Endangered Weapon B More Available Than Ever

I'll be honest, it hasn't been quite as easy as I might have hoped to lay your hands on mine and Bob Molesworth's graphic novel Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science (not unrecently described by Sci-Fi Now as "frantic, joyous and brilliant fun"!)  This is probably something I should have talked about before now, because a friend recently mentioned to me the difficulties they'd had picking up a copy on Amazon - you know, that obscure independent bookshop in the Outer Hebrides you probably haven't heard of - and it reminded me that, yeah, that's a thing all right.

But who needs Amazon, right?  Anything that slows down their despotic plans to take over the retail world and replace everyone under the age of twenty-five with robots and insert mind-reading insects into our heads has got to be a good thing.*

So first of all the new and up-to-the-minute news, which is that EWB is one of the launch titles in a new digital anthology PULSE, the first issue of which is just now out from digital comics specialists ROK.  It's dirt cheap at 69 pence an issue, and that buys you not only the opening part of Endangered Weapon but also the beginnings of fellow Markosia titles Serpent Wars and Dinocorp (which Bob happened to illustrate as well, by the by.)  Truth is I don't know exactly what's in there because right now it's iPad only and I don't have an iPad, but hey, 69p.  Even if it spontaneously combusted in your face the moment you looked at it that would still be great value for money.

Then when I was thinking about that I happened to do a little shopping around and I discovered that right now Endangered Weapon is available from Forbidden Planet at the awfully reasonable (if slightly arbitrary) web-only price of £6.89.  That's a fair bit less than you'll see it for anywhere else, so I'm happy to recommend Forbidden Planet as the EWB stockist of choice, especially since I did my Free Comic Book Day signing there and so the whole thing has a nice air of cosmic justice about it.

Anyway, like I said, this is hopefully only the beginning.  Both Markosia and Bob and I have a few things up our sleeves to keep the Endangered Weapon B train a-rolling on, until the inevitable day when the film rights get picked up and it earns us all enough to retire on the moon.  I'm thinking Sean Connery as The Professor, Seychelle Gabriel as Tilly, Ray Park as Wiffles and - of course!- Andy Serkis in the role of Banjo.



* Not that I have any reason to believe that Amazon are doing any of those things and I really don't want to get sued please sorry.

2013: Or, Phase IV

I've been a little troubled at the prospect of putting together my end-of-the-year round up, truth be told.  I try to be positive here at Writing on the Moon, because I fervently believe that writing is a thing to be positive about, but the flip side of that is that I've always intended this blog to be an honest account of my career and there are some things that are just very difficult to put a positive spin on.  For me, for the most part, 2013 has been one of those things.

It certainly got off to a difficult start.  Of the three Damasco books, the writing of Prince Thief had been by far the hardest; I've no doubt it's possible to write a book in a year around a regular job without suffering any serious ill-effects, but when that day job involves things like twelve hour night shifts and inordinate amounts of travel it becomes, frankly, pretty tough.  And when you live like that for month after month, working up to seventy hours a week, doing little else and not sleeping anything like enough, after a while your health starts to suffer.  Hell, everything starts to suffer.

What made the experience just shy of impossible, though, was that I had a fair idea of what was in store for Prince Thief.  Giant Thief had performed moderately well, but not well enough for Crown Thief to receive much publisher support or attention from bloggers and reviewers, because sequels don't attract anything like the sort of interest that debuts do.  By the time I started Prince Thief, I'd been reliably informed that I should expect proportionately less again.

Looking back, that's seems a lot more like common sense than it did at the time: you'll always be preaching to the converted with the third book in a trilogy.  But at the time, the cost seemed just too much; I knew I was making myself unwell and causing distress to the people close to me to write a book that couldn't hope to achieve the sort of things you hope a book will achieve, and it broke my heart a little.

All of that was more of less done with by the end of March, but it cast a long shadow.  Even with my writing efforts dialed down I was still doing at least one and a half jobs, the exhaustion never quite went away, and things continued to be a struggle.  In retrospect, I might have done better to slacken the pace a little more; as it was, I spent the next few months feeling like I was doing far less than I should have been.  I'd have liked to have worked much more to promote the launch of Endangered Weapon B;  I enjoyed coming up with my first novella, insane sci-fantasy oddity Patchwerk, but it cost more in time and effort than I'd been expecting.  It was really only when I put the day job once and for all behind me in October that things began to settle down, and only in the past month that I've felt like everything was more or less back under control.

-oOo-

For all that I've sure as hell done it in this post, I don't like moaning.  I still remember with perfect clarity what it's like to be an unpublished author, as I imagine some of the people who'll read this will be, and I know that I've been very, very fortunate to make it as far as I have, in the ways that I have.  I wanted more than anything to have a book published and now I have five out there, in various shapes and sizes and - regardless of how hard I worked for it, regardless of anything - that is a thing of utter awesomeness.  As is the fact that I've finally achieved my other lifetime goal this year, to make writing my day job.

So, for all of those reasons, and because sometimes it's nice to remind yourself of all the good stuff, here's a list of the things that happened in 2013 that were actually pretty amazing:

• I sold a story to Clarkesworld and, with the year nearly out, to Interzone, two markets I've been chasing ever since I started writing seriously.  It was, in fact, a pretty great year for short fiction sales, all told.

