enjoy something like this, but what's changed my mind is an awareness that my horror at live reading is partly influenced by unpleasant memories of being forced along with others at school to read stilted passages from dull but supposedly worthy books. And let's be frank, there's a lot of dull people reading dull stuff out there. Writers Bloc, by contrast, was a terrific night.

One reason I attended was the admittedly vague notion I think it would be a good idea to do something like this in Glasgow. I've semi-promised Andrew Wilson from the Edinburgh group I'll be checking out places over here for hosting such an event, particularly if Andrew and the others are willing (and I get the impression they are) to do a Writer's Bloc thing over here. Apart from anything else, it would give me a little extra to do and keep me occupied: even though I have the part-time work and the writing, I definitely need something else to occupy my mind.

Besides, the fact that the East Coasters play up that whole East/Soviet angle just demands an appropriate response from us West Coast authors, don't you think? I keep picturing a flyer in my head for an event with an east/west theme, maybe using that picture of Sly Stallone facing off against Dolph Lundgren (in the sickle and hammer boxing shorts) in Rocky IV - a movie, I hasten to add, I've never seen.

I dropped into Borders the other day and spotted Jon George's new tpb The Faces of Mist and Flame. It looks very smart. I'm holding back on buying it since I'm hoping I can blag a freebie from my editor (since Jon is another Tor UK author) at some point in the near future. What impressed me further was the full-page author photo on the inside of the cover, with a fairly detailed bio.

Full-page pic on the inside cover? Full bio? Rats, how come I didn't get any of that? Sigh. But it would have been nice to have had the full bio I'd originally written, rather than the hacked-down version due to a slip-up at Pan ...

Interestingly enough, the bookseller in charge of Border's sf section had given George's books a good face-out; nice and visible. My next stop was at Waterstone's, where I had a much harder job finding it. It wasn't on display on the new books tables, though quite possibly it had been and simply hadn't been replenished. I finally found it quietly tucked into a bottom shelf, no face-out. Some sense of bond between myself and other Tor UK sf authors made me pick a couple of copies of George's book up, and drop them on the new books tables. It felt like the least I could do.

I got tired of waiting for further inspiration to strike, so I went ahead and started work on the first chapter of The Fracture. The word count stands (I started on Thursday) at just shy of 3,000 words. I thought about doing that whole planning for even more months thing until I had it all worked out, but to be frank I got bored sitting around waiting for any more ideas to come. Much more fun to actually sit down and make the book happen as I write it. What I've got so far feels pretty good. I've learned a lot from the experience of writing Against Gravity, so I know what to expect from myself, and can take certain actions to prevent writing myself into a corner. Also, I'm looking to make this one a little longer, if possible; but that's just a maybe (for reference's sake, both the previous books stand at 130,000 words each).

Of course, I don't have a deal for The Fracture. My deal with Tor UK is for two books. But once I've got some of The Fracture written, me and my agent can see about chasing after a new deal to follow up the current one. Here's hoping.

Well ... this was meant to be a brand new look for the blog, but Blogger done got the better of me. This is partly down to my abysmal lack of understanding of CSS, something I'm seriously considering correcting. It looked fine on the laptop, but when I was doing some freelance work I checked it out on a Macintosh and the page was literally all over the place. And even though relatively speaking very few people use Macs, I'm not going to insult them by using a page design that's literally unreadable on their screens. So back to the old - with one or two adjustments - layout it is. With any luck, this will be legible. Otherwise, it's back to the bare bones original next time and screw the changes/pretty pictures/whatever.

I've been back and forthing with my editor concerning the recently finished Against Gravity. He hasn't finished reading it, but I've basically been given the green light: everything's fine. I can expect some money to come winging my way before too long, apparently. This has also engendered an attempt on my part to write a back-cover blurb for AG. The editor put in some changes, but it's still not quite there for me. Some more bits and pieces here and there, I think, and it'll be good. The cover art will be done somewhat ahead of schedule this time, at least compared to the last time around with Angel Stations, when the cover art was delayed by just the few days necessary to force the publishers to push the publication date back another month to September.

