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.

Chapter 1

Nikola, as he ran, wished many things.

He wished he was faster. He wished he had wings. Above all he wished he had never strayed beyond the fence. They had warned him against it. Everyone had. Countless times. The fence, they had told him, is there for a reason. Not to keep us in. To keep them out. So do not go over it. Stay this side. It is dangerous out there for our kind.

Nikola had listened. But he hadn’t listened. He’d seen little of London since arriving on the ferry from mainland Europe. In fact, once he’d been discovered stowed away in the back of the articulated goods lorry, all he’d seen was a detention centre, the inside of a van, then the housing estate. He was sixteen, and he did not care for being confined.

So tonight he had scaled the fence. All but vaulted over it, in fact. It was not that high, four metres or thereabouts. The barbed wire had scraped his hands but drawn no blood. An easy escape. Everyone was right: the fence was a deterrent to the rest of the world, not to those inside it.

Tentatively, curiously, Nikola had begun to explore.

In the immediate vicinity of the estate there was nothing much. Dead shops, hollow houses, pavements latticed with weeds. Nobody wanted to live here, so close to a Sunless Residential Area. Local Londoners had decanted themselves elsewhere.

Nikola startled a stray cat, which yowled and spat at him like a demented thing before scurrying away. A short while later he had to hide as a SHADE patrol car rolled by, sweeping its searchlight. Emerging from the basement stairwell down which he’d ducked, he carried on his voyage of discovery warily. He hugged the street shadows, of which there were plenty, as he moved out towards where the city was alive and humming.

He only wanted to take a look, that was all. Just to see what it was like, this English capital, this fabled metropolis that was now, by default, his home. He was certainly not on the prowl, hunting for victims. He could smell them from afar, and the smell was unbelievably exotic and intoxicating, but he had no intention of taking one of them for himself. He knew how insanely unwise that would be, how it could have dire repercussions for his whole community. A little curiosity, though, a little sightseeing—that was allowed, wasn’t it?

His attackers came out of nowhere. There was no warning. They were quick, and they were wrapped head to toe in thick clothing, which masked their scent. This, more than anything, told Nikola that they were specialists. They’d been lying in ambush, hoping for precisely this opportunity, waiting for someone like him to happen along. Someone rash. Someone reckless.

There were four of them, all in motorcycle helmets with leather neck guards. Two were on rollerblades, leading the attack, hurtling unexpectedly around a corner, keeping low as they kick-thrusted themselves towards Nikola, arms pumping. He started to move, but they were on him in no time. A blow from a chainmail-gloved fist caught him on the side of the head and sent him reeling.

Nikola staggered to his feet, only to see the two rollerbladers arc around each other in the middle of the street and veer at him again. As he turned to run, he came face to face with the other two members of the gang. They stood with their legs apart, braced, each carrying an ash-wood stake.

Nikola felt fear then like he had never felt before and had believed he would never feel again. The stakes’ sharpened points were bright white in the darkness. The visors on the helmets of the men wielding them were implacably black and blank.

He sprang sideways. It was all he could do. He collided with a set of railings, which he hurdled clumsily. Within seconds he was scaling the face of a three-storey terraced house. He heard shouts behind him, below him. He scuttled up the brickwork as fast as he could, finding finger purchase in the narrowest of crevices. Height. If he gained height, surely he would be safe. These men could not follow him up onto the rooftops, could they?

But they could. While the two rollerbladers raced off in opposite directions, heading for the ends of the terrace to cut off Nikola’s escape that way, the other two men lodged their stakes in their belts and went in pursuit of him on foot, propelling themselves up the front of the house much as he had, if not quite so straightforwardly. Drainpipe, window ledge, door lintel, anything that projected outwards, however slightly, was of use to them. They were free runners. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal, it made no difference—it was just a surface to be negotiated, just a series of handholds and toeholds they could employ to get to where they were going.

