The website of fiction/non-fiction author Colin Harvey
Okay, okay, so I haven’t been into uni this week — I’ve still been working, and I need my weekend as much as you do. So I’m not going to feel guilty about heading for the coast. We’re down at Kate’s parents in Poole in Dorset. And it’s a glorious evening.
So I’ll see you on Monday – kay?
The last couple of days I seem to have hit a hot streak.
Yesterday morning I started nudging some ideas around my cranium about the Brian True-May story, and before I realized it I had an article about the demographics of Keynsham vs Midsomer which I sent in –without too much hope– to the local newspaper, The Week in Keynsham & East Bristol. To my surprise, they wrote back within a few hours and said they’d take it.
And having placed my first article, this morning I got more good news when Andy Remic accepted my story ‘Torturer’s Moon’ for his forthcoming anthology VIVISEPULTURE, to be published by new imprint Anarchy Books. Subtitled “Weird tales of twisted imagination,” I suspect there won’t be many kittens in it…at least, not live ones.
Joking apart, I share a ToC with Rem and fellow Roboteers Gary McMahon and Lauren Beukes, as well as a who’s who of British horror, fantasy and SF; Conrad Williams, Neil Asher, James Lovegrove, Ian Whates and Ian Watson, among others, all within a cover designed by Vinnie Chong. I can’t wait!
As things are supposed to happen in threes, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow.
Midday on the 16th; halfway through the submission period for Transtories. I was a little worried that we not attract enough submissions, or that they’d be of insufficient quality, but so far the quality has been good, and we’ve had 25 submissions, from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Israel — even Nigeria.
Let’s see how the second half of the submission period pans out.
On Friday I wrote the first part of a blog post, just before heading out to the theatre to see Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (which was terrific, by the way):
“This will be the third blog post in as many days, and it feels as if I’ve finally got back into the swing of things. I still have to post something on the film blog, but that can wait another day or two. Meanwhile yesterday felt like one of those rare days when you can go through the ‘to do’ list, ticking stuff off.
I finished reading Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm at something of a gallop, having been struggling with it a little — I think it was the cold, fogging my brain.
I survived my six-monthly visit to the dentist yesterday, and shot into Bath to get tickets for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at the Theatre Royal. Tomorrow is going to be spent mostly watching televised sport, and reading subs for Transtories, my next anthology. I may post some stats tomorrow or Monday. Or even Tuesday…Tuesday sounds good, as it’s halfway through the submissions period.
Sigh. So much time. So many choices.”
Hah. I should have known better with the Ides of March just around the corner….
Instead I woke up on Saturday with the most blinding headache…every time I coughed, it felt as if my skull was literally being split with an axe. On Sunday I started to see shadows moving out of the corner of my eye, and decided that I had to go and see the doctor.
Luckily the combination of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories is starting to take effect, and I seem to be over the worst of it. With any luck, I’ll get back to work tomorrow But that’s not definite — I must remember not to make any plans in future before the Ides of March. …
As part of the Codex Blog Tour, American author and my fellow-Codexian Gray Rinehart has kindly interviewed me over at his website. 
feel free to stop by, and while you’re there, take a look at his other work.
Interzone 232 Reviewed
Four of this issue’s five contributors make their Interzone debut, including
the 2010 James White Award winner, but if the fiction comes from new sources, the non-fictional surround comes from the regular suspects; news and commentary from David Langford’s Ansible Link, Film reviews from Nick Lowe, DVD and Blu-Ray releases reviewed by Tony Lee, and Jim Steel’s Bookzone crew reviewing new titles.
Douglas Lain
Interzone opens its 2011 fiction inventory with ‘Noam Chomsky and the Time Box’ by Douglas Lain, a short story that focuses almost microscopically on the detail of an SF-nal trope –a trans-temporal jump—rather than the macro-effects, such as the history-altering consequences toward which IZ and other magazine stories usually gravitate.
If anyone needed more proof that the gadget driven marketing scam that was the American Empire is now completely dead, the utter failure to adequately create demand for the world’s first personal time machine should suffice as proof….The public seems content to leave history to the necrophiliacs and Civil War Buffs.
Using entries from December 2013 to February 2014 on Crawdaddy Online (with the original Crawdaddy now online, is Lain offering the title as an ironic hint toward an alternate future?) blogger Jeff Morris attempts to override his time machine’s failsafes and alter history, with less than total success. Lain has appeared before in Strange Horizons and several other online magazines, and it’s easy to see why the ‘slipstream’ label has been applied to his work, judging by that micro-focus, together with his oblique, elliptical prose and the downbeat nature of the ending. Illustrated by cover artist Richard Wagner, it will probably delight and annoy readers in equal measure, depending on their tastes.
