Nooks and Crannies

In the spirit of Expanding the Web Presence I've set myself up with a myspace. I doubt whether much will happen there that doesn't happen here, or on the site, or on the message boards, but you never know.

I've been using myspace for yonks* with the band, and found it a brilliant networking tool. And since I see a lot more writers having the same idea, I figured now is probably the time to jump in. So if you're all tooled up with the myspacing gear, fire on over and friend me up.


*Technical Note: the "yonk" is a non SI unit of time which is derived from Einstein's non-specific Theory of Stuff That Happens When You're Not Really Paying Attention.

Talking of Mr Duncan

On returning home from work tonight I was delighted to find that the postie had delivered Hal's Sonnets For Orpheus. This is a gorgeous little volume, a beautiful artefact in its own right, and for Vellum fans the thought provoking contents echo in sonnet form one of the main concerns of the novel - the institutionalised anti-homosexual agenda.

It's a very fine book, and I understand there are handful of copies left. Get 'em while they're hot - or pay thousands on ebay later.

Written On The Skin : Context For Vellum


"Written on the skin
Tattooed with a pin
In ink as black as sin
The future flows."


You can't have read much genre fiction in recent months and not heard of Hal Duncan's "Vellum". It was published just a smirch over a year ago on a wave of strong publisher backing and word of mouth industry hype, and it's fair to say that anyone who reads it has had an opinion on it. For good or ill. Some critics have loved its ambition and the verve of the prose, while other reviewers have been disappointed by its unconventional structure. Opinion has been split.

When I read Vellum I didn't know quite how to respond to it either. I knew that I genuinely loved it, and that I was genuinely confused by it. Hal had created something that broke my rules of reading. When I reported back my feelings about the book I mentioned my misgivings (would people get it - publishers and readers alike?) but since it was clear, also, that this fractured, layered, faceted delivery method was his intention, I wished him good luck and left it at that.

And it's paid off. The book has made a splash, and has been nominated for the Crawford, British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards.

Still though, in my head I've found it difficult to tell my friends whether they would like the book or not. I didn't have a describable context for it. And I think what's been interesting is watching a critical context grow over the last year as reviewers and critics and plain old normal readers have discussed their reaction to the book. Watching them get closer to a way of describing it. And finally, this morning (via a link from Hal's own blog), I read something that pinned the tail right on the fucking monkey.

It's by a chap called Matthias Davies, and it's nothing more than an honest reader reaction.

So, if you want to know whether you'll like Vellum - and the soon-coming Ink - lookie here.

Submission Angst

Something has always puzzled me about the business of writing short stories. It’s a phenomenon that seems mostly to strike newer writers, but it seems that more experienced authors aren’t immune either from the way it has consumed enormous amounts of energy on writing related blogs, forums and discussion boards ever since writers discovered the internet.

I call it “submission angst”, and it goes something like this:

1/ Writer sits down at keyboard armed with a new, fresh, exciting idea for a story.

2/ Over a period of days/weeks/months the story takes shape. It is finely shaped, honed and crafted. It might just be the best story the author has written. It’s certainly the most recent, and therefore it is the one he is most excited about.

3/ Writer scours the market lists for the perfect venue for his story. Then he prints it out, straightens the paper clip, slips it carefully into an envelope and rushes it off to the post office. Watching it disappear into the little red slot, his heart is giddy. (I’m being intentionally traditional because the image is better, but same goes for e-subs).

4/ Writer waits. While waiting he imagines his title and byline on the contents page. He wonders if there will be accompanying artwork. The reader response and reviews will be universally positive. There’s a fair chance of being picked up by a Years Best anthology. The story might even feature on the awards shortlists…

5/ He tells himself to get a grip. Smiles at his foolish extrapolation, but that after all is supposed to be his stock in trade. Still, being objective, it’s a very good story. It’s certainly better than half the stories in any given issue of his chosen market. If the editor is as excited by it as he is, then it’s a shoe-in for publication.

6/ Days/weeks/months pass. Nothing happens. From week three, our author starts checking his email more frequently than usual. He’s often late because he waits for the postman to arrive before leaving for work every morning. Still nothing.

7/ Writer wonders: did my letter/email arrive? Have I been waiting all this time and they never got it? Or has the reply got lost in the mail? What if they sent a contract the same day and it never arrived? Should I send them a query, just to check – or will that earn me a black mark for being pushy?

8/ Writer checks the available information about the market. The website says they hope to respond within three months. That sounds rather woolly. Perhaps intentionally so?