• In the end, I finished one novel, two graphic novels, one novella, a novelette and three short stories. Under the circumstances, that doesn't feel like a bad haul.

• I completed my first trilogy.  The Tales of Easie Damasco are out there now, and I'm very proud of them.  They have stunning Angelo Rinaldi covers.  They're read wonderfully by James Langton in the superb Brilliance Audio audiobook adaptations.  They exist in the world, they're finding readers and listeners, and the more time goes by, the more I appreciate that fact.

• Endangered Weapon B is out there too, after some five or so years of trying to make it a reality, and I love it to pieces.  Of the many things I have to be thankful for, high on the list is that I've been able to work with Bob Molesworth, a great artist who I have no doubt is going to become an extraordinary artist over the next few years.

• I'm now writing full time. It's impossible to exaggerate just how much even typing those words feels like a gigantic weight coming off.  2014 is the year when I get to start writing the way I want, instead of the way I can somehow manage to fit around my day job.  2014 is the year when producing a book a year is suddenly the absolute least I can do, and when I get to put together some of the projects I've had to tread water on these last couple of years.  And, since this is the stage of my career that I've long been referring to as phase 4 in my Stalinesque ten year mental plan, 2014 is also, quite possibly, the year when ants take over the world.

         If that's not something to look forward to then I don't know what is.

Thought Bubble 2013

It was tempting to come up with some rubbish pun title, "Thoughts on Thought Bubble" or something like that, and I might even have done it if it weren't for the realization that I'd then have to come up with an even more rubbish pun title if I go next year, and on and on, until I either went mad with the effort or had to stop attending altogether.  And that would be a shame, because I enjoyed my one afternoon of Thought Bubble, and would very much like to go again next year, and actually make an effort to attend a few things and do more than wander around being slightly distracted.

Lavie's I Dream of Ants: Odd.

But now that I think about it, haven't all of my Con reports gone that way of late?  The truth is that, more even more so than World Fantasy, Thought Bubble had the distinction of being my One Con Too Many this year, the one where Con exhaustion really kicked in with a vengeance.  Unfortunately, the same went for Lavie Tidhar, who'd come to stay with me over the weekend and have his own first look at TB*, and who has done even more of these things than me this year, and the net result was that between us we had just about enough energy and enthusiasm for one mildly energetic and enthusiastic Con goer, which frankly was never going to cut it.

And like I said, that turned out to be a shame, because Thought Bubble was interesting and intriguing, and actually very different from anything I've been to before; more, in fact, what I'd (perhaps ignorantly) consider an Expo than a Convention, with a quite staggering number of stalls spread over three very large rooms.  It was a bit overwhelming, really, and most of the three or four hours we spent there on Saturday were eaten up with wandering around and randomly chatting to people and feeling a bit bewildered by the whole thing.

My Princess Mononoke print: Awesome.

Which doesn't sound like a great deal of fun, now that I read it back, but it was. I ran into some of my favourite industry friends and acquaintances, including such kind souls as Adrian Tchaikovsky, Paul Cornell and Alasdair Stuart, got to hang out with superstar artist Mr Bob Molesworth and to meet our Endangered Weapon B publisher Harry Markos; Lavie bought me a copy of his Murky Depths Press book I Dream of Ants, (which is, frankly, downright odd); I picked up a gorgeous Princess Mononoke** poster by the excitingly talented Cristian Ortiz, and ... well, I can't remember what else.  This is what happens when you post about events half a week after they happened.

Anyway, in retrospect, we should probably have left before the bizarre school disco-style party that followed the main event on the Saturday night, and I should definitely not have let Lavie talk me into going clubbing after that, because frankly I'm just too damn old, or at the very least too damn tired.  But stupid is as stupid does, as a wise man once said, and what doesn't kill you gives you a hell of a headache the next day, and all in all it was a good day so, in the end, who's complaining? 




* Wow, that's a really unfortunate abbreviation.
** Possibly my favourite film of all time.  There, I've said it!

All That News I Don't Have

I said when I put up my last post that I didn't have any writing news, and then realised straight away that I actually have loads of writing news.  It's just that none of it is really the kind of stuff that I'd normally blog about.  Still, saying I have no news implies I haven't been up to much, and that's the exact opposite of the truth.  So I thought I might as well set the record straight, even if I was the one who unstraightened it in the first place.

First up, there's the novella that I've been working on since around the start of June, and hope to finish soon.  I've never had much desire to write a novella before, but I had an idea that was too small for a novel and way too big for a short story, and I needed a project to sink my teeth into for a few months, to keep myself busy until ... well, until the massive thing that's happening next month, that I should probably keep quiet about until then, in case I jinx it or something.  Anyway, the novella's currently called Patchwerk, and its best described as ... um ... kind of a Moorcockian multidimensional science-fiction / fantasy thing.  Well, maybe that's not how it's best described, but put it this way, the fact that it has about twenty-five people in it but they're all the same five characters should give you a fair idea of what it's like (and what a gigantic headache it's been to write in places!)