Nikola reached the roof, moments ahead of his pursuers. He darted along the vertex, doing his best to keep his balance on the rounded tiles. The two men thundered after him. Nikola swung round a chimney stack. A second afterwards, so did they. Only a couple of houses lay between him and the end of the street. One of the rollerbladers was waiting for him there, at the corner. Nikola jinked right and slithered down the angle of the roof towards the houses’ backyards and the alley that furrowed in between. He leapt off the gutter, landing lightly on a wall below. Then he was in the alley, skirting overturned dustbins and upended shopping trolleys. The pair of free runners weren’t far behind.

The rollerblader intercepted him at the alley’s mouth. Nikola, however, sprinting with all his might, barged straight into the man, his shoulder low. The rollerblader was shunted backwards, went scooting across the street, and whacked into a lamppost, letting out a loud grunt of pain. He recovered and joined the two runners in chasing after Nikola; soon all three of them were at Nikola’s heels. Nikola pounded on, praying that he was going the right way. The tower blocks of the Residential Area loomed ahead, but the street he was on seemed to be curving away from them. He had no idea whether to take a right or a left at the next junction. If he could get to the Residential Area he would surely be okay. The men would not dare follow him over the fence. But he felt that he was in a maze, and any wrong turn he made would be the end of him. He was strong, stronger than any of the four men, but they outnumbered him, and they had weapons.

Then Nikola slammed face first into the ground. He didn’t know how it had happened. Had he tripped? He tried to get up but couldn’t. His legs were stuck fast together. Ropes entwined his ankles, attached to weighted steel spheres. A bolas. Frantically Nikola began to unpick the ropes, but the three attackers now had him surrounded. The other rollerblader appeared, skidding to a halt. Nikola looked up at them all, baring his teeth and hissing in rage. He swiped at the nearest of them, raking talons across the man’s leg, but his trousers were made of Kevlar or something. Some fabric that talons couldn’t penetrate.

Knees pinned Nikola’s wrists roughly to the road. He struggled with all his might, but the men bore down, holding him in place. A stake was brandished. Nikola writhed and spat. All he could think of, even as he lay there helpless and apparently doomed, was tearing open the throats of his four attackers and feasting on the delicious warmth within. His thirst, spurred by anger, was a feral thing. He despised them all. They were nothing but cattle. Prey. Given the chance, he would drain every last drop of life from them.

The stake hovered, poised above his chest. The fist around it tightened its grip.

“Drop it.”

The voice was deep, calm. Its tone did not expect refusal.

“I’ll give you to the count of three. Drop it, or I drop you.”

Nikola’s English was not good, but he knew enough to tell that the person speaking was threatening his four attackers, not him. He twisted his head round on the tarmac to look. He saw boots, a long overcoat, a tall man with moon-white hair and a face as craggy and imperturbable as a chalk cliff. He saw, too, a high shirt collar like a priest’s, one that went all the way up to the jawline, and a gun, a weighty, long-barrelled handweapon of the type he knew was called a Cindermaker.

Which meant SHADE. The Night Brigade.

Which in turn meant Nikola was no less doomed than he had been a few seconds ago.

 *   *   *

 “One last chance,” said the SHADE officer. “Put down the stake or be put down. A bullet’s a bullet. Wooden or not, it’ll still put a damn great hole in you.”

“Fuck off, fangbanger,” said one of Nikola’s attackers. “This here’s a vamp and it’s out of its nest. If we weren’t about to dust it, you’d be doing the same yourself.”

“Maybe,” came the reply. “The difference is that I’m a servant of the law. You, you’re nothing but vigilantes. Stokers, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, drop the stake and move away from the Sunless.” The SHADE officer advanced, Cindermaker to the fore. “One. Two…”

“Wait,” said another of the Stokers, one of the rollerbladers. “Wait just a second. Let us poke a hole in the bloodsucker”—he gestured at Nikola—“and we’ll be gone. No one will know we were ever here, and you can claim the dusting as your own. Come on, what do you say, shady? That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Everybody wins.”

“Do you know who I am?”

The Stokers shook their heads.

“The name John Redlaw ring a bell?”

