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News Archive :: January 29th 2007 -- Bits and Pieces 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.
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.
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?
Either that or it's some random book using the same image as the Gollancz edition. But I'm pretty sure it's Worldstorm. :: August 9th 2006 -- Theo 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...
:: July 26th 2006 -- Hmmm 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... :: June 16th 2006 -- "Never A Cross Word"... ...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. :: April 4th 2006 -- Imminent Arrivals 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. :: December 17th 2005 -- A Four and an Oh-My-God 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. :: August 31st 2005 -- Provender Gleed imminent...
On the cultural front, I'm looking forward to listening to Goldfrapp's new album, if I can just persuade Monty to loosen his stranglehold on the car stereo during journeys. About the only chance I get to listen to music these days is in the car, and Monty insists on his CDs being on continuous rotation, and I rarely get to drive anywhere without him in the back seat, so I'm building up a prodigious memory-store of nursery rhymes and folk songs but not enjoying much that's new. It's the same with DVDs. When Monty's around I don't get to watch anything except the ruddy Wiggles! (All-male foursome of Australian children's entertainers. Sing songs. Do dance routines. Just about the gayest piece of kid TV I've ever seen.) Speaking of DVDs, I have managed, at last, to track down a copy of the Vole Pogrom Collection. This has been on my to-buy list for ages. It brings together all of VP's experimental short movies on one disc, including "Sunset Over Chocolate Bar", "Homage To My Desk Stapler" and "Snap!". The transfer isn't too bad. The soundtrack gets a bit wobbly in places, but with Pogrom's work one can never be sure whether that sort of thing isn't deliberate. No extras, though. Even just a commentary would have been nice, but then the reclusive artiste's reticence is renowned. Otherwise, the collection is everything I could have hoped it to be and I recommend it highly. Best viewed with the lights out and two rolls of kitchen paper and a length of wooden dowel to hand. Meanwhile, courtesy of Chris Wooding, comes this: www.rereviewed.com/thedeepnorth. Check out the last paragraph of the August 11th entry. Spooky or what? :: July 11th 2005 -- Morgan's Rum I thought I would share this image with you, taken by Orion's lovely Sara Mulryan at Interaction in Glasgow last weekend:
It shows Lou (Mrs Lovegrove) and a certain other fellow pretending to be pirates in one of those wooden seaside-cutout thingies (actually located next to the Clyde, close to the tall ship aboard which the Voyager imprint's convention party was being held). To avoid embarrassing the bestselling SF-noir novelist in question, I shan't name him. I can tell you that he isn't two feet tall in real life and that publishing this pic on my site may just wake his furies and that, if he were willing to cough up enough cash, market forces might compel me to take the image down again, although I doubt it. Heh heh heh. The convention itself was great fun and I only wish I could have stayed longer than two days and had had a chance to explore some of Glasgow itself instead of being stuck in one small area on the outskirts next to the SECC exhibition centre. Maybe next time, at EasterCon. As it was, I did some panels and readings, met up with old friends, stayed up horribly late, drank too much, and generally did all the things which, for the sake of one's health and sanity, one shouldn't do when one is pushing 40. I was very pleased to meet a new Gollancz writer, Robert Scott, whose first novel, The Hickory Staff, I am immensely looking forward to reading. Robert's an American but he definitely gets the British sense of humour. He also had a bunch of us playing a Spot-The-Lie game which led to us learning lots of worrying new facts about people we thought we knew well (and trusted). Like, did you know that rugged, handsome, vigorously heterosexual fantasy writer M*** C******** has snogged Elton John? And bestselling SF-noir novelist R****** M*****, when he's not pretending to be a two-foot-tall pirate, relishes the fact that he was once sexually assaulted by two female work colleagues? And epic heroic fantasy specialist J**** B****** has slept with someone who slept with Steven Berkoff? I do now, and wish I didn't. One of Robert Scott's truths, incidentally, is that he once composed a song in honour of his own penis. But then, let's be honest, we've all done that at one time or other, haven't we? :: June 6th 2005 -- Provender Gleed Sneak Peak Provender Gleed isn't out till September, but if you click here you can read a sneaky-peek preview extract. It's an early chapter of the book which introduces several of the main characters and sets up the titular hero's main dilemma. It also includes a possibly gratuitous use of the word 'bifurcated'. :: April 4th 2005 -- Big In France (And Other Stories)
