I Hate Bookshops and Libraries

I hate bookshops and libraries ... but I also love them. Does anyone else get that? On the one hand, there are all these wonderful books in there, rows and rows of them, each one an enticing invite into a whole new world. I want to read every single one of them. There and then.

On the other hand, there are all these published books in there - all of them so witty, enthralling, fascinating and moving. Such clever ideas. Such pretty covers. And the killer is, mine isn't - yet - one of them. Sometimes, each published book sitting there so smugly is like an arrow to the heart ...

Do you ever open books at random, read a section and think, ooh that's beautifully done : vivid, engrossing, way better than anything I've written? I do that all the time and always wish I hadn't. Sometimes a simple trip to a bookshop is just torture. A torture that, thankfully, buying/borrowing a good book or two generally assuages.

But, bookshops and libraries? Hate them. Can't keep away from them either.

While we're on the subject, it's pretty clear that there are more books out there than any of us could ever read in our lifetimes. Unless they hurry up and sort out immortality soon (come on scientists, now would be a good time). But I can never decide if this is a happy thought or a sad one. What do you think? On the one hand, I'll never run out of books to read. On the other hand, I just know I'll die with that pile of unread books sitting next to my bed ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (29/100)

... blink ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

I'm Being Interviewed!

Karen over on the Coming Down The Mountain blog is publishing an interview with me today about my adventures with ePublishing, the Kindle etc. Karen's is one of the blogs I follow closely and is always a great read. Highly recommended. But then, if you've come over from Karen's blog, you already know that! Many, many thanks to her for asking me.

While we're on the subject of eReaders I thought you might be interested in this. It's a promotional video for Microsoft's Courier device that I came across recently. I was pretty taken with it. Technical details of the device aren't clear yet and the video itself is a bit cutesy. It doesn't even demonstrate the Courier being used as an eBook, more as an interactive journal. Still, it's worth taking a look.



What struck me was that I really liked the idea of having the two screens, like a conventional book. It feels much more immersive, much more like you could lose yourself within its "pages". By comparison, the single-screen arrangement of the Kindle etc. seems suddenly rather clinical and cold.

It seems to me this is definitely a device/concept to keep an eye on. Is this the future?

The Joy of Text

I had a great day writing today. I got down another 2000 words or so of my current WIP, and it was an effortless process. One of those days when I just couldn't type fast enough. It isn't always like this, of course. Some days each sentence, each word even, requires thought and effort. But sometimes the whole thing just flows. I barely felt like I was even there, as if I wasn't even doing anything. I mean someone was doing the writing but it didn't feel like it was me. My conscious mind sat in the back seat, doing nothing, maybe chipping in occasionally to spot a spelling mistake or a grammatical screw-up.

It's glorious when it goes like that is it not? You can "work" for hours and it feels like only a few minutes have gone by. You hate to stop. Of course, you need to make the most of it because tomorrow it will be a slog again.

But when it's like this I suppose I can understand how people end up believing they are channeling some other soul, or why artists talk about having a muse that is breathing inspiration into them. Those are just metaphors as far as I'm concerned. Clearly my subconscious mind has been beavering away sorting things out and, when the time came to get it all down, it just splurged out everything it had already come up with. But it still feels pretty miraculous. The human mind is a wonderful thing.

Flash Fiction : Light Years (28/100)

... suns ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

The Story of a Story

Stories, as we know, have to have an arc. Or, if not an arc, some similar shape. They even teach this in primary school these days, which I think is fantastic. But still, it's the basic tenet of storytelling that there needs to be a progression, a movement, a transformation. I was struck, recently, that the process of writing a story is the same. There is an arc to what the writer goes through as well as to the story that results. A story to the story. A story which, in fact, is pretty much a love story ...

For me it goes something like this. First there is the thrill, the rush of a new idea. It's often unexpected and can strike at any time. Often inconveniently. But it's generally a glorious experience, love at first sight. It's like peering through a tiny crack in a wall and glimpsing a whole new, sparkling room through there. For a time, you find it hard to think about much else. You're fascinated by its shape, its quirks, the things it says to you.

Once the initial rush is over, reality starts to set in. You start drafting and redrafting and discover the story's flaws and irritations. You hit some stumbling blocks that may or may not be insurmountable. There are still moments of wonder and discovery, but you may also fall out of love with the idea before seeing it through to the end. It may turn out to be just be a brief infatuation or it may grow into a grand love that requires novels to be written. Or it may be a brief dalliance : a short story you write when you're supposed to be working on something else.