So there's that. And there's the second, as-yet-untitled volume of Endangered Weapon B, which I finished a few days ago and now just need to format ready for winging over to Bob.  It's fun stuff, if I do say so; we find out just why the Professor's been so interested in resurrecting the dead, just about everyone from volume 1 returns, mostly in the most absurd ways possible, and - at the risk of giving away crucial plot points - there's a bloody great, ridiculous fight at the end. Oh, and I get to parody a load more stuff, from John Carter to Bride of Frankenstein to Endangered Weapon itself.  (Thinking about it. mainly that last one.)

Then there's the planning.  Oh so much planning!  I just recently wrapped up a synopsis of what I fervently hope will be my next novel, and that's with my agent John Berlyne right now, waiting on his feedback.  There's my ongoing figuring-out of how to nail down War For Funland, the book I wrote a first draft of between Giant Thief and Crown Thief and would really like to write a second draft of one of these days.  There's the third novel that's at the mostly-in-my-head stage.  There's the new comic series that Bob Molesworth and I are hoping to put together, which I'm sketching out bit by bit, with a view to getting a synopsis together in the next month or two.  There are short story ideas piling up, there's the film script I've been plotting for a couple of years now...

That might sound like a lot, and it probably is, but from my point of view this is no bad thing. For all the love I have for Damasco and his world, one of the hardest aspects of writing Crown Thief and Prince Thief was how much they dominated my writing time, to the exclusion of all else.  I'm always happier with a few different projects on the go, and I'm happiest when those projects are as different from each other as realistically possible.  So, right now, when I have a dozen things in the pipeline and none of them are the least bit similar to each other ... well, that's an okay place to be in.

Nine Worlds 2013

I didn't see half as much of Nine Worlds as I would have liked.

I think the only way I could have would have time travel, or perhaps the ability to create little homunculi of myself.  Nine Worlds had a lot of programming.  And the more the weekend wore on, the more I realized that even the bits of it that at a first glance hadn't looked even remotely interesting probably were.  I wish I'd hung around the Steampunk track a little more.  Jobeda spent much of Saturday telling me how good the Geek Feminism stuff was, and I caught the end of a panel on Joss Whedon and sure enough, it was tremendous; I've been to entire Cons that contained less enthusiasm and intelligent debate than that one small, overheated room.  I completely missed the Science track, and pretty much all of that looked interesting.  I did a little better with the All the Books track, since I was in it, but I still felt like I'd barely scratched the surface.  We never even got a look in at the Board Gaming, despite that being one of the things we'd specifically planned to do.  And what I've listed there is only scratching the surface of what was on offer at Nine Worlds.

Readers!

On top of the basic impossibility of doing more than scratching that surface, I quickly discovered I wasn't feeling too well.  It turned out to be a chest infection, but over the weekend it was just a sore throat and a general feeling of crapiness, which did a good job of keeping me out of the bar and stopping me talking to a lot of the people I'd have liked to talk to - which was a lot of people.  I did manage a bit of socializing, particularly on the Sunday, and I got to give Paul Cornell a copy of Endangered Weapon B as a thank you for his brilliant introduction, which was high on my 'to do' list, but all told I spent a lot of time being frustrated that conversation equaled pain.

Francis, Benedict, Me, Den, Emma.

Then last up, and if anything even more distracting, there was the fact that I seemed to spend a large chunk of the weekend working.  Okay, doing a signing was no biggie, and I got stuck with a slot when no one was in the dealer's room, so I mainly spent that chatting with the lovely Forbidden Planet people and my old friend Flick (Hi Flick, good to see you!)  And the panel I was attending on Saturday, Gender and Sexuality in SFF, went smoothly - if unspectacularly - enough.  But those were things I've done before and are just about comfortable these days.  No, what kept me in a perpetual state of Serious Work Mode was the knowledge that I was moderating my first panel on the Sunday, and my being determined to make a decent job of it.

In truth, I perhaps got a bit carried away with my preparation.  I went in with twenty-some questions (many of which had sub-questions!), a separate page of questions for the audience and notes on my panelists, which I'd prepped during a frantic ten minutes spent at the Forbidden Planet stall.  Then I nearly lost all my notes.  Then I found out at the last minute that Benedict Jacka was ill, wasn't coming and had been replaced by someone I'd never heard of.  Then Benedict turned up, and was befuddled to discover that he wasn't expected. 

A scale model of the Nine Worlds hotel, possibly.

But minor, slightly surreal hiccups aside, it went well.  I think, possibly, that it went really well.  Certainly, I had a good time - which frankly was about the least likely outcome I expected.  I felt like we gave out a lot of valuable information, and everyone got their say.  I was fortunate enough to have four intelligent, witty and unusually polite panelists* in the shape of Benedict, Emma Newman, Den Patrick and Francis Knight.  We had some great audience questions, and one in particular that really touched me: it was something along the lines of, "say you were really shy and didn't feel up to mugging editors in the bar at Cons and all of the other things you've been advising us to?  Would it still be possible to get published?"**  That was about the only question I took myself, because - as I explained - I consider myself a basically shy person, who used to be a very shy person indeed, and yet somehow I've ended up doing things like moderating panels in front of dozens of people.  And while of course it is possible to get published without ever so much as speaking to an editor face to face, I think it's also true that confidence is a skill that can be learned like any other, and that Cons are tremendously good places to do that learning.

