Holy Smoke

Smoke is the essential publication for anyone who loves London, and everyone into loving irreverence and weird truths: check it out here.

No End To Books

Hartwell and Kramer’s Best SF anthology is out now, and Dozois’s Best SF will be out early next month; both contain my short story ‘Rats of the System’. And the US edition of Dozois and Strahan’s New Space Opera, with my story ‘Winning Peace’ glimmering amongst a glittering host of talent, has also just hit the shops.

All of which reminds me that I should get started on my doppelganger story, ‘Oz’; especially as the title and ending came to me one recent sleepless night, in that nice, sly way the good stuff has of sneaking up on you.

Free At Last! Good God Almighty Free At Last!

The proofs for Cowboy Angels are done at last - read twice by me, and once by one of the people to whom the novel is dedicated. Amazing what slips through after several drafts, editing, copy-editing etc. Thankfully, most of the corrections are of the word processing-error class - extra words or missing words from inaccurate microtonal cut and paste operations. Weird line break errors. Inverted commas that have inverted the wrong way around. This kind of stuff didn't happen with my first typewritten typescript, reset by an actual human being.

Separated the pages with red ink from those untouched, wrote up a set of notes on the more complicated changes, stuck notes and red-inked pages in a padded envelope and rode the tube into town and Orion towers, where I dropped them off. As it was sunny, I walked back home, crossing the river, passing the South Bank complex (on the little beach by the Thames there, roughly where Frenzy started, a couple of people where building an ambitious sandcastle), crossing the wobbly bridge and sneaking back through Smithfield.

Thinking about not much at all after thinking about too much, pretty concentratedly. The header by the way, is MLK's, and features in the book. Might be slightly misquoted here but I can't be bothered to check. Don't have to do that for a bit, now: just make stuff up for the second draft on the ongoing.

Meanwhile, I live in hope that bound proofs might turn up, although they are already two months overdue. I have no idea why. And in three months and a few days, the thing itself should be published. I hope. In the thickening modern world, much of what was once simple and linear now becomes an infinitely sub-divided Xeno's paradox... At least summer sun in city is still uncomplicated.