Well, that was interesting. Having fumed righteously against piracy in all its forms, I was contacted by a real live pirate (arrrr!) who put his side of the story. And I’m such a bleeding heart liberal, I not only took the time and trouble to read what he had to say, but also think seriously about the points he made.

And surprisingly (to me, at least) I am partly convinced: it’s certainly more nuanced than I allowed for. So I’ll try and go through some of the issues raised again, but this time with my special They Live glasses on. And yes, I do have plenty of gum.

Do I own the copyright to my work?   Yes. Yes I do. And yes, my ability to charge for my art depends on me being able to assert that right. As the original creator of a piece of fiction, I can choose to do one of several things with it: I can give it away for free (under a Creative Commons licence) like I have done with Thy Kingdom Come, for example. This way, the work can be distributed freely without alteration, but also without allowing anyone else to attach their name to that work. I’m happy to do that with older pieces of work – and one of the things I have to think about next is whether I do the same thing with Heart. I can also release excerpts of my work as ‘tasters’ (or advertising, if you like). If you like what you’ve read so far, you can then continue to read when you purchase a copy.

Do I need paying for my work?   Again, need is relative. Which is something I’ll touch on later. But for the moment, I live in a scarcity-driven capitalist economy. The future is not going to come and save me, supplying me and my family with fabbers and a Mr Fusion for all my energy needs. Likewise, I cannot eat a good reputation. One day I will. I have worked in a Gift Economy before, when I was a research scientist at a university. I provided not just my employers (the Natural Environment Research Council) with original research, but the whole world. In return, I was given enough money to live on: for the length of my contract, it didn’t matter if I produced one paper in a peer-reviewed journal, or half a dozen, but whether my contract was renewed at the end of it did depend on the quality of what I’d done already, that is to say, my reputation. I believe this is also a workable model for artists. But we’re not there yet.

Do publishers actually do anything? Or, why is your royalty rate so low?   Publishers do lots. Editors improve a manuscript, sometimes immeasurably so. Copy editors, likewise. I’ve had my arse saved by good copy editors too many times to either dismiss the work they do or to think they’re not worth paying. They, like me, have to eat. Then there is the layout, the cover art (hi, Lauren!), the publicity, the mailing room even. All of that happens so that you know the book exists, and that it’s of a minimum standard of quality. Someone other than the author has read it. It makes some sort of sense. It’s written in a language as it’s meant to be written. The publisher has put their reputation behind it. And that’s part of the immutable cost of books. I’ve said nothing at all about printing, which is almost, but not quite, pennies in the pound. The way a publisher recoups these up-front costs (they haven’t made a single dime until the book sells), which includes the author’s advance, is by charging for the product. I know there’s a lot of kvetching about the cost of ebooks, but the cost of a professionally edited and designed ebook isn’t much different from the same book in dead tree form.

Isn’t this publishing model broken?   Probably. Guy Haley also entered the fray a couple of days ago, and has had a lively time of it. In his follow-up post, he makes the entirely cogent point:

When they first started, Penguin paperbacks were cheaply priced, mass produced, but not, and this was the point, not pulp. They were good books, keenly priced, and I think that industry-published ebooks need to go the same way, and soon. I have no control over the pricing of either print or electronic versions, but it seems entirely possible that there would be more profit, not less, on an ebook as a whole if it was substantially cheaper. But not free. Not free. See above regards to quality.

Piracy does not equal lost sales.   This is where things start to get fuzzy. I would agree that not every pirated copy of my book is a lost sale. Some most certainly are, but not 100%. We’re arguing about proportions here – what ratio of pirated copies would have turned into sales, all things being equal? It’s a fruitless question, because there’s no definitive answer. We’ll stick with the ‘some’ value. But anecdotally, it can be significant. Lucia Etxebarria found that value too great, and has vowed her next book may well be never.

“Literature is not a profit-making job, but a passion,” said Kelly Sánchez, one of the least vitriolic critics. “If you had a real vocation then you wouldn’t stop writing.”

You could argue, that having won a couple of really very well paid literary prizes, Ms Etxebarria doesn’t need any more cash. But what Sanchez is saying is “work for free”. Not many employees would work a second month if at the end of the first month, their boss told them that their job should be a passion, and they didn’t need paying. And Etxebarria’s book in question wasn’t published as an ebook – it was scanned and pdf’d. See above, regarding the publishing model. But again, if every book was 100% pirated, only a very few writers would pay for their words to be professionally edited. Only a very few independently-wealthy writers would write full-time. The quantity of quality books would not only decrease (and dramatically so), but the demographic of writers would change (and dramatically so). Neither is healthy. An individual download is a drop, but mass piracy is a flood. Writers can probably afford an umbrella, but that’s not going to be much use when the twenty-foot wave tears up the whole town.

I cannot afford your book.   Here the rubber hits the road. I spent most of my teens with my head buried in a book. I often read late into the night because I couldn’t put the book in question down. And to a very great extent, I hadn’t bought those books at the bookstore. They were either library copies, or second-hand (those, I still have most of them), gleaned for tens of pennies from jumble sales and second-hand book shops. Quite literally, I could not afford to buy all the books I read. I couldn’t afford to buy so much as a tenth of them. My pirate contact – I shall call him The Captain – says this (and English is not his first language, but I’ll quote verbatim):

To me reading is like breathing. I suffocate without books, information etc. … And since the book trip is really some 4-6 hours depending on number of pages .. well I have to breathe books the other 29 days

The Captain can’t afford to buy all the books he needs. Not wants. Needs. He lives in a place which, without giving too much away, was recently a war zone, and civil society struggles to provide health care, let alone an abundance of second-hand books. Now, I grew up in rural Berkshire in the seventies and eighties, but I recognise myself in him. Far too much. “I have to breathe,” he says. Ouch. The stricter reader of this may well say, “Of course he should pay. I had to. It’s still stealing.” So it is, but, but… I’ll have to think about what to do about this. It would be brilliant if I could give away electronic versions of my books to those people who genuinely couldn’t afford them, or at least heavily discount them, while asking those who could to pay more, or even full price. But I can’t. There’s no mechanism to do so. If anyone’s got any bright ideas, please do comment, or email me on the Contact page.

Is there a solution?   Probably. I’ll let you know when I work it out.

I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, people who download music, films, books and audio that they would have ordinarily had to buy in order to listen to/see/read are stealing copyrighted material from their copyright holders. Downloaders make it increasingly difficult for artists to firstly, earn anything from their work, and secondly, make a living from their work so they can give up the day job and concentrate solely on their art.

In the case of the Metrozone books, they were pirated within a couple of days of being released as ebooks. Orbit (and their parent companies LittleBrown and Hachette) try and get those copies removed from file-sharing sites as soon as they can: they do so because the person uploading those files has no right to make them publicly available without the copyright holder’s consent.

And that copyright holder is not Orbit, or some faceless megacorp. It’s me. I’m the creator of the work, and it’s my copyright. By torrenting my work, you’re denying me income which I could put to good use – like repairing my roof and walls, which badly need doing, or saving for my children’s education.

Furthermore, because I’m losing digital sales, the next time I sell a book to Orbit, my advance goes down. Lost sales for the publisher results directly in lower advances for authors. Which means that fewer authors will be able to support themselves, and perhaps their families, with their work – and the vast majority of writers make peanuts as it is. With long, long hours and little pay, they’ll have to do something else instead of dedicating the time and effort into producing good prose.

And unlike musicians, authors don’t have an alternative income stream. Why have the cost of live concerts gone up in the last few years? Blame the downloaders. The live experience is the one thing you can’t stream. It always used to be that a band would tour to promote the album. Now the albums promote the tour, because there are decreasing returns from the physical and digital recordings. Sure, you can go and hear an author speak, but aside from Neil Gaiman (who I understand charges an outrageous fee simply to dissuade folk from booking him: he’d rather be writing), I can’t think of many writers who the general public would pay to go and look at. I’m no oil painting, and Toby Leonard Moore (who reads the audio versions of the Metrozone) is simply better at speaking my lines than I am.