Me, I was hard at work doing signings and being interviewed by journalists, including one from Le Monde and one from Liberation, French equivalents of the Times and the Guardian. I also was able to drool over the huge quantity of lovely-looking bandes desinees on sale at the bookfair, even though, with my painfully impoverished French-language skills, there was no point in me buying any. I'd like to express my immense gratitude to Alain Nevant and everyone else at Bragelonne for looking after the three of us so well. It was a wonderful trip. Coming back to England and the proper business of actually writing was like coming down to earth with a bump. However, those works of fiction don't just compose themselves, you know. Speaking of which... On the short-story front, may I direct your attention to the following recently-published anthologies to which I have contributed tales? The first is The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Stories (edited by Mike Ashley and Eric Brown, published by Robinson in the UK and Carroll and Graf in the US) which is a wonderful and -- the title doesn't lie -- very large assemblage of homages to the French SF grandmaster, the hundredth anniversary of whose death has just passed. Most of the stories are offshoots of original Verne works, or else, like mine, 'Londres au XX1e siecle', unofficial sequels thereto. It's a lovely, thick, compendious collection, and a fitting tribute to the great man. Second up is Constellations (edited by Pete Crowther and published by Daw) which is the third in what nobody but me is calling Pete's Solar System Sequence, following on from Moon Shots and Mars Probes. The theme of this particular volume is - you've guessed it! - constellations, and Pete has gathered new tales from a veritable who's who of contemporary British SF authors, and me, to create not only a hugely varied and enjoyable book but also a tasty sampling of the current, thriving, multidenominational church that is British SF (ghastly mixed metaphor, sorry, but who says you can't eat a church?). My contribution, 'The Meteor Party', is a meditative earthbound effort that sits strangely well alongside excellent out-of-this-world tales by the likes of Eric Brown, Roger Levy and Adam Roberts. Finally, I have yet another new tale, to be found at Paul Brazier's recently-come-onstream site, Quercus. 'The Last Change' is one of my curmudgeonly, isn't-technology-overrated? fictive grumbles which got a lot of psychic pus out of my system and is also, I like to think, quite poignant and funny.  James meets a member of his French public at the Paris Bookfair. :: December 29th 2004 -- Best Wishes for 2005. After a shaky couple of months following my family's recent relocation – the stress! – I'm nose back to the grindstone, working on a book I've been threatening to write for a while now. More details when the first draft's done. As 2004 draws to a close, I thought I'd offer a few reading recommendations. Lately I have been mostly enjoying Rude Kids, an autobiography by the Viz founding editor and creator Chris Donald. It's very funny, oddly sad, and at times highly illuminating – worth a look whether or not you're a fan of the galaxy's sweariest comic. Then there's Michael Crichton's newie, State of Fear, which I tore through. As a novel it is … well, let's just say it functions at a level just about recognisable as fiction (Crichton does not excel at characterisation or prose). Where it scores is as a bracing counterblast to the doom and gloom we're currently being bombarded with from all quarters. Particularly interesting is the book's critique, reasoned and apparently justified, of the scaremongering carried out by environmental pressure groups in order to drum up donations and the "be afraid" tactics adopted by governments in order to keep people in line and provide an excuse to pass draconian laws. Crichton tries to be unbiased but it's clear that he regards science – proper scientific analysis and procedure – as the way forward and the answer to all the world's ills. Which is odd, coming from the author of such techno-nightmare-scenario books as Jurassic Park and The Terminal Man, but there you go. Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons seems pretty good so far (I'm 200 pages into it). Set on an Ivy League campus, it's a proper, deeply detailed, old-fashioned Big Novel that still manages to be contemporary, touching as it does on the timeless issues of race and class. Comics-wise, check out Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. He's halfway through a twelve-issue run, and has created the best X-title of recent years, hell, possibly ever. Luscious art by John Cassaday doesn't hurt. Meanwhile former New X-Men team Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely are at the peak of their game with the three-issue miniseries We3, about super-enhanced lab animals, would you believe. Like The Incredible Journey meets The Six Million Dollar Man. And there's a new series of Mark Millar's Ultimates to marvel at. Hooray! Finally, back to books, and an oldie but goodie. I'm two thirds of the way through Vole Pogrom's Solar System sequence, having reached Volume 6, The Sultanate of Saturn. Pogrom, in case you don't know, is one of the forgotten masters of the Golden Age of SF. Staggeringly prolific, as authors often were in those days, he turned out four novels a year on average, plus reams of short stories, and the Solar System books are among his best. I'd never heard of the guy myself until recently, when I received near-simultaneous recommendations from Adam Roberts, Roger Levy and Chris Wooding. I'm eagerly Dysoning up everything of his that I can find. Here's wishing you all a very happy, safe and successful 2005! :: November 9th 2004 -- New Home, New Site. As if to confirm that it's all change on every front for me, not only do I live in a different corner of Britain now, having relocated from East Sussex to North Devon, but I am the proud possessor