Colin Harvey – author

This morning I passed 40k on the next novel, so it is now officially a novel, albeit an unfinished one.  

I also posted up my full Angry Robot schedule at Suite101. Since the US and UK have different ordering and delivery cycles, there are four different dates, which makes it hard even for me to keep track of.

And I watched Misfits on Channel 4 last night. Brilliant. Heroes done properly — including a cheeky dig at the American series.

This morning I’m guest blogging over at at Gareth L Powell’s website, on the subject of Generating Heat.  Nothing to do with starting fires or keeping warm, but rather a film industry term.

Long gone are the days when the author wrote a book, sent it off, and left it to take its chances in the world. Nowadays every publisher expects the author to have a plan. The scriptwriting industry is much more self-aware about writing as a career, and can provide the aspiring writer with useful career guidance. Read more here.

I was supposed to be working on a synopsis this morning, but I hit a bit of a road block. So when I saw a recent  Guardian article that tied in with a couple of recent conversations, I thought it worth taking a few minutes out to post something at Suite101.  

But now I’ve done that, I’d better get back to work.

I’m going to be particularly busy over this next week. Kate and I went to see Wilde’s Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime in Bath last night, so this morning I posted a quick review at the usual place.

Tomorrow I’m in Bristol at the Shakespeare (down on Princes Street) for the launch of Gareth L Powell’s debut novel Silversands – I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

Monday night I’m in Bristol again, for the monthly meeting of the Bristol SF & Fantasy Society, where doubtless talk will turn to Bristolcon. Although there will be other subjects discussed -such as whose round is it?– and Doctor Who and…the meeting is at 8pm at the King William on King Street, and as well as yours truly, Jim Mortimore and Jo Hall will be there, plus assorted others.

On Wednesday I’ll be attending the Arthur C. Clarke Awards presentation ceremony in London, and staying overnight. The next morning I might just take a stroll into one or two of the local bookshops, and maybe even sign a few copies of Damage Time…

If you’re at any of the upcoming events, feel free to come over and say ‘Hi.’

With the eruption in Iceland knocking even the General Election off the headlines yesterday, I thought that I’d check that my friends up there were okay, since the BBC were making it sound as if the Four Horsemen were on the move — even checking with some rent-a-pundit whether we were at risk from all this flying ash (which begs the question; what are we expected to do if he says “Yes, we’re all going to die”?).

I got an interesting reply, which I’ve paraphrased here.

Then he added with typical Icelandic humour, “So now we are not just dealing with corrupted businessmen and politicians, but mother nature as well. But in some ways we are relieved having something else to talk about than Icesave.”

That last by the way, refers to the bank which Wee Gordy Brown decided to lock down using anti-terrorist legislation, which was clearly what it was designed for. Not. Of course you should trust us with these powers, the politicians say…we’d never dream of misusing them…

OK, so it’s a year late, but I finally got around to reviewing one of the best of the Nebula Awards series in quite some time. Here it is. Meanwhile, I’m still pondering how I approach multiple blogs and still keep them interesting. More on that later this week.

I posted the usual blog entry over at suite101, but I’m acutely conscious that if I’m not careful, this blog becomes no more than a daily re-direct. It was something that I was already aware of before a friend made a comment yesterday, but it made it more important that I give it some thought. (Oh no, more thinking required…)

I’ll follow it up on Monday, although it won’t be posted at suite.

It’s been a day for remembering things almost too late.

I intended to post a chapter or two from Damage Time on the blog, and as we were walking Alice along the seafront at Clevedon, I slapped my hand to my forehead in best Homer Simpson fashion as I thought of it. Fortunately we got home at a reasonable hour, so here‘s Chapter 2. It’s short enough to be squeezable in at Suite101, unlike most of them — so why not scatter chapters across the cyberverse in best Hansel and Gretel mode?

But before that, I’d had another doh! moment as I went to clip Alice’s lead on her collar, only to realize with a sinking feeling, that she didn’t have her collar on…so faced with a choice of a fifteen-mile return journey to fetch it, or some lateral thinking, we turned her lead into an impromptu choke-er, string.

It seems that the amnesia running through the novel may be catching. Or perhaps the novel is my way of coming to terms with my Emmenthal-like memory.

Chapter 3 is here, by the way.

If he’s running to time, Gareth will be here in 30-40 minutes, and then we’ll be off to not-so-sunny Heathrow for the madness that is Eastercon, held again in the Hotel Non-Euclidean, aka the Radisson (people who’ve stayed there and emerged will understand the reference).

Details of the programme are at Suite101.

Hopefully the onslaught of spam (about 100 spam posts a day) will abate while I’m away — touch wood, they seem to have slackened off already.

A lot of what I’ve been writing lately is intended less as Words of Wisdom than as the electronic equivalent of me thinking aloud. This has the benefit of enabling me to argue with myself as I grope toward understanding of the genre I work in. The latest musing is just how separate (or inter-connected) the short fiction and novel markets are.