Excuse me while I momentarily slip into huckster mode, but I hadn't realised the UK website Play.com also sold books. This is significant, because they have free postage. So, er, you can get Angel Stations for a sum total of £8.49 (link). It's still a quid cheaper over on Amazon, but only if you spend at least £19.

... by the way, I am not the author of the book listed under 'other books by...'!

So remember I mentioned the 'Aye Write' Glasgow literary festival launch do I got invited to, at the City Chambers last Saturday?

I'd received an invite that very definitely didn't mention bringing anyone else, so I went on my own. MJ wanted to do some studying and wasn't particularly interested in literary festival launches, anyway. The City Chambers themselves are sort of impressive, in an Extraordinary League of Gentlemen meets Overlook Hotel kind of way: ludicrous quantities of marble, a (marble) staircase leading up four floors, of the grand and sweeping variety. Wallpaper that looks like they maxed out on the local gilt supply, where you can see it behind the four foot tall paintings of a hundred years worth of Lord Provosts.

Funnily enough, I got talking to Duncan Lunan about the City Halls, and he compared it to the Emperor's Palace in the movie of Dune ... you can make up your own mind by looking at a picture of the banquet hall here.

So.

I get there at exactly eight. The Chambers is right at the heart of the city, on one side of George Square. Walk in enormous front entrance. Get eyed suspiciously by two heavily brylcreemed gentlemen in identical electric blue jackets clearly positioned in order to meet and greet. Did I mention the piper standing just outside? Cold night. Knees clearly turning blue under the kilt. Upon entering, immediately have brief mental flash of Tom Cruise entering big scary house full of rich weirdos in Eyes Wide Shut. Go up four floors, having failed to find elevator.

Twenty people standing at far end of enormous hallway immediately reminiscent of set for am-dram production of Agatha Christie novel. Men all wearing suits, women dressed up. Glance down at own leather bomber, black t-shirt, black jeans, black boots. Recall distinctly that the invite said informal.

Phone MJ.

"They're all wearing suits. I don't even own a suit. They're looking at me like I got in through the back door."

"I told you so."

Hang up. Ten seconds later, early-thirties-looking guy wanders in wearing donkey jacket and faded jeans. Immediately relax.

Invite says eight for eight-thirty, so stand around feigning deep interest in paintings of past Lord Provosts. Get chatting to little old lady. My hearing being not the greatest, mistakenly believe her first name is 'Blair'. There's a little monkey-voice in the back of my head shouting 'It's Emma Blair, you twat! Author of 'Tea at Miss Cranston's and a dozen enormous great family sagas set in Glasgow and the lowlands!' But of course, I'm too nervous to check. We discuss invites; it's clear that in fact bringing a companion was entirely acceptable. MJ however, has already decided to stick with the studying, so I'm on my own. The shame is, I could have brought someone from the writer's circle.

Eight-thirty: down stairs and into ginormous dining chamber as in above picture link. General free-for-all for seats. Fail to spot any other sf writers, not even comics writers, not a rare species in Glasgow (Grant Morrison for example). Nor a Richard Morgan, or from slightly farther afield Ken McLeod and Iain Banks, who are taking part in the festival, but given it would mean a long drive from Edinburgh I can hardly blame them.

Do spot Alisdair Gray, however, sitting at next table. Don't know him personally, but some friends of mine do. (By the way, if you happen to be a fan of Gray's stuff, and you're coming to the Worldcon, make your way to the Oran Mor theatre/bar/restaurant in the West End, which is in the process of receiving a Cistine-like paint job from Mr Gray.) Emma Blair is on one side of me, a guy called Tony Roper (I think) opposite her. I chat with him quite a bit: he's vaguely familiar from a couple of tv shows.

Rapidly realise there's an awful lot of actors and theatre-types there for a literary festival launch.

