Colin Harvey – author

I’ve posted the final part of the blog post about editing over at Suite101. I hope that it’s helpful in understanding the thought processes that accompany assembling an anthology.

And on other news, I passed the two-thirds mark on Ultramassive.

I’ve posted the second of  what is now three parts on editing over at Suite101, detailing what I do with a submission when I receive it.

One unexpected side effect of spending so much time on less than a dozen submissions is that I’m finding it a real battle writing my 1500 words each day. I have enormous admiration for those writers who can work on one book in the morning, and then focus on another in the afternoon.  My next task is work out how I can mentally multi-task.

More tomorrow on editing, though.

Yesterday’s marathon working on Dark Spires left me with a killer migraine this morning, but also part one of a two-part blog over at Suite101 about editing. I’ll consider the migraine a reasonable price if readers like what comes out of the edits.

I’m still getting settled back into some sort of routine this morning. After a brief diversion into the land of short story writing, I took a day off yesterday to attend my step-father’s funeral.  Not the sort of day off that I like — I much prefer them to involve lying prone somewhere in sunshine on one hand, a long drink in another, and a good book — wait, that’s too many hands…

But despite being slightly worried about resuming novel-writing, once I got going, I found slipping back into the groove of writing Ultramassive surprisingly easy. I think that I’ve achieved a certain residual momentum. Or maybe the day ‘off’ did some good.

My only reminder of work yesterday was when Lee rang me from the Angry Robot office for one last minor edit for Damage Time. It came as Kate and I were buying some sandwiches for lunch in a bomb-site/Sainsbury’s-under-construction, on the edge of Exeter. I thought, ‘shall I tell him where I am?’ but decided against it. He might have felt guilty, whereas I was actually glad of the distraction.

And Damage Time cropped up again this morning, with this timely link provided by the lovely Liz van Zandt, via Facebook. I proposed in the novel that society might be entering a phase whereby economic factors affect people’s living arrangements, and even marriage. In the draft it raised more eyebrows and hackles with the crit group than perhaps any other point, which surprised me.

I suspect that I’m not done with blogging about this yet. In fact, I know I’m not…thanks Liz. 🙂

This morning has been one of those great mornings when it’s a pleasure to be a writer.

I finished ‘Spindizzy’ my story for Dark Spires over the weekend, or rather, I finished the main part of the narrative. I needed to write some short inserts that are pastiches of Golden Age SF. I started out fairly restrained, but as the morning progressed the battles got ever bigger, the villains more villainous and the women more beautiful. All in the space of a thousand words!

I’d almost forgotten how much fun SF can be.

Meanwhile the other stories have started to come in, and I’m enjoying reading them.

Tomorrow worn’t be quite so enjoyable, as it’s my stepfather’s funeral, so no blog tomorrow, and then it’s back to work on Ultramassive on Wednesday.

I’ve posted a review of the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award winner, China Mieville’s The City and The City over at Suite101

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…

After a weekend of ringing round the family and giving them the news about my stepfather, alternating with my wandering around restlessly, things are slowly returning to normal. Thank you to everyone who offered their condolences and support. It helped a lot.

Meanwhile, I’ve posted a review of the latest issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction over at Suite101.

Lastly, I’ll be at the monthly meeting of the Bristol SFF Society tonight at the King William in Bristol, at 8pm onwards. See you there, if you can make it. If not, I’ll be at the monthly BSFA meeting in London on Wednesday, saying hello to Lauren Beukes, author of Moxyland.

Yesterday I was going to post about being halfway through my writing splurge (but more than halfway through the wip — more on that next week, maybe) but events overtook that.

I’ll keep it short; at 1.30am yesterday, my stepfather died of the myeloma he’d been fighting for the last six years.  He raised me from when I was six (my birth-father died when I was ten), so to all intents and purposes he was my father. I can’t believe that I’ll never see him again.

He took an immoderate delight in reading my books and commenting on them -always positively- until the pain grew too much for him to even be able to hold a book.  And he was immensely proud -and rightly so – of the fact that against all the odds, he lived long enough to draw his Old Age Pension for four months.  And even that short eulogy would embarrass him enormously, so I’m going to leave it there, and retreat to a dark cave.