of a revamped, rejigged and thoroughly reinvigorated website. As is abundantly evident, it's spiffy-looking, with a cleaner, clearer design and layout, and is much more user-friendly than the last. There's a new author photo in the biography section to replace the antiquated and somewhat blurry old one (now you can see me warts and all). There's an exhaustively thorough bibliography section, which I shall keep updating. The homepage has a sexy array of my book covers, which will also be kept rigorously up to date. All in all, I couldn't be more pleased, and I would like to extend copious amounts of gratitude to my webmaster, Ariel, for all the hard work he's put in, not to mention the great patience and forbearance he's displayed over the past few months. I presented him with a list of nigh-impossible demands for the site, he came back with a somewhat saner list of counter-suggestions, and the result has still exceeded all my expectations. Thanks, dude! :: September 30th 2004 -- Worldstorm reviewed... The following is an excerpt from a "review" of Worldstorm on the admirable trashotron.com site, which is hosted by the equally admirable Rick Kleffel. I put "review" in inverted commas as Rick admits he hasn't actually read the book yet. That doesn't matter, though. Check out the Alien metaphor! "Yes, it's one-hundred percent true. James Lovegrove is arguably our most versatile and skilled writer of speculative fiction. Almost any one of his novels or novellas -- from the Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated low-key SF novel Days to his high-concept SF novel, The Foreigners to the scalding horror-tinged novella that launched the PS Publishing Line, How the Other Half Lives, to his elegiac Bradburyian collaboration with Peter Crowther, Escardy Gap, following Lovegrove is a bit like following the chest-burster around the ship after it departs from John "Really, Really" Hurt in Alien. You see him in one form, but before you know it he's shed that skin and moved on to something entirely different. From last year's apocalypso dance Untied Kingdom, a sort of feudal fantasy set in the post-present UK, he's moved on to the eerily topical Worldstorm..." :: July 30th 2004 -- "Moving, Keep on Moving..." The big news on the Lovegrove domestic front is that, around the middle of August, barring disasters, we will be moving house. We're upping stakes and leaving picturesque Sussex county town Lewes behind for the more rural setting of a village in north Devon. Moving to the country has been a cherished dream of ours for some time, and we decided it was better to do it now, while Monty is still relatively small, than later. That way we won't have to wrench him away from a school or other local attachments. He won't even remember ever living here, which is slightly sad but there you go. The new residence is a renovated farmhouse some ten miles from Barnstaple. It's a beautiful part of the country, with broad sandy beaches and rolling hills and moorland and lots else besides. The house itself is about the same size as our present house but with rather less wallspace, meaning a small proportion of the library is going to have to go, worse luck. Actually, I've been intending for some while to dispose of some of the literary chaff that has been accumulating on my shelves, and this is the perfect excuse. The local charity shops are going to have a field day. Another benefit of the move is that I am going to have a garden office built so that I can work at home but not in the home. That way everyone else can make as much noise as they want indoors while I'm frantically wrestling with prose. When the office is finished I will be a hundred yards away in my little insulated wooden hut, with only the cows in the neighbouring field for company. I'm now trying to come up with some kind of pun on "low" here but I just can't manage it. You'll all, I'm sure, be greatly relieved about that. On the work front, I have just signed a contract with Orion/Gollancz for Provender Gleed and another book, which at present seems to be one that's going to be called Shiftlands. I still have various other projects bubbling under, including something with a certain Adam Roberts. More on that if, when, it comes to fruition. Gig has at last appeared, and has been acclaimed in several quarters as PS Publishing's handsomest-produced volume yet. And who am I to disagree with that? Especially as it's true. This is genuinely a lovely-looking book, and the content isn't half bad either, I think. Why have you not bought it yet? Worldstorm is imminent. Official publication date is September 23rd, but the launch party should be slightly sooner than that, as I'm likely to be co-launching with the aforementioned Dr Roberts. His new opus is titled The Snow, so there's sort of a weather/climatic theme going on there. Finally, I have recently achieved a lifelong ambition, which is to set a cryptic crossword. The result has been published in a national daily during the past week, and is, I hope, the first of many. I've always been a huge fan of crosswords and of wordgames in general, a fact that often finds itself reflected in my writing, and now I'm the proverbial poacher-turned-gamekeeper. The only reason I'm being somewhat cagey about where the actual crossword has appeared is that I wish to preserve the anonymity of my crossword-setter pseudonym. And that's it for now. I'll post again after we're safely ensconced in the West Country and supping scrumpy there. :: March 29th 2004 -- Lovegrove = Culture. Official. 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.