Food quite good: four course meal. Evening gets quite interesting, conversation-wise. Apparently (unless my lousy hearing was once again taking advantage of me) author of well-known children's book The Gruffalo is at the table, although I've no idea which one it is. Discuss medieaval weaponry with bloke on my left whose name I've since forgotten. Lord Provost's speech mercifully short. By shortly before eleven, too tired to remember very much of what's subsequently said during speech by Liz Lochhead (another writer).

I get asked if I'm going to any of the festival events, then realise the only one I might be interested in (Banks/McLeod) I won't be attending, because Banks was through only a few weeks before promoting his new sf novel at Waterstones, and McLeod is going to be fairly prevalent at the Eastercon in March.

Conclusions: fun, in a haven't-done-that-before kind of way, but not necessarily of any great advantage. I got chatting to some interesting people, but it all confirms the real networking gets done at genre conventions. Would I go again? For free food? Of course I would. Except next time I'm taking somebody.

So there's been an enormous gamma ray explosion on the other side of the galazy, of unprecedented destructive power ... thanks to Duncan Lunan for notifying me of this one. As he notes, not unlike certain events in a certain book of mine.

From the BBC: "We figure that it's probably the biggest explosion observed by humans within our galaxy since Johannes Kepler saw his supernova in 1604," Dr Rob Fender, of Southampton University, UK, told the BBC News website.

One calculation has the giant flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashing about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. We have observed an object only 20km across, on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a 10th of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years," said Dr Fender.

The word for today is prescient (heh).

But what's also ridiculously cool is they've found an underground sea - on Mars (Mars pictures reveal frozen sea). I'm not nearly enough of an expert to say how important this will turn out to be off the top of my head - in terms of not only, say, future human exploration or even colonisation - but it's certainly and more directly a source of information that could be really, really useful to anyone wanting to set a book on Mars.

Not that I said I was going to, mind ...


(by the way - I didn't realise until earlier today that the link for the Glasgow SF Writer's Circle hadn't been updated to the new address, which is a screw-up on my part, even though I remember doing it - but probably it was one of those situations where either you go offline or your computer crashes at the wrong moment. Whatever. If you were trying to get through to us, you'll find the correct - functioning - link down there on the right, working properly, just below the reviews.)

I started feeling a little more like a writer the other day – as opposed to feeling like somebody who spends a lot of time sitting in front of a computer monitor, trying vainly to ignore the xbox and tv sitting about three feet to the left – when I received a letter inviting me to, of all things, a civic dinner at Glasgow’s city halls. The dinner is the launch point for a Glasgow-based literary festival taking place over the second half of February, called ‘Aye, Write’ (this is a lot wittier if you come from around here), designed to do the usual things promotional events of this sort are intended to do: make Glasgow look like a hotbed of creativity – which it can be. Sometimes.

I only heard of this thing through somebody else, since apparently it’s been primarily promoted via local newspapers like the Evening Times and the Glasgow Herald, neither of which I read (I usually stick to the Guardian these days), so I only heard about it relatively late in the day. But they were after at least 150 local writers, and naturally I wanted to get in the act. Several phone calls and a couple of emails later, it turned out they’d actually tried to contact me, but for various reasons hadn’t been able to get my details in sufficient time to ask me to participate in whatever it is they’re going to be doing.

Mind you, the upshot of this is they asked for my contact details in case anything turned up they could invite me to, and hey presto there’s an informal inaugural civic dinner with the Lord Provost. Which should be … interesting, since I have no idea what this kind of thing might be like. It might be cool, or it might be utterly horrendous, I have no idea. But it’s informal, which means I can drag myself along as my usual scruffy self. If it had involved – I don’t know – ties, or suits, or something, forget it: I don’t do drag. So I’ve got that to look forward to over the next couple of weekends.

If I haven’t been blogging with quite my usual frequency recently, put it down to all the hard work I’ve been carrying out on Wonderland. This is by far and away the most heavily researched thing I’ve done, ever. In the space of five pages, I had about four large reference books open at various points, and a dozen websites tabbed across my screen in Firefox, while I delved into the mysteries of – nazi art thefts of the second world war: a street map of Los Alamos: a description of a museum, in Los Alamos, dedicated to nuclear energy and weaponry: induction and training procedures for US Army troops in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s: the flora of Tibet: an expedition, also to Tibet, carried out by SS officers towards the end of the Thirties: and the reasoning and method behind modern art techniques. So – busy, really.

