James Lovegrove – author

On the cheeringly palindromic date of 30/6/03, at approximately twenty-five past midnight, Lou gave birth to our son. He arrived a week late and not without some bother, but he weighed in at a very respectable eight and a half pounds and was and is in every respect healthy.

His name is Monty, short for Montgomery, and he has more middle names than I can really remember. Three at the last count, owing to the need to namecheck various family members and also shoehorn in a forename which has been handed down from Lovegrove to Lovegrove through the male line for generations blah blah blah…

Now eight weeks old, so far Monty has turned out to be happy and talkative, if not exactly an aid to sleep. Here’s a picture of him, less than a week old, along with his dad, hard at work. After this, I promise: not much talk about babies on this website. Nothing worse than dads rabbiting on endlessly about their infant offspring.

I was contacted the other day by a certain Torbjørn Pettersen, webmaster of a site called fantafiction.com, which lists most SF/fantasy authors (and does a commendably comprehensive job of it – check it out). Torbjørn was updating his records and wanted to check that the site’s content about me was correct. Well, it was, although I found one or two small anomalies.

First off, in my bibliography a book called The Penitent was listed. Now, The Penitent was supposed to be my follow-up novel to Untied Kingdom but it was one of those projects that didn’t get very far. For various reasons I couldn’t seem to make it work, so after 50 or so pages I shelved it. It will doubtless remain shelved. Somehow, however, it found its way onto Amazon as a forthcoming title, and thence onto Torbjørn’s site. I’ve corrected the error in both places, and let me state for the record here that there is no such book nor, most likely, shall there ever be such a book. So there.

More curiously, there was also listed in the bibliography a novel allegedly published under my name in 2002, called Saeth. Unusual title. I had no idea what it might be but I was sure it had not come from my pen. So I did a bit of research. Torbjørn had learned of it from another site, fantasticfiction.co.uk (also worthy of being checked out). Fantasticfiction’s webmaster Dave Wands told me he had found it listed on Amazon. So I searched Amazon. No such book. But the search led me to another book co-written by James Lovegrove and someone called Sion Lewis. The book’s title was Adenydd.

OK, so by now the old antennae were twitching and someone was whistling the X-Files theme tune in the background. What the hell is this Adenydd? Sounds Welsh to me. And what are the chances of there being another author called James Lovegrove, writing in Welsh? Slim to none, I’d say.

Adenydd‘s publisher was listed as Gomer Press. I Googled them, searched their site, and found no reference at all to either the book or James Lovegrove. So, resorting to old-fashioned, steam-powered telephone, I rang them. The nice man I talked to had never heard of James Lovegrove. Nor had the other person in the office with him. I then asked him what the word “adenydd” means in English, even remembering to pronounce the last two letters as “th”. He said, “Wings.”

Lightbulb flicked on overhead. And at that moment, someone else entered the Gomer office and she, bless her, had heard of me and also of Wings. So the book, it turned out, is a Welsh translation of my YA book from 2001. Nobody at the original publisher, Barrington Stoke, had informed me it was being translated, although apparently this was mentioned on my royalty statement and serves me right for not having read it properly. (Saeth, by the way, is Welsh for ‘story’ or ‘fiction’. Somewhere along the line this got confused with the book’s actual title. And Sion Lewis is in fact Sian Lewis, the book’s translator.)

The mystery was solved, and now I have a complimentary author’s copy of the book, and very nice it looks too, though my Welsh being somewhat sketchy, I can’t really read it. In fact, the only Welsh I know is ‘grid gwartheg’, which means cattle grid, and Wings, alas, contains no mention of any cattle grids anywhere.

The moral of this tale? Well, I never ever thought I’d hear myself say this, but hurrah for the Internet. Oh, and if anyone tries to tell you I’ve published a book called Saeth, I haven’t.

