Thaw

I guess the term blogsplash is a good idea most years, but things haven't really thawed out too much round my neck of the woods.

Anyway, I've not had much sleep and so am waffling a bit. Aliya and I are taking part in Fiona Robyn's blogsplash, but both of us thought the other was doing it, so neither are sure quite what to do. I guess the best thing is to say the book looks great, find out more about it by taking a look at the Thaw page on her website, and maybe buying/borrowing, but at least reading the book.

Three things not about me

1. Fiona Robyn is blogging her new book. The whole shebang. But not for a while yet. It's called Thaw and takes the form of journal entries written by a woman who's decided to make a decision about whether life is worth the effort at the end of her next three months. (Incidentally, this is the book of Fiona's I've been looking forward to.)

2. Spain is holding an e-book fair (following the Madrid Book Fair's decision not to have anything devoted to ebooks).

3. Snowbooks just hit a million pounds worth of sales. Congratulations to them.

I don't usually put punctuation at the end of list items, but today, I'm feeling a bit rebellious. I'm even going to leave the full stop off of this sentence

At it again

Co-authoring something, that is. Like a chivalrous knight of yore, I'm galloping to Aliya's rescue to let my naturally optimistic nature raise her happy short sf story to the heights of ecstasy. Wish us luck. (She's done all the hard work already, it has to be said. Tip top setting and great ending in place. )

In other news, Fiona Robyn, she is of the ubiquitous The Letters has made a pretty, colour-coded blogroll.

Snow joke

As it snowed this morning, I thought I'd let all you budding published authors into the news that Snowbooks are looking for some very specific book types for their 2010 list. I don't seem to be able to get to a direct post for this on their blog, so I've snagged the whole thing. There's a link at the bottom:

2010. It seems so futuristic. Will we all finally get our jet packs? I for one will be saving scraps of tin foil from now on, with which to fashion a suitable cardigan or such like garment. And don’t forget the colander hat to set it all off, with a coat hanger aerial jauntily poking out the top.

But it’s not so far away, you know. In the dynamic world of Snowbooks (where we plan more than a year ahead. Hmm. A brand new definition of dynamic), 2010 is really quite close, and we are starting to think about our list.

So this is a call out to writers to submit your work for our 2010 slate – one which we hope will be better than ever.

Here is what we’re interested in:
• Fantasy. Alternate realities, strange universes. Think The Affinity Bridge, Book of Shadows
• Horror. Zombies, werewolves, vampires, witches, apocalypse, supernatural frighteners. Think Maneater, Paris Immortal, The Fall
• Sci fi – from space opera to near future dystopias.
• Historical fiction. Think Needle in the Blood.
• We’re also looking to scale up our non-fiction publishing programme. We are interested in all topics – even quite specialist or technical subjects if they are interesting enough and written well - we’d like to publish books that are the best in their field, from super-clear introductory texts to, for example, popular science, current affairs, technology, cookery or gardening. Or, I don’t know, bee-keeping. The important thing is the quality of the writing, not the subject. All our non-fiction will be published in full colour with lots of illustrations and photos.
(I wish ‘non-fiction’ had a less negative name. ‘Informative books’, let’s call them. Oh, no, that’s no good either.)

What we’re not interested in: Children’s, poetry, biography, experimental, edgy literary fiction, derivative fantasy featuring lots of orcs and elves.
What we might also be interested in: Other genre writing including chick lit & crime.

Please follow the instructions at www.snowbooks.com/submissions.html. You'll need to send full, not partial or proposed, fiction manuscripts.

Also, Snowbooks author Fiona Robyn has a giveaway available for The Letters, her first release. (Aliya will be reviewing it at some point--there are plenty of vegetables to keep her happy.)Just email fiona@fionarobyn.com to enter. Open until the end of January.

Fiona Robyn's blog tour

From here on in, Aliya and I will be hosting regular flash fiction pieces by guest writers. What better way to kick things off than providing a stopping point for Queen of the hyperflash fiction, Fiona Robyn, on her blogtour, which takes place throughout July. Not even Foo Fighters hit the road this hard. More importantly perhaps than the fact she writes perfect gems about being alive is the one that she has a vegetable patch. Surely the title of this blog is proof enough that we like a decent bit of veggie culture. Fiona couldn't agree more with our veggie/writing crossover ethos:

I can't decide whether growing my own vegetables is easy-as-pie or never-ending-excrutiatingly-hard-work. It seems to depend on how often I do the weeding, and if I've just eaten some home-made blackcurrant jam. I also seem to need to learn the hard way. Last year I watered my sweetcorn seedlings on a scorching day. I knew you weren't meant to water plants in the middle of hot Summer days, but I didn't think it would do them THAT much harm. Every single one shriveled and died a painful death.

"Gardening does feel a bit like writing a novel. Little and often is the key. Paying attention to detail. Plucking out bad words/weeds. And most importantly of all, taking pleasure in the process. Getting satisfaction from completely clearing a little corner of nasty weeds. Enjoying the sensation of sliding ripe raspberries from their white cones. Yes - it's good to bite into firm new potatoes dripping in butter - but the journey is just as important... in the same way that noticing my small stones is just as important as writing them down.

Do you think everyone is capable of experiencing those special moments that are recorded by your stones?

Yes, absolutely. I'm more likely to experience those moments when I have a bit of space in my head - doing things more slowly, focussing on one thing at a time - and so I think we can all improve the chances of these moments occuring by doing the same. I still have days that pass in such a whirlwind that I don't notice a single thing properly - but at least writing a small stone gives me a daily prompt!

Here's a question in mock-haiku. It seems appropriate:

What's your favourite
gem? Tell us about it.
Why's it so special?

Hmmm that's like asking a car enthusiast to choose between his cars! I suppose some of them tend to 'strike me' with more force when I read them, such as the stones I've chosen to end each month in the book. They often tend to be shorter. A few examples of these are:

Quarter to nine:

I look and look at the huge full moon

a white rabbit bottom bobs in the beams before dissolving into the dark

blackbird on bare branches, his beak a chip of flame

A chip of flame for a beak. What a great image.

Have you ever experienced that special stone feeling and somebody else has got it too?

When you ask this question I think about two people sitting in deck chairs and watching the sun go down, but even then they'll be looking at their own sunset, through the filter of their own preferences and experiences. So no, I can't remember having shared this feeling with someone else at the time of the 'moment', but I hope that other people may experience a similar feeling when they read a few of the stones - the ones that resonate for them.

Fiona's book Small Stones: A Year of Moments is available now.