Colin Harvey – author

A late arrival to the Dark Spires team of contributors, former Death Ray  editor and SFX columnist Guy Haley has had quite a lot to say for himself lately, and rightly so.  A few days after we thrashed out the last few edits to ‘Outside,’ his disturbing paean to post-industrial Swindon for the anthology, he launched his blog. (I especially liked the page on that beast of a cat of his — somehow I suspect that Tourette’s Dog may have met her match.)

Among his first half-dozen posts came the news that he had sold a pair of intriguing-sounding novels about a team of 22nd century detectives, Richards and Klein to Angry Robot Books. I particularly liked Guy’s take on the future, that —like the past, [it] is a foreign country, not an alien world.  And that irrespective of technology, people will still have the same emotions as now. That mirrors my own feelings about it, although I suspect we articulate them in very different ways.

The next day he posted about Dark Spires, announcing his sale, plus some general thoughts of his and mine on the anthology.  What struck me this morning is that while there are an equal mix of SF and fantasy stories in the anthology, and while half of said fantasy stories (and one of the SF stories for that matter) slide some way into varying shades of darkness  –thereby re-igniting the old dark fantasy vs horror debate– his is the only out and out horror story in the anthology. And it’s penned by an SF writer. There’s versatility for you.

We need to keep a wary eye on this Haley chap, or at the rate he’s been going, he’ll be taking over the world before you know it…

This is shameless self-indulgence, I know…but forgive me. I’ve been working for this for thirteen years and I’m going to enjoy it for a few more days. Maybe one day I’ll be completely blase about having a book actually on shelf instead of the vast virtual warehouse of Amazon, Book Depository, etc. But that day hasn’t come yet!

There’s this vast warehouse of a shop that covers three floors in Portland, Oregon. It’s a bit of a legend by all accounts — and even I’d heard of Powell’s Bookstore.

A friend of mine who was there on holiday sent me a snap of the front of it which looks pretty unprepossessing, but inside is a wonderland of books…

…and there it is — out in the wild.

Not quite next to Joe Haldeman or Harry Harrison, but close enough. 🙂

Yesterday morning was another one of those mornings where I looked at the clock and saw that it was 10.15; I’d been working for almost three hours, and I seemed to have nothing to show for it.  I’m sure that you know the feeling…

It wasn’t strictly true that I had nothing to show for my three hours worth, but it was admin stuff, so not very sexy.  Things like sending information off to Andy, the cover artist, so that he could generate a map for Dark Spires.  and setting up a copyright page, among many other things.

Which led me to think how much information is needed for the application for an ISBN number. Here are just some of the things;

• A full list of contributors
• Copies of the title and copyright pages
• A confirmed selling price
• Classification (eg, SF / fantasy / fiction)
• Intended size in millimetres, and number of pages
• And last but not least, a short description of the book.

A lot of this information is dependant on other factors, like edits, etc, so only parts of it are currently available.

And the requirements are perfectly logical but it’s time consuming. Publishers such as Tor or Random House probably have lots of interns running around doing such work. Then again, they publish a lot more books than we do! But hopefully, all this will be worth it when you see the final product.

I’ve been busy on admin stuff this morning, about which more tomorrow -or maybe Thursday, depending how quickly I get it done — so this morning’s blog post is a very quick one.

Quick, but nonetheless happy; the first new reviews are coming out for Winter Song, one in Sweden, where Cybermage describes it as ‘fun to read’ among other nice words. It was fun to write, too. 

The second is from the US, where Daniel Marcus says that ‘Winter Song is a great read.  Looking forward to more from Harvey and more from Angry Robot.’

So are we.

Thanks Ove and Daniel, it really is very much appreciated.

I’ve posted the list of 2010 Hugo Winners over at Suite101, together with some Hugo trivia.  

In the article I talk a lot about Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind-Up Girl, particularly in light of the fact that it’s only the fourth novel to win the ‘trinity’ of Hugo, Nebula & JWC. I’m not so naive as to believe that the best novels always win these awards. In fact some stinkers have won individual awards. But over the years they’ve collectively been a good barometer of what exemplifies what we should treasure, and point newcomers to as introductory works to the genre.

A second mini-thought: Nicholas Whyte mentioned on his blog that all five fiction winners were men. When I looked through my scrappy list, I found that the [fiction] winners for the 2000s had the lowest proportion of women of any decade since the 1970s.  Does that mean that Hugo voters are becoming more sexist, or is gender less of an issue in who the voters pick, leading to a greater preponderence of male stories on the ballot? You decide.