Not with three of them, but the fourth man stiffened. “Yeah, I’ve heard of this geezer all right. Tough bastard, they say.”

As for Nikola, he was truly terrified. He might not have been in this country long but even he had heard of John Redlaw. The man was spoken of among his kind often and only ever in hushed tones, the name rarely uttered louder than a whisper.

“Then,” said Redlaw to the man, “you’ll know I can’t be dissuaded and I can’t be bargained with.” He halted less than five paces from the Stokers and Nikola. “I’ll happily blow each and every one of you out of your socks, and to hell with the paperwork. The ’Less is mine. Leave now, and you leave intact. My best and final offer.”

The Stokers looked at one another. Then the one with the stake said, “Fuck it,” and flung it at Redlaw. As Redlaw twisted to evade it, the Stoker pounced on him. He punched Redlaw’s gun hand, sending the Cindermaker flying, then he punched Redlaw himself, full in the face. Blood spurted from the SHADE officer’s nose.

“Fuck’s sake, come on!” the Stoker yelled to his cohorts as Redlaw went down. “There’s just one of him, and he’s old. Let’s have some fun here.”

The other three needed little encouragement. They relinquished Nikola and dived in to beat up Redlaw.

“Wave a gun at us, will you?” one cried.

“Ash-wood fucking bullets?” snarled another. “Ash-wood? On people?”

Kicks and punches flew. Nikola could not see Redlaw any more. The SHADE officer was buried beneath the Stokers, the hidden eye of a storm of violence. He didn’t appear to be fighting back. Why not? Was he really not so fearsome as his reputation suggested? Was he, in fact, nothing without a gun in his hand?

Then there was a loud crunch, and one of the rollerblader Stokers whirled to the ground, clutching a broken knee.

A snap, and a second Stoker sank down, shrieking, his left arm skewed hideously at the elbow.

Suddenly Redlaw was on his feet, and he was gripping the other rollerblader by the jacket, swinging him into the fourth Stoker, and sending them both crashing onto the road in a heap. Redlaw straddled them, grabbed the uppermost by his neck guard, and began pounding his head against the man below’s. The helmet visors shattered; splinters of black polycarbonate were hammered into skin. Redlaw didn’t relent until both Stokers were half senseless and their features were like bloody maps of hell. Then he went over to the rollerblader Stoker with the crippled knee and, almost clinically, stamped on his good knee until it was crippled too. Finally he turned to the man with the broken arm, who was hobbling away, whimpering. He yanked the man’s helmet off, exposing a pain-wracked, tear-streaked face.

“If there’s one thing lower than vampires,” he said, “it’s people who prey on vampires. I want you to carry a message to your cronies, all those other Stokers who think they’re so self-righteous and clever. A personal message from me. Will you do that for me?”

Desperately the Stoker nodded.

“Tell them this, from Captain John Redlaw of the Sunless Housing And Disclosure Executive…”

Headbutt.

The Stoker toppled backwards with a ghastly yelp. His skull cracked on the road surface, and he lay still.

Redlaw straightened out his shirt collar, smoothed down his overcoat, and went to retrieve his Cindermaker.

  *   *   *

Throughout the fight Nikola did nothing but gawp. He knew he should flee while Redlaw was busy with the Stokers, but he was still badly shaken from the attack. He’d been moments away from getting staked, his immortality over almost as soon as it had begun. He was hollowed with fear, and besides, once the tide of the fight turned and Redlaw started taking the four men apart, he wanted to watch. It was an awesome sight, Redlaw despatching the Stokers with such ruthless, savage precision. Gratifying, too, to Nikola. They deserved what they were getting. Every bit of it and more.

In hindsight, he realised he had made something of an error. For now Redlaw was striding towards him, Cindermaker in hand, its barrel levelled at Nikola’s heart. Nikola started scrabbling to free himself from the bolas ropes.

“Bună seara.” Redlaw said. “Labvakar. Blaho večer. Jó estét.”

