Colin Harvey – author

This morning I’m guest blogging over at at Gareth L Powell’s website, on the subject of Generating Heat.  Nothing to do with starting fires or keeping warm, but rather a film industry term.

Long gone are the days when the author wrote a book, sent it off, and left it to take its chances in the world. Nowadays every publisher expects the author to have a plan. The scriptwriting industry is much more self-aware about writing as a career, and can provide the aspiring writer with useful career guidance. Read more here.

If you click on this link, you’ll see some thoughts on Saturday night’s Doctor Who (Vincent and the Doctor) which contain spoilers. This added comment will avoid them.

What prompted the post was my own reaction to the episode, and a number of negative comments that I’ve seen lamenting the direction that the series is taking.  And in making the story small, even intimate (no threat to the world this week, just one Provencal village in danger), in making the drooling, near-psychopathic alien somehow almost poignant, and –heresy of heresies– in showing how resiliant the time-line is to change, Curtis certainly seemed to be deliberately flouting a number of conventions. But isn’t it about time some of the series’ conventions were flouted?

We’ve had five years of ever more grandiose set pieces. It’s about time Doctor Who lost some of the pomposity it accreted under RTD’s stewardship.

Today’s review is John Travis’ quirky debut novel The Terror and the Tortoiseshell.

I was all set to write a blog post today with my schedule next Saturday for Alt.Fiction in Derby, but my publishers –bless ’em!– have saved a me a job, and probably put up a nicer post to boot.

So here’s the link showing all the Angry Robot-eers and their schedules.

In a stop press, I’ll also be in a panel titled ‘sci-fi’ with Tony Ballantyne and Paul Cornell at 10am. I’m not quite sure what we’re going to talk about, but I have a suspicion that that it may just have something to do with science fiction…

A new blog post over at Suite101 about the frenzy of writing and critiquing at SFFEditors.  I was determined to get the word ‘orgy’ in there somewhere; it might yet play the viagra-peddlers at their own game! (They’ll be so disappointed when they read what it’s actually about…)

About five weeks ago, I mentioned a new online review zine.  Since then The Portal (that’s the zine) has been gradually booting itself up for a launch. They now have a website, which I promised to pass on. So here it is.

Enjoy.

Over at Suite101, probably my longest review for them, but it’s worth it; it’s a fascinating collection.

It’s a warm, damp Saturday afternoon that doesn’t seem to be able to make up it’s mind what to do.

Since I’m on holiday I’m not doing much work, although I’ve critiqued one piece of flash today. Instead Kate and I did a little shopping and lunching in Bath (the all-you-can-eat Lebanese mezze is highly recommended), and this afternoon has been spent watching rugby league and listening to cricket — when there’s some play.

And catching up on other people’s blogs. One of my new favourites is Madeline Ashby, who I first read in Shine. Her blog is as elegant as her fiction, and makes me grind my teeth with envy at the apparent ease with which she posts. Her latest entries muse about Stanley Kubrick, Playboy magazine and avocadoes. Head over there and enjoy.

I was supposed to be working on a synopsis this morning, but I hit a bit of a road block. So when I saw a recent  Guardian article that tied in with a couple of recent conversations, I thought it worth taking a few minutes out to post something at Suite101.  

But now I’ve done that, I’d better get back to work.

I was relieved this morning when I looked to learn that I have 0 (as in nought) new spam comments on the blog. It was getting a bit worrying when it hit 50 a day (yes, that was fifty). I don’t think I have an overly fierce spam filter, since most of the comments seemed to be in Cyrillic, but if you’ve posted a genuine comment and it hasn’t appeared, drop me a line.

I’m 850 words into a short-short story at the moment, and have a novel synopsis and third chapter to revise, but my main work today is to work on the links page, following up on my updating of my bibliography page. So I’d best get on.

Oh yes, and I’ll be at the Bristol SF&FS meeting tonight, and the BSFA meeting in London on Wednesday. If I don’t see you at one, maybe I’ll see you at the other…?