Colin Harvey – author

Over at Suite101.

I’ve been having a bit of a reading splurge on Ngaio Marsh recently; partly that’s because I seem to have overdosed on SF, and partly I’ve been looking at culling some of the contents of my book shelves. 

Given that I haven’t read most of them for fifteen or more years, Marsh seemed to be an obvious choice, and a few of her earlier, slighter stories have indeed ended up on amazon.

But some have yielded little gems of underwriting which my younger self didn’t really appreciate. A lot of the stories are far more worldly than contemporaries such as Christie or Allingham, and the characters more finely drawn.  I’m finding myself reluctant to sell too many of them.

Damn – I’ll have to look for another author to cull….

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m trying to justify watching football on the tv by writing a blog — after all, if I’m writing a blog, it’s not really goofing off is it?

I’ve spent the morning writing my daily 1400 words, which I finished by about 12 o’clock, before settling down with Henning Mankell’s Firewall, which may or may not be his last Kurt Wallender novel. For those of you who only know the dyspeptic, diabetic detective by the anaemic BBC adaptations featuring Kenneth Branagh, which are not a patch on the original Swedish episodes often shown on BBC4, the cycle of ten or a dozen novels are perhaps the most grounded narratives in the detective genre. At the risk of sounding pretentious, they chart the moral disintegration of Swedish society in the 1990s through the brutal and often irrational murders that Wallander has to investigate.

Before Firewall, I read Sidetracked, which justifiably won the Crime Writer’s Assosciation’s Gold Dagger Award for Best Novel. Mankell interweaves real world events with the storyline by featuring Sweden’s matches in the 1994 World Cup as part of the sub-plot and setting. It’s part of a complex set of plot threads that at times sidetrack the reader as effectively as they do Wallander’s investigation.  

Reading Mankell teaches one that it’s the little touches that give a narrative its sense of reality. Years ago, Brian Aldiss began to work himself, his friends and family into the narrative, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. I’m tempted to try the same technique in future, maybe featuring a writer who blogs during the 2010 World Cup as part of the sub-plot….

But for now it’s back to the real World Cup. I’ll finish Firewall between the two matches.

Here’s a thought; as I type this, it’s 12.07 on the 183rd day of the year. We are seven minutes past the mid-point of the year — from now on, we’re closer to 2011 than we are 2009. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the future, that has a certain satisfaction to it. And of sourse we’ll be even closer to 2011 when you read this.

But looking back 36 hours, I had a thoroughly good time chatting to Eric Brown before and after the BSFA meeting in London on Wednesday night. It seems incredible that he’s been writing for over 20 years, but he has, and had some interesting points to make about Haworth in Yorkshire, SF, reviewing and writing for readers who have difficulty reading.

It was also nice to get to chat to Ian Whates, since we both of us always seem to be busy at cons. I’m not sure where he finds the energy to write, edit, publish and find time for the BSFA. Long may he continue.

And after over 30 years, it was good to say hello again to Geoff Ryman.

More on that another time, when we’ll be even closer to 2011…

As I noted over at Suite 101, The Speculative Literature Foundation has announced that its seventh annual Older Writers Grant is to be awarded to Mario Milosevic, for his ‘Untied States of America’ which appeared in Interzone 228. It’s particularly interesting for three reasons:

First, this is the first time since 2007 that I’m familiar with the winning entry, and for all my reservations, it’s a worthy winner.

Secondly, I judge the awards myself in 2007, and it was a tough call then to pick just one winner, so I understand perfectly Malon Edwards comments of  “Honorable Mentions for the Older Writers Grant go to Michele Cashmore, April Grey, Lynne MacLean, Ada Milenkovic Brown, and J.A. Huets for their entertaining submissions, which made the selection of the winner a difficult but enjoyable process.”

Yep, not much has changed there, then.  Come the deadline, there’s usually much tearing of hair.

Lastly, and most selfishly, in five months time I’ll be eligible for the award myself. Not that I think that I have a prayer of winning it, but I have to have a go…it’s nice to see what benchmark’s been set.

It’s been a productive morning — I’m now 20% of the way through Ultramassive, 21000 words in, and I’ve critiqued a short story for Critters to keep membership of that that particular group ticking over.  Plus the review of Black Static 17 is posted.

So now –since it’s 23c in the shade and it feels criminal to be inddors on such a nice day, I’m going to sit under a tree and catch up on some z’s for an hour. There have to be some benefits to being a writer, after all….

OK, so it’s ofiicial: I’m an idiot.

I plugged the laptop in before coming away, and made sure that it was plugged in. What I didn’t check was that said battery was secure.  It wasn’t, so when I took my 1.35kg paperweight with me, it had a battery with no charge. 

Instead, you get some post-con ramblings here.

There is talk of making it a two-day event next year; whether or not it is one day or two, I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m packing before heading northwards for tomorrow’s Alt.fiction in Derby, so this will be one of the quicker posts, especially as I need to do some thinking about panels. 

I’m on the 10am opener talking about classic SF, together with Tony Ballantyne and Paul Cornell; then at 3pm I’m being locked in a broom cupboard with Mike Cobley and That Man Ballantyne (again) to podcast on The Future of the Future.

Meanwhile, over at Suite101, I’ve scribbled a few words on Futurismic‘s newest columnist, the always fascinating Luc Reid.

Hopefully, I’ll have time to write a few words tomorrow from the evnt itself, but until then…

If you click on this link, you’ll see some thoughts on Saturday night’s Doctor Who (Vincent and the Doctor) which contain spoilers. This added comment will avoid them.

What prompted the post was my own reaction to the episode, and a number of negative comments that I’ve seen lamenting the direction that the series is taking.  And in making the story small, even intimate (no threat to the world this week, just one Provencal village in danger), in making the drooling, near-psychopathic alien somehow almost poignant, and –heresy of heresies– in showing how resiliant the time-line is to change, Curtis certainly seemed to be deliberately flouting a number of conventions. But isn’t it about time some of the series’ conventions were flouted?

We’ve had five years of ever more grandiose set pieces. It’s about time Doctor Who lost some of the pomposity it accreted under RTD’s stewardship.

I was all set to write a blog post today with my schedule next Saturday for Alt.Fiction in Derby, but my publishers –bless ‘em!– have saved a me a job, and probably put up a nicer post to boot.

So here’s the link showing all the Angry Robot-eers and their schedules.

In a stop press, I’ll also be in a panel titled ‘sci-fi’ with Tony Ballantyne and Paul Cornell at 10am. I’m not quite sure what we’re going to talk about, but I have a suspicion that that it may just have something to do with science fiction…