I haven't had a great deal to say on the subject of Gordongate (An Edinburgh Waterstone's employee fired for making mildly disparaging remarks about his workplace in the context of an entry in his online diary), since everyone else got there long before me. Joe Gordon was in charge of the sf section of his bookshop, and was apparently extremely diligent both in promoting the genre to customers and via occasional interviews on local radio, where he was generally presented as a Waterstone's employee.

I have some considerable sympathy for Joe's dilemma, which has generated a thousand times more bad publicity for Waterstone's than they could possibly have anticipated. The general feeling is that at the very most he deserved a slap on the wrist, rather than being fired and escorted from the building, particularly given his considerable beyond-the-call-of-duty efforts for the company he gave eleven years of his life to. Much of that sympathy arises from my own short experience of working for the rival store Borders some years ago, when it opened an enormous multi-level store in the centre of Glasgow. Like Joe, I ran the sf section. Unlike Joe, I had no intention of sticking around for as much as a year, if I could avoid it, let alone eleven.

If I had any advice for Joe, it would be to look on the loss of his livelihood as having a distinctly silver lining: now he can hopefully get a job not only more suited to his talents, but also one that pays rather better than a bookseller might be expected to receive. Enthusiasm, I'm afraid, in the modern high-speed world of bookselling, is rarely appreciated. It smacks of dangerous individualism and the forming of personal opinions, traits clearly incompatible with the modern world of shareholders and profit maximisation.

Some of his experiences sound depressingly familiar, particularly his reference to an 'escape committee'. On the other hand, he did have the advantage of having a 'union rep' on hand during the meeting that led to his being fired. Unions, of course, are not allowed by Borders, a fact which remains to my mind both scandalous and disturbing.

Joe sounds like the kind of guy who is enthusiastic about the books he was employed to sell, and is filled with the commendable desire to share that enthusiasm. He is also, I suspect, intelligent and well-read enough to have opinions and be prepared to share them. These are not necessarily qualities to endear employers like Waterstones: although they would like to be seen to reflect the liberal/ intellectual qualities deemed desirable by their core customers, this doesn't mean they genuinely share those values beyond the point where such an appearance generates a substantial profit.

This dichotomy between what many companies make themselves appear to be, and what they actually are, only becomes clear when you're in the fortunate or unfortunate position of working for them. I decided to leave Borders, at least in part, because for all my engagement with the books I sold and the customers I sold them to, I might as well have been working in a supermarket, stacking tins of beans.

If you're thinking of getting a job in a place like Waterstone's or Borders, here's my advice: think of it as a temporary gig, unless you have serious managerial aspirations, in which case an enthusiasm for books is (I suspect) neither required nor even necessarily desirable. Otherwise, do it for the summer, or between jobs, and then get out and find something better. I left because I was literally going stir crazy. The hours were unbelievable, I could hardly stay awake even on my days off, and the longer I was there the more I spent my waking hours in a kind of numbed haze.

And if you still think working in a bookshop would be cool, then I agree wholeheartedly. But remember: Borders and Waterstone's aren't bookshops, they're supermarkets that happen to sell books. 'Real' bookshops, unfortunately, are becoming a thing of the past in many ways.

But then, what do I care about Borders or Waterstones? I don't buy my books there, I just browse them - then go straight to Amazon and get them sent to my front door.

From a piece of spam received this afternoon:

"a rest broadcasted elastic. where expansion drove me soon? awkwardly knowledge outdid this company beyond hate. we showed that last fold without sugar. obediently. a bent harbor save store, that underlet female, angry current. Gianni rived my able cough. you sowed Leroy when skywrote them Johanna! it forbore thin bear, who befell elegantly... toward memory sang harmony, flag struck onto your dust round female curve:"

Either it's an international conspiracy of technically-gifted Dadaists, or (if this were in fact a science fiction novel rather than real life) the first awkward baby-steps of something groping its way toward sentience via the internet.