Which, I guess, is also my conclusion when it comes to Nine Worlds: it did what only the very best of Cons can do and created a hugely inclusive space where everyone seemed comfortable regardless of race, creed or My Little Pony costume.  It wasn't perfect***, but in its first year it was better than many established Cons, it raised the bar in a lot of ways that I hope get taken on board by the wider community, and I'm already looking forward to next year - when hopefully I'll actually get to do and see a bit more stuff.

* Seriously, this was the most polite panel ever.

** Wait, we didn't say that.  Buy drinks for, not mug.

*** Main imperfection being the extraordinarily pricy bar.  No pint of Coke on earth should cost six pounds.

Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science Lives!

That's all there is to say, really: Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science is finally out.

I've been talking about this project for so long now - since October 2009, to be precise - that it's hard to know what to say now that people actually get to see it.  (Okay, quite a lot of people have already seen bits of it, thanks to Free Comic Book Day and the Myebook preview, currently at an astonishing 50'000 views, but you know what I mean.)

I guess I could say what's actually in the book?  I mean, I've possibly been a bit cryptic in the past, rattling on about mechanically enhanced grizzly bears battling Nazi dolphins on the moon and whatnot.  Although in fairness, that's actually a fairly concise summary of the introductory story.  Then there's issue one, The Tentacles of Doom, which was partially included in the FCBD issue and which covers the origins of our protagonist the Professor, his chief engineer and unwilling prospective child bride Tilly, his ursine factotum Banjo and his ninja butler, the redoubtable Wiffles ... along with some stuff about psychic squid and giant killer carp and, oh, Mothra, possibly.  As for issue two, The Monsters of Monster Island, that sees the Professor encountering Dracula, the Wolfman and the Invisible Man, and discovering what really happened to Frankenstein and his monster.  And then there are some Endangered Weapon-themed games, (because what comic book is complete without at least a couple of games?), and an introduction by the wonderful Mr Paul Cornell.

So that's Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science.  Ain't it Cool News described it as "...a MONTY PYTHON / Mike Mignola love child," and they were more right than they'll ever know.  You can pick it up from Amazon here, in Kindle or in print direct from publisher Markosia.

And in the meantime, here's a picture of an airship disguised as a bumble bee approaching Dr Frankenstein's castle:

May News (Or the Lack Thereof)

Yes, the news at the middle of the month is that I don't have much news.  However, I'm off to Malta tomorrow (for more retrospective novel research, you understand) and I fear I'm not likely to find time to be writing any blog posts while I'm there, so I figured I should stop by here to set down just how little I have to talk about right now.

Well, perhaps that's not entirely true ... it's just that a lot of things are in progress and nothing is quite there yet.  I'm most of the way through my first standalone graphic novel script, the long-gestating C21st Gods, and enjoying the change of direction; Prince Thief is with its copy editor, and I just finished my own final check-through; and Bob and I are putting the last touches to the trade of Endangered Weapon B, ready for it's July release, while - touch wood! - one of my all-time favourite comic creators is in the process of writing us a glowing introduction.

I suppose, then, that finishing off two books while writing a third can't really be described as nothing happening.  Still, in comparison to recent months, I've been taking it relatively easy all told.  What a shame then that all that peace and quiet's going to be interrupted by the hardships of an exhausting retrospective research trip in the punishing Mediterranean heat. 

No, don't pity me gentle reader!  It wouldn't be art if I didn't suffer horribly for it.

Free Comic Book Day Fun

Free!  All free!

I'd had fairly high hopes for my Free Comic Book Day signing at Forbidden Planet on Saturday, what with that combination of a great venue on a great occasion and the fact that I was there - thanks to Mr Bob Molesworth - with a marvelous-looking book that I was confident people would be eager to get their hands on once they got a look at that lovely, betentacled, Indy-pastiching cover.

But honestly, I hadn't the faintest idea what I was getting myself in for.  If I'd known, I probably wouldn't have dared go.

It was the queue that gave it away.  It appeared out of nowhere, just after I sat down, as I was getting my own first look at what can only be abbreviated as FCBD:EWB - atToD.  It reached the length of the room - and not long after that, half the way back again.  And it was made up entirely of people holding copies of Endangered Weapon B that they wanted me to sign.

Fortunately, I did at least manage to spell Jobeda's name right.

Everything after that was a bit of blur - mostly consisting of me asking people to spell their names (even when their names where things like Ed and Joe) and then, on at least one occasion, spelling them wrong anyway.  In just under 40 minutes, I signed 98 comic books and chatted with somewhere in the region of 80 people.  By the end of it, my wrist was aching, my throat was sore, and I felt like some kind of superstar writer.  It was, frankly, an awesome experience ... the sort of thing you dream about when you start writing, while secretly having to admit to yourself that it's never likely to happen.

After I was done, me and Jobeda and our friend Liam skipped out for a bit of lunch, and then had to hurry back for the second Free Comic Book Day Forbidden Planet signing of the day, which consisted of a rather impressive bunch of 2000AD folks: Al Ewing, who I happen to know from way back in my days at York, Dan Abnett, Ben Wilsher and lengendary Judge Dredd artist Mr Ron Smith.  Which was great in itself, but then top author type and official nicest man in publishing Jonathan Green turned up and kept us company in the queue (for a whole bloody hour ... damn those impressive 2000AD folks and their huge fan following!)

