Here’s the marvellous cover image that’s been conjured up by Tomsilav Tikulin for next-but-one novel Dust.
When I first saw examples of Tomislav’s work, his style immediately made me think of 1970s SF paperback covers – in a good way — and that’s the vibe that he’s gone for here, without lapsing into a slavish tribute or kitsch parody. While I gave him a few pointers as to what the book is (or rather will be) about, he came up with the visual content himself. The dead soldier is a great idea — someone obeying orders and suffering the consequences — but for me the loveliest touch is the No U-Turn sign. The book is (will be) about scientific hubris and the notion of going too far in the name of Progress, but with a secondary theme centring on destiny and the idea of learning to go along with whatever fate allots you in life. In both cases the message is: once you’re on a path, there’s no turning back.
And now, as with Redlaw, I can’t wait to get started on the book. In fact, I want to write both novels so much, I’d do them simultaneously, if I could. A kind of literary menage a trois.
And moving swiftly on from that…
If you’re in the Eastbourne area this weekend (and why wouldn’t you be?) I’m going to be signing books at the town’s branch of Waterstone’s for most of Saturday, from 11am onwards. So that’s July 31st, Waterstone’s, Terminus Road, Eastbourne. In the pedestrian-precinct part. Come along, say hi, buy a copy, have my name and yours scrawled in it. It’ll be fun.
Check out this.
..
It’s the cover image for my upcoming novel Redlaw, and it is, I think you’ll agree, awesomely awesome in its awesomeness.
The artist responsible is Clint Langley, as I mentioned in my last post, and I think he’s done an unbelievable job. In fact, I like this image so much I’ve set it as the desktop background on my computer. That way it glares at me sinisterly and redly every time I switch the machine on.
When I said “upcoming” above, what I of course meant was “as yet unwritten”. I’m planning to start work on the book next month, and with luck will have a finished first draft ready by the end of the year.
What this picture does, apart from induce drooling and cause me to become ever so slightly aroused, is make me want to turn in the best damn novel I can manage. If the contents of the book can match the jacket, or even come close, then I shall be a very happy camper indeed.
Redlaw’s a vampire cop, by the way. That’s a cop who deals with vampires, not a cop who is a vampire himself. The bloody-fanged fellow emerging from his coat, and the hoodie types below, are the vampires. And the bad guys.
Or … (pauses for effect) … are they?
I’ve just been helping to brief artists on the covers for my next two books. It’s exciting but also slightly daunting: now I’ve really got the write the damn things! They’re not just synopses any more, they’re things that are going to have to happen.
For Dust I’ve been in contact with Tomislav Tikulin. It looks like it’s going to be a classic apocalypse-fest with, I hope, a retro 70s feel, all crumbling cityscapes and abandoned cars, and I can’t wait to see the final result. As for Redlaw, Clint Langley of 2000AD fame is doing the honours, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with either. I’m envisioning a kind of “Solomon Kane battling vampires in the modern world” approach (that’s certainly the tone I’m going for in the novel itself). I long ago learned, however, that it’s best to leave the artists to determine the image. They know what they’re doing.
Sticking to the subject of covers, here’s one for Solaris’s upcoming anthology End Of The Line, edited by the inestimable Jon Oliver and based on the theme of the London Underground. It comes courtesy of Solaris’s own design wizard Luke Preece, and I reproduce it here not only because it’s ineffably understated and cool but because I’ve contributed a story to the collection, “Siding 13″.
End Of The Line is out in November. This is what Solaris themselves have to say about it and this is what Dark Wolf website has to say about what Solaris has to say about it. A mouth-watering line-up of authors, wouldn’t you agree? Looking forward to getting my author copies!
The podcast I did with the lovely people at Solaris is now up and running, and you can listen to it by clicking on the link here and then following the relevant instructions on the page. There’s the interview I did with the very well informed and affable David Moore, and there’s also my reading of a passage from Age Of Zeus, with added sound effects and that.
Trust me, you’ll be relieved I didn’t attempt accents for the non-English characters. I’m hardly a Rory Bremner in that department, although if you want a convincing impression of a second-generation Pakistani who may or may not live in Wales, I’m your man – because that’s where every accent I do, whatever region or dialect I’m shooting for, ends up.
OK, I admit it, the entry title’s a very convoluted joke. But the answer, according to the review pages of this month’s SFX, is three and a half.
Actually, it’s a blisteringly good review of The Age Of Zeus, with one or two minor caveats which need not detain us here. It starts by describing my pantheon books as “wonderfully bizarre”, and dubs Zeus a “barking mad fusion of Andy McNab and Ray Harryhausen”, which is an almost perfect assessment. It goes on to call the book “a rollicking page-turner, crammed with violence, lurid plot twists and mythic monster-battling adventure”, and adds, “The plot moves like a bullet.” The final analysis is: “energetic and entertaining stuff”.
In all, a fine write-up, courtesy of that excellent fellow with the wonderfully bizarre name, Saxon Bullock.
This splendiferous write-up has just appeared in The Guardian, courtesy of the inestimable Mr Eric Brown. It’s all good but here’s the beefy part: “It’s a compulsive, breakneck read by a master of the craft, with stunning action sequences and acute character observations. This is the kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write.”
