Colin Harvey – author

The news is that Peter Watts has been fined, not imprisoned; hardly good news, but far, far better than things looked 36 hours ago, and at least he can now (hopefully) get on with his life.

Meanwhile, I’ve reviewed Gareth L Powell’s debut novel over at Suite101.

And the second part of the memory thread that formed such a serendipitous moment, given Damage Time’s imminent publication, is here. This is specifically about deleting memories, the parallel to the novel’s ripping them.

If this all seems a little breathless, it is; this Tuesday seems especially frantic as the Uni timetable is all over the place and I have to be out of the door in about five minutes…

I’m going to be particularly busy over this next week. Kate and I went to see Wilde’s Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime in Bath last night, so this morning I posted a quick review at the usual place.

Tomorrow I’m in Bristol at the Shakespeare (down on Princes Street) for the launch of Gareth L Powell’s debut novel Silversands — I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

Monday night I’m in Bristol again, for the monthly meeting of the Bristol SF & Fantasy Society, where doubtless talk will turn to Bristolcon. Although there will be other subjects discussed -such as whose round is it?– and Doctor Who and…the meeting is at 8pm at the King William on King Street, and as well as yours truly, Jim Mortimore and Jo Hall will be there, plus assorted others.

On Wednesday I’ll be attending the Arthur C. Clarke Awards presentation ceremony in London, and staying overnight. The next morning I might just take a stroll into one or two of the local bookshops, and maybe even sign a few copies of Damage Time…

If you’re at any of the upcoming events, feel free to come over and say ‘Hi.’

It’s been a day for remembering things almost too late.

I intended to post a chapter or two from Damage Time on the blog, and as we were walking Alice along the seafront at Clevedon, I slapped my hand to my forehead in best Homer Simpson fashion as I thought of it. Fortunately we got home at a reasonable hour, so here‘s Chapter 2. It’s short enough to be squeezable in at Suite101, unlike most of them — so why not scatter chapters across the cyberverse in best Hansel and Gretel mode?

But before that, I’d had another doh! moment as I went to clip Alice’s lead on her collar, only to realize with a sinking feeling, that she didn’t have her collar on…so faced with a choice of a fifteen-mile return journey to fetch it, or some lateral thinking, we turned her lead into an impromptu choke-er, string.

It seems that the amnesia running through the novel may be catching. Or perhaps the novel is my way of coming to terms with my Emmenthal-like memory.

Chapter 3 is here, by the way.

  As I noted over at Suite101, it’s exactly four weeks until the publication of Damage Time.

  Each week I’ll post an extract from the novel, starting today.

  It’s an exciting time, and a very, very busy month.

First of all there’s Eastercon to attend.

 More on that tomorrow.

I drew a certain amount of flak for last week’s post for suggesting that writing short stories was no better a preparation for writing novels than any other form of wordsmithery, such as journalism or scriptwriting.

Some of it was very useful in outlining this week’s post over at Suite101 following up on what some of the differences are. Unfortunately I ran out of available space,* so I’ve had to break it into installments.

* Suite has an official word limit of 300 words; it’s possible to go a little over, but not to post something the length of what this was turning into…

This morning’s post on Suite101 is full of joy and tears and awkward questions. More here.