Note the now much emptier table.

All in all then, an amazing day.  Massive thanks to Jon Harrison, who did a splendid job on the organization front, and to Harry Markos and Bob for making the whole thing possible ... but mainly to all the people who turned out to get my name scribbled over a copy of Endangered Weapon B.  I can honestly say I've never scrawled all over the property of a nicer bunch of people.

Endangered Weapon B ... Signing Tomorrow!

If you happen to be near a comic shop tomorrow - that would be Saturday the 4th of May - you might want to think about popping inside and loading up with a great big heap of free comic books, including the premier issue of mine and Bob Molesworth's Endangered Weapon B.  It won't even be stealing, because May 4th is Free Comic Book Day.*

And if the comic shop you happen to be near is the Covent Garden branch of Forbidden Planet in London, and the time you're there happens to be somewhere between eleven and twelve in the morning, then you should definitely nip inside and come to my Endangered Weapon B signing.  You'll receive a free issue of what will almost certainly be the year's best comic to include a grizzly bear punching ninja squid, and my illegible squiggle as well, all for the grand price of absolutely nothing. Or, if you're in Brighton from 10:30 onwards, why not nip into Dave's Comics and say hello to Bob?  He's a top artist type, so his signature is probably much more readable than mine.

I don't think there's much I can add to that, is there?  Saturday, May the fourth.  Free Endangered Weapon B, and a whole lot of other free stuff too.  If it was any more exciting, they'd probably have to name a day after it.


* Although, if you try and take off with any comics that aren't in Free Comic Book Day then that will be stealing, so you should probably not do that.

Im Schatten der Giganten Out

Giant Thief - or rather Im Schatten der Giganten - is now out in Germany.  And it's lovely.  German books are really nice!  It's a paperback that looks like a hardback, with good quality paper stock, high quality printing, a solid, embossed cover ... none of which is terribly interesting, I guess, unless you happen to be the author of the book in question.  Which, wait, I am!

Or, "In the Shadow of Giants"

Oh, but you're not.  Shall we talk about something else?  Because I could probably manage a couple of paragraph's about how elegantly sculpted the spine is and ... no?

Okay.  Well, perhaps more interesting to people who aren't me is the promotional stuff that we put together for the German launch. There's an in-depth interview (I can't find it on the Piper site, but it's up here - in German, admittedly) and, a first for me, a brief video introduction.  This was filmed (by my lovely partner Jobeda, who just so happens to list editor and director amongst her cornucopia of skills) about a week after I finished Prince Thief, and I was pretty exhausted - which shows a bit, I think - but it was a fun new experience for all that, and something I'd like to try again.

But more exciting than either of those, at least for me, is the trailer that we've spent about the last six months putting together. The one with art by that Endangered Weapon B guy, Bob Molesworth. The one with the most outrageously catchy music ever, which I guarantee you're going to spend the rest of the day trying to get out of your head (I say this from experience as somebody who's currently poking a screwdriver into their ear in a bid to do that exact thing.)  I'm really proud of this, which is why I'm mentioning it now, but it's worth pointing out that there'll be an English version up in due course, and hopefully a post explaining what went into it - all of which will probably make a little more sense if you don't speak happen to speak German.

Sign in the Moonlight Out, and Other Short Story News

Considering that I'm working hell for leather (whatever the hell hell for leather means) on getting Prince Thief wrapped for its end of March deadline and Endangered Weapon B ready for July, I'm a bit surprised by how much short story stuff I seem to have going on right now.

Because even freaky ghoul kids need hobbies.

For a start, there's The Sign in the Moonlight just up at Nightmare magazine; you can read or listen to it for free here, and personally I'd go for the audio version, since in John Rubinstein they seem to have actually found an early twentieth century mountaineer to narrate this weird tale of  Tibetan adventuring amongst the Edwardian rich.  Or you can buy the full issue here for a measly $2.99, roughly the price of three quarters of a bagel in Jimmy's New York Bagelorama, and also get stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Molly Tanzer and Livia Llewellyn, along with plenty of non-fiction goodies.  Speaking of which, there's also an interview with me regarding Sign here.

Cthulhu PI.

On top of that, I've had a couple of new sales.  My main reason for submitting to new outfit 01 Publishing's inaugural anthology Whispers From the Abyss was that gorgeous cover on the right.  But having dug a little further, I think these guys are going to be seriously worth watching; they're putting out some stunning-looking books.  Anyway, my blackly comic take on Lovercraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, ridiculously titled My Friend Fishfinger, by Daisy Aged 7 - and once, long ago, my first story to appear in print, back in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #30 - should be appearing behind that lovely bit of artwork sometime soon.

Last, there's First Date, another older tale and beyond doubt the kinkiest thing I've written, so much so that I was starting to think that no publisher was ever going to embrace it's take on a near future where digital smoke and mirrors can make any sexual fantasy come to life.  So special extra thank you's to editor D F McCourt at AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review for giving it a chance; I can't wait to see what people make of this one!

Endangered Weapon B: The First Interview

I'm not sure it's entirely sunk in yet that Endangered Weapon B, the first ever full length comic book I've written, has somehow ended up being in Free Comic Book Day, huge, exciting international event that it is - but recently, a few things have been happening that have made it start to feel a little more real.

