Colin Harvey – author

Well, here we are and it’s the 31st of August.

To celebrate the official US release of Winter Song (yes, really! Have I mentioned it already?) the lovely, intelligent and charming Sharon Reamer has updated an interview with me that orinally ran in Allegory magazine a full twelve months ago.  There’s plenty more where that one came from!

In fact, I’m not quite sure whether it’s actually in the shops, or just means that it’s officially in a warehouse in Omaha, or Oregon, or…

And this morning I finished the wip. 613 words over, but that’s not bad for a 105,000 word novel. It’ll be put to one side now, while I think about re-writes for a month.

Finally, but equally importantly, I wrapped the last of Kate’s presents yesterday.

All done and on target — a nice red letter day!

Over at Suite101

I’ve posted an update on Dark Spires over at Suite101. I’m hoping to be able to announce a confirmed ToC in the next week or so, but that depends on the last few writers coming through — including one very late signing. More on that another time.

I’ve been concentrating lately on ticking off the multiple deadlines falling on August 31st.

It’s starting to come together, and to celebrate Winter Song‘s realease into the wild in the US with a series of links and teasers over at Suite101.

More tomorrow, this time on Dark Spires.

It’s been a busy old morning with lots happening, so if this string of bulletin points sounds a bit breathless, that’s maybe because it is.

First of all, so much for the power of 31. Anne and Brian’s baby girl decided not to hang around until the end of the month, but instead emerged into the world at about 6.30 am yesterday morning. I’m delighted for them.

Also soon to emerge into the world is ‘Chameleon,’ my flash story that will available to  subscribers of Daily Science Fiction in the first week of September.

Finally, the podcast of my panel on ‘The Future of the Future’ is up at alt.fiction’s website.

Right, time I sorted out some lunch.

It’s now 14 days until August 31st, a date which grows increasingly significant with every day. That’s because organizations and individuals target the first and last days of the month, so the 31st is always busy with some deadline or other.

It’s also the day before Kate’s birthday, by which time I need to have sneaked any goodies into the house and wrapped them. So usually in August I’m getting a little stressy. Although this year, I no longer have the annual influx of applications for the SLF‘s Annual Travel Grant.

Still, when I planned my summer workload it seemed to be against a view of one looooong siesta as I dozed beneath the apple tree from the end of the 1st year in May, to the 2nd year in early October.  I calculated that if I could finish the draft of Ultramassive by August 31st, I could take a month off before going back to uni. So far, so good; I’m 80% of the way through, and if I can keep producing my target wordage, I’ll make it, bang on schedule.

And although Dark Spires is to be launched at Bristolcon, the printers only need a couple of weeks, so I figured that with any luck I could even write the story for it in early October — at least, if I was lucky… if not, then late September. 

Ah, I thought smugly. A plan is hatched…

The first flaw came at the end of May. Angry Robot announced that they were gearing up the US launch to start with Winter Song. They are launching in September, but monthly deliveries go out on the last Tuesday of the previous month, which is….de de de de de de de…August 31st. (It’s actually great news, but it was about two or three months earlier than I’d expected, and Leeee keeps shouting at me for more interviews and more blog material!!!!)

Now, having thought that I could get away with a gap before turning my full attention to Dark Spires, it transpires that WTP’s lovely copy editor is expecting her first child soon, and we need to get all the editing done soonest. Last Friday I learned that it’s due…August 31. 

And that first annual deadline hasn’t gone away — at some point I need to get Kate’s birthday presents before she returns from holiday on…August 31st. (Can anyone recommend a mains-operated DAB radio that also picks up FM?) 

I know, I know. I could be writing, blogging, editing or…ew, shopping…instead of whinging about it. But hey, my therapist tells me it’s good to share.

But if anyone else has any deadlines for this date, keep them to yourself — at least until September the 1st.

Please? Pretty please?

This morning I received a note publicizing William Gibson‘s forthcoming tour , including his visit to Bristol in October:

William Gibson is the bestselling author of 10 novels. His first, Neuromancer, sold more than six million copies worldwide and his books and short stories continue to reach massive audiences and win just about every award going. He coined the term cyberspace and is credited with predicting the rise of reality television and establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the Web. His comment – ‘The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed’ – first made in 2003 continues to be used widely. He has collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians and has influenced many other authors as well as design, academia, cyberculture, technology, and the film The Matrix. His new book, Zero History, set largely in London, spookily captures the paranoia and fear of our post-Crash, late Capitalist times. A rare opportunity to see one of the world’s finest writers, someone who has had, and continues to have, huge influence in the making and understanding of the modern world.