I don’t get much from each sale. But I do get something. Other people get somethings too. The cover artist. The editor. The copy editor (and they’re worth their weight in gold). The publicists. The lawyers who draw up the contracts. The distributors and the booksellers. My agent (who is also worth his weight in gold). I don’t have a problem with that, and neither should you.

There is, of course, very little I can do about any of this, except two things. And you can do them too. Firstly, don’t pirate copyrighted art. If you like an artist’s work, you’ll want to support the artist so they can produce more of it. So do your best to pay for it. I’ve no problem with you buying second-hand books, and I’ve no problem with you going to the library (all my books are registered with the UK’s PLR scheme). The more you support artists, the more art there’ll be.

Secondly, don’t approve of piracy. It might seem just a bit, well, dad-like (guilty as charged) to withhold your approval. But if your friends torrent and download like bandwidth was going out of fashion, that doesn’t mean you have to. It’s not a victimless crime, and it does hurt people – the very people who produce the fantastic music, brilliant film or riveting book you’ve just enjoyed. Hurting people, ripping them off, that’s just not cool, especially when they’re in no position to stop you. It would be lovely if pirating art became socially unacceptable, and those that did it, frowned on and ostracised.

On the other side of the coin, do I want kids to go to prison for five years because they’ve downloaded a copy of Equations of Life? No, I don’t. As someone pointed out, someone torrenting a Michael Jackson song could end up with a longer gaol sentence than the doctor who killed him. Neither do I want websites that promote legitimate content taken down for a single rogue link.

SOPA is sledgehammer to crack a nut. It’s virtually unworkable, and the effort to make it workable is so great and the disruption it would cause so widespread that it’s completely counterproductive. The internet would become unusable within days.

There does need to be something though, that protects artists in the digital age. Real, physical art is difficult and time-consuming to reproduce. Digital art can be copied millions of times, perfectly, and distributed at the click of a mouse: the old copyright laws can’t cope with this new reality. So the solution may mean that sites like megaupload.com get taken down and their owners sued: claiming ignorance when the majority of traffic consists of copyrighted work seems more than a little silly. Whatever the final answer is (and there probably won’t be one), copyright holders need a quick and easy way to not only remove illegal content when it goes up, but prevent it from going up in the first place.

The bottom line is that copyright is how artists make money. Without any way of asserting it, we’re in trouble. You can, however, be part of the solution. Which is a positive note to end on.

Creativity is part of us, and part of us all whether we are specifically Christian, generally spiritual, or completely materialistic. Story-telling (the bit I’m most concerned with), like music or representative art, transcends both time and geography – people tell each other stories, make music together and daub pigments on things throughout history and across wildly different cultures.

The question arises, does spirituality feed creativity? The answer is sublimely simple – yes, of course it does, but then so does pretty much everything else. Certainly, a great deal of creativity can be expressed within a formal religious context (providing that isn’t taboo), and a society’s religion provides a context for creativity.

A further question, though, is whether spirituality can inspire sublime works of art in an individual who otherwise would be mediocre? This is a much trickier claim to pin down: if you pick some of history’s greatest artists, it’s often individual genius and a large sack of cash that’s the potent combination, rather than anything else more numinous. Despite the popular image, there’s nothing more likely to depress creativity than starving in a garret or being so dog-tired from the day job that all feelings of creativity are sapped. Patrons are critically important to the production of great art – and it’s often the patron who decides on the subject matter. You could even argue that it’s the spirituality of the patron that’s important here.

I’m lucky in this respect. My wife earned enough that when we were divvying up child-care duties, it made much more sense for her to keep going to work and for me to stay at home. When the kids got older and were at school during the day, it meant I had time to write – in the warm, with a full belly. And even luckier, no one tells me what I have to write except the publishers, and even they realise they don’t have me over the same barrel that a lot of authors find themselves bent over: I don’t rely on them for a roof over my head.

So I’m sorry to be so prosaic, but those are often the realities.

Which was pretty much an off-the-cuff response, but does include Morden’s 3rd Law of Writing “Marry someone rich”, so clearly I’ve been thinking along those lines before. I’m just wondering if part of the new publishing model that’s always just around the corner might include, how shall we term them, stipends for writers, rather than an advance?

The Metrozone series – all three books, no less – have been nominated for this year’s Philip K Dick award. I am properly stunned. Dick is one of the authors I not only enjoy, but admire: big concept stuff, played out at the personal level.

Congratulations to all the nominees – I’ll be dining out on this for a while!

Frank's rabbit

2011 has been an extraordinary year – I’ve sold some books, I’ve got some more lined up, people have (mostly) liked what I’ve done so far. 2012 looks as if it’s going be be really hard work – Ignite is rich seam to mine but oy, that seam runs deep – but I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s probably going to be hard work for you, too. There’s an awful lot of things in the world that could really do with fixing, so if you don’t already, can I suggest you volunteer some of your time, doing something you feel passionate about, in your local community? The world starts just outside our front doors.

Here’s to you, and the difference you make. Happy New Year.

Just a quick note to those lucky, lucky people who found one or more Metrozone books all carefully wrapped up in shiny paper and bows this Christmas. Once you’ve got over the eye-searing covers and read the expertly-written blurb on the back covers, you’ll be ready to start heading down the mean streets of post-Apocalypse London.

Two things to say at this stage:

Firstly, enjoy. Whilst the Metrozone is serious business (or srs bsns, as the kids say), the books are meant to be fun. If you find yourself snorting inappropriately as something terrible happens, don’t worry. You’re in good company.

Secondly, the Russian. None of it is translated. Just go with it – get the sense of it by reading it (it’s mostly phonetic), and if you’re desperate to find out what Petrovitch says, feel free to look it up on the internet. It is mostly absolute filth, though, as the guttersnipe was dragged up on the streets and paint-peeling insults are simply stock-in-trade for the man.

Other than that, welcome. Have a look around here for extra content, and if you’ve got any questions, don’t be afraid to ask!

Also mentioned in the December Orbit newsletter was the little matter of me writing a fantasy. While this is entirely true, it is not completely true. Ignite (for that is what the book is called) is not just a fantasy, it is more than a fantasy: have some blurb from the synopsis…

Rome was the centre of the largest, most powerful empire the world had ever seen, but that didn’t stop it falling to Alaric the Goth, his horde of skilled barbarian tribesmen and their wild spell-casting shamen. Having split the walls with their sorcery and slaughtered the inhabitants with their axes, the victors carved up the empire into a series of bickering states which were never more than an insult away from war.

 A thousand years later, and Europe has become an almost civilised place. The rulers of the old Roman palatinates confine their warfare to the short summer months, trade flourishes along the rivers and roads, aided by merchants using magic-powered barges and self-propelling wagons, and farming has – at least for the lucky few – become less back-breaking with millstones that turn themselves and ploughs that pull their own way through the soil.

 Even the barbarians’ pantheon of gods has been tamed: where once human sacrifices poured their blood onto the ground, there are parties and picnics, drinking and singing, fit for decent people and their children.

 But it looks like the gods are going to have the last laugh before they slip quietly into ill-remembered obscurity…

 Of all the old palatinates, alpine Carinthia is the most at ease: the richest, poised between north and south, east and west; the most peaceful, having not fought a single battle for over a century; the most magical, being the home of the highest, purest expression of European sorcery – the Order of the White Robe and the feared hexmasters, whose legendary powers brought down Rome and stopped the Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde in their tracks by turning the field of battle into a glittering lake of lava.

 The Prince of Carinthia shelters the Order, and gives them half the palatinate’s revenue. In return, the hexmasters guarantee that any aggressor, no matter how large their army or how many magicians they bring, end up as no more than a memory for the next generation to ponder. It’s been a very long time since someone tried.

 Magic is Carinthia’s wealth, its protection and its way of life. So what does a magic kingdom do when it runs out of magic?

What indeed. And in case you think I’ve gone all hey-nonny-nonny and foresooth on you, I managed to revolt myself with something I wrote towards the end of the the first section. It’s also destined to be a bit of a beast: I’m over 90,000 words in, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve no doubt that some of those words will fall out in the editing, but currently I’m looking at somewhere close to 200,000 words, if not more. Gadzooks, as they say (actually, they don’t. These people are descended from Goths, and they tend to call it as they see it).