One of those was when I discovered that the FCBD team had started following me on Twitter (!) and another was doing my first interview, also for the official site.  Between the introduction by the FCBD gang themselves and my own, shall we say in depth (as opposed to blithering and long winded) replies, I think this gives a fairly good sense of what the world is in store for come May 4th.  That is, unrestrained preposterousness, dubious morality and nature's bountiful offspring beating seven shades of stuffing out of each other in glorious cartoon technicolor.

Only 76 more days to go!

New Sales: Pseudopod and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

It's been a surprisingly good few weeks for short fiction sales, especially given that I haven't had a whole load of time to send stuff out lately, what with all the work on Prince Thief and Endangered Weapon and, oh, that day job thing I try not to think about.

First up recently came Pseudopod, taking my short story Prisoner of Peace - also recently accepted for Eric Guignard's very-likely-to-be-wonderful After Death anthology - and, due to some scheduling mix-ups and my usual confusion, leading to me tying myself in knots over whether a story that had been accepted but not printed could actually be called a reprint.  Fortunately it can, since After Death comes out in March / April time and Pseudopod are planning to run Prisoner on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, for reasons that I can't explain without giving the whole thing away.*

Then, soon after, Beneath Ceaseless Skies editor Scott Andrews expressed interest in my Leiber-pastichingly-titled tale Ill-Met At Midnight**, with some reservations ... he wasn't entirely sold on the ending and asked me to make a few changes.  I duly went back to it, while sitting in the roof garden of our hotel in Marrakesh on a sunny December afternoon - one of the most pleasant bits of writing I've ever done.  And it did the trick!

Clearly, there's a moral here.  I now know where I've been going wrong all these years, and it has everything to do with not writing everything in beautifully sunny North African locations.  Expect this to be redressed the very moment I make enough money to emigrate...





* In fact, come to think of it, running it on the anniversary of Nagasaki already gives the game away a bit.  But it's also very appropriate, so I think it's probably okay.

** Which I recently read aloud at Fantasycon 2012, if you happen to be one of the nine people who was there.

2012; or, My Damasco Year

At the end of 2011, I wrote about what a tough year it had been on a personal level, what an unexpectedly triumphant year it had been for my writing, and how everything had somehow ended in a weirdly positive place.  So I guess I can't just say the same again this year, right?  No?  Well, okay then.

Anyway, looking back, it feels a lot like stating the obvious.  Any year where you try and write a publishable novel from start to finish around a more-than-full time day job is never going to be easy, and any year where both your first and second novels are released is going to have its moments of pure unadulterated awesomeness.  It's almost impossible to look back at 2012 right now and believe that I managed to cram so much of either into it; that this time twelve months ago I was putting the finishing touches to Crown Thief, waiting for Giant Thief to come out, and getting ready to move to London to start my new job.

Now London is my second home, Giant Thief's release seems an awfully long time ago, even has been out for a while, and all my energy is going into finishing the second draft of Prince Thief and ending a story I started five years ago, with no idea at all of what I was getting myself into.  For me, 2012 has definitely been the year of Easie Damasco, and I'm deeply glad that for every reader who's failed to get on with the despicable reprobate there have been plenty more who've taken him into their hearts.  It's more than he deserves, frankly, but it's still pretty amazing to realise that my books are out there in the world and that Damasco, in however small a way, has broken and entered his way into the minds of complete strangers.  Hard work it may be, but this novel writing lark definitely has its rewards. 

But what's really surprising is all the other stuff that's happened.  I didn't expect to get much else done in 2012, all things considered, and I was reconciled with letting the other strands of my writing - all those many, many strands! - fade into the background for a few months.  What a nice surprise, then, to win my first writing contest, via This is Horror and Spectral Press, and as a result to have my first chapbook published, meaning I ended up with not two but three whole books out in one year.  And how unexpected it was that I managed to get a bit of short fiction out there, and even, just as the year began to expire, to make a few good sales. 

Now I get to look forward to 2013, and to think hard about where I go after Damasco and I finally part ways.  I know I should have at least two new books coming out, in the shape of Prince Thief and, (in some more not-entirely-expected good news), the first Endangered Weapon B trade paperback - not to mention the German edition of Giant Thief and the audiobook of Crown Thief.  But who knows what else might happen?  The same goes for my planned projects; right now, my agenda for the coming year involves finishing Prince Thief and the second volume of Endangered Weapon for the end of March, then writing a science-fiction novella, then writing at least one draft of a new, as-yet-untitled novel while simultaneously rewriting my second book War for Funland more or less from scratch,  plus putting together a short story collection and likely writing a second graphic novel that's been at the drawing board stage for a while now.

But good plans are made to be unplanned, right?  And really, I'm mainly saying this so that I can look back on this post in twelve month's time and feel stupid.  Because, as the bloke from Stingray so famously never said, anything can happen in the next twelve months.

Endangered Weapon B: Coming to a Comic Shop Near You

It feels like I've been working on and talking about my comic book project Endangered Weapon B since forever, and for a long time it looked like it might never even be more than a ten page script, let alone a published comic.  So any news that involved it getting released into the world would be pretty damn exciting; but my actual news is a bit better than all that.

