Shortly

I’ve just received the proofs of my short story ‘Adventure’, which will be published in Lou Ander’s Fast Forward 2, coming realsoonnow. As previously mentioned, I have a short story (well, half a short story, strictly speaking, as I wrote it with Kim Newman) in the recently published The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow. And tomorrow is the publication day of The Starry Rift, edited by Jonathan Strahan*, which includes another of my short stories.

And that, as they used to say in TV ads for 50 piece kitchen-knife sets, isn’t all. The Big Space Robot story, cheekily called ‘Little Lost Robot’, has been accepted for publication by Interzone. And this summer Postscripts magazine will be publishing an all-SF edition to coincide with the World SF Convention at Denver, and as I’m the featured author, it will include no less than four of my stories. One, ‘Looking For Van Gogh At The End Of The World’ is a reprint - although it’s the first time it will appear in print in English. The other three, ‘The Thought War’, ‘A Brief Guide to Other Histories’ (which shares the setting of Cowboy Angels), and ‘City of the Dead’, are originals. There’ll be an extract from The Quiet War, too.

Admittedly, the stories in the SRB of SFF and The Starry Rift were written a couple of years ago, but in between working on drafts of The Quiet War, and starting the first draft of the next novel, I seem to have found the time to finish five new stories in the past eight months: a fairly intensive burst of productivity as far as I’m concerned. But now I have to get back to the novel in hand. Two-thirds of the first draft are done, and it’s just beginning, like a piece of ice on a hot stove, to ride on its own melting (to borrow a phrase from Robert Frost).

*Jonathan has not only set up a website full of information about the book, but he also offers readers a chance to win copies of the book by entering a simple competition.