N.B. Dan Brown is no relation to Eric Brown, in case you couldn’t guess.
I popped over to Solaris HQ last Friday to meet the editorial team and record a podcast interview and a reading. They inhabit a building which, from the outside, looks just like a large warehouse-like building on an industrial estate in west Oxford. Ah, but when you get inside…
Well, the huge statue of Judge Dredd versus Judge Death in the lobby gives you a pretty big hint that this is no ordinary place. And then there’s the vast open-plan room full of dozens of workstations where dozens of computer programmers are beavering away on video games for Rebellion. And in one corner of this hive of industry there’s the Solaris den, where Jon, Jenni, Ben and David lurk, plotting their nefarious schemes.
I cast pods with David in a soundproofed booth for about half an hour — some fascinating questions, and he’d really done his homework — and then recorded a chapter of The Age Of Zeus. It’ll all be up on the Solaris website at some point, and I’ll let you know when it is so you can have a listen yourself. The reading was quite hard work but I enjoyed it. I did, however, chicken out on doing the accents for the American and Australian characters. Personally I think I’m pretty good at accents but my wife assures me that I’m not and that every time I try it ends up sounding like I’m trying to impersonate an Asian-born Welshman.
I suppose the trick would be to write an Asian-born Welshman into the next novel. Then I’d be quids in.
Couple more very positive notices for Zeus…
First there’s this courtesy of Fantasy Book Critic’s Liviu Siciu, who raved so wholeheartedly about Ra last year. Let me extract from it just one pertinent paragraph out of many: “And the action is just unbelievably good, keeping the reader on his/her edge of the seat so to speak; the monster hunts and later the direct fights with the Gods are the highlights of the book, while the humor and the jibes balance the tension well – though the explicit titles of mythporn movies that are used as cover against the all-seeing Argus who is now the ‘global moderator’ of the world are not for the easily offended.”
And then we have this, courtesy of Detra Finch. If I may quote the actual review segment of it in its entirety: “***** FIVE STARS! A brilliant combination of modern warfare and Greek mythology. Though the synopsis has the sound of Fantasy, believe me when I say this is Science Fiction. One must read the entire story to fully understand my meaning. Author James Lovegrove’s writing style is intense. His plot is creative, impressive, and could almost be called noble – no matter which side of the battle line the reader may mentally stand on. Lovegrove is on his way to greatness.”
Just received a copy of the BSFA’s British Science Fiction & Fantasy Survey. Edited by Paul Kincaid and Niall Harrison, it’s a fascinating and compendious overview of the state of the genre in this country, or rather overviews plural, because it consists of a survey conducted in 1989 as well as one conducted last year. I took part in the latter, and although I’ve yet to identify where any of my comments appear in the book, I’m sure some do somewhere and I’m sure they’re typically wise and insightful. Everyone else’s seem to be, at any rate.
What is surprising is that, when I checked my biographical details in the back, I discovered that it mentions Untied Kingdom being shortlisted for the 2004 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Why is this surprising?
BECAUSE I HAD NO IDEA.
Not an inkling. Not the smallest clue.
Nobody told me at the time. Nobody told me afterwards. Not one single person saw fit to think that I might be interested to know this flattering and encouraging fact. The publisher didn’t stick it anywhere on the paperback cover. I was, until this week, completely ignorant of it.
There are lots of things I could say about this, but I’ll confine it to a simple “tchoh” accompanied by a resigned roll of the eyes.
The first couple of reviews of The Age Of Zeus have emerged, and here are the links: The Hub (you’ll need to scroll about two thirds of the way down) and Total Sci-Fi. Both are cockle-warmingly positive. In Total Sci-Fi, Den Patrick describes the book as “a good, enjoyable romp with plenty of bang for its buck” and “a fun read that doesn’t get bogged down with technology or lengthy paragraphs of exposition”. Which is pretty much what I intended.
In The Hub, meanwhile, Martin Willoughby praises the book’s humour, saying, “There were some points where I giggled out loud. Humour isn’t the main selling point of this book, but there is enough of it, not always of the gallows variety, to give the story the occasional lift and add a touch more human-like reality to the characters.” And he concludes, “This is one of those books that I have no regrets about reading [...] a fine book, a thumping good read and well worth the money”. Although, oddly, and rather aggravatingly, this comment appears only in the pdf version of the magazine, not in the online edition where the last three paragraphs of the review, the ones that carry most of the thumbs-up stuff, seem to have been left out. Harrumph!
Mr Willoughby does raise an issue which I feel duty-bound to address here. “There is also one thing that troubles me,” he says. “About halfway into the book, there is a reference to the World Trade Centre and the twin towers. Given that this book was written at some point in the last 18 months and it is not set in the past, why was that left in? It’s a small point, but I wonder how many readers will come to that point and flinch.”
The reason the Twin Towers are still standing is simple. The Olympians have been in charge of things for a decade. In that time they’ve stopped all wars and eradicated all known terrorists. And who was responsible for the September 11th attacks? Terrorists. I didn’t feel the need to spell this out in the novel. In fact, I thought the World Trade Center reference was a rather splendid way of doing it by stealth. The chapter set in the Middle East also makes the point when it details how hard a time Islamist extremists have been having since the Olympians took over.
Hey-ho. It’s still a stonking review, though.