Because, not only has Endangered Weapon been picked up by UK publisher Markosia for a trade paperback release this coming July - featuring the first couple of extra-length issues and whatever other goodies we can crowbar in there - it's also going to be the headline story in their first ever entry into Free Comic Book day.  Which means it's going to be in many, many comic shops this coming May 4th, and potentially read by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands or even billions of tens of thousands of people.  (Though probably not that last one, realistically.)

Anyone who knows me will attest that I'm a complete comics geek; as much as having a novel published, having a comic book out there is one of my lifelong dreams.  But that it's this comic, the most demented and willfully absurd thing I've ever let myself get away with writing, and that it's with Bob Molesworth's astonishing artwork bringing it to life, and that it's going to be available to so many people for free, is beyond thrilling.  This has been my dream project for such a long time - and during the bad times, my nightmare, never-to-see-the-light-of-day project - and now it's looking very real.  I've seen all of issue one and a portion of issue two, and I swear to you on my cocktail-swilling, artifact-stealing, bride-kidnapping, mad-scientist protagonists' life, what Bob's doing is eye-wateringly lovely.

(Well ... as lovely as robotically enhanced grizzly bears and mutant ninja squid and pirates and wooden supercomputers and Nazi dolphins and any number of monsters can be, anyway.)

So there it is.  Endangered Weapon B: it's big, it's crazy, it probably shouldn't be encouraged or allowed near small children and animals, and come May, people will actually get to read it for free.

The Dinocorp Needs You

Bob Molesworth gets a fair bit of mention on this blog, mainly because he's the artist of our comic book series Endangered Weapon B, but also because he's a tremendous artist full stop and it amuses me to go on about how good he is.  We've been electronically hanging out a lot recently, we have a couple of exciting things close to fruition and a couple more on the backburner, and so it only seems right that I should give a quick plug to Bob and writers Steve Horvath and Andy Briggs's recent publication, Dinocorps.

Here's the blurbage:

Entombed for millennia, a team of combat dinosaurs is accidentally reanimated by 14-year-old Carl Heyward. While trying to keep them a secret, Carl discovers the evil Saurons have survived too. Responsible for the last mass extinction event, they’re planning to eradicate the human mammalian vermin with another extinction event. The race is on to save the planet… again. World shaking action-adventure in this all-ages story!

You heard that, right?  Combat dinosaurs!  That means, dinosaurs with guns kicking ass.  Everyone loves dinosaurs, right?  I know I do.  Although granted, not as much as when I was twelve, which I think is probably the perfect target age for Dinocorps.  When I was twelve, I would have thought it was about the coolest thing imaginable.  I would probably also have been a little troubled, in ways I couldn't quite put my finger on, by the slinky lady dinosaur, Lieutenant Kayla.  Boy, I'm sure glad that stuff like that doesn't bother me anymore.

 Anyway, I obviously picked up Dinocorps for Bob's artwork and not for slinky dinosaur ladies.  One of the fun things about working with artists is getting to watch them evolve, and Bob's done a whole lot of evolving since we first came across each other.  He really does get better and better with every project he does, and it's a joy to watch. Plus, it means that the work he's doing right now on Endangered Weapon - and our other, secret mini-project - is his absolute best yet.  Which, from my point of view, is pretty great news.


So if you have a twelve year old to hand, or - like me - a significant portion of your brain that frequently forgets it isn't a twelve year old, why not give Dinocorps a go?   It's a lovely-looking comic book about dinosaurs with guns kicking the crap out of each other.  If you can find a single thing not to like there, you're probably a pod person.

Tales of Damasco: Update 3

I was vaguely hoping to talk about something other than the Damasco books this week ... there must be other stuff happening! ... but then a load more Giant Thief-related news came in, so here we are.  And, I dunno, maybe I'm being a little unrealistic.  Probably I shouldn't be suprised that my first novel and it's upcoming sequel are about the only thing I have to discuss, right?  Kind of a big deal, that.

Still, I was determined to dig up something else to witter about, before my interview with Mur Lafferty on the Angry Robot podcast went live.  My first proper talking interview!  I was actually dreading this one about as much as I was looking forward to it, if not a little more; I had vague memories of umming and arring a lot and talking way too much about Endangered Weapon B and then going off on a mad tangent where I basically declared the bricks-and-mortar publishing industry dead.  And, hey, all of those things are exactly what I did.  But it's all worth it for the sheer existential oddness of listening to myself talking like some proper author type and sounding like I have a vague idea of what I'm on about.  Ah, the reality-bending effects of podcasting!

Speaking of which, I got a lovely e-mail midweek from Lisa at Brilliance Audio to say how enthusiastic she and Brit actor James Langton are about recording Giant Thief, and to check over the pronunciations of all those wacky Spanglish character and place names.  As a result, I'm even more excited about the audiobook edition than I already was, and I was pretty damn excited about it to begin with.  The only problem is that given how little time I have, I'm going to have to contrive some really, really long journey that I can listen to it in when it comes out in April.  Maybe it's time for that hotair balloon journey to Tibet I keep putting off and putting off?

In other news, the last of my initial splurge of guest blog posts are up.  At Tor.com, I talk about Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, unreliable narration and how they relate to Giant Thief - you'd think that one would be a really short post but somehow it isn't! - and at My Favourite Books, I sort of explain what was going through my head when I was coming up with Damasco, a little of why he's such an irrepresable ratbag, and how it's not really my fault, honest.