I’m hoping to get parts I and II out of the way by sometime in January, and see how the land lies after that. This and subsequent posts will be tagged with Ignite to keep you up to date with everything.

Which is Metrozone 4: The Curve of the Earth, will be published by Orbit, most likely in 2013.

It’ll feature your favourite sweary Russian genius, Dr Samuil Petrovitch, doing some monumentally stupid/heroic feats, kicking some seriously weapons-grade butt, and ratcheting up the global tension-meter to breaking point. You’re going to need guns. Lots of guns.

This is a probably ill-advised attempt to sum up my thoughts regarding the most recent British Fantasy Society awards. If you’ve never heard of the society, or the awards, that’s fine – it is very much a minority sport. If you don’t want to read anything about the internal politicking of a small organisation focussing on the fantasy and horror genre in print and other media… then that’s fine too.

Firstly though, I have to declare some interests – the chief of which is that my novella Another War was published by Telos, and that I know Dave Howe well enough to consider him a friend. I’ve been going to FantasyCon (that’s the society’s annual convention) for the better part of a decade, without ever being a member of the society. I’m acquainted with most of the principle parties involved.

So, time for some background. The BFS awards are nominated by members, voted on by members to to form a short-list, and voted on again to decide a winner from that short-list (I think that’s right). This is the way it’s been done since I’ve been going, and the awards have always thrown up some unexpected winners. The voting pool is small (usually a couple of hundred people who vote), so statistically, that’s going to happen, and in some categories, the same person/publishing house wins every year for a substantial block of time. Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing magnanimously chose to sponsor the Best Small Press award, rather than dominate the field in perpetuity.

The awards (as both a punter, and as someone who was in a winning anthology) have, hand on heart, never been taken that seriously. Yes, it’s nice to see your friends win (cue ribald cheers and drinks in the bar), and sometimes the results leave you scratching your head, but it’s never been something to get too excised over.

Until now.

As far as I can piece together the timeline, it goes something like this. The BFS awards are administered by the Awards Administrator. In January of this year, the sitting administrator has to leave their post for personal reasons. Their replacement also leaves, also for personal reasons, in March. Dave Howe, chair of the BFS, as one of his requirements, picks up the duties of administrator.

The nominations, short-listing and final voting go ahead more or less to plan. There are some entirely valid complaints about notification of the voting deadline arriving, with the society’s publication, after the date has been passed, and moving to electronic voting only. Others have also said that they received email notification of the voting procedures in good time, so it’s difficult to say how this affected matters.

Dave Howe checks the electronically-counted votes, gets the results rechecked by another committee member, and then proceeds to order the awards and get them engraved with the winners’ names. He also organises appropriate people to present the awards at FantasyCon.

Now, in hindsight, this is where the flags should have been raised, because it’s at that moment that Dave discovers that his partner (Sam Stone) has won two awards, and Telos (of which he’s a director) has won Best Small Press, and published two of the other winners. Dave should have handed the whole process over to someone else. Not because he’s done anything wrong – no question of that – but because of how it’s going to look. He (and co-host Sarah Pinborough) would be giving awards not only to himself, but also to his partner and to people he’s published.

Hindsight is, of course, wonderful. It allows all concerned to have a clarity of vision they simply never had while they were in media res. And, in common with many voluntary societies (including the ones I’m involved with), there is a magnificently British tradition of muddling on and letting goodwill and sympathy carry them over the rough patches.

To sum up so far: the rules have been followed, no one’s done anything wrong, the votes cast were all legal, not tampered with or adjusted in anyone’s favour. The awards ceremony is scheduled for the Sunday afternoon of FantasyCon, all the physical awards have arrived with the correct names on and the presenters are… present.

Remember what I said about hindsight, and about how it would look to be presenting awards to yourself? If there was one mistake in all this, that would be it right there. And just so I’m not misunderstood, I think that was the only mistake Dave made. And again for clarity, it’s the sort of mistake that ought to leave you with toe-curling embarrassment and a red face, and something for your mates to poke fun at in good-humoured jest for at least the next few years. And certainly, all concerned would resolve to make bloody sure it doesn’t happen again. He was, in popular parlance, a muppet.

It’s not the resigning, hand-the-award back, shitstorm that subsequently ensued. Dave has offered his resignation to the BFS committee, who have accepted it whilst issuing a statement exonerating him completely. Sam has returned her Best Novel award. A lot of things have been said that cannot be unsaid and some people have burnt their bridges and divided into camps. The Guardian (and now the Express) have covered the situation.

What precipitated this? Stephen Jones blogged this (http://www.stephenjoneseditor.com/article-sj-fantasycon201101.htm). If you haven’t already read it, take the time to do so now. (See update at bottom of post if this comes up 404.)

As I’ve said elsewhere, Steve Jones can be a very polarising character. There’s absolutely no doubt of his passion and commitment to publishing fantasy/horror, but being the gatekeeper to some of the biggest commercial horror anthologies for a very long time brings its own problems. So before this incident, even someone as socially unaware of subtexts as I am was cognisant of two broad poles in the BFS which I will call for shorthand-sake, pro-Jones and anti-Jones.

While there have probably been previous skirmishes of which I am blissfully ignorant, this has certainly crystallised matters. Jones essentially levels two charges at the BFS in general and Dave Howe in particular.

Firstly, that the BFS and FantasyCon members who voted, voted for the wrong people to win the awards: “Perhaps the majority do not read outside the small press anymore? Maybe they no longer have good taste or any critical acumen?”

Secondly, that the voting system was compromised by Dave’s involvement: “there is certainly a strong case for the BFS Chairman to have removed himself from the entire process once it became apparent how many of his own titles and those of his partner were on the initial nomination list. This shows a serious lack of judgement by someone in such an important position.”

However, to that second point, there is more. He accuses Dave of using society funds to further his own, and his partner’s, and his friends, careers. He accuses Dave of a ‘fix’, and a ‘con’. The get-out clause of “Without any proof, I’m not accusing anybody of doing anything underhand” doesn’t negate or lessen the charges.

To the first charge, I shall simply quote the old football chant, “you only sing when you’re winning.” The voting system this year hadn’t substantially changed (caveats above) from one year to the next, including 2010 when The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20, ed. Stephen Jones (Constable & Robinson) won Best Anthology. It’s a common charge to make that a popular vote didn’t choose who you wanted, therefore the electorate had taken leave of its marbles, but if the same system has made you a repeated winner… it’s not a very good argument.

The second charge is where the rubber hits the road. I pretty much agree with the statement quoted. Yes, there was a lack of judgement. In the circumstances, he should have insisted that someone else take over responsibility for the awards, or let them lapse for the year. When you’re juggling a day-job, a busy small press, duties as Chair of a society, and an additional workload due to not all of the committee places being taken? It was, I think, a mistake – see above for notes on goodwill and sympathy.

The additional barbs speak for themselves, and most eloquently. They are, I believe, (amongst other things) just as, if not more unwise than Dave not recusing himself . The BFS has, at least from this outsider’s view point, always been a fan-run, slightly anarchic society which nevertheless manages to throw a decent party. I go because I get to meet my friends and drink and eat and talk with them. I’m not particularly concerned by how ‘professional’ it is, or how many industry people turn up, though I appreciate that some are. I’m just there for the beer and craic, and I like it like that. If the BFS want to change that, then fine – that’s the way the members will take it, but it’s ultimately the members’ decision, and there’ll always be a corner of the bar where the writers congregate and bitch about publishers and reviewers, so I’m reasonably insulated from any decisions. I get to be a filthy pro elsewhere (even if I did hang out an awful lot in the fan bar at Eastercon).

I didn’t get to go to FantasyCon this year – despite the remark “do those people never go on holiday?” to which the answer is yes, but because I work in a school on Mondays and Tuesdays, I have to be awake, sober and ready to teach a class of ten and eleven year olds, and I absolutely cannot be late, which is something I could guarantee I wouldn’t be when the event was in Nottingham – so I missed out on what was by all accounts a classic convention. Steve Jones was part of the organisation, so kudos where it’s due.