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. :: December 15th 2003 -- Out with the Old, in with the New. As 2003 draws to a close and 2004 looms, I thought I'd let everyone know what I'm currently up to, work-wise. Publication of Gig has been (slightly) delayed to January, which means I am still looking forward, even more now than before, to the book's appearance. In that same month the mass-market paperback edition of Untied Kingdom is due to come out. I've received my advance copies and it's a fine-looking publication, garlanded with great review quotations. Expect hundreds of copies to be weighing down the front table at a good bookshop near you very soon (ahem). At present I am approximately halfway through my next novel, Provender Gleed. I can't say much about it here, because it's unfinished and I'm always a bit superstitious about discussing something that's not finished. However, I am having a great time writing it, which is always a good sign. After that, what does the pipeline hold? Well, most probably a Young Adult novel (what they're calling children's books these days). Provisional title: The Heap. Possibly the first of a trilogy. And after that, I expect either to write a Worldstorm sequel, or another Barrington Stoke book, or something completely different. I just don't know. I'll have to see what grabs me, nearer the time. I have also compiled a second short-story collection, Waifs and Strays, which if the gods smile on us could be winging its way into bookshops sometime in 2005. 2003 has been an up-and-down year: highs, lows, and a lot of hard work. My best wishes to you all for Christmas and for the New Year. :: October 13th 2003 -- Publication Latest. Sorry I've not been keeping on top of things recently, news-wise. Of course I'm going to blame Monty, who takes up all my available spare time and then some. No one ever tells you how long you spend with small children doing nothing except making faces and stupid noises at them. I wouldn't make the effort, either, if Monty didn't find it all so damn amusing. Anyway, the main news is that I've just completed and handed in a first draft of Worldstorm. It's a big old manuscript, weighing in at a hefty 200,000 words. Simon The Editor will no doubt pare this down in his skilful scalpel way to a somewhat more manageable size. Then again, there's a lot of story and a lot of essential descriptive detail in the book, so I don't expect there'll be too many cuts (fingers crossed). It turns out that Worldstorm may well be the first in a trilogy. There are certain characters and plotlines which seem to be crying out to be followed up on, and I already have basic outlines in my head for the two subsequent volumes. We shall see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm already gearing up for a new book, doing all the groundwork and storylining stuff that, for me, is truly the fun part of writing. I'm not going to say much else about the project as I'm very superstitious. If I talk about it now, I might not have anything to write when I sit down and begin on it. As for actual books published, my second Barrington Stoke book (for reluctant readers) has just come out: The House of Lazarus, a substantial rewriting of the short story of mine which previously appeared in the Peter Crowther anthology Destination Unknown and my own collection Imagined Slights. The sales of its predecessor, Wings, have been startlingly good and to judge by the pre-publication uptake this one looks set to continue the trend. And next month Gig is going to appear, courtesy of PS Publishing. I'm excited about this for many reasons but largely because the jacket is going to be fantastic and because PS have really got behind the concept of the book and are doing everything right with the design and packaging. Start saving your shekels now! I assure you it's worth every penny of the cover price. :: August 27th 2003 -- New Arrival. 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.