9/ Author looks up what the online communities have to say about it and the seeds of doubt, worry and injustice that had begun to germinate during the Great Silence are fertilized by the mulch of communal dissatisfaction.

10/ Some time later...the story is either accepted or rejected. Writer either laughs at their own foolishness and forgives the overworked publisher for the understandable delay, or demotes them for future choice of market and picks the next market on the list.

Now, all of this is a tad exaggerated, but not that much. And I understand the frission of wondering what someone is going to make of your story.

But.

For the amateur writer (which, financially speaking, most of us are – let’s face it if you’re earning money you can live off from writing fiction your relationship with the slushpile is going to be different to the rest of us), does it really matter how long it takes? Really? Does it really matter that editor A replies to you three weeks (or six months) faster than editor B?

Long time ago I learned a useful trick that keeps the stories that are sitting on editors’ desks out of mind where they ought to be. It’s called “writing something else”. Best cure for submission angst there is – write a new story, and make it even better, fresher and more exciting than the one before.

And the added bonus is, when you finally get those replies in, they come as a nice surprise. I've received rejection letters from markets that I'd forgotten existed.

Feel free to disagree. Perhaps I'm not adopting a professional enough attitude. Perhaps I'm not treating my work with the respect it's due (and if I don't no-one else will)... but you know what? I write because I enjoy writing. Publication is great, but it's secondary to the creative process itself.

Life's too short to get upset about the length of time these things take.

Of course, when you've got someone waiting for you to deliver something it's a different story.

And since this is my lunch hour, I should be working on the Nov.

So, if you'll excuse me, I've got better things to do...

Our Paris in a top-ten meme kinda fashion

So, we had a classic time in Paris. By the time we were there less than a day, we knew we could live there given the opportunity. Since we got back I’ve been trying to work up the energy to blogalise it, but to be honest I just don’t the time or the inclination. Anyone reading this would be bored titless by the third day. So, I’ve decided instead to do a top ten of the things I liked most.

10. Destroy All Camcorders (deluxe edition).

Okay, I’ll admit to a small amount of misanthropy in my character. Generally, there aren’t many things I really dislike in this world, but tourists are one of them: they dawdle, they’re bulky, they gawp, they queue patiently for hours when they could be doing something worthwhile like drinking beer (I mean how good is the Mona Lisa anyway), they talk too loudly, and wherever they happen to be they act like they own the place. And they constantly take stupidly ill-conceived photos and videos. Constantly.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when M introduced me to a fun game to play in to tourist resorts. Destroy All Camcorders. It’s very simple. Whenever you spot someone taking a pointless video (for instance of their stationary mother standing in front of a stationary national monument), you adjust your trajectory for a close fly-past of said camera’s in-built microphone and, raising your broad Glaswegian voice, improvise as bizarre a conversation as you can muster, with the ultimate aim of confusing the hell out of the tourists when they finally watch it back.

I know, it’s horrible, but it’s fun. And who knows if we improvise well enough they might even give them something to laugh at. Besides their stationary mother.

9. Zidane Diorama

The area we were staying in on the Left Bank was riddle with comics and figurine shops (like Forbidden Planet, but much more so). Given that we were a street or so down from the Sorbonne, I wonder what this says about Parisian students. Anyhow, among the many weird and wonderful objets on display in the windows of these establishements, we spotted a lovingly constructed diorama of Zidane (heroically) butting Materazi (with blood flying from a mysterious head wound). We particularly enjoyed the poetic licence employed in replacing the ref that officiated in the final with Collina – who has been retire from international football for a while now! These people have no shame.

8. Supermodels cleaning up dog-poo

At the end of one particularly fine afternoon spent with friends we happened to be sitting drink beers en pression in a café that seemed to be staffed entirely by supermodels. And when a little Parisian dog left a little Parisian present on the pavement outside the establishment, it was obvious whose job it was to dispose of it. Quite a clash of expectations, that.

7. Paris, Je T’Aime - Good Fairy

We went to the cinema. We always try to go to the cinema when we’re abroad. This time we saw one new film in a multiplex on Boulevard St Germain, and one old film in one of the little arthouse cinemas on the Rue Des Ecoles behind our hotel. We recommend both. The new film – Paris, Je T’Aime – is a portmanteau movie that comprises something in the region of sixteen short films each of which is set in a different district of Paris. Some of the directors will be familiar to you, others may not, but pretty much all of them deliver poignant pieces. Memorable moments include the Coen brothers’ segment, featuring Steve Buscemi as a hapless American Tourist who falls foul of the locals on the Metro, Elijah Wood meeting a vampire in the Quartier Madelaine, and the mimes who fall in love at the Eiffel Tower.