But we can’t have everything the way we’d like it. Sometimes is nice, always isn’t good for the soul. Steve Jones can probably take care of himself, but I do feel for Dave, and especially for Sam who deserves absolutely none of the criticisms levelled at her. Being guilty of winning a popular vote isn’t exactly a hanging offence. Neither is being gratuitously nasty on the internet, of course, but Jones’ post is the very opposite of professional. It would go a long way if a fulsome apology were forthcoming.

I have no idea how this will resolve itself. Reconciliation is understandably a million miles away. If there’s one good thing about this is that lots more people are joining the BFS so they can have their democratic say on the future direction of the society. I might well be one of them.

UPDATE 13/10/2011: The Steve Jones link is coming up as a big fat 404. I don’t know when or why it was taken down – for completeness’ sake, I’ve saved the googlecached copy, which if I put a copy up here I’m reasonably certain will breach copyright. But I do have a copy and it should stay on googlecache for a while at least, here.

Greenbelt – was fantastic this year, as it is every year, but differently fantastic. The festival seems to reinvent itself every so often, and as the kids get older and need less looking after (I’m a great believer in benign neglect), the grown-ups get to do different stuff. As it was, I was down to do three sessions this time: a Q and A with my good friend and colleague RS (Ruth) Downie, creator of Roman detective stories, a revisit to the subject of Christian fiction, and a workshop on ‘How not to write a novel’. All three went excellently well. We had a good crowd for the Q and A, I didn’t get burnt at the stake as a heretic after the Christian fiction talk, and the workshop was wildly oversubscribed (but we managed to get everyone in anyway!). The only dark cloud on the horizon was the on-site bookshop not having any Metrozone books at all – it wasn’t personal, as they didn’t have lots of speakers’ books. One I was particularly keen to get was Andrew Philip‘s The Ambulance Box, and have him sign it/them – but for shame, the book ordering had gone seriously awry this year.

Other Greenbelty highlights were the triple-bill on Friday night of Show of Hands, Martyn Joseph, and Billy Bragg. I also got to hear (on Monday), the Unthanks and Mavis Staples, who rocked in every which way possible.

Also of writeringly interest, I managed (due to geographical happenstance) to get to a ‘Book wake’, for Gollancz’s Tom Lloyd, held up in London – got to meet some of the Gollancz crowd, who are lovely, and shout at them over the impossibly-loud music. Thanks to Gillian for inviting me, Simon for letting me come, and all the authors and booksellers I met there.

Then, back to the grindstone. Lots of stuff going on, so there’ll be more news soon!

Where are we now? Sex, death and Christian fiction revisited is here,

and

You’re doing it wrong! How not to write a novel is here.

Published under a Creative Comments licence, so play nicely. Legal boilerplate to follow when I put it on its own page.

You’re doing it wrong: how not to write a novel: a Greenbelt 2011 talk by Simon Morden

Before you write

Don’t read
If you haven’t read enough books by now in order to work out what you’re looking for in a novel – what’s good, what’s bad, what works, what doesn’t – go and do so now.

Don’t know anything about the genre you’re writing
I’m not saying that you need to read the entire canon of science fiction from Mary Shelley to Charlie Stross in order to write SF, or bone up on everything from Mallory to George Martin before writing epic fantasy. But it does help if you firstly, love the genre in which you’re writing, and secondly know enough of the tropes (literary conventions and devices particular to a genre) to be able to use, avoid or subvert them, and thirdly, know enough to be able to avoid clichés. And you want to avoid clichés, right?

Don’t write
You talk endlessly about writing a novel, but you don’t actually sit down and write. Until you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, what you have is the wish to write, not a work in progress.

Chase the last fad
Don’t decide to see what’s “big” in your chosen genre and start writing something similar. Everything that’s being published now was sold at least two years ago when what’s popular now wasn’t popular. By the time (one year, at least) you submit your manuscript, it’ll be ‘so last year’, and publishers and agents will be looking for something else.

Hate what you write
Writing is not going to make you rich and it’s going to take up a lot of time. So write what you’d like to read because life’s too short to spend upwards of a year writing some old guff even you hate.

Write using someone else’s characters
Aka Fan-fic. There’s a thriving fan-fic community writing stories containing their favourite literary characters. The copyright problems with this are simply insurmountable and no one will ever publish a book you’ve written like that. Shared universes, yes, Young Bond etc, yes, but those are jealously guarded and the authors are always contracted and use a “Bible” to guide them.

While you are writing

Give up the day job
The first time I made actual proper money from writing was 2007, by which time I’d been writing for almost two decades. You can do the maths yourself, but starving in a freezing garret isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You don’t write because you want to make a living out of it. You write because you have to. If and when you get paid for it, count yourself very fortunate.

So let’s talk cold, hard cash for a moment. JK Rowling got an advance of £1500 for HP and the Philosopher’s Stone. Do you think she lived on that while she wrote the next book? No. The median advance now for a first novel is around £2-3000. Can you live on that? The median wage in the UK (2007-8) was £18500. The figures speak for themselves.

Don’t write fiction
Write what you know: that’s the maxim. It’s a bit more difficult when you’re writing SF or fantasy, but that’s a different discussion. Remember that you’re writing fiction, not a biography, even an autobiography. But even if you avoid that pitfall, there is a tendency to put in bits of your real life that while they might not be obvious to you, will be to your friends, your family and your work colleagues.

Writing fictionalised accounts of real people is perfectly acceptable, but normally only if they’re very dead. Doing it to your parents, your partner, your siblings, your kids or your boss can, and does, lead to a whole world of pain and regret.

Put in a Mary Sue
A Mary Sue is a literary term for a character who is the author. Actually the author – perhaps stronger, smarter, more attractive, with superpowers, magical abilities, vast wealth and incredible talent – but the author nevertheless. Don’t. It’s not pretty.

Write a novel where everyone is just like you
This is a pet peeve of mine, so apologies for mounting this particular high horse. Not everyone in the world is white, middle class and educated. Which is more or less what I am. The pull to write a book featuring only white, middle class people is huge, but entirely resistible.

My first novel, Heart, had half the story told from the point of view of a German detective. My second, The Lost Art, had three protagonists: a Russian monk, a Berber traveller and a Kenyan scientist. The Metrozone series, despite being set in London, features Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Japanese, Nigerians and Americans. Only two characters are white, only one is a middle class Londoner. It can be done, even by white, middle class englishmen.

Write a novel that doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test
The what? I hear you ask. Alison Bechdel, web comic writer, came up with a rule that concerns women characters. In order to pass the test, your book must meet the following criteria: it includes at least two women, who have at least one conversation, about something other than a man or men.

This is basic stuff. As much as I’d like to think that the world revolves around my gender, it doesn’t. Write women characters who talk to each other about something other than men. That would be brilliant.

Publish the chapters as-you-go on the internet
That’s your first English rights gone, and that’s what publishers will be buying. Don’t.

Don’t finish
A novel has a beginning, a middle and an end. Anything without an end is an unfinished novel, not a novel. Writing is surprisingly hard work – it takes time spent in isolation, it’s time you could be using to invest in relationships, work or other hobbies. It requires a considerable amount of emotional and intellectual energy.

I challenged myself to do NaNoWriMo last year – National Novel Writing Month (November) – where you pledge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. 1667 words a day. It’s difficult. You end up in a waking dream where you’re no longer certain where reality ends and your novel starts. But not as bad as a friend who wrote an 80,000 words tie-in book in six weeks. You’re usually looking to write a book in between six months and a year, working steadily throughout.

Write short
Most publishers will want a novel to be at least 65,000 words long, and the normal range is between 80,000 and 110,000 words. If you come in short, it’s not a novel. There are places which will publish a 40000 word novella – try them instead.

Write long
That said, for a first novel, you really do need to pitch it at the length the publishers want, not what you want. There is slack at the top end – if you’ve written a massive fantasy brick of 250,000 words, you will find a lot fewer places you can send it to unless you can carve it up into three 80,000 word instalments.

