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!)
It only happens a day or two in every few years, but when it does it’s always glorious. The temperature drops and out of the dreary overcast of the normal British winter sky comes the snow.
In that magical way of fresh snow, for a day or two even the ugliest of districts is transformed into a marshmallow wonderland. The bare trees are lined with cotton wool and a white carpet lays a gentle hush over the inner city streets.
A benign hysteria grips the neighbourhood. Within hours, everyone has scoured their homes for the sledge that has been shoved into the cellar and neglected for a year. Failing a sledge, tin trays, the tops of wheelie bins, bits of plywood; anything that can slide down an icy hill is pressed quickly into service.
Aaaand….all at once, south east London is transformed into a Dickensian tableau.
Or maybe it’s Breugel. Anyway, I’m not writing. Gone sledging.
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.
Maybe that should be Valentines’ day (apostrophe after the ‘S’) – because Wikipedia tells me that there was more than one St Valentine matryred in Roman times, and honoured these days with roses and heart-shaped chocolate.
Whatever, I confess I haven’t taken St Valentine’s Day too seriously in the past. Not since that time I booked a romantic meal for two and arrived with Laura at the restaurant to find they had hopelessly overbooked. (We bailed out and went home with a bottle of champagne and takeout fish and chips, all consumed in bed!)
Did I mention I loved the cover? Courtesy of Kate Cowan, Broken Arrow Designs
But now – to my surprise – I have a romance novel, published only two days ago, so maybe I need to treat this festival with respect.
All right, I admit it’s a romance novel between a man born in 2010 and woman who dies in 1944. And there’s time travel, and flying bombs. But nevertheless, there’s a love triangle and romance in there!
It’s a been a strange and hectic couple of days since Fifty-One was published on Monday. And there’s no end in sight. As a writer, what I really want to do is hide away and write another book. But there are promotion duties to be done!
If you haven’t encountered Fifty-One yet – whether you’re seeking a Valentine’s treat or not – you can get it 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.