On the other hand ... my agent sent me a press clipping from Publisher's News, which features details of my debut novel amongst a listing of new releases and new authors. The P News entry says the launch date is 1st October ... 1st October??I seriously hope they've just cocked it up ...

Yes, I’ve been quiet, but that’s because I’m thinking very hard about plot outlines for new books. The Fracture just about has a complete working outline. There are still other details to consider apart from that, of course. Planning out some complicated scenes, for instance. Plus, it’s going to take me some time to figure out how some things work out in the scenario I’m creating: to give you a taste, the story involves frequent travel between alternate realities. In some of these universes, time moves faster, in some, slower. In some, time doesn’t even necessarily travel in the same direction. Exactly how characters conspire to interact under these circumstances is something that’s going to take some very, very careful plotting.

I’ve decided on a new look for the blog. It’s not quite complete, since I’m thinking of bringing in some background graphics, gradually, in order to spice it up. But in all – and assuming it looks as good on other people’s screens as it does on mine – I think it’s come out pretty well. Although I feel I must insist that I do not look sinister up there, on the top left. .

Kingdom Hospital: I’ve just watched the new, Stephen King-flavoured version on tv. It’s too early to tell if it’s going to be any good, but I kept feeling like I’d seen it before. Then I realised what felt so familiar: it reminded me – in a good way – of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, the recent early-80’s gore-spoof developed by Channel Four. But … they are both set in a hospital, and it does create a certain – resonance.

There was an explosion at a plastics factory here in Glasgow the other day, a few miles from where I live. I knew absolutely nothing about it until that evening, when I met some other writers in town. Apparently you could hear the building detonating, apparently, from several miles away. When it happened, I was cycling around a park where it was quiet. I wondered if I’d heard it: I have a feeling that if you hear something like that, your immediate reaction is: blown tyre, or something falling off the back of a truck. The kind of thing you hear so often, in some form or another in a city, that you forget about it immediately.
It was nice running into Gary Couzens at the writer’s circle the other night. He’s on holiday at the moment, and I had a look at his short story collection while he was there .Apparently we stalked Gardner Dozois at a Worldcon because we wanted to, er, touch his Hugo (Award). Or something like that – Gary has a better memory for these things, I think, than I do. He mentioned the incident at the time, though my memory is a bit garbled. I first met Gary when I’d managed to place a story in Interzone in the mid-90’s, and he’d just made a sale to F&SF. Gary’s gone on to make considerably more short sales since then than I have, while I kept whittling away at novel-length manuscripts.

I had a tiny scrap of positive news; so naturally, being a writer and generally paranoid in an uncertain industry, I feel driven to place huge emphasis on it. My editor says he’s happy enough with what he’s read of Against Gravity (so far) to ask me for a synopsis, so he can get the cover art and some other details done and dusted. Cripes … hope he likes the second half of the book too …

Here’s something that quite shocked me. I finished a short story recently – it’s called The Sleep of Flesh – and I figured, send it to a magazine. That got me thinking about just how many years since I’ve regularly bought any science fiction magazine regularly – if at all (the noble exception, of course, being Scotland’s own and sadly almost certainly defunct Spectrum SF). Feeling the urge to pick up Asimov’s for the first time in maybe a decade (I stopped buying the short fiction magazines for the same reasons, I think, as anyone else – you just reach a point where you read the articles first, and the period between that and actually reading the stories grows longer and longer until you realise, despite your best intentions, you’re never going to read them).
Guess what? I couldn’t find it – anywhere – in Glasgow. Not even in Forbidden Planet which galls me. Yes, they have Locus, and I’m pretty sure they stock 3rd Alternative and Interzone – but absolutely no sign whatsoever of the US digest magazines. Which is just insane – how the hell is anyone going to find out about short science fiction these days if they walk into FP and all they can see are Lord of the Rings action figures? Yes, I’m aware they’re as driven by market demands – but it’s still a vast pity. Analog and F&SF, curiously enough, can be tracked down in Borders – but no sign of Asimov’s.