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…

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!