Colin Harvey – author

That damned buzzsaw guitar of Keith Richard keeps running through my head.  You know the one — that intros the Stones The Last Time?

Because this is the last, the very last time I should be going into Newton Park for over four months, all being well.  Next week I start a 3-week holiday before going back to work at one of the hospitals in Bristol; sadly, we’re at least a month, ideally two from my being able to take the summer off and write literally full-time. Maybe that’ll happen next year.

So what have I learned?

As I told Carrie Etter when she asked me that question, the thing that I’ve learned is how to really, really think about things. I’m not talking about the odd bit of neuron-firing that we all substitute for thought, but the brain-stretching stuff like; how can we believe anything what the mass-media tell us when each information provider has an agenda of their own? How do I generate ‘heat’ for my writing career? When was the time I was I most happy in childhood? Can I write a sonnet to order?

I don’t have the answers to any of those, apart from the last one, which is yes, although unsurprisingly it wasn’t very good.

Sadly, by the time I go back, the leaves will be starting to go brown. But in the meantime, here comes summer…

I’ve just posted what may be either a one-off experiment, or the first of an occasional series at Suite101, in which I make my debut as an interviewer.

Black Static reviewer Peter Tennant is my first victim, and he did a series of fairly mundane questions proud, with some interesting and at times controversial answers (I may agree with Pete that Wembley should have been burned down, but not for his reasons!).

In the interest of full disclosure, most of the questions were adapted –or just pinched outright– from Angry Robot’s Lee Harris & Marc Gascoigne.

If you have a book or story coming out or if you have something to say in general about the genre, and you’re interested in being interviewed drop me a line, and we’ll see if this idea has legs.

This morning Kate asked me over breakfast what I was going to be doing with myself today. There was no hint of checking up, or suggestion that I was going to be playing World of Warcraft until my eyeballs fell out (that comes later) but there was still that sense that non-writers simply can’t visualize what writers actually DO.

The answer –of course– is that we dream with our eyes open.

But the result would be supremely tedious should anyone have fitted cctv to my office (aka the small settee). I just sit here and bang away on keys, and every fifty minutes or so get up and move around to relieve any stress on my back.

I like quiet to work in, so all you can hear from here are distant traffic noises, a periodic clang of the gate followed by the dog going ballistic at the postman, veg deliverer, or other unfortunate.  And that’s it — one day some enterprising burglar is going to get the shock of his life because he thinks an empty house has been left unlocked…

But that’s the difficulty for people who make things, or who work in an office where productivity is judged by how many files you move, or how many orders you process, or how many customers you serve. There is no tangible way of measuring a writer’s productivity. George Alec Effinger once spent all day writing four words. And at the end of the day, he deleted those four words.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of accountability, I may post some of the results of that banging away on keyboard tomorrow, or maybe later in the week, depending on how I feel. Or maybe I won’t. Because I know what I’ve done, and how important it is, and you can’t always measure it.

I thought I ought to start getting back toward at least a semi-regular blog.  Even though this morning’s lie-in to a decadent 7.30, plus (food) shopping and fitting the new TV rather rather blew that out of the water, I’m determined to say a few words about yesterday, which was hectic and hinged around two very different experiences of lectures.

The day was terrific but exhausting; Ashley Pharoah gave the 9am script lecture, then I spent the day with friends before heading back to uni to give the 5pm guest lecture with Gareth L Powell.

In the morning Pharoah talked about the bizaare genesis of Life on Mars, the rare pleasure of actually ending a series ( Spin-off Ashes to Ashes finishes on the 21st) rather than handing it over to someone else, as Russell T Davies did with Doctor Who, or just having it axed by the network.  He also talked about his agent, and the fact that scripwriters cost their agencies an average of £10,000 per client. I’m sure that that’s less for literary agencies, and perhaps comes down the more clients an agency has, although conversely, the less they can do for an individual client, but it’s an interesting insight into the pressures on an agent. That’s something that most writers rarely think about.

Co-hosting the 5pm lecture with Gareth was a very, very different experience.  

In actual terms there were only about 30 people there (Gareth estimated 20 to 30, I thought 30 to 40, so let’s go with the middle figure) but the shape of the auditorium, which rises away from one makes even that low number pretty formidable. I suspect that not all of the audience were SF fans, since attendance is theoretically mandatory — though it was the end of the academic year — so I wanted to give them a flavour of proper SF. Gareth went for a lighter approach, and read a short story which went down well, while I read an extract from Winter Song which is perhaps -with hindsight- a little tech heavy, although perfect for a con. There’s a moral there; think about the nature of your audience. But it showed them just how diverse SF is. 

Gareth gave them some very tips on writing, which you can read about here, while I talked a little about a typical day, and both of us fielded the ‘where did that story come from?’ which is still a good question to ask.