At the other end of the spectrum the other movie we saw was a 1930’s Hollywood flick called The Good Fairy. An utterly charming wee movie starring Margaret Sullavan and Frank Morgan (who a few years later would play The Wizard Of Oz himself) about a young usherette in a Budapest cinema who tries to do good things for a random stranger at the same time as keeping out of the clutches of a rich old letch (who keeps remarking that she’s “Simply Marvellous!”). What was especially nice about seeing this in a cinema in Paris is that the theatre in question only showed old Hollywood films, and everyone present was there because they loved those movies.

6. Crepes

For late night, post-pub snack food, even Morello’s chicken tikka kebab is given a serious run for its money by a freshly made crepe loaded with banana, nutella and Grand Marnier.

5. Blackpool Tower

From a distance the Eiffel Tower looks just like Blackpool Tower. Well it does to us anyway. Whenever it came into view (which in Paris is often) we duetted the Entry Of The Gladiator music in tribute.

4. Studio Galande

Another cinema on the Left Bank. This is where they do Rocky Horror on Friday and Saturday nights. The weekend we were there, M guested with them. Utter hilariousness.

3. Picnic in the rain, the other side of Montmartre

M's friends G, M and their pal B took us for a marvellous picnic in the Parc Andre Citroen. The park was designed and built to replace the old Citroen car plant, and is beautiful. The rain came on lightly while we were eating and I think our friends thought we were just being polite when we told them we found it refreshing after so many days of baking sunshine. Politeness went out of the window on the way back to the car when the heavens opened. Outdoor options in abeyance for the time being we were then treated to a Rocky Horror fan's tour of Montmartre - where to go to find the right sequins, wigs, shoes, etc.

We also stopped to look at an interesting piece of street art that runs from the Rue Magenta down to the Gare Du Nord. It's an arrangement of red lines that, viewed from the right spot, joins up to give the impression you're looking at a two dimensional image that someone has drawn on. Uncanny.

2. Café culture

Breakfasting in the morning on fat cakes and coffee, working through notes on the Nov as I waited for M to return from the pool. Possibly even in the same establishments that Hemmingway and Wilde dossed around in. That was nice.

1. Our friends

The best thing about Paris was meeting new French friends and meeting up with old and new friends from other parts. It was great to spend time with the V's and the S's. Lovely to meet the M's for the first time, as well as Mr C and Mr M.

M, giving up the chance of a shoe shopping expedition to hang out and drink beer, accientally got to sit in on the decision making of a prestigious literary award. Which was great fun.

All in all a marvellous trip.

Painting!

Weekends are the bane of my life, so they are. It’s that yawning, inviting gap of blank space that smiles so invitingly at you all week long. You make grand plans for filling it – in my case with The End Of The Novel – and then it’s gone in a frittering of interruptions and minor displacement activities, and you’ve only achieved a tenth of what you planned.

I’m not going to dwell on the procrastination blues – what I will say though is that when I have to process a writing problem, it’s often a good idea just to go away and do something else entirely and let my brain get on with it.

So. We spent the weekend painting M’s new kitchen. We fired up to B&Q after work on Friday and got the necessaries, and on Saturday morning, armed with two and a half litres of “Droplet”-flavoured emulsion (er, light blue to you and me) and a tin of white for the woodwork, we set about it like pros. Which meant: first off, after jumping into our old togs, nipping down the hill for rolls (bacon/square sausage/square sausage + tattie scone) and a couple bottles of Irn Bru (glass, natch). After that we broke out the rollers and went at it.

Cut to seven or eight hours of Ralph Macchio-like zen state later. Thought about the pub, but only had energy for How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? (is it just me or does anyone else think the “So Long, Farewell” routine for booting out each week’s failure is crass in the extreme?), an excellent takeaway from Wongs and a bottle wine. Followed by The Sleep Of The Dead.

Sunday I woke early, and delayed our return to painting by suddenly knowing how to replot the end of the book to make it work. Result. Once that was documented we got back into painting mode (our imaginary Mr Miyagi berating us in his characteristic taciturn manner), aided and abetted by a rare foray into the (vast) reaches of M’s vinyl collection (Free, Big Brother And The Holding Company, Badfinger, Mott The Hoople, Family). Next thing we knew it was time to go. M had a meeting and I had a project plan for getting the Nov done in three weeks, plus the first missing scene worked out and dying to be written.