Untied Kingdom was well and truly launched on the night of Thursday April 10th. The party was held downstairs at The Green Man pub on Euston Road, with red roses and complimentary copies strewn everywhere. The organising was done by Orion’s publicist par excellence Nicola Sinclair, to whom a big, heartfelt thanks, and as far as I’m aware everyone behaved themselves and no one got too horribly drunk. Which is a pity, but there you go. Certainly there was no repeat of my shameful performance at the launch of Days, where a surfeit of fortified bottled cider saw me behind the bar, merrily doling out drinks, and then having to be decanted into a taxi for my own and everyone else’s benefit. Ah, youth!

Everyone came who I wanted to come, with a few notable exceptions, all of whom tendered very good excuses for their absence, so I don’t mind. My editor, Simon Spanton, delivered a thoroughly blush-making speech. He prefaced it by saying that I was the most painful author to publish, which almost caused me to walk out, but explained that he meant painful in the sense of frustrating, because I don’t think of myself as being nearly as good as he says I really am. So that’s nice. I then got myself into trouble by referring to Miss Sinclair as “a horse of a girl”, but this is, I maintain, a compliment, in fact the highest compliment that can be paid. She took it as such, anyway.

Spookily enough, I learned today that the pub was once called The Albion. So what was once The Albion is now The Green Man. Anyone who’s read Untied Kingdom will see that that’s pretty much the plot of the novel in a nutshell. Weird!

Prior to the launch, I was in Manchester at the Deansgate branch of Waterstone’s, doing a signing and question-and-answer session in company with Roger Levy, Richard Morgan and Adam Roberts, stalwart fellows all. Before an audience of fifteen, there was much banter and badinage and altogether too many Dick jokes, but it was an enjoyable occasion, and burned onto my memory banks forever is the image of Dr Roberts doing a charade of his favourite SF novel, The War of the Worlds. All I can say is, thank God he used one of his arms as the third leg of the tripod and not anything else. Michael Rowley arranged the event, and it was great to see him again (his, surely, is the best-stocked SF section of any branch of any bookseller chain anywhere).

Reviews of the book have started appearing, and so far all have been very positive. Check out current issues of Dreamwatch, The Bookseller, Waterstone’s Books magazine and Locus, plus the websites Infinity Plus and scifidimensions. (The less said about the piece in SFX the better, but hey, you can’t have everything.) Birmingham’s Sunday Mercury also praised the novel, and there’s more to come, including a review by John Berlyne on sfrevu.com and one by Mark Greener in Vector. Accompanying the Dreamwatch review is a short interview with me, courtesy of Sharon Gosling, and there’s a longer interview, courtesy of the aforementioned Mr Greener, that is due to be published shortly in Matrix.

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s all going worryingly well.

Spring is sprung, the birds are on the trees, the birds are on the other birds, and I’ve just completed a first draft of my next book, Provender Gleed. I’ve knocked this one out in (for me) record time, something like five months, partly because, once I started, I built up momentum and couldn’t stop, but also because I wanted to produce a book that had greater-than-usual pace and energy and the best way of doing that, I decided, was to write it with pace and energy.

Provender Gleed is SF, it’s alternate-history, it’s a detective story, it’s a suspense novel, it’s satire, it’s a sustained wordgame, it’s even a romantic comedy. I’ll reveal more later, when the dust in my head has settled, but I will say that I’m cautiously pleased with it. Its tone is in marked contrast to that of Worldstorm, a darker and much more serious novel. I probably needed to write it as an antidote, a piece of entertainment to counteract Worldstorm‘s violence and sombreness. By the way, if I haven’t mentioned it already, Worldstorm is out in hardback and trade paperback this September.

I must acknowledge here the grant I received from the Arts Council UK which gave me breathing space and financial wherewithal to finish Provender Gleed. Their help and sponsorship were invaluable. I now know I’m not merely a jobbing author, I’m culture!

Finally, for those still awaiting publication of Gig … so am I. There’s been a small production hitch at PS Publishing but I’m assured that the book is on its way and should be out imminently. It may even be available by the time you read this.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything new on here since November. Bad James. Naughty James. Slapped wrist.