Think you’ve finished when you’ve finished
When you’ve written the words “The End” at the bottom of the last page, allow yourself a pat on the back and a fresh cup of tea. Finishing a novel-length manuscript is a considerable achievement, but it’s only the start of it.

You need to edit the manuscript. You need to reread it. You need to make sure that each sentence makes sense to you, that you’ve spelt words correctly and consistently, that you’ve used grammar in a standard English fashion. You need to make notes about what you think you need to change.

After you have finished writing

Don’t show your novel to anyone else
Obviously, if your looking for publication, you’re going to need to show it to someone sooner or later. You really, really, don’t want the first person who reads your manuscript to be the agent you’re trying to get or the editor of the publisher you want a contract with. The reasons are self-evident, but I’ll spell them out. You have one shot. One. Make it count.

If your manuscript is riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or you’ve ripped the entire plot from Twilight/Harry Potter/Tolkien, you don’t want find out from people who are looking for an excuse to turn you down. Simply put, if you’re serious, you need to put your manuscript in as many hands as possible, and then act on the feedback you get. Seriously.

Don’t change anything
It’s finished, it’s perfect. You don’t need to alter a word. Respectfully, I disagree, but my opinion isn’t the important one here. If you want to seek publication, it’s agents and editors you need to impress. And not only do you need to acknowledge that your manuscript requires editing, they need to know that you’re editable. Are you going to argue with every last suggestion they make? Even if you’ve got a novel of startling genius and originality, it’s never going to get published if you’re impossible to work with.

Don’t think the rules apply to you
They do. They really do. Asking an agent or a publisher to consider your work is a job in itself. They will all have subtly different submission criteria that are designed to make their job easier – not yours. You are unimportant. They want the first three chapters and a synopsis with a covering letter, that’s exactly what you need to give them. They want those chapters double-line spaced. Do it. If they have a word limit on those chapters, stick to it. Check if they take email queries before emailing them

They will be getting hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions a week. You make them pay attention to yours not by being wacky and out-there, but by sticking to the rules. And never ever call them.

Really don’t think the rules apply to you
This is worth repeating, because the commonest complaint that agents and publishers have against the submissions that land on their desks is that a high proportion of them are simply wasting their time.

You should, in general, have the following as a bare minimum:

1) a finished manuscript that you wrote yourself from an original idea you had, that you’ve checked scrupulously for spelling and grammar errors, that at least one other competent adult has done the same for, and commented on the quality of the writing, and whether or not the story you’ve told makes any sort of sense.

2) a excerpt containing the first three chapters or up to whatever word limit is mentioned, formatted exactly how the agent or editor wants it – commonly in a 12 point serif font, double spaced, with indented paragraphs. Not three chapters at random, but the first three chapters.

3) A synopsis which tells the story of the story, commonly over one or two sides of A4, detailing the plot arc, the principle characters, their history and motivations, and how they change because of the story, and what sort of reader would be likely to buy your novel.

4) A covering letter, addressing the agent or editor by name, containing who you are, the title of the work you are offering, which genre it’s in, how long it is, and any previous publishing credits. You may also include a small biographical detail, but not always. Make sure you’re sending it to the right person, at the right place, and that they take that sort of work. Then be prepared to wait.

Spend no time at all on your synopsis
I will happily admit that my least favourite writing task is writing a synopsis. It is an art in itself, and it’s one I absolutely suck at. A good synopsis will not be a dry scene by scene description of what happens in your novel, but will be a story about your novel. It’s unlikely that a single word of your novel will make it into the synopsis – instead, get me excited to read the actual thing. It’s your best advert for your novel: if someone reads it and gets enthused by it, they’ll read your sample chapters. Consequently you should sweat blood over this thing, and take every care over it that you took over your novel.

Submit science fiction thrillers to a romance publisher
And yet people still do. They send poetry to prose publishers, kid’s picture books to agents who don’t represent that sort of work. If you’re lucky, they’ll reply. More likely, they’ll just bin it and move on to the next one.

Expect them to get straight back to you
Or even get back to you within three months. Six months is not unheard of, especially if you’ve submitted your manuscript to a publisher’s slush-pile. The volume of submissions is scary-big, and when you send your letter, you’ll end up at the bottom of an already very large pile which will be dealt with in strict time-order.

Often what happens is this: the job of initially sorting through the submissions is given to the most junior member of staff in the office. They’re not paid to read through your manuscript – they’re paid to check whether or not you are firstly, sane, and secondly, can follow the rules. Then and only then will your submission be passed to the second-most junior member of staff, to work out whether or not it’s worth an editor’s time reading what you’ve written.

Expect to sell at the first place you submit to
JK Rowling’s agent submitted the first Harry Potter to twelve different publishers before Bloomsbury took it – but she did have an agent. And some consider it more difficult to get an agent than to get a publisher. You have to be methodical. You need to make a list, order it in anyway you see fit (alphabetically, by likely success, randomly), and work your way through. It might be the last name on your list is the one who takes you on.

If you get a rejection, don’t mope. Send it out the very same day to the next name on your list – after checking what it is they want, exactly. You need to tailor your submissions like you’re applying for different jobs. Which, in effect, you are.

Write one novel
You’ve a novel in hand that you’re happy with. You’ve edited it, shown it to other people, heeded their criticisms and re-edited it. You’ve sent a three-chapters and synopsis to an agent(s) and publisher(s). One of the things you need to do now is start another one. Don’t wait for the first to be snapped up for a five-figure sum – the odds are very much against you – but your second one might. Everything you learnt writing your first novel, you can apply in your second. It will be better. That’s the one that might be your breakthrough. Also, publishers will want to see both commitment, and potential. They’re not going to waste their marketing money on a one-novel author.

As promised, here is the text of my talk at this year’s Greenbelt Festival. The talk wasn’t recorded, so you don’t get my witty ad-libs and asides (for which you’re all eternally grateful, I’m sure). At some later date I’ll give this a page of it’s own in the essays section, but for now, here it is in its entirety.

This essay is published under a Creative Commons licence: usual rules apply, and comments welcome.

Where are we now? A Greenbelt 2011 talk by Simon Morden

Blue pill – red pill

I like the film The Matrix. And yes, it is a shame they never made any sequels. In The Matrix, a young computer hacker called Neo starts to realise that reality isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. He ends up being offered a choice by Morpheus.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

I’m going to offer the writers in the audience a similar choice: you can listen to what I have to say, and decide it’s not for you. You’ll wake up tomorrow, and the world won’t have changed. Or you can decide I’m on to something here – and it could end up changing everything.

How did we get here?

Back in 2005, in an act of either misplaced bravery or extreme hubris, I took on the Christian fiction industry. I delivered a – the kind word to use would be polemic – in a tent located pretty much where the Jesus Arms is. I wasn’t expecting to bring down the temple in one mighty shove, but I did want to let people know that I was as mad as hell, and I wasn’t going to take it any longer.

What brought me to that point was partly my own experiences with the fringes of the Christian fiction world, but mostly a growing realisation that there were grave artistic problems with writing what Christian fiction publishers wanted. I was frustrated by the blind alley I felt I’d led myself up, and then frustrated all over again at others making that same journey.

By 2005, I’d been a published author for six years: I’d written a host of short stories, enough for two collections, a small press novel, and a novella that later went on to be shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. None of these had been published by Christian publishers, but a decade earlier, I’d been in negotiations with Lion. We’d just about malleted out a publishable manuscript, when they decided to stop publishing adult fiction completely.

What I discovered afterwards, was that this publishable manuscript simply wasn’t up to scratch, according to every agent and SF publisher in the UK. And yes, I did try. Something was clearly wrong – was it because the story was too Christian, or because it wasn’t good enough?

The answer, slowly won over the next few years, was both, and the two were inextricably linked. There was something about my creating Christian fiction that degraded the story’s worth – and after that, I realised that it wasn’t just me thinking that way. There were other Christians who wanted to be writers, but somehow couldn’t quite mould the stories they wanted to tell to fit inside the strictures that the Christian publishing industry imposed.

