James Lovegrove – author

End of 2007, and what have we learned this year?

First off, never move house. It’s disruptive, traumatic, expensive, and it destroys your faith in human nature. Stay put. Be happy where you are. Add an extension if you have to. New curtains. New wallpaper. Anything. Just don’t move.

Second off, if you must move house, move to somewhere you enjoy living. Which we’ve done. Eastbourne is fantastic. Why, I could almost see myself growing old and retiring here, ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha.

Third, write lots of stuff and get it published. Oh wait, that’s not a revelation. I’ve been doing it anyway. I’ve managed one and a half pseudonymous novels this year, plus the first quarter of a new James Lovegrove novel, so that’s one and three quarter novels in total. Added to that are a Barrington Stoke book, four short stories, and thousands of words of reviewage. Been busy.

Fourth, be prepared to receive praise from unexpected but welcome sources: andyremic.blogspot.com. I don’t know much about Mr Remic’s work, but I shall be sure to check some out now. A man of taste, clearly.

Fifth, give thanks where thanks is due. And this year it’s due to Ariel, for discharging website maintenance duties with diligence and aplomb; Eric Brown, for being Constant Correspondent and a reliable source of encouragement and advice; Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz, for editorial efforts above and beyond the call of duty; George Mann and everyone at Solaris, for being so wonderfully enthusiastic and excited; Alain and Stephane at Bragelonne, for being so unmistakably and thrillingly French; Silveracre Comics, a sublime source of Silver Age nostalgia (I’ve been buying black and white ’70s Marvel magazines off them by the dozen); and Joe Gordon at Forbidden Planet, for help and recommendations. Not forgetting the missus, for love and patience, and Monty and Theo, for all those lovely early morning wake-ups and the heady bouts of ultraviolence.

Happy Christmas to all, and here’s hoping for a great ’08.

Kill Swap has just been long-listed for the 2008 Manchester Book Award, which according to the web site is “a reader development initiative for young people. Run by Manchester Library and Information Service, it involves young people across the city, creatively encouraging them to read and talk about books to promote literacy and a passion for reading.” The long list contains 24 titles, which will be whittled down to 6 sometime in January. It’s lovely to be nominated, and fingers crossed the book might even make it to the short list, although the competition seems strong to me. I’m pleased too for Barrington Stoke, as it’s great publicity for the imprint.

Meanwhile Cinema Macabre, the nonfiction anthology from PS Publishing of which I am one contributor, has just won a British Fantasy Award. Congratulations to Mark Morris, the editor, and to all the other contributors and, why the hell not, to myself as well. It’s a great book (I have a copy in the downstairs loo, for dipping into — the book, I mean, not the loo) and perhaps now those rumours of a possible mainstream edition are even more likely to become fact.

All that and we have spanking new carpet in most of the house, to replace the manky and rather suspiciously stained old carpet. Joy!

So we’re about to move house, and things are pretty much in disarray, and there’s a ton of jobs to be done (boxing up books, taking down pictures, Polyfilla-ing holes in the walls, oh, and getting that mortgage secured) but I thought I’d squeeze in one final news update before the chaos begins in earnest.

First off, Telos publishing have at last come up with the deluxe hardback edition of Shrouded By Darkness, the anthology edited by Alison Davies which has a story of mine, ‘Cutting Criticism’, in it and which is already out in an equally attractive paperback. This is not only a beautiful-looking book, with a host of quality stories, but the profits are going to a worthy cause, so that’s all the more reason to rush out and buy a copy.

Across the Channel, there’s now a mass-market paperback edition of the French version of Days doing the rounds. This is the spooky-but-rather-nice cover, appropriately dollar-greenish in colour:

I’ve yet to see a finished copy myself (hint, hint, Mr French Publisher) but this image really works for me, and also seems to be working for the Gallic public, as the book is selling like gâteaux chauds over there.

Now, I was Amazoning myself the other day, as one does when one is an author, and found several curious listings under my name, which I thought I’d share with you.

