The website of fiction/non-fiction author Colin Harvey
In which Colin points out that editors are nothing like Hollywood Production Accountants Here
Today’s blog is in appreciation of those splendid chaps and chappesses at the BSFA.
Here‘s the fourth and last Blog post.
Cheers
I think that the title says it all.
This week I’ve cast my evil eye over Polluto, the journal of anti-pop culture, whose issue 4 is sub-titled "Queer and Loathing In Wonderland." Not much rock ‘n’ roll, but lots of sex and drugs. The review is here.
More about Eastercon here.
The reason that you’re only reading about Saturday at Eastercon on the following Tuesday is that unlike last year at Heathrow, there was no free wi-fi either in the con or my hotel. So with much grumbling I decided that rather than pay £12 for 24 hours –most of which would be wasted– I would just book one hour, although at £6.50 it doesn’t half concentrate the mind.
However, having queued to get a log-on ID, I found that to add insult to injury, I couldn’t log on. The hotel had obviously had this problem before as they hadn’t charged me -telling me to check the access first– but when I went back to reception, a mile-long queue had spontaneously generated, so with dark mutterings, I abandoned the blog for the weekend. I’d already wasted enough time, and I had a meeting scheduled with my publisher.
After lunch I met up with Sharon and our friend Rob and spend an afternoon in the bar, just easing back.
Then it was time for the BSFA awards. Kim Newman and Paul McAuley gave another brilliant performance as Masters of Ceremonies, including an imaginary interview between David Frost and Sir Arthur C. Clarke in 1969, with Clarke giving some wildly inaccurate predictions of how the world would look in 1999 and 2009.
Then the long-awaited Doctor Who special: only a middling episode, but still the best thing on TV all week.
And it was one of the best curries I’ve had in ages, eaten in good company. From a fairly crappy start, the day had turned out really well.
To someone used to near constant internet presence it feels like the same thing. The blog that follows was originally to be posted Saturday, and why it wasn’t will come in the one that was intended for Sunday….
Friday
Finally, time for the panel on YA fiction that as always generated a fair degree of impassioned opinion from the audience – including the interesting idea that Wicked is all about Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of Washington DC in 1913. Hmm. Not sure I buy this, but an interesting idea.
Then time for a quick visit to an SF-nal variant of Dragon’s Den, in which six aspiring authors pitch their first page and synopsis to a panel of agents and publishers. It was interesting that what I considered to be only the second or even third best entry was unanimous winner among the judges: Which just goes to show why I’m not a publisher or an agent.
And so -to quote Mr Pepys– to bed.
Today’s Blog is given over to my other job – that of reviewer at Suite101, where I’m Featured Writer for SF (or to use their classification sci-fi/ fantasy), where I seem to have defaulted to posting the reviews on a Thursday.
This week’s subject is the June 2009 issue of Asimovs, which features a tribute to the remarkable James Patrick Kelly.
I started Winter Song in March 2008, but I’d been thinking about it since returning from Iceland in September 07. We’d been trundling around Borgarnes, one of the first settlements in Iceland hearing and watching the story of the early settlers. Those stories included the classic Egil’s Saga one of many great tales of Icelandic literature.
Tomorrow’s blog will be the weekly review — hopefully I’ll be back on Friday, wi-fi at Eastercon permitting.
Today I had the great pleasure of signing a contract for two novels with Angry Robot Books, the new division of HarperCollins.
Winter Song will be published in October 2009 in the UK, and at an as yet unspecified date in the US and electronically. It’s the story of an ordinary man -that is, ordinary by thirtieth-century standards- who is ambushed in a remote star-system and crash-lands on a ‘lost’ colony. He has to get home past alien wildlife and unfriendly colonists, unaware that the planet holds a huge secret.
Damage Time is scheduled for May 2010 publication, and is set in a near-future New York, where memories can be copied and sold for entertainment. But there’s a darker trade which leads to a policeman being framed for murder, and when that fails to put him off, he’s attacked and stripped of his memories.
It’s a huge step up for me, and I’m really looking forward to it.
