Colin Harvey – author

After a couple of recent ventures into Children’s Lit I’ve gone back to genre, with a review of Lavie Tidhar’s wonderful The Bookman at Suite101.

Last week I blogged about a couple of live cases involving members of the SF community and getting in and out of the US. In the last few days the situation has become clearer, although no happier for those involved. More about it at the usual venue.

This morning’s post over at Suite101 is on the subject of books-that-were-submitted-by-publishers-and-considered-by-the-judges lists…or long lists, as I prefer to call them.

For my Creative Writing Workshop, I need to write some YA or children’s fiction (it’s that or performance poetry…and I think I’d prefer root canal surgery sans anaesthetic to standing in front of an audience reciting pp). 

Acutely aware that my knowledge of YA and kid-litt is almost forty years out of date, I followed Mimi’s advice and went down to Mr B’s in Bath, where I purchased a couple of titles.  I was also hugely reassured that lot of books that I read all those years ago are still available and even recommended.

One of the new titles that I bought was Joshua Doder’s A Dog Called Grk, which is quite simply wonderful.

So, if you’re curious as to why I’m reviewing children’s fiction, that’s the reason. (You may have put it down to increasing eccentricity, in which case you may not be too wrong, either <g>)

If you have a 9 – 12 child, go and buy it for them. If you don’t have children, but you like dogs, buy it anyway.  Actually, just buy it.

Today’s post at Suite101 is the -with hindsight– rather clunkily titled* ‘Making the change from short stories to novels’ which is actually more about putting to bed one of the recurring myths of SF, that writing short stories is a step on the ladder to writing novels. It was inspired by some excellent research by writer  Jim C Hines on the subject of first novel sales.  Research that’s well worth checking out.

* Sadly, however, by the time I’d read the title aloud and realized how clunky it was, it was too late to change it without scrapping the whole post.  And isn’t one of the joys of blogging supposed to be that it’s spontaneous? Clunky titles and all!

On the day Hugo-nominated Canadian SF writer Peter Watts goes on trial, and soon after another friend has had, erm, issues with the US Border Agency, I’ve written the first of two blog posts taking David Langford‘s section header from Interzone as my starting point.

I’ve posted the first of an occasional series at Suite101, examining why stories fail. SF is a literature driven by ideas, but an idea without a plot is not a story. Plot grows from character, just as in the best stories, plot drives character.

I’ve held back from this sort of article for some time, because I still think of myself as a journeyman, but I’m slowly accepting that I’m further along the road that journey takes, than many others.

The clock is headed toward midday as I write this, and I’ve only been in for about half an hour! I was up at 5.30 this morning, which is no earlier than any other day, but it already seems to have gone on forever. It’s all about the travelling. And in about three hours I’ll be heading for my Scriptwriting Seminar at Uni, so I’d better turn my thoughts toward that.

But before I do, I’ve posted more about P-Con over at Suite.

I fly out to Dublin later on today for the annual Phoenix Con, now in its seventh year. I have a pretty busy Saturday, with panels pretty much every other hour, so that if I’m lucky I’m on stage for an hour with an hour until the next one.

I’m unsure where my slot is in the ‘Meet the Author’ strand; if it’s Saturday, it could blow that nice steady routine out of the water — Sunday before or after lunch would be ideal, but I’ll take whatever crops up.

Sunday looks a little quieter, but here’s my timetable in full.

I was going to say ‘See you all tomorrow’ in Gaelic, but I can’t actually read Grace’s hand-writing…translation fail, Grace!

So I’ll see you all tomorrow…in English.

This morning’s blog is a straight list of the 2009 Nebula Award finalists. However, I couldn’t resist posting links to the stories I trumpeted when they first came out, which makes me look profoundly perspicacious. Of course, that ignores the finalists I initially rubbished, as well as all the other stories I backed which never made the final… 🙂