First off, it would appear that I’ve been writing for a very long time indeed, judging by the fact that The Guardians Volume 3, by James Lovegrove, has a publication date of April 1st 1920 and is categorised under the subheading “Antiquarian, Rare and Collectable”. Rare is the word for it, given that it came out 45 years before I was born! Mind you, that actual day of the year mentioned has a kind of fishy ring…

Then there’s a novel I’m supposed to have co-written, Nevada Blue, which is in fact by John Tilsley alone. How my name has come to be attached to it, I’ve no idea. The only reason I can think of is because it was published at exactly the same time as the first edition of Days, under the same imprint, and somehow, by some process of literary osmosis, I’ve managed to take half-credit for it. I’m sure it’s an excellent book. Just please don’t think I had any input into it.

A rather smart-looking cover for the second in the Guardians series, Berserker, would appear to belong to an American edition published by TV Books. I like the acid-green hand leaping out at you. As far as I’m aware, though, this artefact doesn’t exist. If it does, nobody ever sent me a copy.

Also listed are two editions of The Kuczynski Verifications, the sequel to Provender Gleed that never actually got written (or rather it did, the first hundred or so pages, but I abandoned it because I didn’t, and don’t, think it was any good). Mind you, the book’s not due to be published till 2008, apparently, so there’s still time for me to get cracking…

And with that, I shall leave you, to return to the world of packing cartons and dismantled furniture. With luck the next update should see me and the family ensconced in a better place. Or Eastbourne, at any rate.

Hello, all. It’s now well into the month of May, and round here at Lovegrove Towers our main preoccupation is how soon it’s going to be before Theo stops having a cold and producing huge, green drooping goobers of snot and coughing like a twenty-a-day crim and ever so often vomiting great wads of mucus. Ah, the joys of childhood. By which I mean, you can do all that and not have to worry about who’s cleaning it up afterwards and whose shirt you’ve just made psychedelic.

Our other, perhaps more main (mainer?) preoccupation is an imminent return to the Home Counties. Yes, after three years in Devon we’ve finally admitted defeat and decided to move back closer to London. We thought that, when we relocated to the sticks, everyone else would up and follow us, therefore we wouldn’t need to visit the Big Smoke and related places so often, but surprisingly it seems that London and its environs have remained pretty much where they were and so have the people who live there, several of whom keep inviting us to go and do things with them, dammit. All being well (and in house-selling and -buying there’s no such thing as a sure thing) we should be tracking back over our footprints sometime in July, and our prospective new home is in … the town of Eastbourne.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you can get the jokes about retirement and God’s waiting room out of the way now, thank you very much. Eastbourne is a beautiful, thriving town, honest it is, and one of the three sunniest spots in all of the UK, I’ll have you know. We’re looking forward to getting there, and I’ll update on the progress of the move and the status of the new pad as and when it all happens. To repeat, nothing is certain in the real-estate arena. So we’re touching wood (and cloth) frantically, in the hope that everything pans out as planned.

Work-wise, I’ve got a semi-regular reviewing gig at the Financial Times now, following my SF article in February. I cover children’s fiction and the occasional SF novel, graphic novel, and just plain modern fiction novel, and my pieces appear in the magazine section of the weekend edition. This sort of journalism is great fun to do and doesn’t harm the bank balance in any way. Oh, and publishers take note. I am completely unbribable. I will not be coaxed into giving a glowing review by any inducements you may offer. None whatsoever. Sports cars, private jets, tropical beach holidays — dangle these plump, juicy and above all costly carrots before me, and I will not be swayed. Oh no. Not in the least. No sir.

On the publishing front, August looms, and in that month I have two titles forthcoming. One is volume two of the teen series that cannot be named (but I will tell you, I have been casually “outed” as the true author of the series in a recent issue of Locus). The other book is Dead Brigade, one of the first titles in Barrington Stoke’s new Most Wanted line. These are books for Reluctant Readers but written for an adult rather than teen audience. Dead Brigade is a zombie tale, and I’ve been dying (ho ho) to tell a zombie tale for ages. Here’s the cover:

Cool, no? I think I recognise the flaky-skinned gentleman from an Italian 1980s zombie flick but I’m damned if I can remember which one.