What’s been happening is… well, not a lot, in fact. Just the usual daily grind of writing — did I say “grind”? I meant wonderful, happy, joyous, breathless process of writing. I’m about halfway through my next opus, maybe a little further than that, and it’s developing into a dark and dense and labyrinthine (but none of these in a bad way) meditation on racial difference and class distinction, among other things. Fingers crossed it’ll be done by the summer, autumn at the latest.

Meanwhile, Untied Kingdom is due out in less than a month’s time, and so far, confidence is high. I’ve received my first two author’s copies, one hardback, one trade paperback, and they’re looking swee-eet. I’ve also completed a couple of magazine interviews via email, one with Mark Greener for Matrix, the other with Sharon Gosling for Dreamwatch. Both journalists asked good and pertinent questions, and the result is two sets of wonderful perspicacious pearls of wisdom from yours truly which should be appearing within the next month or so.

Two other publications due out this year: The House of Lazarus, which is my second Barrington Stoke book for reluctant readers and a rewriting of the short story of the same name which appeared in Imagined Slights; and Gig, my dual-novella effort, which is getting the signed, limited-edition, slipcased, so-gorgeous-you-just-want-to-hug-it-and-treat-it-to-a-Chinese-meal treatment from PS Publishing. The former is scheduled for August, the latter for the end of this year.

Somewhere before either of those lies Junior’s scheduled appearance. According to the twenty-week scan, “it” is most definitely “he”, and Lou and I have been mulling over names and have come up with… Oh, but we’re not telling anyone until after the baby arrives. Just in case he doesn’t turn out to fit the name we’ve chosen. It happens, you know. My cat Nermal was called Isabel to start with (my five-year-old niece’s suggestion) but after a few weeks proved herself to be more annoying cartoon kitten than pretty, girly type. A rechristening wasn’t just desirable, it was necessary. And same principle may apply here. Better to be safe than sorry, eh?

We’re pregnant! Lou, a.k.a. the Missus, is expecting delivery of a human manuscript sometime in June. I am, of course, delighted and terrified at the prospect of fatherhood, but having owned cats since I was in my early twenties, I’m sure coping with a baby will be a doddle. Currently we’re toying with the names Gladys and Digbert for it. And if it turns out to be a girl…

Otherwise, I continue work on my own brainchild, Worldstorm. Although which reaches completion sooner, it or Lovegrove Junior, remains to be seen.

A quick toot of my own trumpet: two of my recent reading recommendations have done rather well for themselves. Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi won the Booker, and Juan Carlos Somoza’s The Athenian Murders got the Crime Writers Association’s top gong, the Golden Dagger Award. Can I pick ‘em or what?

Any publishers who have a book they want to promote, and who are interested in taking advantage of the jameslovegrove.com effect, should send me a copy of the tome and, more importantly, a hefty bribe. In return, I’ll mention it here and it’ll then go on to win a major prize. (No guarantees, no refunds.)

Looks like I’ve finished the first draft of a new novel, which is now on its way through the agent-then-editor filtration process. More details will be furnished once the health (or otherwise) of the new arrival has been assessed. I’m pretty pleased with it, and I think the format of the book — trick, gimmick, call it what you will — is unusual, perhaps even unique.

I’ve also just sold a couple of short stories: ‘Seventeen Syllables’ to Night Shades, an anthology edited by Peter Crowther and Tim Lebbon, and ‘Bible Basher’ to Bible Black, an anthology edited by Darren Floyd of Razor Blade Press. Both books are out next year.

Mr Crowther, of course, needs no introduction here. Mr Lebbon is the acclaimed and award-winning author of more horror titles than I have room to mention. Mr Floyd‘s excellent, edgy, exquisitely-designed books are small-press publishing at its very best. All have websites. Go find ‘em!

My children’s book Wings has now been a second distinctive commendation: as well as being short-listed for the 2001 NASEN Award, it was among the 100 Best Books (2002) chosen by Booktrust, a body set up to promote reading and literacy among youngsters.

Finally, there’s a stonking review of Binary 1 on the Infinity Plus website, and three stonking reviews of Imagined Slights to be found in the latest issues of SFX and Starburst and, coming soon, on Andy Fairclough’s Horror World site. Salutations to these fine critics for their wisdom and discernment!

