Colin Harvey – author

I got back at about midnight from London, where the wonderful Lauren Beukes of Moxyland  fame continued her tour to promote her new novel, Zoo City with an evening at the BSFA. Not only does she write like a demon, she reads marvellously as well, putting real feeling into it. The room was packed, and the audience responded with some stretching questions.

But getting back at midnight, and rising at 5.30 does not make an ideal situation in which to put the novel aside, and to start working on a story for Dark Spires.

Still, it has to be done so I gritted my teeth and with the ease of giving birth, ground out 2250 words this morning. That’s actually about 50% more than I planned, but I found the first 1500 so tough that it was only when I passed target that the words began to flow with anything approaching ease.

And now they’ve started to slow again, so I shall put it aside, and maybe read some review material this afternoon. Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker arrived this morning, and yea verily, it looks good.

Things have been a little serious around here of late, for understandable reasons, but I thought maybe a change of mood was overdue (plus I’m off to London via Bath in a couple of hours, so a quick post was called for…)

Hence this, which is an oldy -in internet terms- but a good one, pinched from SFawardswatch, with gratitude.

The winners of the 2010 Bulwer Lytton contest (for truly awful opening lines) have been announced. This year’s most horrible prose appears to have come from a romance novel, but winners were listed in genre categories as follows.

Fantasy

The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dower granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage – but that’s not our story; ours is about fairies!

Rick Cheeseman, Waconia, MN

Science Fiction

t’Bleen and Golxxm squelched their way romantically along the slough beach beneath the three Sommodian moons, their eye-stalks occasionally touching, and tenderly belched sweet nothings like, “I don’t think I’ve ever had such a charming evening,” and, “Say, would you like to gnaw that hunk of suppurating tissue off my dorsal appendage—it really itches.”

Bryan Olive, Tustin, CA

The full list of winners (should you dare to look) can be found here.

I’m going to put together my entry for next year straight away…

I’ve not got much work done the last 24 hours or so, although I’ve managed to write my 1400 words for the day, so the only thing I’m behind on is the various guest blogs I’ve promised people for September to support the Angry Robot launch.

Yesterday I had to shoot into Newton Park to drop off my second consecutive change of course form, as I managed to balls-up the first. Because my academic grades were insufficient to qualify for the BA course, I had to take the DipHE in the first year as the equivalent of academic probation.

So last week was about changing up to the BA course, but the more I thought about it, the more I debated whether to continue with Media Studies, which is interesting but demands most work for lowest return in terms of grades. So I’ve switched from a joint to a single degree, but that meant printing out and completing a second change of course form, which meant a second consecutive visit to the Ghost Town (cue the Specials aka) that is NP.

While I was there I printed out my interim timetable, which was immediately obsolescent  as soon as the Head of Department signed the change form.

So unless I can suddenly access the timetable network remotely, I shall need to make a third visit to the site!

Meanwhile Kate’s taken the day off, which meant a lovely lie-in; with no alarm I slept through until the decadent hour of 7.30. So now I’m running about two hours late. Not that I’m complaining, you understand — the extra sleep was loverly…

What’s that bright light poking through the clouds? Why, I do believe it may be the sun…

Perfect timing — I’ve written my daily ration of words, answered some e-mails, and I’ve posted the first of a two part piece on Interzone over at Suite101.  More on that subject tomorrow.

But now I’m going to take myself off to the garden, and read some of this year’s Hugo nominees…

We who form the male half of the human race are often criticized for being unable to multi-task. However, we can focus. Boy can we focus, as I have demonstrated this morning. Despite the incessant sound of the house alarm across the road (now 2 hours and counting), I’ve finished this week’s Suite101 review, and have laid out Interzone 229  for your examination.

I think I may now go out, as the noise is starting to seriously hurt my ears, now that I have nothing to focus on.

And tomorrow -or the day after- if I get distracted by something shiny going past….

…sorry, where was I? Yes, tomorrow or the day after, I should have some more book news.

This morning seems to have whizzed by even faster than it usually does, perhaps because even during my breaks from writing, I’ve been busy chopping things to stuff mushrooms with for lunch — so walnuts have been pestled, peppers and onions chopped and all mixed in with beaten egg and grated cheese.

So suddenly it’s nearly twelve and I’m contemplating where the morning’s got to.

One moment of it was spent thinking about this blog:

We’ve had week after week (it seems) of glorious sunshine, to the extent that people are muttering about hosepipe bans and water rationing. I looked out of the window as I was fetching the post in and noticed that after one night’s heavy rain, the lawn is already starting to green up. Suddenly everything is looking less dessicated, a little less tired — everything’s going green again.

I suspect that the next time I emerge from my daze, Joe Public will be complaining how they’re sick of rain, and wot ‘appened to the summer?

Right, back to stuffing mushrooms.

I’ve posted some writing stuff over at Suite101, but not much time for anything else today. I’m off to Bath in ten minutes or so. First’s travel policy is that it’s cheaper for me to get a train into into Bath and get a bus from there to Newton Park than it is to get a bus to Corston roundabout. Go figure.

The bad news is that the Newton Park buses only run every hour in the holidays, and my train arrives about two minutes after one leaves. Go figure.

So to pick up assignments and drop a change sheet in, I need to be there before twelve, when the office closes. Fun fun fun…

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.

The newest bit of news on release dates is that Damage Time has been scheduled for release on October 7th. I can’t wait!    

And the other bit of news is that I’ve passed my first year.

For anyone who is interested the full results are:

I think we’ll be going out for tapas tonight!

This week’s review at Suite101 is A.E Moorat’s Henry VIII: Wolfman. I didn’t much like it, not being a fan of monster mash-ups, and it’s nowhere near as good as the author’s Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, which was far better written, and had some novelty that any follow-ups will inevitably lose.

So I was going to let Wolfman go by without a review.

But Hodder have a publicist, who’s even more annoyingly persistent than they usually are (though Tor have got a particularly odious specimen) and she wouldn’t let it go. Having spammed me with not one but TWO unsolicited hard copies* –stretching my poor elastic walls to their limit– she then e-mailed me asking whether I’d had a chance to read it. At which point I muttered “Okaaaaay…..” and took my gloves off.

Actually, I understand publicists are only doing their job, and maybe they regard even a negative review as being ‘any publicity is good publicity.’ Unfortunately, they never seem to publicize good books and anything that finds it’s way to me via a publicist always seems to be a pile of shite.

And I now look forward to receiving a really good book from a publicist that proves me wrong…

* I don’t mind getting review copies if the publicist has had the courtesy to ASK first. I may say no, but more likely than not I may say yes with the caveat that if I don’t like it, I won’t review it.