Or maybe this is just what you get when you run the same Viagra advert through a dozen different flavours of language translation software.

Anyone who's seen the version of the cover for Against Gravity in the most recent issue of Starburst will note it looks nothing like the artwork you can see here. This is the correct version: the version in Starburst is something that was put aside some time ago, but still found its way out there nonetheless. The artwork here is by Steve Rawlings, who also did the cover for Angel Stations. Frankly, I think it looks terrific.

Against Gravity is coming out on July 15th this year, in trade paperback, and the paperback of Angel Stations should be out at the same time.

I've been busy working away on 'Wonderland' (might as well call it that for now) over the christmas period, and as a result haven't been posting here as often as I might have. So it goes. It's 'working' rather than 'writing' since the only way, I've found, I can figure out a plot for a book is to start writing the book and see where it goes. Usually I get bogged down somewhere between twenty thousand and forty thousand words, but I've learned to anticipate this.

I hit twenty-five thousand words a couple of days ago, and decided to take a step back and work out the exact details of the story I want to tell. Part of this means building an Excel spreadsheet (I've never done this before, but figured it would be worth a shot) detailing series of events over a period of several decades. This way, I can look at short snippets of events and personal histories arranged along a timeline, and work out where the story threads through it all. One thing I've already found this good for (and I only started building the spreadsheet earlier today), is pointing out glaring inconsistencies. In a couple of days, I should know where all the several characters were at different points between about 1945 and 1976. I've also set up a timeline for real-life events, such as the Korean War, the MKUltra program, major events in CIA history and anything else that looks like it might fit, since these things will all be entirely part of the environment for the characters.

... and how was your christmas? I spent Christmas Day at my mum's with MJ, New Year at Jim's in the West End, plus had Dave (who I used to work with years ago) visiting from Edinburgh on the Saturday. Finally, a night out at a chinese restaurant in Princes Square called Ming's (very highly recommended) with some of the writer's circle. Quite relaxed for once.

A book recommendation - I saw the movie of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (the quite possibly almost entirely fictitious life of Chuck Barris, creator of the Gong Show, and covert CIA assassin, should you choose to believe him) some time ago, and finally got around to reading the book. Very good indeed - in fact, a lot better than I'd expected. Heck, he had me wondering ...

Flicked through a copy of Starburst in a shop the other day and found the mini-piece I put together for Sandy Auden, in the magazine's 'publishing news' section ... and saw to my horror that Tor had supplied the wrong book cover for Against Gravity (what you see there is a much earlier version of the cover, entirely unrelated to the artwork now being used). Oh well ...

I found a press release online for Phil's agent deal, which you can find here.

Spent most of the week scraping around the fifteen thousand word mark on Things Unseen/Wonderland, then got past the 'difficult' bit I was in and started moving more quickly towards the twenty thousand mark. In the name of research, I started reading a (second-hand, picked up by MJ on her occasional trawls through the bookshelves of charity shops) copy of 'Psychic Warrior', a purportedly 'true' account of US military remote viewing programs, hoping to glean some information concerning the more bizarre real-life exploits of American black-ops. Instead I rapidly found myself trapped in a sub-Castanedan narrative of wide-eyed spiritual discovery by an individual so unquestioningly God-fearing he makes Marge Simpson look dangerously bohemian. I gave up when the author started getting advice from guardian angels.

Nonetheless, the armed forces in any country has its own quota of mystics and cranks, as does any sufficiently large social group or organisation, and some of the whackier exploits of the US Army are a matter of public record, although I aver on the side of the skeptics in finding little to recommend in the supposed results of these experimental programs: much of it seems the result of wishful thinking and overactive imaginations, and I'm a big believer in the notion that remarkable claims require equally remarkable proof.