The whole experience  was pretty draining, and offered an insight how it feels to be a lecturer. Some of the questions were tough ones to answer on the hoof, and there were several occasions when I wished afterwards that I’d just had a few more seconds to think before answering — but I felt that I had to keep one eye on the time.

It would be profoundly interesting to go back in a year’s time and repeat the experience, to see whether the experience feels any less overwhelming, and whether any of the students have gotten into SF and/or fantasy.

This will only be a quick post, since I have to leave at 8 for a 9am lecture. It’s one that’s worth going to, since the guest lecturer is Ashley Pharoah, creator of Where the Heart Is, and more importantly to genre fans, co-creator of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.

And then tonight I co-present the 5pm Creative Writing Lecture. I’ll be reading from Winter Song, and taking questions on SF, writing — whatever. I may not be home until 7.30, so we’ve decided to give the theatre a miss tonight. Just as well — it’s been a long year and at the moment I feels like I’m running on empty.

Still, one more week, one more seminar, and two more assignments and it’s all done until the Autumn.

The news is out: Angry Robot is under new ownership, more details of which you can see here.

My initial thoughts are that this is good news. While Harper Collins was a ‘name’ publisher, they aren’t specialists in the way that Marc and Lee are, and (hopefully) freed from all the constraints they’ve been placed under at HC, the Robot Overlords and their army will be able to give readers a better service.

And of course, good luck to Marc and Lee who have already done a terrific job, and will (hopefully) do an even better one free of corporate interests.

Meanwhile, normal service will be resumed shortly — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Depends how I get on with my remaining assignments…

I’ll start with the latest worrying news about Pete Watts, for those of you who haven’t heard it already — he has heard that the prosecutor is pressing for a custodial sentence. We await news, but the silence is worrying…let’s just hope that it’s good news and that the silence means he’s celebrating.

Meanwhile, the review machine rolls on at Suite101 — this morning’s target is Rhys Hughes’ new novel Twisthorn Bellow.

And over at the Vector blog (that’s the review journal of the BSFA) they’ve started a discussion on Winter Song. If you want to join in, feel free to join in — I don’t think that it’s limited to BSFA members.

The Saturday review at Suite101 this week is Black Static 16, but before you click on the link –or not– I want to add a coda.

I mentioned that it’s the first full colour Black Static, but Suite’s policies preclude me from saying that the whole magazine is jaw-droppingly fucking gorgeous.  I had my doubts about a full colour edition, simply because  it’s a magazine of dark fiction, which just goes to show that

a. sometimes bright colours can enhance the darkness

b. I know nothing, absolutely nada, about artwork. Except what I like.

Oddly, the Lynda E. Rucker artwork, which is among the strongest in the issue, seems to be uncredited.

On another point, space precluded me commenting in more detail on Stephen Volk’s ‘Electric Darkness,’ which was like a shot in the arm. This is how it starts:

There’s this story. This guy went to live in the wilderness with grizzly bears… He admired their grace and ever since he was a kid he adored them. He thought, if I treat them well, they’ll have no reason…to attack me.  On the contrary, they’ll love me like I love them and we’ll all live happily in the forest together. Well, one day the fucking grizzlies turned on him and ate him.

I know the feeling.

Volk recounts the series of setbacks and the periodic depression that plagues him (and sometimes the two are linked, and sometimes they’re not) — and wonders why he bothers.

It touched a chord because I’m slightly melancholic by nature, and also lately because I’ve begun to note the switchback nature of writing for a living.

Possibly every beginning writer dreaming of the first sale thinks that after they’ve made the breakthrough, it’s happily ever after. In fact, given long enough a writer’s career seems increasingly to me to be like a game of Snakes ‘n’ Ladders. Volk’s article nails it absolutely, and in the process outlines how he copes. Anyone who suffers from depression, or whose career is going through a rough patch should read it.

Black Static is a great magazine, and 16 is an exemplary issue, but in any case this month’s Electric Darkness alone is worth the cover price.

This will only be a short post, as it’s just before 9.15 am, and I have to be out of the door by 10 o’clock, to get to uni for the first lecture of term.

At the end of last term I was faced with the prospect of handing in five assignments in eight calendar days, from Monday the 10th to Monday the 17th of May. It’s clearly do-able, but needed planning and to get ahead.

I’ve at least made a start on four of them, although all will still need further polishing. But on the back of 1400 words written this morning, I’ve posted over at Suite101 about one of them. It’s a children’s novel about a boy with the (deliberately) unfortunate name of Brian Brain, and which contains a single element of fantasy to what is otherwise a mainstream novel.

I posted the usual blog entry over at suite101, but I’m acutely conscious that if I’m not careful, this blog becomes no more than a daily re-direct. It was something that I was already aware of before a friend made a comment yesterday, but it made it more important that I give it some thought. (Oh no, more thinking required…)

I’ll follow it up on Monday, although it won’t be posted at suite.