Finally, I’ve penned a new short story for a new Pete Crowther anthology, We Think, Therefore We Are, due out next year from Tekno Books. The theme is artificial intelligence and my tale, ‘The Kamikaze Code’, is a follow-up to ‘The Bowdler Strain’, set in the same MoD research establishment, Chilton Mead. I hope to do a couple more stories set there, if and when suitable ideas occur to me.

Blimey, has it really been nearly five months since I posted a news update? Slack indeed, and I apologise. I can only say, in mitigation, that I’ve been kept very busy with our small-but-rapidly-enlarging baby, and that any largish bits of news I’ve had to impart have all had to do with the Pseudonymous YA Project I’m Not Allowed To Talk About. Which is a bit frustrating, but there you go.

I have, though, completed various small bits and pieces of writing which will see publication in the coming months. To start with, I’ve two short stories appearing in anthologies this year. One is ‘The Bowdler Strain’, which is in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, edited by the estimable George Mann and due for publication at the end of this very month. (By the way, why is it that estimable and inestimable both mean the same thing? It’s true of flammable and inflammable too. What’s up with that? Why aren’t they opposites? Come on, English grammar, sort yourself out!) This collection looks to be a goodie. All the big names are in it, as well as me.

The other tale is ‘At One’, my weird story-told-in-monosyllables experiment, which has found a slot in The British Invasion, an anthology edited by that masterful dark fantasy writer Tim Lebbon. I’m not sure of the publication date, but I know that it’s being put out by (in)estimable US horror imprint Cemetery Dance sometime this year and that it contains some of the very best of UK horror writing.

I’ve also a couple of new Barrington Stoke books appearing in ’07, one imminent, one not so imminent. (Does that mean the latter one is minent? I’m really confusing myself now). The first is Kill Swap, an urban murder yarn, written for teens. The other is The Dead Brigade, which is intended for BS’s new line of books for adult reluctant readers. It’s about zombies in the military. I’ve been dying — no pun intended — to write a zombie tale for ages. I’m very pleased that I’ve managed it, and I’m very proud of the result. That’s likely to be out in August, same month as the second volume of Pseudonymous YA Project I’m Still Not Allowed To Talk About.

Finally, I’ve contributed a books essay to the Financial Times‘s Saturday magazine supplement, which is scheduled to appear on February 10th. Essentially it’s a review of four recent or just-about-to-be-published SF novels, discussing the themes they have in common and how they relate to the current state of the genre. I’d recommend checking the article out, if only because I’d recommend checking out the four books it deals with.

On the pending projects front, Adam Roberts (a.k.a. “The Prof”) and I have pitched an idea for a nonfiction work to Orion Books. They’re making all the right noises about it, and we’re awaiting the final, definite go-ahead, which should come any day now. I’ll gabble on about it a bit more once it’s confirmed as a goer.

And last but not least, I must congratulate the above-mentioned The Prof, and also Roger Levy. The latest masterworks from each of them have made it onto the short-lists of, respectively, the Clarke Award and the BSFA Award for Best Novel. Well done, chaps! And well done to Gollancz, too, for being the imprint that dominates both short-lists. That’s not sucking up. Or is it? No, it can’t be. You can’t suck up to the people who already publish you. Can you?

P.S. This is the cover of the Bulgarian edition of Worldstorm, just out from Bard Publishing.

Either that or it’s some random book using the same image as the Gollancz edition. But I’m pretty sure it’s Worldstorm.

The baby arrived safely at just past three on the afternoon of July 27th, and has been named Theodore Finch Xavier Lovegrove, Theo for short. The “Finch” part is in tribute to Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird being Lou’s favourite book and its hero her ideal of a Good Man (other than me, of course), while the “Xavier” part is one of Lou’s family names … although there may be a sly X-Men reference in there too. And I’ve always thought it would be cool to have X as one of your initials. As for Theo, we both just thought it a nice name, and it seems to suit him.