:: May 29 2003 -- Amusing Internet Anecdote - previously unheard-of Lovegrove book discovered. 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. :: April 17th 2003 -- Launch Party 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. :: March 12th 2003 -- News Round-up 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? :: November 18th 2002 -- The Pram in the Hall 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.) :: July 30th 2002 -- Things are going Suspisciously Well at the moment... 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! :: June 28th 2002 -- Imagined Slights and The Hope Now Available 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! :: May 1st 2002 -- A Temporary Setback 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. :: April 4th 2002 -- Helicon - The Con From Hell 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! :: February 12th 2002 -- Eastercon / Search Engine Madness This Easter I shall be emerging from my slime-hung cave to attend Helicon 2002 on the bee-yootiful island of Jersey. My good lady-wife Lou will be accompanying me, and although I won't be sitting on any panels, because I invariably end up blathering incomprehensibly and making an idiot of myself when I do, I will be swanning around the hotel, meeting, greeting, eating and possibly even bleating, should the urge take me. If you know me, or even if you don't, and you want to come up and say hello and have a chat and perhaps (if you think you've caught me in a munificent mood) cadge a drink, then by all means feel free to do so. On a weirder but maybe more amusing note, here is a list of various search engine keywords that have somehow directed web-users to this very site. Some of them are ridiculous, some of them are strange, and just a few are rather worrying. I mean, who, for God's sake, would input "knife belly guts girl" or "castrati fat" into a search engine? And what, when it's at home, is a "plastic window cleaner plexus"? Search Engine Keywords: cucumber fucking; castrati picture; disembowelling her; egg puns; film extract porn; knife belly girl guts; marmaduke the little red lorry books; plastic window cleaner plexus; cunt fucked; emotional cripple definition of; castrati fat; whitewashed brick fireplace; no hair twat; scissors cutting panties; teenage boys and white socks; dumas chamberpot; over inflated inflatable doll; man cunt; gold tooth muscle; formaldehyde picture jar; monochrome green theme for windows; cylinder liner cross hatching; jolly cunt; teenage boys wearing trainers; how much can i earn driving a lorry; mons veneris; hotel lift creaky; impenetrable cunt; cunt sizes and shapes; her new arm; fucking cucumber; porn star gets head shaved. All I can hope is that some of these visitors, having inadvertently found their way here, will choose to satisfy their curiosity, or else assuage their disappointment, by going out and buying one of my books... :: November 11th 2001 -- Wedding Bells and Computer Hells Shattering the dreams and hearts of countless ladies up and down the land: I've got married! About six weeks ago, I and my cohabitee, Lou, decided to tie the knot, for reasons which remain not entirely clear to both of us, other than that it just seemed like a great thing to do. We kept it entirely hush-hush-secret-squirrel from everyone, including our parents, who were informed only two days before the event. The reason for this was to simplify the organisation of the thing and make it the kind of event we wanted rather than the kind anyone else might want. In other word, no one else was able to get their oar in, and it worked a treat. We had a quiet ceremony at the local registry office followed by a slap-up meal and then a week's holiday in the Dordogne, where we ate like pigs and drank like fish and loafed around like sloths. It's a strange feeling. Nothing's changed and everything's changed. I've always been adamantly opposed to marriage, but now that I've finally gone and done it, it's not such a terrible, conventional, conformist state of affairs after all. If nothing else, now our cat is a legitimate child-substitute as opposed to an illegitimate one. Finally, on an unrelated matter: a quick apology to anyone who's tried to send me an email via this site and failed. Owing to a problem with the ISP -- or *something* like that, I don't know, it's over my head -- emails haven't been getting through. So if you've tried to get in touch and haven't had a reply, it's not me being unpardonably rude, it's just a technical hitch... :: November 5th 2001 -- News Round-Up Ho-hum, things have been pretty quiet lately. I've been working and not much else. I've embarked on The Penitent and it's taking shape nicely. I should have a first draft finished around early spring 2002. (Actually, it'll be more like late summer, but let's perpetuate the lie I told my editor, shall we?) Days has now been officially sold to the Poles. I've signed a contract at any rate, with Warsaw-based publishers Muza. The Foreigners paperback has appeared, looking nice and fat and lovely and sporting some embarrasingly glowing review quotes. Short story roundup: I've had three short stories published this year so far. Two are in Interzone: 'Speedstream' in