So when I stood up in front of all those people – and it was quite a number, considering I was very much a Z-list author without much past success, a current publishing contract, or at that point, an agent – it was with real, heartfelt indignation but with very little else. I would encourage you to read the original talk if you haven’t already, but the argument boils down to essentially this:

“[For Christian fiction publishers], the criteria are not based on either literary merit, or commercial success. There is another whole area of concern which overrides even the commercial one. Does it fit into our doctrinal basis? Does it have Christian characters at its centre? Does it avoid references to sex, drugs, drink, violence? Does it communicate God to the reader? Will it strengthen Christians? Will it save souls?

The publisher and the bookseller are no longer filters for artistic or commercial concerns. They become controllers of the content of the story. They are the gatekeepers, and their criteria for publication dictates what shall pass.

We, the writers, are faced with the proposition that if we do not write to their criteria, there is no chance of publication – no matter how good our writing is…

… This is what causes Christian fiction to have such a bad reputation: it is simply that good writing is rejected because it does not say what the publishers want it to say.”

I finished the talk, and waited for the audience to smack me down. It didn’t happen. There were questions, which I fielded more or less competently, and then it was over. Except that it wasn’t. I put the text of the talk on my website, and people started reading it, and quoting it. People used it for academic research and teaching fiction writing courses. Six years later, and it still pops up whenever the subject gets mentioned.

Has anything changed?

So, in those six years, has anything happened to make me change my mind? I hadn’t given the question much serious thought in the intervening time, so this has been an opportunity for me to revisit the subject in hopefully a more measured and objective way.

In those intervening years, I’ve had another four novels published – three of those in the last year, though that’s not normal by any stretch of the imagination. But yes, I now write books and people pay me for them.

I hope I’ve grown as a writer in that time. Hopefully, I’ve grown as a person in that time too, but that’s probably a different talk. The last three novels are worth discussing, though, because I have, more or less unconsciously, taken almost every single taboo in Christian fiction and given them a thorough kicking. My protagonist is a violent, sweary atheist scientist with poor impulse control and a very suspect past. He drinks vodka for breakfast and thinks Christians are idiots. And when I say sweary, he swears both in Russian and English, and its about as far removed from gosh-darn as you could possibly get.

It gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view. Most of Europe has been destroyed by terrorists using stolen nuclear warheads. Those terrorists were Christian fundamentalists trying to force the Second Coming. The United States of America is controlled by conservative evangelicals with policies not unlike those of the Tea Party and, as a consequence, the US government is one of the bad guys. The good guys are mixture of Catholics, communists, anarchists and traitors.

Not only did I have a fantastic time writing these books, a lot of people are having a good time reading them. Even American conservatives.

The question that immediately arises from this is: how can I possibly justify writing these irreligious, profane, blasphemous things when I am supposedly a child of the living God? It’s pretty much what a Christian fiction publisher would ask, let alone a Christian fiction reader.

Time, then, to look at Christian fiction. Why do we have it and what is its purpose?

Why do we have Christian fiction?

Again, it’s one of those things I could spend the whole talk exploring. But essentially, we have Christian fiction because there’s a market for it.

Christian publishing is predicated, like its secular counterparts, on producing commercially successful writing. It produces Bibles, study guides and other educational material, biographies, life-style guides, as well as fiction. So Christian fiction sits in amongst this industry, as part of it and as a small part of it: not insignificant, but a publisher that produces ten fiction books a year may well publish a hundred other titles as well.

This is also why Christian fiction is overwhelmingly North American, and more specifically from the USA. It’s difficult, if not impossible to sustain a separate commercial Christian art industry in isolation or opposition to secular art in the UK because the market is too small even if Christians exclusively consumed Christian art. That market doesn’t really exist because UK Christians tend to use secular art by making their own choices about it, and furthermore UK Christians are actually suspicious of art labelled as Christian. The exception is liturgical art to be used in churches and as worship – but that need not be produced by Christians!

What is the purpose of Christian fiction?

Christian fiction will necessarily have the same purpose and the same sensibilities as the non-fiction produced by that publisher. That is to say, if all the other output of a Christian publisher is to either teach Christians how to be better Christians and reinforce the Christian worldview as True, or teach non-Christians the Truth of Christianity, those purposes will also apply to the fiction that publisher produces. To expect anything else would be asking them to deny their reason for existing in the first place.

To illustrate this point – and I’m in no way picking on the particular publisher here, just that there is a lot of documentation about this incident – the year after I gave that first talk at Greenbelt, there was some editorial ‘tidying up’ done by Thomas Nelson, one of the big Christian publishers in the US. At the time they were expanding fast, and had lots of different imprints, each with their own editors and authors. Those in charge began to realise that things were starting to get away from them – to quote the CEO, Michael Hyatt, there was an increasing tendency to “color a bit outside the lines.”

They looked at themselves and decided what it was they wanted to be: and out of everything, they decided they wanted to be a Christian publisher. That’s hardly surprising, but they felt the need to set out what they were, what they were going to publish, and who they wanted to work with. There was some controversy at the time, because it was reported that assent to the Nicene Creed and Philippians 4:8 would be written into author contracts – in the event, this wasn’t actually true, but the truth was stranger than that.

Firstly, Thomas Nelson defined their editorial standards. Like other Christian publishers, they wanted all their books written from a Christian worldview, but they also wanted their authors to explore any subject they wished. So there would be books on spiritual and devotional topics, but also business, culture, politics, entertainment, cooking, family, and fiction too.

Secondly, they stated that the editorial standards focused on the author, not the content. Thomas Nelson explicitly stated that “content flows out of worldview and, ultimately, out of a writer’s heart”. So – they wanted to publish those authors who professed “a personal faith in Jesus Christ”, who embraced the central truths of historic Christianity (as summarised in the Nicene and Apostles’ Creed), and who sought to live according to the standards of biblical morality.

Thirdly, they said that beyond those standards there was “great latitude”. They used Philippians 4:8 not “as an editorial standard per se, but as an inspiration for how broad and expansive our publishing program could be.”

So – time to take stock. I’m a Christian, I hold to the historical creeds of Christianity, I genuinely make an attempt to live out the teachings of Christianity. So far, so good. Because their editorial standards focus on the author, there’s the reasonable assumption that whatever I’ve written, I’ve written from a Christian worldview. Outside of that, I have “great latitude” in what I write. My last three books are well-written enough to be published by a large, successful publisher, and they are on the way to being commercially successful too.

For those of you who haven’t memorised Philippians 4:8, this is what it says:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (NIV)

Thomas Nelson use that verse to arrive at eight (count them – eight) minimum criteria for content. They state you are “free to think or write about anything”, as long as these criteria are met. I am merely going to flag up the incongruity of being free and having eight minimum criteria, then I’m going to read them to you in full.

1. It must be true. This means that it must be authentic or corresponds to reality. We want to publish books that embrace reality as God created it, not books that “sugar coat” reality or try to make reality something it is not.

2. It must be noble. This means that it must raise us up and make us more like God. The opposite is to debase or degrade. We want to publish books that ultimately motivate people and call forth their best qualities.

3. It must be just. This means it must be righteous or consistent with the commandments of God. It also means it must be fair. We want to publish books that promote righteousness and godly living. By the way, this doesn’t mean that novels can’t have evil characters. (There are plenty of them in God’s story.) But it does mean that in the end righteousness is rewarded and evil punished—if not in this life, the next.

4. It must be pure. This means it must be chaste, modest, clean. We want to publish books that promote holiness and offer a necessary corrective to the current trend to sexualise everything. This does not mean that we are opposed to sex, of course. But we want to make sure that our books advocate a view of sex that is consistent with Christian morality.

5. It is lovely. This means it must be aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. We want to publish authors who are committed to beautiful writing. Both what is said and how it is said are important. Beauty is not a means to an end. It is an end in itself, because it reflects the beauty of the Creator.

6. It is of good report. This means it must be commendable or of high reputation. Again, the emphasis is on that which represents the best, that which anyone could read and agree that it is well-written.