He’s been a very well-behaved baby so far, if well-behaved is another way of saying sleeps a lot, which he does, as this pic would seem to demonstrate. His mother, meanwhile, is recovering slowly but surely, and as for his brother … well, Monty’s a bit nonplussed by the whole event, but he did enjoy the slew of gifts he received in the wake of the birth and has taken to asking for “more presents” on a more-or-less hourly basis. I’m sure he’ll warm to the idea of gaining a smaller brother once he appreciates that he now has a playmate / helper / minion / victim to use and abuse as he sees fit.

Me? I’m tired but OK. And secretly, I’m rather looking forward to getting back to work. But don’t tell the missus.

And here’s what Ozzy the cat thinks of the whole affair…

The MMPBs (mass-market paperbacks) of Provender Gleed have arrived, and the official verdict is … hmmm.

Outwardly they’re fine. The cover is a slight development on the hardback and trade paperback cover, with a nice review quote from the lovely Johnny Berlyne prominently positioned.

Inside, however, is disappointing, to say the least. No further review quotes on the flyleaf (even though there were plenty to choose from), but worse than that, the text has been set in a teeny-tiny font size pushed right to the edges of the page, with margins that can be measured in micrometres. The word “unreadable” springs to mind. As does “amateurish”.

I am pretty peeved about this, as you may be able to tell, and have expressed my views to Gollancz, whose response has been to admit that someone goofed but without specifying whom or how. All I can say is, poor production values aside, it remains a terrific novel and well worth recommending to friends, family and nodding acquaintances. It’s just not, alas, a terrific edition.

On a brighter note, I’ve contributed a second comics nostalgia piece to Forbidden Planet’s website. It may be found on The Forbidden Planet Blog and I’d like to thank FP blogging-supremo Joe Gordon for giving me the opportunity to wallow once again in the cheaply printed pleasures of my youth.

Joe also supplied me with this photograph:

It’s an office he passes every day on his way to work. Clearly the Gleed Family’s power and influence is such that it reaches even into the real world.

I’ve written another short article, on the subject of wordplay in fiction (my own and others’), for issue #3 of the BBC’s MindGames magazine. It should be on shop shelves imminently, if it isn’t there already. Inevitably, the piece isn’t only about wordplay but contains wordplay. Well, what would be the point otherwise?

Our second child is due to arrive any minute now, so a noisy and hectic few weeks lie ahead. I’ve wound down the writing for the time being, but I don’t anticipate that my pen will be lying idle for long.

And finally, our house is on the market. Lou and I have decided that our rural idyll has come to an end and it’s time to return to the busier and more populous climes of East Sussex. We love living in north Devon but the travel links are proving problematic and I need to be up in London more frequently than I can manage. We hope to be elsewhere by the end of the year. Although, looking at the sere savannah that the Home Counties have become this summer, compared with the verdant lushness of the south-west, where hosepipe bans are the stuff of fantasy, you have to wonder if we’re not a little bit crazy…

…as the immortal Tom O’Connor used to say on the classic daytime game show Cross Wits. (For “immortal” read “not dead yet”, and for “classic” read “long-forgotten”.)

Speaking of crosswords – see what I did there? – yours truly has become official crossword correspondent for a new BBC publication. The magazine in question in Mindgames and the first has issue has just appeared, available at all good newsagents and WH Smith. My mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to explain in a series of bite-size chunks how to solve cryptic crosswords. Look for me on page 26. I’m the one with the thick pink column. (Why does that sound somehow sordid?)

And if you are at all curious to see me in the flesh, you could always invent a time machine and travel back to the beginning of May, when I made an appearance at Alt.Fiction, a day-long event put on by Derby City Council and organised, immaculately, by their Literature Development Officer, Alex Davis. I did a reading from Provender Gleed, then rabbited on about my work for far longer than I intended, leaving no time for audience questions at the end of the session. Sorry about that. But I had a fantastic time and met up with lots of old pals and signed books and chatted with fans… A great day, and I understand Alex already has a follow-up planned for 2007. Check out his blog.

Publication-wise, my story ‘Speedstream’, a favourite of mine, has recently appeared in a French anthology, Science-Fiction 2006, from the mighty Bragelonne, and I have a short piece in Cinema Macabre (available now from PS Publishing), which is a collection of articles by genre writers and editors, each celebrating his or her favourite horror film. Mine’s The Omega Man. Not high art, I’m sure you’ll agree, but a classic of its kind and a movie that had a profound influence on me at a shockingly impressionable early age.

