Colin Harvey – author

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.

As part of my fearless crusade for the truth, I’ve managed to lay hold of a draft copy of an internal BBC Memo on last night’s final episode of Ashes to Ashes.* Be warned, there are spoilers there, as well as here.

Joking apart, it wasn’t the event we’d all been promised — but then again, nothing could match the hype. I had hoped for something a little more, rigorous, I suppose, and a bit less woolly headed. Probably the big revelation was a little too early in the episode, although learning the fate of Ray, Chris and Shaz was effective; Shaz especially carried the honours.

But it was all a bit too much like the shower sequence out of Dallas. If everything is in the mind of a dead man, even if it is a collective gestalt, then where are the consequences — so gunning down the villains was no more impactful than a video game.  Or maybe that was the point of it? Bolly’s final parting was no more powerful than a ‘ta-ra then!’ as if she were going to the shops. When nothing is real, then nothing matters.

Although I did like the very last scene. Nicely wrapped up, Ashley. But next time, stick to cop shows and leave the metaphysics alone…

* For the humorously challenged, yes this was intended as a joke; no, there is no such Department — at least, I don’t think so…

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.

I’m delighted to report that my short story ‘The Killing Streets’ finished a respectable joint 9th in the Interzone poll, out of  32 stories.

Cogratulations to Jason Sanford, whose ‘Sublimation Angels’ narrowly beat Eugie Foster’s ‘Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, etc.’

And thanks to everyone who voted for me.

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’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.