The result – I’ve got 8000 words of detailed notes for the last three chapters and the writing boiler is well and truly stoked again.

And the good news, with the rest of M’s flat, and then mine, and then hopefully a new flat in the not too distant future, is there’s plenty more painting to be done if I need it.

Something Unexpected

Nova Scotia has been short listed for this year's World Fantasy Award.

I'm gobsmacked. If I hadn't already made plans to go to World Fantasy in Austin, I'd be booking my tickets right now!

This Happens

I'm as guilty as the next person for taking things for granted. We all do it. When something provides us with consistent high quality we forget to be amazed, or even grateful. We just register that it happens, and we expect it to keep on happening.

Take, for example, Interzone, Britain’s longest running professional SF magazine. I started reading it during what some have dubbed its Golden Age. That period of the mid-late 1980s, early 1990s when every month brought new stories by Ian McDonald, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, Eric Brown, Keith Brooke, Chris Beckett, Nicola Griffith, Ian Watson, Molly Brown, Alastair Reynolds, Ian McLeod, JG Ballard, Brian Aldiss… the list goes on. You’ve heard of these guys right? Well back then, many of them were starting out…and Interzone was the place to find them. Every month.

Little wonder that I took the magazine for granted, but looking back I’m grateful for whatever piece of luck it was that led to me picking it up off the newsagent shelves, because Interzone played a large factor in my decision to have a go at writing. I moved to London in 1990 and one of that year’s issues (#34 if I remember right) featured a story by Ian R McLeod called Well Loved. And it was, by me at least. It was a very simple, but immensely affecting, little story about a prostitute who, using a certain device, provides a service that allows men to swap bodies with her so that they can experience sexual violence from the female point of view. The descriptions of how she feels, as a man, having to hit her own face, anticipating the pain she’ll have to deal with half an hour later, are heartbreaking. This was the story that sparked ideas in my head. Extrapolations blossomed, possibilities unfolding like petals. I realised I had stories in me too.

I subscribed to Interzone after that, and have kept my subscription active ever since because the magazine continues to provide me with those moments. For a few years they were fewer and further between, but they were still there – Interzone introduced me to the marvellous work of Liz Williams, Tony Ballantyne and Zoran Zivkovic. And it I’ve never been prouder than when they published stories of my own.

Until a couple of years ago the magazine had persisted largely due to the dedication and energy of its longstanding editor, David Pringle, but when it became evident that Pringle’s reserves were down to the vapour it seemed the right thing to do to hand the magazine on. I stood and cheered at the 2005 Worldcon when David was given a special award in recognition of his services to science fiction, not least of which was Interzone, but by then the new look TTAPress Interzone was standing proud in the dealers room.

For me personally, the marriage of Andy Cox’s TTA and Interzone is perfect. I’ve been reading The Third Alternative since its inception. If you lay out the issues in sequence you can physically see the development of Cox’s talent as a designer, publisher and editor. The Third Alternative will be relaunched soon as Black Static, but Cox’s work on the redesign of the full-colour, sexy Interzone has turned it into a title that beacons out from the newsagent shelves. And the content has risen to fill those glossy covers The non-fiction giants of Interzones past – Langford, Clute and Lowe – have returned, and are joined by a whole host of fresh, insightful reviewers, interviewers and columnists.

And as for the fiction? Well, it’s like 1987 all over again. Alongside some familiar names like Ian Watson, Paul Di Filippo, Dominic Green and Chris Beckett, there’s a whole host of names I don’t know very well producing very good fiction. Check out Will McIntosh and Jay Lake, Karen Fishler and Jason Stoddart.

And in the most recent issue, #205, there’s one of *those* stories. One that excited me so much when I read it that I rewrote it fifty different ways in my head before I got to the end, only to realise that, yes, the way the author did it was the best way after all. It’s a very simple story about catastrophe befalling innocents in a war-zone and, like the best science fiction, it could not be more relevant to the world we live in right now, today.

It’s brilliant.

It’s by David Mace

It’s called This Happens.

Interzone has rolled on past its 200^th issue and it’s as bright and lively and interesting and provocative as when I first started reading it 20-odd years ago, but it shouldn’t be taken for granted. We shouldn’t just notice peripherally that it happens, and it expect it to keep on happening.

Go check out Interzone. You’ll find it on your newsagent shelves. If you’ve got the disposables, take out a subscription.

Read This Happens, and be grateful. Be amazed.