7. It is virtuous. This means it must affirm behavior which is consistent with the highest values. Values that don’t manifest themselves in behavior are merely platitudes. We want to publish books that challenge people to live lives of moral excellence and virtue.

8. It is praiseworthy. This means it must be worthy of recommendation; something you can personally endorse. At the end of the day, we want to publish books we are proud of, books that we are willing to give to a family member or friend with the confidence that they will enjoy it and grateful that they took the time to read it.

How have I done? Have I embraced reality? Have I avoided sugar-coating the world I describe? Does it raise readers up? Does it motivate people and call forth their best qualities? Is righteousness rewarded and evil punished? Is it sexually chaste? Is the writing aesthetically pleasing? Is the writing of a high standard? Does it challenge people to live lives of moral excellence and virtue? Can I recommend the book to others? Can they recommend it to their friends?

I don’t think I’m a million miles from the mark in being able to say a tentative yes to all those things. Given all that, why didn’t I or my agent consider Thomas Nelson when selling the rights to the Metrozone?

Mostly because neither of us are insane enough to try. It would be a cold day in Hell before a Christian publisher like Thomas Nelson – whatever their stated editorial principles might be – would ever publish a book like Equations of Life, because their editorial practice has not changed from when I gave the first talk, back in 2006. They would not publish the book then, and would not do so now because the central character is not a Christian, he drinks, he swears, he doesn’t get saved. It doesn’t tell a story they want told. That’s their prerogative – but I think they need to make that clear, rather than throwing up a wall of spiritual-sounding words that obfuscate, rather than clarify.

After reading Thomas Nelson’s editorial policy, how much clearer are you as to what they actually want? They say they want books that don’t sugar-coat the world, but you’d never get so much as a “bloody hell” past them. The same with a Christian character who drank beer. They’re not lying when they say what they want, but neither are they telling you the whole truth. Which is sad.

So what is the truth here? I think it is this: Christian fiction, dominated as it is by big US Christian publishers and driven mainly by the preferences of a certain section of Christian America, is simply the cultural expression of that brand of Christianity. These values are not Christian values per se, but there are enough people who reflect those cultural values who want to buy books that reflect those values. Christian fiction is essentially Conservative Protestant Evangelical American Christian fiction.

That means we need to take a look at the cultural markers that come up in Christian fiction.

There are behavioural mores regarding:
Drinking and smoking – it’s something that non-Christians do.
Swearing – not just irreligious blasphemy, but all forms of invective – sexual swearwords, and bowdlerised versions of both – are taboo.
Sexual behaviour – all sexual/sexualised behaviour is allowed strictly only within marriage between heterosexual partners, and even then, must not be talked about in anything but the vaguest way.
Violence – acceptable to a large degree, as a corrective and as retribution for unacceptable behaviour. This seems to have become much more used in Christian fiction recently – possibly due to the wars that the US have recently fought/are fighting.

There are also deeper cultural differences between the US and the UK regarding:
Patriotism/nationalism – taking a wild generalisation, Britain’s patriotism is backward-looking and rooted in the past, while American patriotism is forward-looking and rooted in the present. US evangelical Christians are usually patriotic and nationalistic, UK evangelical Christians much less so, if at all.
Political views – America has two political parties, one which is very right wing, one which is moderately right wing. In the UK, most of the Conservative party lies to the left of the Democratic party. US evangelical Christians are predominantly Republican supporters, while UK evangelicals don’t even all vote for the Tories.
Isolationist outlook – American poet Ambrose Pierce quipped that “war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography”. The UK, and UK Christians in particular have a much more global outlook.
Tolerance to the secular world – the plural of anecdote is not data, but I perceive a much greater tolerance to the secular world and especially its art, amongst UK Christians than US evangelicals.

So while conservative cultural values like no drinking, no smoking, no profanity, and no sex outside marriage are paramount, violence is not an American conservative Christian taboo. As to why this is the case is probably beyond the remit of this talk, but it’s certainly useful to identify it.

To illustrate this point, I found an online discussion about whether swearing should or shouldn’t be permissible in a Christian novel. The example I’m going to read was highlighted as an exemplum of how to handle bad language, given by a poster who maintains:

“… there is no reason whatsoever to use swear words. I believe the Bible is very clear that it’s sinful. Literature is no exception. I also disagree that writing out these words “enhances” or “is necessary” to any story. Swearing can be skilfully written without using the actual words themselves.”

This is from Angela Hunt’s The Novelist, published by Thomas Nelson 2006:

In this scene, the twenty-one year old son, Zack, goes on a tirade against his parents, Carl and Jordan. Their son has been exhibiting behaviour that they’ve never seen before. (Please note that Jordan is the novelist of the title, and “Tower” is her protagonist hero.)

“Helpless, I watch as the son curses and threatens to pummel his father; the father red-faced, dares his son to “bring it on.” I stand to intervene, but when I step between them, Zack moves closer and calls me a word I wouldn’t put in the mouth of Tower’s most nefarious villain. As automatically as I would smack a spider that has just inflicted a painful bite, I slap my son’s cheek.

Zack’s hand curls into a fist, ready to strike. I refuse to back down; I’ll slap him again if that’s what it takes to knock sense into his head.

“You will not threaten your mother!” Carl roars, and suddenly his arms are around our son. Zack is screaming, kicking; Carl locks his elbow around Zack’s throat and is choking the breath out of him. Zack’s face grows red, and I am about to scream for mercy when Zack goes limp – he hasn’t passed out; he has given up, and not a moment too soon.

My son is weeping when Carl releases him.”

(Angela Hunt, The Novelist, Thomas Nelson 2006)

This excerpt was presented entirely without irony, or it seems, any self-awareness at all. The poster, and presumably the publisher, thought that a scene depicting parent on child domestic abuse was okay, but in the same scene, it was beyond the pale to read any of the words Zack called his mother. The violence – a mother slapping her son, a father choking his son – was explicitly described. The swearing was deliberately excluded.

There is no rhyme or reason for this, except that these are specific cultural norms promoted and guarded by a specific culture. In the UK, the cultural expression of Christianity is significantly different. The US culture is not mine. No wonder I had such difficulty fitting within it.

UK Christian fiction?

Of course, I do have a culture, and that is middle class, professional, left-wing, white, male, Radio 4, Church of England, English. Given that market isn’t huge, a British writer will be necessarily writing books that appeal outside of their immediate culture. So can we say that we have indigenous Christian fiction in the UK, and if we do, what does it look like?

It looks like what it is – Christians writing fiction. If you write fantasy, it looks like Tolkien, Lewis, Charles Williams, David Gemmell, JK Rowling. If you write crime fiction, it looks like Dorothy Sayers, PD James, our own Ruth Downie. If you write science fiction, it looks like Paul Cornell, and it even might look like me.

Is this a problem, though? Is lacking a distinctive label detrimental to either our witness, or our art?

I’d argue it’s actually healthier, not just for us, but for everyone. The Christian artist has to be ‘in the world’. Their art has to compete for attention, as there is no ready-made market. Their art has to be commercial even when it is discussing Christian things, because we are not simply speaking to ourselves. It stops us being insular. Christian artists mix in the same commercial and artistic environments as everyone else.

What your publisher will be looking for from you is good, commercial fiction. That’s actually all they’re concerned about – is it good, can we sell it? They’re not concerned about doctrinal tests, or whether your lifestyle comes up to scratch. They’re not concerned about the amount of ale quaffed, curses uttered, drugs consumed, virgins deflowered, or shibboleths spiked. They care about the story and the craft used to tell it.

They’re not going to bar you because you’re a Christian. They’re not going to stop you having Christian characters. They’re not even going to stop you having Christian characters who behave Christianly. I recently read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead – not my usual fare as it doesn’t even contain so much as a hint of a giant fighting robot. However – it came recommended, and I discovered it is a quite astonishing book. It is not published by a Christian publisher, and I challenge you to find me another book that is that equals it in its art and its story, and yet is so Christian.