Price: £7.00 / £5.50. Contact Watershed Media Centre, Bristol on: 0117 927 5100, book online (http://www.watershed.co.uk/exhibits/2481/), or visit in person.

Gibson is one of those writers who will probably never the impact of that first novel (I remember the buzz I got from reading Neuromancer that first time) but it will still be fascinating to hear what he says.

Up at 5am this morning to go to the Balloon Fiesta. It’s the biggest in Europe — in fact, only the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in the USA is bigger, but since we started going 25 years ago, Bristol’s event has  shrunk to a fraction of it’s former size. This morning the attendees numbered probably nearer hundreds than thousands, whereas in 1985 they were in the tens of thousands. Those who didn’t go probably assumed (correctly) that there would no flight today.

The number of balloons flying also seemed markedly less than in the Fieta’s glory years, which are shown in the pictures attached here. That’s almost certainly down to the recession slashing corporate advertising budgets, which are the fuel of balloon flights through sponsorship. Car parking -which used to be free- now costs almost ten pounds per car per stay, discouraging people from coming and going. And it may be that the night-glow has cannibalized morning attendances. Whatever the reason, I hope that the Fiesta has many more years of success.

Meanwhile, elsewhere I’ve posted an interview with Hugo nominated writer Lawrence M. Schoen -known as Klingon Guy, due to his work on the fictional language- over at Suite101. (I bet you wondered where the Klingons came into the title…) Lawrence is a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer who provided an entertaining interview.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of bloggage lately — not only have I been head down on Ultramassive (three-quarters of the way through), but I’ve also been flat out editing the subs for Dark Spires, and on top of that I’ve had Leee at Angry Robot c-cracking the whip.

But now I’m within 19 days of finishing the Ultramassive draft, and the last sub  for the anthology is in, so come September I might even take a day or two off. Although there’s Mrs H’s birthday to sort out.

So I’d better get on with some shopping….

Last year one of my tutors opened hr class with the immortal line (delivered in a Louisiana drawl) “I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately.”

To paraphrase her, I’ve been thinking about age a lot lately. I’m exactly three months from my birthday, which will see me enter another decade. There’s a lot of unemployment in most countries, and despite the fact that ageism is theoretically illegal in the UK, most employers still have a residual favouritism toward employing younger workers, using code phrases such as ‘energetic.’  (I don’t know whether this is the case in the US as well.) Even assuming that I graduate, unless I unearth a best-seller in the next two years, I face a gap of eight to thirteen years when I graduate when I will probably need some kind of salaried position to supplement the erratic earnings of writing SF.

You’d assume that self-employed writers would be immune to such trends, but there are worrying signs with the recession squeezing publishers on all fronts.

Established writers running into problems selling their new novels is a phenomenon that’s been rumbling away for years. John Brunner found his career stalled in 1983 after a period away; before his death in 2000, Keith Roberts railed against the difficulty of selling his new works.  Both of those authors, however, had the reputation of being ‘difficult.’

More recently, Norman Spinrad has vociferously expressed his frustration at being unable to find a US publisher for his latest novel. Spinrad is two years short of celebrating 50 years in SF, has an enthusiastic French following, and has been a multiple Hugo and Nebula finalist — but significantly, never a winner. Spinrad is 70 next month.

James Gunn expressed similar frustration -but with considerably more dignity- a few months ago in an interview with Albedo One. This is a man who was made a Grand Master by SFWA three years ago, but he can’t sell his new novel in the US. Gunn is 87 years old.

It’s eminently possible that their problems have nothing to do with age, but more to do with their work being of insufficient interest to readers to hit break-even numbers in these commercially constrained times. But it would be interesting to know the average age of those editors who turned them down. Even more interestingly, how much of a factor is the likely length of their career? (Publishers are less and less interested in single-book deals, but rather in multi-book deals)  

We’ll never know, of course. But I feel a wholly illogical indignation on their behalf — these are giants of my youth, and deserve a little respect.  

But there’s no arguing with the cold logic of the marketplace, and I’m in no position to really complain, since I sold my break-out novel at 48.