The Hope and Imagined Slights are now in the shops, looking all handsome and available. Also just published is a new anthology edited by Peter Crowther, Mars Probes, to which I have contributed a story called ‘Out Of The Blue, Into The Red’. This one’s a US paperback but you can get it off Amazon UK no problem. The theme is, of course, the Red Planet, and my fellow contributors include such illustrious souls as Stephen Baxter, Paul Di Filippo, Michael Moorcock, Eric Brown, and some bloke called Bradbury.

My book recommendation of the moment (other than any of the above) is The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the tale of an Indian boy who survives a shipwreck, only to find himself stuck on a lifeboat with an untamed Bengal tiger. The blurb promises that this is a story that will make you believe in God. It didn’t quite manage to nudge this particular agnostic off the fence, but it is a wonderful, visionary, exquisitely detailed and formulated novel. As a change from page-turners, which exist solely, it seems, to be finished and dispensed with, here is a book which you won’t want to end.

My music recommendation of the moment is Bowie’s newie, Heathen. It’s the first album from him in a while that makes you want to listen to it again and again and get to know it intimately. More than just a return to form, it’s a truly great piece of work.

Last but not least, I have been promoted at The Alien Online from jobbing comics reviewer to full-blown critic/columnist, with my own contributor’s cache and everything! Look up “Panel Beating” on the site. There you will find me and my not always temperate opinions.

Hooray for summer!

Right, there’s no soft-pedal way of saying this, so I’m just going to have to come right out with it. Publication of Untied Kingdom, scheduled for this summer, has been put back to spring 2003.

Orion/Gollancz have had to slim down — downsize, rationalise, streamline, choose your own euphemism — their output in order to be able to concentrate more fully on each book they produce, since they are currently producing quite a lot of books. As a consequence, several titles have had to have their release dates postponed so that the company can, as it were, catch up with itself. Untied Kingdom has fallen into this category.

I’m none too happy about this state of affairs, and to all those who’ve told me how eagerly they’re awaiting the book, I can only say I’m sorry but it’s all beyond my control. I finished writing the book over a year ago. It will now be another year before it goes on sale. That’s an awfully long wait and I can only beg your patience. Trust me, it’ll be worth it when it appears.

In mitigation, or perhaps compensation, Orion/Gollancz have assured me they’re going to put everything they can into promoting and publicising the book when it does finally reach the shops. Springtime is a good time for my kind of fiction, apparently, and they have promised me they will be giving Untied… a hefty push.

The Hope and Imagined Slights are still due this year, as planned.

Helicon turned out, alas, to be Hellishcon for Lou and me. What we thought was food poisoning turned out to be a stomach bug which left us seeing rather too much of our hotel room, specifically our hotel bathroom, and rather too little of our fellow convention-goers or of Jersey itself. I managed a day and a half of health before being laid low, during which time I hung out with the various members of the Gollancz crew and a few non-aligned others, and that was fun. So hello to all of them and to everyone I didn’t get to meet at the Con, and I hope I haven’t infected you with anything dire. I don’t want to get a reputation as the Typhoid Mary of genre publishing.

Visitors to this site who are of a sequential-art bent may be interested to know that I have begun providing a quasi-monthly comics review column for that esteemed and celebrated e-thereal forum The Alien Online. Go to the Reviews section of the site and follow the logical prompts, and you will find (as of writing) three helpings of my deathless and incisive critical approach to such works as The Fantastic Four and Essential Howard the Duck. It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity or the inclination to attempt reviewing, and this time around I’m dealing with stuff I really know about and have been a fan of for thirty years, so I’m enjoying myself with it and I’m grateful to the mighty Ariel (of this parish) for strongarming me, er, I mean coaxing me into doing it.

Meantime, publication of Untied Kingdom approaches. Start getting excited, kiddies!

Oh, and book recommendation of the moment: The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza. It starts out looking like a murder-mystery set in Ancient Greece and soon develops into something far stranger, more complex and more intriguing than that. A ground-breaking literary conceit, brilliantly executed, and a page-turner to boot. Read this novel!