Kevin Smith vs Jeanette Winterson

In response to last Friday's Newsnight Review (no I didn't see it--way past my bedtime these days--will iPlayer it soon), Damien G Walter has an interesting post on 'Sci-Fi' versus SF&H up on the Guardian blog. Oh, and he has a new domain name too.

In other news, my love affair with Holby City may be coming to an end. Tonight will prove the pudding, or something. If it is, and it does, then I need a new weekly hour-long soapy type thing to get my teeth into.

C'est Lavie

Earlier in the month, that globetrotter Lavie Tidhar (currently sunning himself in Vietnam) announced a three-book deal with Harper Collins' SF imprint Angry Robot. They're going to be publishing The Bookman series, in Lavie's words, "...a kind of steampunk adventure novel with automatons, giant lizards, poets, pirates, airships and, you know... STUFF"

And from the Angry Robot press release:

In The Bookman, a masked terrorist of that name brings London society practically to a standstill by placing bombs inside books. After several atrocities against London’s theatres, he outdoes himself with an audacious attack on the blessing of the launch of the first expedition to Mars (by giant cannon!). For young poet Orphan, it seems his destiny is entwined with that of the shadowy terrorist, and so it turns out to be.

Like a steam-powered take on V for Vendetta, rich with satire and slashed through with wild adventure, this is book one of a series that will run to at least three volumes. The Bookman will be published by Angry Robot in Spring 2010, with sequels to follow at nine-month intervals.

Couldn’t have happened to a better man. Also congratulations to Aliette de Bodard, who has a similar deal and like Lavie has certainly paid her dues in the indie press.

Apex have also plumped to pick up Lavie’s weird spy thriller-fantasy An Occupation of Angels (published in the UK by Pendragon Press) and publish it for the first time in the US.

What kind of writer are you?

Over on the Macmillan New Writers blog, erstwhile fantasy author Tim Stretton deliberates over his immediate writing future following the rejection of his latest novel, The Last Free City, by Macmillan and explains, following discussions with editor Will Atkins, that it's now more likely he'll follow an historical fiction tack (The Last Free City and its published predecessor The Dog of the North owe as much, if not more--as Tim admits--to historical military fiction as they do to fantasy, so this makes sense. Probably painful sense, but sense nonetheless. And didn’t I start this post with a very long sentence? More of those to come below. Tim seems inspired by the opportunities opened up by reconsidering his primary genre.

I, on the other hand—like Aliya—have been dabbling with speculative fiction for a number of years now, but also write ‘literary fiction’ (I hesitate to prefix that with the word commercial, as no one’s bought it). I have a novel, sent to the aforementioned Will at Macmillan, that I strongly believe in. (A revamped version of the original is with him now, hoping against hope that he finds a willing pair of hands to take the manuscript from him and kindle it into life, rather than turn it into kindling.) I’ve embarked on a subsequent novel, working a similar seam that, if by whatever chance that first book is picked up, shows I’m attempting to build on its relatively distinctive blend of literary romance and criminal underworld shenanigans.

In the meantime, the co-written contemporary science fantasy Aliya and I wrote together winged its way off to a likely looking agent, along with a sampler from a post-apocalyptic SF novel I’m working on. No, the agent says to the co-written piece, but, hang-on maybe, says the same agent of the SF novel-in-waiting.

So I’ve now made the decision to try and be two writers at once. I’m always working on far too many projects at once anyway, and trying to steer away for new ventures. Now it appears finally--thankfully--those various projects have converged into two very distinct strands. And furthermore, I’ve discovered something very welcome. I’m getting much better at research. I appear to have found a happy medium between learning trivia and writing none of it down, and gaining genuine knowledge about a topic I’m working on and being able to improve my writing in response to that knowledge.

If we were still on LiveJournal, that bouncy little icon at the bottom of the post would be saying ‘:) positive’.

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.

Internet Review of Science Fiction

I've noticed, probably belatedly, that after a period of downtime while the site was being re-designed, the rather excellent IROSF is back on the scene.