Current music rave: Seu Jorge, The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions. One man, a guitar, a selection of early-Bowie covers. In Portuguese. Lovely, if odd. Or: odd, if lovely.

2006 has started out a funny old year.

First off, the big news is that Lou is expecting again, and if all goes according to plan the nipper should be appearing in late July. It’s going to be a boy, in spite of Monty’s conviction that there’s a penguin in his mummy’s stomach (don’t ask). The only drawback as far as I can see is that this will leave Lou in even more of a minority in our household. At present the male/female ratio is 3:1, if you include the cat, which I do, lack of testicles notwithstanding (I mean the cat lacks testicles, not me). Soon it’s going to be 4:1, which means Lou having to deal with four erratically behaved and congenitally irresponsible male creatures. Poor her.

On the writing front, the curse of sequelitis has hit again, and I’ve halted work on the Provender Gleed follow-up which I began in February. The plot wasn’t gelling and the characters seemed to decide they didn’t need to be in another book after all. It may that I’ll take another bash at it at a later date. In the meantime…

Well, I’m in a bit of a quandary here, because I promised in my last update that I’d reveal details about the other new project I’ve been working on, and in the event I can’t. What’s happened is that I have a fantasy series coming out, the first volume appearing in August, but now, for various reasons, it’s being published under a pseudonym and for the time being I have to keep my involvement in its authorship a secret. Which is a bugger, because I’d like nothing more than to shout about it and give it a right old ballyhoo, being as I’m very excited about it. I’d love to tell you that the series spins off from a well-known short story of mine, rebooting the world I created in that tale. I’d love to tell you that each volume is fast-paced action/adventure from start to finish, and that each is self-contained but forms part of a larger unfolding story, and that I’m channelling my inner comics geek to write this, and that there are airships in it…

But then there are airships in virtually everything I do, so that’s hardly a surprise.

As it is, I’ll have to leave it for now, but I swear I’ll post more on the subject once the series is up and running and we know where we are, pseudonym-wise.

Oh, and a quick P.S. The venerable Mr Crowther of PS Publishing fame has agreed to produce a limited-edition collection of all my short fiction from 1997-2005. The book’s working title is Diversifications and it’ll be coming out in — wait for it — late 2008. So, plenty of time to start saving up for what will undoubtedly be yet another beautifully put-together PS package.

Christmas Eve 2005 looms, and the viziers have consulted their astrolabes and the druids have checked their solstice calendars, and they’re all saying, “Holy shit! James Lovegrove is 40!!!”

Believe it or not (and I’m very much in the “not” camp) I am hitting the midlife milestone in a very short time indeed, just days from now, and I’m feeling alternately mellow and horrified about it, although admittedly more the latter than the former.

I’ve had the party already. No chance of holding it on the day itself, since most sensible people I know already have plans for then, so last Saturday 25 or so of my pals wended their across country, over hill and dale, forging through fjords, to Lovegrove Manor, not one of them getting lost along the way, or so they tell me. We had cake and champagne, fireworks and speeches, but it seemed that the great draw as far as most were concerned was the VHS transfer of my dad’s old 8mm home movie footage. Me, aged 11, gurning and falling over. Me, aged 12, doing much the same. Some very long, slow pans across landscapes (my dad doing his Truffaut wannabe thing). Then more of me gurning. It held people in a mesmerised/appalled thrall, some for hours.

It would be invidious to single out any of the wonderful gifts I received, but an honourable mention must go to the 4ft inflatable Dalek bestowed on me by Roger Levy. It’s standing sentinel in the kitchen even now, and the only thing that detracts from its sinister, Nazi-pepperpot appearance is the somewhat droopy eye stalk. I’ve blown it and blown it and still can’t get it to stiffen up, fnarr fnarr.

So there we have it. End of the final year of my thirties. I’ve written a lot this year, two books more or less, about which I shall reveal details in my next update. In the meantime, here’s wishing you a happy holidays and all the very best for the New Year.