This month’s vic -interviewee is Ira Nayman, who runs the Alternate Reality News Service. Actually, Ira is so enthusiastic that we had to cut his interview in three to fit it into the tiny little boxes Suite101 allocates.  But it’s worth it to check out this fascinating man’s thoughts on reading, comedy and spec-fic.

I can’t think of too much else to say at the moment as I’m still reeling from the twitter feed covering the Hugo Awards. I’ll cover the results in more detail tomorrow; enough for the moment to say that I’m pleased and delighted that Peter Watts and Will McIntosh won deserved first Hugos, and I’m (pleasantly) gob-smacked that not only did Paolo Bacigalupi win the Hugo I never thought he’d for The  Wind-up Girl (too controversial, I thought — shows how much I know!) but that he had to wrestle China Mieville to a stand-still to tie with him for The City and The City.

Earlier this week, Salon Futura ran the Table of Contents for the Dark Spires anthology.  It’s not quite finalized, as the running order of the last few stories needs to be ironed out (I’ve blogged before about the importance of the order of stories).

But while they thrashed out here is the interim Table of Contents for Dark Spires:

• Sarah Singleton: “The Preacher”
• John Hawkes-Reed: “Pump House Farm”
• Adam Colston: “Cobalt Blue”
• Joanne Hall: “Corpse Flight”
• Colin Harvey: “Spindizzy”
• Eugene Byrne: “Spunkies”
• Christina Lake: “The Sleeper Stone”
• Guy Haley: “Outside”
• Liz Williams: “Milk”
• Roz Clarke: “Last Flight To West Bay”
• Gareth L. Powell: “Entropic Angel”

I’ll talk more about the the anthology nearer the launch date of November 6th.

A title which will, I’ve just realized, mean nothing to American readers . 🙂

Blue Peter was/is a much-loved children’s TV program where the presenters made things out of cheap -and years ahead of its time, recycled– materials such as sticky-back plastic, cardboard toilet roll holders, and washing-up liquid bottles. So the very words Blue Peter resonate with generations of British children.

 My day will consist of printing dummy covers for a book, swearing a lot as I realize my expensive but over-sophisticated printer won’t let me do what I need to do, printing it again, etc until I can finally mock up two-different sized paperbacks.

 Then I’ll be creating a new page for this site.

 I’ll post today’s post tomorrow instead — since I have to write it first.

Today is the second of the five big days that I have spread over the next two months or so, and it’s great everyone is making so much noise about Angry Robot’s US launch / UK re-launch.

And to add to the fun, nine of the titles (including Winter Song) can now be bought in e-book format.  For those readers with questions about DRM, etc, check out the comments at the link.

And there’s a terrific competition for US readers being run at the moment at Robot Towers, while over at the nascent Salon Futura Cheryl Morgan interviews Lauren Beukes.  Lauren’s new novel Zoo City has been reviewed at Dark Fiction Review by Adam Christopher. They published me in an interview and will be reviewing Winter Song in the next day or so.

I have a whole host of outstanding jobs to do, but am finding (in the nicest possible way) that I’m struggling to concentrate; I’d much rather be seeing what the next event unfolding is. So maybe I’ll just accept that the transmissions from me brain are going to be jammed for the rest of the day / week.

Especially since I’ll have even more news tomorrow.

The first of any month always makes me a little thoughtful. The first of September especially so. It’s only one day after the end of August, yet the very name of the month is autumnal.

It’s the start of the academic year, and in a day or two the road will be jammed with cars and buses on the way to and from Broadlands School, at the top of our road. In just over four weeks I’ll be registering at uni, and students and staff alike will be catching up with people they haven’t seen since the heady days of May.

The days are noticeably drawing in – it’s almost pitch soon after eight o’clock in the evening and now we rise in the dark as well. On sunny days especially, there’s a bitter chill in the early morning air — especially venturing down into the valley with Alice.                                        

Alice, drying out...

Mist hangs heavy on the ground, and the long grass in the fields is so wet that I need to wear wellington boots to keep my feet and legs dry. Alice takes most of the morning to dry out, and the wet fur smell of damp dog fills the house if I forget to open the windows.

Tomatoes are ripening on the vines, and at night lying in bed the quiet is broken by the constant thud of apples falling from the tree onto the lawn.  It’s a beautiful but elegaic time of year, as we (mostly) unconsciously start the clock counting down to a new year.