the January issue and 'Junk Male' in the September issue. The third, 'Running', is in The Third Alternative #26, alongside an in-depth interview with me by the erudite and well-read Mr David Mathew. (Said interview is also perusable now on the Infinity Plus website.) A fourth story, "Out of the Blue, Into the Red" is due to appear in a Daw anthology, Mars Probes, any time soon. My children's book Wings has been short-listed for the 2001 NASEN Award, which is the Special Educational Needs Children's Book award given to "the book of any genre that most successfully provides a positive image of children or young people with special needs". The winning title is announced in early November. Album of the moment: Asleep in the Back by Elbow. Very prog-rocky, with time-signature changes and everything. The album Radiohead should have made if they hadn't faffed around and wasted everyone's time with Kid A. Lovely stuff. And Elbow's lead singer is, vocally, a dead ringer for Peter Gabriel, which can't be bad. Book of the moment: Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gould. It's set in San Francisco in the 1920's. It's got magic shows, Houdini, a president dead in mysterious circumstances, a hissable villain -- everything! The best big fat American novel of the year, after Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I'm shortly off for a well-earned holiday in France -- Bergerac in Burgundy, in case you're interested. Then it's back to the grindstone. Hurrah! :: July 5th 2001 -- Untied Kingdom, Penitent, Schnitzel and Audio Streaming A lot has been happening lately, most of it in-the-pipeline stuff, and while it would seem risky to talk about deals that haven't yet been signed and sealed - tempting fate, counting your chickens before they're hatched, telling God your plans, all that - here, nonetheless, is the latest. The mighty Orion Books are to publish my next two novels, which are Untied Kingdom and The Penitent. The former is, of course, written and should appear in summer of 2002. The latter I have yet to begin, but I'm all geared up for it, helmet on, seatbelt fastened, hands on the joystick, ready to rock. All I can say about it at the moment is that the setting is extremely odd and that I'm very excited by the whole concept.. The Penitent should be out in mid-2003, so anyone currently holding their breath: stop it. Meanwhile, the paperback of The Foreigners is out in August (I've just received cover proofs and it looks great) and a publication date has at last been formalised for my short-story collection Imagined Slights and the reissue of The Hope. The bad news is, that publication date is Spring 2002. On the foreign front, it looks as though a Polish deal is in the wings for Days and possibly other titles from the backlist; a Swedish publisher has bought the rights to my Web book, Computipia; and a German publisher is sniffing around DAYS. So the word is slowly spreading through Europe. Viva the entente cordiale and bring on the schnitzel! Finally, last week I recorded an interview with John Snider of scifidimensions.com. John is a thoroughly nice fellow from Atlanta, Georgia, and his site is informative, well designed and broad-ranging in its content, paying special attention to the comics medium, which is nice. The interview will be online in a couple of months' time and it's "audio streaming" apparently, which means you will have the novelty of hearing me shamelessly plugging my work instead of just reading me shamelessly plugging my work. That's all for now. Ta-ta! (As we British never say.) :: May 15th 2001 -- Current Events, Latest News I've just completed my latest opus, Untied Kingdom, and my agent is busy selling it. There's more information on Untied Kingdom in the bibliography and there will be more details posted here when I know them. On the more imminent publication front, The Hope is due out again in a new edition from Orion, rewritten very slightly but still as gruesome and nasty and sweaty and sweary as it ever was. Imagined Slights should be out at around the same time - the publication dates are, I regret to say, nebulous at present. Imagined Slights is a round-up of my entire short fiction output from 1990 to 1997, plus a couple of never-before-published bonus tales (they're decent ones too, not just filler). In the even nearer future, May 2001 in fact, I have a children's book coming out. It's called Wings and it's an adaptation of a story which appears in the aforementioned Imagined Slights, and again there's more info in the bibliography. Apart from all that, I'm at the mulling stage on my next book, The Penitent. (I love a good mull, me.) I'm also toying with various notions for the one after that. This is the time when I like my job the most: when I'm not having to do any actual writing, just thinking about writing. |
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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.
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.
P.S. This is the cover of the Bulgarian edition of Worldstorm, just out from Bard Publishing.
I've just returned from a weekend at the Paris Bookfair. As you may be aware, a 
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!