Michael R. Fletcher
Dhaka…capital of Gano Projatontri Bangladesh…the city was a madhouse. Buses and plastic Tata Kei Cars spewed thick smoke from their struggling two cylinder aluminum engines. The heat and pollution were stifling and the cacophony of car horns relentless….It was dirty. It was overcrowded. It was dangerous.
I loved it.
In ‘Intellectual Property,’ Michael R. Fletcher’s debut sale takes the reader on a journey into another near-future, this one a post-cyberpunk (biopunk?) tale of identity crisis inside sterile malls and offices amidst the incredible pollution quoted above. It offers interesting thoughts on corporate politics and is an effective debut. Highly Recommended.
Sarah L. Edwards
Monticello Dabney skimmed the beauty from beautiful things and fed it to those that had none. It was no honored profession; the animatists and the masquers nearer the center of the dark quarter took pleasure in spurning him whenever opportunity offered. They were the artists and he a mere artisan.
Two years after her ‘Lady of the White Spired City’ appeared –and was selected for Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF 15– Sarah Edwards returns with ‘By Plucking Her Petals,’ a fantasy in which a beautiful young woman sells some of her beauty to alchemist Dabney. She succeeds, but she isn’t the only one changed by the experience – Dabney comes to view his profession with less satisfaction than before.
Both the Edwards’ and the Fletcher stories are illustrated by Mark Pexton.
Sue Burke
Illustrated by Ben BaldwinWhen Letitia Serrano synched her phone to Brianna’s, I defeated its firewall 
and entered. I’m a benign program and would only observe through its microphone and camera, so I saw no ethical problems.
Sue Burke’s ‘Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise’ takes the reader to near-future Spain where young American student Brianna and her AI are on a ‘study abroad programme.’ Except that when the AI hacks into her hosts’ phone, it discovers that the Spaniards have an agenda of their own, one not designed to help Brianna. What is an AI precluded from helping its owner to do in such circumstances? Burke is an American living in Madrid, which lends the story local colour, and her portrayal of the AI is among the best: Highly Recommended.
James White Award
The James White Award is a short story competition open to nonprofessional writers and is decided by an international panel of judges made up of professional authors and editors, including Lois McMaster Bujold and Mike Resnick, and for 2010 Martin McGrath and Ian Whates.
Sadly, the awards administrators seem a little shy, since the site hasn’t been updated since October 2010, so it’s difficult to find out more. Nonetheless, the winning story each year is published in Interzone, and the latest winner is ‘Flock, Shoal, Herd’ by James Bloomer, a fine piece of writing in which Rocco searches for Elaine; either of them is capable of hiding anywhere, be it amongst a flock of pigeons or a herd of wildebeest. Recommended.
It’s a good note on which to end the beginning of another year for this excellent magazine.
Bradley P Beaulieu came 2nd in the 2004 Writers of the Future contest, and has subsequently sold short stories to Realms of Fantasy and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. His first novel, The Winds of Khalakovo will be published in April 2011 by Night Shade Books — it is the first volume of The Lays of Anyushka trilogy. He’s stopped by to answer a few questions. 
So to begin, if you could pick anyone at all, who would you most like to meet?
Anyone alive? I’d probably pick Cate Blanchett. She’s such an interesting actress. She’s so good at her art, and I think it would be fun to talk to her about her process, how she prepares for roles. And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that she’s beautiful, nor that she played the part of one of the more interesting characters in The Lord of the Rings.
You like spicy food. What dish do you most like to cook?
Tell us about your fantasy kingdom – what cultures and/or countries have you drawn inspiration from?It’s 2.26 am as I write this. I have a stinking cold caught from my film group which is keeping me awake. So as it’s the beginning of March, I might as well give into insomnia and do the monthly stats, for February.
I worked 244 hours in February, which for the mathematically challenged among you, means I worked four 61 hour weeks. That’s 4 hours more than November, my previous busiest month, with 2 days less in the month. (In November I did also work 45 hours at the Eye Hospital, which is why I was gibbering the end of that month)
Unsurprisingly, Planning & Making A Film accounted for almost as many hours as the other three modules combined. The good news on that front is that we completed shooting, so (hurrah!) my hours should plummet on that module – I intend them to, certainly.
Cumulatively, I’ve worked 900 hours in the past 4 months (120 days) averaging 7.5 hours a day, or 52.5 hours a week. The big single subject – bar, none, including miscellaneous reading and writing—is film; I’ve worked 138 hours on that.
However, it’s now Reading Week, so I shall devote some time to reading, which always helps me chill.
The submission period for my new anthology Transtories is now open. You have thirty days to finish up that revision if you’re thinking of submitting. Meanwhile I gave an interview to D.L. Snell over at his Snellville blog, talking about what stories and authors I particularly like, and some of the things I’m hoping to fish out of my inbox over the next month.
