Bolts of Silk

Today I had word from Juliet Wilson, the editor of Bolts of Silk that they are going to publish one of my poems. The poem is entitled ', i.e. a single quotation mark. Which title kind of makes sense when you read the poem. It's supposed to be a large, curvy quotation mark but getting it to appear like that isn't always straightforward ...

The poem will be appearing in a month or two. I haven't had any poetry published for a while; I suppose I've been firmly in prose mode. So, great news. I'll post an update when the poem appears.

Musem Beetles Latest

Had word from Wendy S. Delmater, editor of Abyss & Apex, that The Best of Abyss & Apex, Volume 1, in which Museum Beetles is reproduced, will be released on April 22nd by Hadley Rille Books. They also have a contest to win a rare and precious Advance Reader Copy of the book - details here, on Wendy's Blog.

A, C, T and G and Serendipity

Today I finished editing and redrafting A, C, T and G (or A, T, C and G as I used to call it, confusingly enough). In the end it simmered down to a nice 7,500 words of science-fictiony goodness and is ready to be released into the wild. I have high hopes of it but we'll see how it does ...

Meanwhile, The Wind Singing in the Wires has been published by Serendipity magazine. You can read the story here. The shame of it is that Serendipity is closing down - I swear it was nothing to do with me appearing there twice in the last few months. It's a sad loss; there are precious few outlets for magic realism out there.

Meanwhile meanwhile I've heard absolutely nothing from YouWriteOn about their "Christmas" offer to publish (on a POD basis) Hedge Witch (along with 4,999 other novels), despite getting the completed manuscript to them in time and in the required format. There's no sign of the status email promised just before Christmas either. I'm very disillusioned with them - they clearly bit off more than they could chew. I could forgive them if their communication was better and they could give me some idea of when my book will be appearing but they're not responding to hails. So, as it is I've pretty much stopped using the site. There's too much mainstream fiction there anyway : too many reviews beginning with a dismissive "This isn't the sort of thing I normally read ..."

We Need a Better Writer's Database

Writer's Database is a submission tracking system I developed for my own use a few years ago. It's basic but works well enough. Essentially, it keeps track of things you have written, publishers/magazines you have come across and then any submissions you have made. So, the sort of things an agent does if you're lucky enough to have one ...

I've found it invaluable for keeping track of what has been submitted where, how many times a piece has been submitted, which magazines I haven't heard back from and so forth. This is all basic stuff if you're going to adopt a professional approach to being a writer. I must have used it thousands of times since I developed it.

It's freely available for download here. And lots and lots of people have done just that over the years.

But the application has its limitations. It doesn't let you sort or categorise things as freely as you might like. It doesn't let you record some fairly essential information about markets, such as whether they accept simultaneous submissions or what they pay. It doesn't remind you when something is overdue. There is plenty of scope for creating a much, much better system. One day, I can see it even downloading market information from a central internet database rather than each user having to type it in. Maybe it could even have some sort of shared comment/rating system for magazines. Certainly it could collate useful data about response times etc. and make that information public.

But a lot of that is down the line. For now, I want to spend some time on the first version of a new Writer's Databse. Not sure what it will be called yet but something snazzier than "Writer's Database". The first version won't be too far removed from the existing system but it will have much greater scope for enhancement and improvement.

Development will probably be quite slow - the writing has to come first - but I'll post here about progress as and when I make any. In time, I think it could become an absolutely invaluable tool for writers everywhere ...

Book Review: Hyperion by Dan Simmons

I found this book both engrossing and frustrating. It is certainly ambitious and certainly interesting, dealing as it does with the role of religion and the religious impulse within a high-tech culture. Events revolve the Shrike, an alien killing machine that is worshipped by some as divine. The universe within which the story of the Shrike unfolds is compelling : the Ousters, the Technocore, FORCE, the Templars etc. are all very well done and believable. The book won the Hugo and Locus awards and the ambition of the story and the detail of the universe were doubtless a large part of this.

Similarly the cast of characters Simmons uses is impressive. We essentially get a different angle on the Shrike's story from a succession of protagonists. The novel is, in fact, a series of novellas as these characters, together on a last pilgrimage to the Shrike, recount their life stories. So, a sort of Canterbury Tales in space, with a lot of Keats thrown in for good measure. But here is the first frustration. There is very little to link the main characters together. Very few pages are devoted to them interacting so that by the end of the book you kind of stop caring about the characters who told their story earlier on. Now, each individual story is wonderfully well done. Apart from the greater mystery surrounding the nature of the Shrike, each could almost be read as a self-contained and highly satisfying story. But as a structure for a novel it clearly has its issues. A shame there wasn't, for example, more cross-over between the individual tales.

But you forgive all this as events move towards the final show-down with the Shrike. And here is the main frustration with the book. There is no final show-down. Events stop just before the pilgrims get there. They say books often make the mistake of starting too early and/or rambling on for too long after the denouement. This isn't a criticism that could be made of Hyperion. It just stops. A bit of research reveals that there is at least one other book in the series - if series it is - that presumably explains just what has been going on throughout Hyperion. But getting to the end of what I thought was a self-contained book only to find that it isn't self-contained is hugely irritating. Perhaps it is just a failure of the packaging in the edition I own. But for me the (lack of) ending spoiled the whole experience.

Special mention has to go to the house owned at one point by Martin Silenus, the poet pilgrim. It is a series of rooms, each on a different world but joined together by your standard SF hypserspace gates so that you can walk from room to room as you would in a normal house. A wonderful and beautiful idea. And a reminder of why I love SF.

Hyperion

A Nice Review of Museum Beetles

I came across this review of Museum Beetles today :

“Museum Beetles” by Simon Kewin has an unusual narrative structure, following a succession of museum curators over generations. It appears at first glance to be about the growth of a beetle colony over that time, and their gradual destruction of the museum and its records. But in fact, there is another narrative arc here, and it is leading to the point where the people inside the museum will understand something new about their situation, and see a new possibility for their future. The reader, of course, makes the same discovery, and Kewin judges the reveal to perfection. This is beautifully written, fascinating, and one of the highlights of the book.

Which is nice. The "book" in question is The Best of Abyss & Apex Volume 1, to be published at some point in 2009. I'll post updates when the book appears.