Last up we have a couple more Giant Thief reviews ... and in a slight break from tradition, no one really hated it this time around.  Okay, Luke at Seeking the New Earth didn't much enjoy the bits that weren't focused on Damasco and felt that "Easie is such a nuanced character that everyone else simply pales in comparison" ... but since Damasco rarely butts of the story, that's still seems like a thumbs up to me.  Elsewhere, My Awful Reviews fail to live up to their site name (for shame!) with a snappy, cogent review that begins, "Giant Thief was a fun roller coaster. I dug into it, thought it was predictable, and then the author hit me with something unexpected. I read on. The story felt predictable again, and whack!, another unexpected turn. Clever, ain't he?"  Perhaps confusing cleverness with being crap at planning there, but hey, I'll take a compliment wherever I can get it.  Lastly, Liz at My Favourite Books (again) opens with the brilliant assertion that, "I had such fun reading Giant Thief. It is the equivalent of a Sunday Matinee movie, it's a popcorn book, the kind of fantasy you give a friend who has never read fantasy and wants to give it a try", goes on to describe GT as "cinematic and cool" and concludes that "Tallerman gives us a fun, fast debut where old fantasy tropes are dusted off and given a newer sheen for a new audience" ... which is sort of exactly what I'd have had in mind if I'd really thought things through that much.


Oh ... since this is a Tales of Damasco update rather than just a Giant Thief update, it's probably worth mentioning that Crown Thief went off to Angry Robot and Zeno yesterday.  And I'm about half way through the chapter plan of Prince Thief, with a week or so to go before the real legwork begins.  Yeah ... bring it on, Prince Thief.

2011: Survived!

On a personal level, 2011 was a tough year.  It started badly, then got worse, and then got much worse, and after that it was pretty much down hill all the way.  It was as late as September when the old adage that things can't go wrong forever finally started to kick in - and even that didn't stop the back of the year being a constant fight against a slide back into disaster.

Funny thing is, though, none of that is likely to be what I'll remember 2011 for five years from now.  Which, in the end, is possibly the strangest thing about a strange, strange year.  As much as the larger part of it felt like a battle against crisis after crisis, I got to its end in a pretty good place.  I have my first house.  I have a new job.  Giant Thief comes out in less than a month now, and it's clocking up the kind of reviews I'd never have dared dream of.

Another funny thing. While everything else crumbled, my writing career seemed more or less immune to the crazy stomping through the rest of my life.  More than that - it flourished.  And, maybe apart from the house thing, I suspect that's what I'll remember 2011 for: the nose-dive from hard-working amateur scribe to slightly shell-shocked professional.  I mean, I know it's true.  The SFWA say so.

So here, for the record, are the main reasons I'll be thinking of 2011 fondly in five years time when about eighty-seven percent of it was downright horrible at the time:

• I guess we have to start with the book deal, right?  The offer of a two book deal with Angry Robot that got me an agent, who got that offer upgraded to a three book deal?  Whichever way you look at it, that's pretty much the biggie for the year.  Now here we are and Giant Thief is about to come out, Crown Thief is nearly finished, and Prince Thief is kicking like a feisty foetus at my brain.  It's been a long twelve months, and I still can't quite believe all this has happened in it.

• For sheer buzz though, the highlight of the year has to have been being part of the team behind Match, the short film that picked up a whole host of awards in the 2 Days Later short film contest - not least, Best Screenplay, the certificate for which is currently suspended behind my head.  And Match isn't the only screenplay I had a hand in over the last twelve months, either.  My fingers, toes and a couple of internal parts that really aren't supposed to work that way are all crossed in that hope that 2012 will bring blogable news on the other two.

• Nothing I've done has taken quite so long to get off the ground as my comic script Endangered Weapon B.  But all the delays turned out to be worth when the brilliant Bob Molesworth made it real and eye-smackingly lovingly and - crucially - signed on for more.  Endangered Weapon is my love-child, and I'd arm-wrestle Ghandi to see it in comic shops.  In the meantime, there's Endangered Weapon #0, available utterly for free.  Ten thousand hits already, and still counting...

• Things even went pretty well on the short story front.  I had my first and second commissions, for the Dark Tales of Lost Civilisations and Slices of Flesh anthologies respectively, both out soon from Dark Moon Books.  I had my first best-of and my first year-end anthology appearances, my best year yet for sales, and stories out in the likes of Bull Spec, Digital Science Fiction, Abyss and Apex, Redstone Science Fiction and Electric Velocipede.

• Lastly, I got my first proper taste of the convention scene.  I had a glimpse of Eastercon, and made it to (and through) what's been roundly proclaimed as the finest Fantasycon ever.  There and elsewhere, I'm made new writing friends and acquaintances too numerous to mention - hopefully they know who they are!  While it's a shame to single anyone out, no list of 2011 highlights would be complete without a mention of the hour spent drinking free wine with Mike Carey whilst anatomising his comics career in painstaking detail.  Happy times!  (And not just for the free wine.)

So there we are.  For what was unquestionably a bad year, 2011 was ... y'know ... a pretty good year, all told.