If the passion is for real there is a certain amount of hum-drum, day-to-day mundanity to come to terms with. There's a need for commitment. You have to work at writing and rewriting and, occasionally, remind yourself why you loved the idea so much in the first place. And if you stick with it, you probably end up with something rather different from your original vision. Reality and dreams never quite coincide. Still, it will probably be better, deeper, more resonant than originally intended.

It can be quite a ride and sometimes you wonder if it's worth it. But when things work out it's wonderful. You emerge from the whole process changed, more experienced and hopefully content. Like the protagonist of the story itself, you, the writer, have learned things, undergone a transformation. I don't think you could ever write the same story twice. Having written it once you'd inevitably do it differently a second time around.

Once the story is complete you just have to hope that others - readers - will see in it what you saw. Or see something that works for them anyway. But, of course, whether they do is a whole different story ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (27/100)

... New ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Read an E-book Week

This week - March 7th -13th - is "Read an E-Book Week" at Smashwords, the foremost ebook publishing site. As regular readers will be aware, I've been exploring the strange, new world of ereaders recently by publishing an SF short story/novelette on the Kindle platform (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). But, of course, there's a lot more to ereaders than just the Kindle. The near-ubiquitous iPhone/iPad, for example, may well become the de facto standard for electronic book reading. For all I know. Smashwords provide one way to make your fiction available to iPhone users, as well as to users of a whole host of other devices. I'll post about what's involved in using their service soon.

But, for now, you might be interested in trying out an ebook. As part of the promotion, authors are offering their stories at a reduced rate, or even for free. So The Armageddon Machine, the SF story I've epublished (gods how I hate that e- prefix), is free to download and read via Smashwords for the read an ebook week. If you fancy giving it a go, you can download it here. Or you can just read it online, via your browser. You just need to enter the RFREE code at the checkout to get the story for free. If you do have a go, I'd love to know what your experiences are and how you feel about ereading generally - I'm mainly doing this just to find out how well the whole ething works.

Also feel free to comment on or review the actual story - either at Smashwords or over on Amazon if the Kindle is your thing ...





An SF novelette in the Golden Age tradition.

The last, battered remnant of the feared Draconian starfleet limps through space, shadowed by ships of the victorious Million Star worlds. But the Draconian ship is still a terrible threat : it is the Draconian's final weapon, a device that can trigger the cascading collapse of space/time itself.

Mackenzie, in charge of the Million Star fleet, fears what will happen if he attempts to destroy the device. Then, one of the semi-mythical Xin ancients arrives on his ship, suggesting a plan that appears to endanger all of reality. In the final battle with the Draconians, Mackenzie must decide whether to trust the Xin or not. The fate of the universe itself hangs on his actions ...



A beautiful story of trust and hope in dark times ... a masterful, compelling work, with deep themes underlying it that brush against life, eternity, and the meaning of existence.

- Keesa Renee DuPres, Tangent

Flash Fiction : Light Years (26/100)

... universe. ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Book Review : Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Pratchett's most recent book sees him returning to familiar territory. This time the citizens of Ankh-Morpork become convulsed with football fever (that's football as in soccer). The set up is that the wizards of Unseen University discover they have to play a match against Ankh-Morpork United. Ridcully, The Patrician, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind etc. are all present and correct.

Shoehorned into this story is another retelling of one of Pratchett's favourite themes : that of monsters being, you know, not really monstrous. In the past we've had vampires and trolls and Death. This time it's - well I won't say. Think of a fantasy creature he hasn't used in the role and you might well hit upon it. Am I the only one who's a little tired of the fashion for just-misunderstood-nice-guy-really monsters? Can't we have some baddies that are actually dangerous for once?

Because there's a frustration in much of Pratchett's writing it seems to me : a reluctance to follow-through with ominous promises. Here, as always, there are characters who, we are told, are capable of dreadful things. Dreadful! But they just never seem genuinely alarming as Pratchett always bails out and refuses to allow them to really scare. He goes for the laughs instead. Which is fine, but the books thus remain slightly childish.

If this all sounds rather negative, then I should also say I enjoyed Unseen Academicals greatly. I love Pratchett. I believe I'm correct in saying I've read every book he's ever published. His wit sparkles as brightly as ever here. I'm not convinced you really read Pratchett for the plots and structures. You read them, a lot of the time, for the sentences : the observations, the asides. the puns. Here, there's a lot of amusing stuff on celebrity culture and the gentrification of football, for example.

So, a satisfying and amusing book. Pratchett's powers remain undimmed. Recommended.

Unseen Academicals