First off, here’s how the cover of Warsuit 1.0, my new book for teens, is going to look.  It’s pretty self-explanatory, I feel.  Big-ass weaponised robot suit.  Jumpsuited terrorist bad guys peppering it with ray-gun fire.  Villain-stomping ahoy!

What you will have to imagine is the foil enhancement.  Basically, wherever you see plain white or grey, there’ll be foil.  So that’s the book title, my name and the Warsuit’s eyes.

Now, how about an excerpt from the back-cover text?

Armed and dangerous, Od is trapped in a desperate race to save his father’s life, battling the terrorists who want his secrets, the government who want their Warsuit back, and a viciously beautiful Secret Service operative known only as Angelica W-K…

‘Nuff said.  Out in March.  Order your copy now!

And this one is from the US edition of Kill Swap.  Barrington Stoke, the publisher, have recently signed a distribution deal in the States, and Kill Swap is one of the first contingent of titles from their backlist that’ll be available over there.

I think this is a very cool-looking image.  There’s been some to-ing and fro-ing over the level of gun references on the cover.  Guns and teens, after all, are not a good mix.  However, the inclusion of a semiautomatic in the image is fairly subtle and, in my humble opinion, works pretty well.

Naturally the book is going to be set in the Caribbean, and I’m hoping Solaris will stump up for me to take an all-expenses-paid research trip to the West Indies, staying at a five-star, all-inclusive hotel.  Failing that, I’ll just have to stay at home and keep watching episodes of Death In Paradise.

This one’s planned as an all-action, ticking-clock military-SF yarn, with as many surprises and as much violence as I can pack in.  I’ve already provided a cover brief for the mighty Marek Okon, and when he furnishes us with a finished image, I will of course post it here.

The other bit, or indeed bob, to mention here is this little update on Emmanuel Beiramar’s site, Fantasy.fr.  It’s a fair summary of what I’ve got upcoming in the next few months, and don’t let the fact that it’s in French put you off.  Everything sounds better in another language — especially French.

But I can’t.

BECAUSE IT’S TOTALLY FREAKIN’ AWESOME!!!

Yes, I have turned into an American teenager.  And I’m not ready to turn back into a 40-something Englishman just yet.

DUDE, IT’S TOTALLY FREAKIN’ AWESOME!!!

There’s the snow.  The American cityscape.  The creepy- ugly vampire face.  The badass mofos in military gear.  And Redlaw looking even more badass than those badasses.  Like he could whup those badasses’ asses badly.

I share this with you all so that you may bathe in its bleak, radiant brilliance.

And now all I have to do, as ever, is make the book as good as I can, in order to match the cover.  And I haven’t even started writing it yet.

No pressure, then.

(Sorry.  Slipped into Stan’s Soapbox mode there for a moment.)

Previously released in mirror-image flipbook format by PS Publishing, and still available as such, the book is now being released in a brand spanking new ebook format by Angry Andy Remic’s Anarchy Books, and may be purchased from all the usual ebook outlets, i.e. Amazon, any time within the next couple of days onwards.

It’s a nice-looking product, and the text itself has been extensively rewritten, mainly to bring the content of the story up-to-date in this age of music downloads and YouTube (and also to sneak in a few new extra palindromes, because, well, why not?).

It’s also been enhanced, in the way that DVDs are enhanced with bonus material, by the addition of an album of music written and recorded especially for the project.  Written and recorded, I should add, by none other than me.  And yes, sung too.  Consider yourselves warned.

There are four songs and four instrumental pieces, and the album is available as a free download — yes, you heard that right, free, as in gratis, for nothing, without charge, on the house – from the Anarchy Books website.

I would urge you to seek out and obtain this wondrous item.  One isn’t supposed to say this about any particular book in one’s oeuvre, but Gig is a favourite of mine.  It was a pleasure to write from start to finish (and it isn’t every one of my novels I can say that about), and it’s also the book which came the closest in execution to the way I’d originally envisioned it.

The music’s pretty good too, even if I do say so myself.  And all this can be yours for a measly £2.98.  Well, what are you waiting for, True Believer?

(Aargh!  I did it again.)

Turns out the tale, originally published in Peter Crowther’s Moon Shots all the way back in 1999, was included in an anthology called The Astronaut From Wyoming And Other Stories, edited by Toro Nakamura.  I got in touch with the publisher, Hayakawa Publishing Inc., to enquire whether or not they had actually bought the rights to translate the story.  I suggested politely that there had perhaps been some sort of administrative error or oversight.  It seems there had.  A very nice editor called Akira Yamaguchi explained that there’d been “some miscommunication between Hayakawa’s staff”.  A contract is on its way, as well as payment, so all’s well that ends well.

The Seiun is Japan’s equivalent of the Hugo, so the award is a huge honour.  I’ve sent an acceptance message, via Mr Hirai, to be read out at the awards ceremony, as I can’t afford to fly over to Tokyo and pick it up myself.

I’m rather fond of “Carry The Moon…” (which can be found, in its original English, in my collection Diversifications).  It’s got some personal resonance for me, even though I’m not old enough to remember the moon landings with any clarity, and it’s a nice, gentle little tale.

On a completely unrelated front, the ebook version of Gig is now ready to go and will be on sale in September, courtesy of Anarchy Books and the indefatigable (and much scarier-looking than you) Andy Remic.  As you may or may not know, I’ve composed and recorded some music to enhance the reading experience, in the form of four songs and four instrumental pieces, all of it relating to the action in the book.  The eight tracks are a free download, and a sampler may be found here, alongside a preview image of the ebook’s cover.

