Goodness, I’ve neglected to keep up to date here. Partly because there have been a lot of trips out of London recently, and by the time I was back home I seemed to need ages to recover. Encroaching age!
My first ever Eastercon was a fascinating experience. Follycon took place in the very grand Majestic Hotel in Harrogate, on the kind of grey and rainy weekend that England has specialised in this winter (and spring).
The weather’s lousy, but spirits Chez Barnham are high as we prepare to set off for the trek north to Follycon, the 69th National British Science Fiction Convention, which this year is in Harrogate.
Having been a science fiction fan for longer than I can remember, I’m ashamed to admit this is my first EasterCon. But I hope to make up for lost time.
As well as meeting people and catching up with what’s going on, I am of course also taking a couple of boxes these beauties – the British paperback release of Fifty-One is here!
Of course, Fifty-One has been available on ebook for a few weeks now. And lucky folks in the USA have been able to buy the ravishing paperback.
But there’s nothing like having an actual physical book, available in your local bookshops. So, I’m just a tiny bit excited that the UK paperback is now at the printers, and should be available by Easter.
I certainly hope it is, because I’m planning to take a few boxes up to Harrogate, Yorkshire, for FollyCon – this year’s 69th national British Science Fiction Convention.
Really looking forward to it. If you’re there, come and say hello.
It would be exciting enough that a book is coming out, containing the best British science fiction of last year.
But I confess I am beside myself that my story ‘When I Close My Eyes’ has somehow managed to sneak into the book. Where you will find it gazing around in awe at the illustrious company of fantastic writers like Adam Roberts, Eric Brown, Jaine Fenn and Ken MacLeod… and the list goes on.
The collection is edited again by the marvellous Donna Scott, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. I loved the 2016 collection, and this one looks even better.
The story first appeared in Interzone #271 last summer. It was my ‘hardest’ SF story yet – with a bereaved astronaut trapped by a rockfall in a cave on Titan, encountering some fragile but peskily well-organised Titanian aliens. (He was however helped out by a ghost, so I guess it is not that hard SF!)
The marvellous CL Rose at Filles Vertes Publishing has just put up on her blog a Q&A she did with me a short while ago, to tie in with the publication of Fifty-One.
Here’s a short extract:
Q: What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring authors?
A: I’ve spent most of my life thinking the great SF writer Robert Heinlein had three rules of writing, and I’ve tried to follow them. I remembered them as:
1. Write
2. Put it on the market
3. Keep it on the market.
Recently I discovered he actually had two more – finish what you start, and don’t rewrite except to editorial order. I’m glad I didn’t know about that last one: I think rewriting is hard but important.
Raymond Chandler
Q: If you could meet any author, dead or alive, who would you want to meet and why?
A: Raymond Chandler. His prose style is often imitated but, while it seems simple, it’s deceptively hard to do well. Although he lived in California, he went to school in south London, so we’d have things to talk about other than Philip Marlowe.
As well as meeting people and catching up with what’s going on, I am of course also taking a couple of boxes these beauties – the British paperback release of Fifty-One is here!
I certainly hope it is, because I’m planning to take a few boxes up to Harrogate, Yorkshire, for FollyCon – this year’s 69th national British Science Fiction Convention.