The last one, Nikola recognised. “Jó estét,” he replied. Good evening.

“Ah,” said Redlaw. “Hungarian. Magyar?”

Nikola nodded. “Igen.”

“You speak English?”

“A little. Please, not shoot.”

Redlaw glanced at his gun, then back at Nikola. “Don’t give me a reason to shoot and I won’t. You understand?”

Nikola did, just about. The SHADE officer’s expression was, if not gentle, then marginally less severe than when he’d been addressing the Stokers. His face’s solidity had softened just a fraction, though his eyes remained hard and watchful.

“It would help if you stopped staring at the blood from my nose.”

Nikola averted his gaze guiltily. The fresh blood sang to him. Its sweet ferrous smell was unbearably enticing. As a boy—a human boy—back in Miskolc, the most wonderful aroma he’d ever known was his grandmother’s hot chocolate, warming on the stove, and the most wonderful flavour he’d ever known was the drink itself, laced with spices and a dash of apricot palinka. But blood was a hundred, a thousand times more wonderful than even that.

Redlaw dabbed at his upper lip with a linen handkerchief. “Lucky shot. I should never have let the idiot catch me unawares like that, or get so close. Old man. Losing my edge. Although, having said that, I did fancy a bit of a scrap. Listen, sonny.”

Dark eyes bored into Nikola’s.

“From the looks of you—incompletely emerged fangs, still a trace of pink in your complexion, only the faintest reddening of the sclera—it wasn’t so long ago that you were turned. My guess is you don’t just look young, you are young. So I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s not something I often do. Ever do, actually. But I’m prepared to make an exception. You wanted to see the outside world. I get that. Don’t. Don’t ever want that. You can see why.” He indicated the four Stokers strewn in their various poses of agony and semi-consciousness. “You don’t belong out here. No one wants you out here. The Sunless Residential Area is your home. Your only home. Forever. Clear?”

More or less. His tone, if not his words. Nikola nodded.

“Then go. Get back behind the fence. Before I change my mind.”

The Cindermaker continued to point, unwaveringly, at Nikola’s beatless heart.

Ropes loosened, Nikola ran no longer in an ecstasy of dread, but suffused with relief and joy.

  *   *   *

 Learned his lesson, thought Redlaw as the boy vanished from view.

The four Stokers had doubtless learned theirs too.

Redlaw pulled out the crucifix that hung round his neck. The wood was warm against his lips as he kissed it briefly. He murmured a prayer of thanks—for victory, for deliverance from his enemies. The prayer was perfunctory and low, so much so that even the Almighty might have missed it.

As he was returning the crucifix to its rightful place next to his sternum, Redlaw’s phone sounded. His ringtone was the opening chords of “Jerusalem” played on a thunderous cathedral organ.

“John.” The throaty, no-nonsense tones of Commodore Gail Macarthur.

“What can I do for you, Commodore?”

“GPS puts you down Mile End way.”

“That I am.”

“But your car’s not moving and you’re not in it.”

“How do you know I’m not in it?”

“Well, if you were you’d have heard the bulletin from dispatch and be en route already. There’s a disturbance at the Hackney SRA.”

“What a surprise.”

“Local units have responded, but they need backup. Someone with some seniority.”

“Me.”

“Anything better to be doing?”

Redlaw scanned the street; eyed the Stokers. “Not much, marm.”

“Right, then. Off you go.”

Redlaw pressed End Call with a sigh.

It was going to be a long night.

But then weren’t they all?

The setting is present-day Britain, where an influx of vampire immigrants from the east is causing civil unrest and political headaches.  The vampires, known euphemistically as “Sunless”, have been corralled and caged in inner-city areas, and the job of keeping them under control has fallen to an agency called SHADE, a band of men and women dedicated to preserving peace — or at least non-aggression — between humankind and vampirekind.

This isn’t just a tale of the fanged undead, however.  I’ve written it as a satire of contemporary politics and business culture.  Not all bloodsuckers shun the sun and drain your veins…

Click here for a preview of the first chapter.

(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.