Perhaps, given that some of the scenes yet to be written in Things Unseen/Wonderland are far more influenced by the psychedelic journeys of Marvel Comics' Doctor Strange into the dream-realm of the Dread Dormannu, perhaps I was never likely to get a great deal out of supposedly 'true' accounts of remote viewing programs.

Other stuff: Phil Raines of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writer's Circle - writing as Harvey Raines - has found himself a book agent in the form of John Jarrold, which is quite something considering Jarrold is a highly-regarded name in the UK science fiction publishing field (former editor of Earthlight, now freelance editor and, as mentioned, agent). Jarrold was also the 'reader' on Angel Stations: he published the first two books of another GSFWC'er, Mike Cobley, through Earthlight. He also recently signed William King to his agency - King is the author of a series of books for Games Workshop, based on some of their characters, as well as being a one-time, long-ago GSFWC'er. Harvey/Phil's book is called 'Moondog', and probably fits somewhere in that whole 'new weird' area of the genre.

A couple of days ago some of us were discussing this, aware that (H)al Duncan had also mentioned it on the Night Shade Books forum. Subsequent to (H)al mentioning this online, queries came in from a couple of publishers interested in seeing the manuscript. Which just goes to show.

The East Coast/West Coast spoken word event went fairly well on Tuesday, although I think a lot of the success may have come down to the East Coasters considerable experience in live spoken-word performance; I had the feeling they were pulling out their 'greatest hits', which is fine, since there were a good few people there who wouldn't have heard any of them before. But we had at least fifty people all in all,in the basement bar of Blackfriars, which is a good number (the same place, as it happens that SCAMM used to meet until a couple of years ago). A lot of subsequent comments of the 'I didn't think I was going to enjoy it, but I really liked it - when are you doing it again?' variety. Unfortunately, nobody (including myself) remembered to take any photographs.

'Things Unseen' (or Wonderland, as I've been thinking of calling it instead) is halted just for the moment at fifteen thousand words, while I try and work out some of the intricacies of the plot. Basically, I need certain people to do certain things. For this, they need motivation. In order to have the necessary motivation, they need a certain kind of history/life experience that leads them to behave in the ways they do. That will also define the kind of personality they have. Which means, rethinking the kind of characters I've been imagining in my head until now.

For some people this isn't a big deal, but it comes down to my wanting to avoid having unnecessarily heroic characters. I've always been very heavily influenced by something Philip K. Dick said (I'm vaguely recalling here) that he'd rather write about ordinary people with relatively mundane aspirations than the kind of gun-toting violence monkeys that up until that point (late Sixties/early Seventies) had been, if not typical of, then certainly prevalent in a certain type of sf up until that point. When I wrote Angel Stations, I tried as much as possible to write about people who did the things they did because they literally had no choice. Elias bucked that trend slightly - he was more of your gun-toting hero type - but I made damn sure he didn't get off on it (far from it, as a matter of fact).

This part of the writing process is beginning to seem quite familiar to me - you get up to a certain point, you stop for a bit, figure out some of the details to get you through the second quarter or so of the manuscript, and hopefully including some of those cool/potentially interesting settings or events that were floating through your mind when the manuscript was only an idea rather than actual words. It's a little frustrating in the sense that the solution to all this - lots and lots of thinking - feels somehow less than proactive: after all, you're just sitting around, waiting. But I've been here before, and will be here again.

At last, a solution. Turns out there were some other variations of the cover kicking around - I guess the artist must supply several different potential versions of a cover design, from which the editorial people pick what they think might work, then ask me my opinion.

I've now seen yet another design for the book (all mild variations on each other, I should point out, rather than anything radically different) which fits the bill exactly. It seems to make the marketing people happy, and it certainly makes me happy. It's like the cover I'd already seen and approved, but better (basically, a different bloke in the foreground, but similar pose). So, sorted, really. Now I can get on with some other stuff, like ... I don't know ... writing, or something.