Handsome hardcopies of Gig are, of course, still available.

The reason?  Mainly, I’ve been head down, nose to the grindstone, working on Age Of Aztec.  It’s nearly finished now.  I’m in the final straight.  A denouement beckons.  “The End” is nigh.

So there hasn’t been much news to write about.  The 2,000-word-a-day grind is boring to the outsider.  It’s pretty boring to the writer, to be honest, sometimes.  But anyway, here, at last, is something to shout about.  You’ve probably already spotted it — the big picture sitting to the right of this text.  You’ve probably already figured out what it is.  If the post title isn’t a massive enough clue, there’s always the fact that it’s unmistakably the work of Mr Marek Okoń, artist extraordinaire, who of course has done all the covers for the Pantheon series so far.  Yes, it’s the cover image for Age Of Aztec.  Complete with flying saucer!  (Marek wasn’t sure he could fit one in.  I had to get down on my knees and beg for the flying saucer to be included.  It’s not a pretty sight, me begging, and I’m not proud, but I did it.)

Yet again, Marek has performed wonders, turning my somewhat scrambled briefing notes into a cohesive, comprehensive and above all cool image.  I can’t add much more, except to say that I’m even more excited about this book than I was.

And while we’re talking cool covers, here’s one for Gutshot, by Caniglia.  This isn’t the finalised image but it looks great as it is, I think you’ll agree.  The book is a Western anthology, as you may recall, edited by Conrad Williams, and with a story by me in it.  There’s every chance it may be out by the end of the year, courtesy of PS Publishing.

Finally, if you’re at all a comics fan, then you might be interested to know that I’ve become a regular contributor to Comic Heroes, a bimonthly magazine published by the same fine people responsible for SFX.  Issue #7 is available in the shops now, and I have two longer pieces in it plus a handful of short reviews.  I can’t tell you how much fun it is writing about comics and getting paid for it, and I’m grateful to editor Jes Bickham for giving me the opportunity to do so.

I’m thrilled with the look of the book.  I suggested the concepts for the cover and interior layout but designer Michael Smith has really taken the idea and run with it.

I’m also thrilled with the contents, but then I would be, given their author.  In here you’ll find what’s probably my all-time favourite story that I’ve written, “The Bowdler Strain”, and the runner-up in that category, “Speedstream”, plus 14 others that are almost as good and may actually be better — it’s so hard to be objective about these things.

Like I said, it’s out now, it’s worth every penny of the cover price, and if you buy a copy you’ll be making not only me very happy but Pete and Nicky at PS very happy too.  So you’ll be spreading the love as well as treating yourself to a very fine collection of tales.

And speaking of very fine collections of tales, lookee what we have here over on the right: the cover image for the soon to be out but not yet Fables From The Fountain.  This is an anthology edited by the estimable Ian Whates, and…  Well, let me quote the promo release here, which says it better than I ever could:

A volume of all original stories written as homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart, featuring many of today’s top genre writers.

The Fountain, a traditional London pub situated in Holborn, just off Chancery Lane, where Michael, the landlord, serves excellent real ales and dodgy ploughman’s, ably assisted by barmaids Sally and Bogna (from Poland).

 The Fountain, in whose Paradise bar a group of friends – scientists, writers and genre fans – meet regularly on a Tuesday night to swap anecdotes, reveal wondrous events from their past, tell tall tales, talk of classified invention and, maybe, just maybe, save the world…

2011 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Arthur C Clarke Award.  This volume is produced in part to raise funds for the Award, which lost its sponsor last year due to the closure of Sir Arthur’s publishing company.  The book will be released May 2011. 

I have contributed to it (of course, why else would I be plugging it here?).  So have many marvellous contemporary genre authors, including Steven Baxter, Eric Brown, Peter Crowther, Neil Gaiman, David Langford, Adam Roberts, Charles Stross, Liz Williams…  The list goes on, and you’d be bonkers in the nut not to give this book a try.  I love the Clarke original, and I’m sure this will be a worthy tribute/successor.

Oh, and the “Rama” gag on the cover?  That was my idea, that was.

Same brilliant Clint Langley illustration – brand-new title, blurbage and lettering.

That bit directly above my name seems downright surreal.  “New York Times Best Selling Author”?  You could knock me down with a very flimsy feather.

I know I said I wasn’t going to do another pantheon book.  I’d had enough of gods and families of gods and humans and their families, makeshift or otherwise.  But then Jon the Editor asked would I mind doing another one for him and the other fine gentlefolk at Solaris, and soonish?  And I thought about it, not for very long, and said, OK.  Because I’m a nice obliging chap and because, frankly, I realised I did want to do another one after all.

Soooo…  Dust is going on hold for the time being.  It’s not been abandoned, it’s just being placed on the back burner, where it can bubble and froth to its heart’s content until such time as it’s ready to re-emerge.

Which pantheon will I be covering?  I’ve been having fun with assorted blog-thread correspondents, especially one Nick Sharps, discussing the various deity clusters available, but the one that strikes me as having the most potential is the MesoAmerican lot.  I’m already working up the synopsis, so I can’t say much else here.  But there will most likely be flying saucers.  Yes, you read that right.  Flying saucers.

In other news, The Age Of Odin is doing nicely for itself sales-wise, especially Stateside, where…  Well, take a look for yourself.  You’ll need to scroll down a bit, but there it is, in at #33 in this week’s New York Times mass-market paperback bestsellers list.  Hurrah!  (NB.  The link is valid only for the current week.)