A while ago, I posed the question of how could I, a Christian, write such violent, sweary stuff and still call myself Christian. After all, I must have all those things in my heart, because that’s where the author writes from. I can’t have used my imagination, or my skill at creating characters and staying true to a plot arc, because writers don’t use any of those when they make up stories. The story is a mirror of the author, according to the tenets of Christian fiction.

Bollocks. That’s not just nonsense, it’s dangerous nonsense. It’s deeply damaging to both the art of storytelling, and to the individual storyteller. Let me tell you what some reviewers have been saying about the Metrozone books.

Because the Metrozone series has been published pretty much everywhere in three months, I’ve got a lot of reviews, and in the nature of reviews, some are brilliant, some are good, and some not so good – which is one of those things, and my skin is now considerably thicker than it was in April. One particular reviewer had issues with the first book, but carried on to the second. They had issues with that one too, but carried on to the third. This is what he had to say at the end of the third book:

“It’s not that often I come to admire a fictional character, but Petrovich is a truly admirable creation: a self-sacrificing hero, an idealist who refuses to be seduced by power and fame. Petrovich is the kind of unwilling leader we wish for in the real world: someone with the wisdom to exercise power nobly for the betterment of society before standing aside to let everyone else do their part. He’s a character of sufficient complexity to experience guilt about the consequences of his actions without feeling remorse for doing the right thing. He gives a speech toward the novel’s end about how he’s changed because of the events described in the trilogy, how he’s learned to be unselfish, to value his friends and to be a reliable friend to them, but it’s clear that Petrovich had integrity from the start, and it’s his integrity, his consistent refusal to take the easy path when he doesn’t feel it’s morally correct, that makes him so interesting.”

So this is the strange thing. My violent sweary atheist protagonist turns out to have a moral core after all, and not only that, but he has qualities that make at least one person wish he was real. More than one, because another reviewer has said:

“I’d totally date Petrovitch. In a heartbeat.”

Which is all kinds of wrong, but she liked the books so I’m not going to complain. I’m highlighting this, though, because I’m genuinely moved by some people’s reactions. When you write books, it’s a very lonely process. You put every bit of skill and artistry you can into the words you use, and you just don’t know if you’re going to succeed in creating something that’s good. Only when it’s out there do you get to find out.

Petrovitch, as another reviewer pointed out, is a bit of a rubbish hero. He’s about as far removed from the classic strong-jawed, capable killer as you can go. But he is the one you need. I’d never go as far as suggesting that “what would Petrovitch do?” is an acceptable way to live your life, but if his example does inspire small acts of honest tenacity or unwarranted generosity then good. It’s not why I wrote the books – I wrote them because they were fun stories and I like blowing stuff up – but I’m reliably informed they’re more fun because of the compelling characters. I don’t do didactic fiction: when I want to preach I book a slot at Greenbelt, then everyone knows what they’re getting.

Conclusion

Christian fiction, as we understand it, is the cultural art of socially and politically conservative American Christians. This is not to say whether it is right, or wrong, or good, or bad. But it does mean that the label ‘Christian fiction’ does not belong to them. I’d argue further and state: we should not need a separate category for Christian fiction. That some do is, I think, a failure of vision and courage on the part of  publishers and consumers and authors.

At the start of this talk, I said I was going to offer you a choice: a blue pill or a red pill. If you take the blue pill, you’ll keep on trying to write Christian fiction for Christian publishers. You’ll keep on having to change your manuscripts because it doesn’t say what they want it to say. You’ll feel the pressure of having not just your work scrutinised for heresy, but your life as well. And as it was in The Matrix, you’ll have this constant nagging feeling that somewhere out there, there is a reality that you can’t quite see.

So here’s the red pill. Take that one and yes, you might well start by waking up in a tank of slime attached to a vast machine that’s using your body as a battery. Which is not a bad analogy. The journey is still hard. The odds of you succeeding are still small. I can’t tell you where you’ll end up.

But, if you fail, you fail with your integrity and your faith intact. If you become successful, it will be because your story-telling ability was good enough and for no other reason. That, to my mind, goes to the heart of what it means to be a Christian writer.

I was going to end there, but I heard something else just recently, and it is this:

“A ship in harbor is safe – but that is not what ships are built for.”
(John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928)

What can be said for ships can also be said for novels. If we stay in harbour, our ships are of no practical use. We need to steer out into the night, through the storms, to uncharted destinations. When they return they will be full of treasure. Because that is what ships are built for.

I live in a country where something like 80% of all the places at our top two universities go to leavers from just six schools – five of which are private. My kids don’t go to the one state school on that list, like 99.99% of their cohort. If either of them wants to go to either Oxford or Cambridge, then the odds are already stacked hugely against them, whereas for the moneyed elite, access to the dreaming spires is simply a matter of buying their children places. I’m sorry if I’m coming over all painfully middle class, but despite the fact they have every advantage in life (except fantastically wealthy parents), that’s the reality of it – and, in my own middle class way, it makes me want to burn stuff down. And don’t get me started on the banks.

Sorry, sidetracked there. Back to the signing.

It was lovely – the whole process was lovely. Forbidden Planet staff were lovely, my fellow authors were lovely (even if Nicole Peeler gets all the goodies – apparently it’s a Romance writer thing), and the pub afterwards was also lovely, even if we did manage to clear out their real ale stocks very quickly.

Everything, including the photographic evidence of beardage, is on the Orbit website.

Two reviewers have read all three and reviewed all three in the same blog post, which indeed makes sense. Considering the books in the round, does the series make sense? Is there a story arc that travels throughout? Does all the swearing and explosions get a bit samey after a while? Is there a law of diminishing returns?

Not according to Usagi, who not only loves the Petrovitch (“I’d totally date Petrovitch. In a heartbeat.”) but, after some (possibly accurate) criticism of my writing style from other reviewers – no, I don’t want you to have to reach for the dictionary every other sentence, and no, I’m not a great prose stylist like m’friend Chaz Brenchley (who I love – both him and his books) – says this:

“I think the best part about Sam as a character and Morden as an author is that you really live through Sam’s eyes the entire trilogy. You’re right there with him, right there next to him, inside of his head. This means everything – from his stuttering heart in the first book, to his broken heart over Maddy by the third book. You see, think, feel, smell, touch everything he does. Morden is a master with sensory language and the amount of showing over telling is overwhelmingly, joyously tipped in the “showing” direction – automatically making me love Morden. It’s so hard to do that, and doing that in a sci-fi genre book/series is even harder. I tip my hat in major respect for him being able to do that.”

That’s really quite lovely. And to continue the theme, Holly at Books for One has other nice things to say. She spots that I’ve actually written a character-driven SF series. SF is not renowned for its production of full-rounded characters, and yes, it often eschews character development for gadget-strewn, plot-heavy shininess (which I do enjoy, but sometimes it’d be nice to have people I care about in all the shenanigans). She finds Petrovitch’s determination “endearing” and is completely on-side the whole time, despite his anti-hero tendencies.

It has been pointed out that there are a lot of strong female characters. I didn’t consciously mean it to turn out that way, but that’s what organically evolved. Here’s what Holly says about some of them:

“There’s Valentina, a true Soviet communist to her red core and demolitions expert. Lucy, the schoolgirl found hiding in a bathtub from the outies who saves his life more than once. And of course Madeleine, the amazonian, Catholic trained bodyguard who does things to Petrovitch’s synthetic heart that has nothing to do with the fact it’s constantly malfunctioning. I adored all of these guys, they were all useful fully realised people, no extra bits of skirt who are only good for the hero to perv over in these stories…”

She concludes: “If you’re looking for something clever, fast paced and exhilarating then you can’t do much better than these three books. In Communist Russia book reads you.” Happy author is happy.

Now, I already have a copy – so I’m going go give these babies away. And this is how I’m going to do it.

1. Take a photograph or short video of yourself (or have someone take a photo for you) doing something Petrovitchy. I leave the interpretation of this entirely up to you. I cannot condone you doing anything illegal within your jurisdiction (no matter how much fun it might be), and I insist you and any bystanders, human and non-human, are not endangered in any way before, during or after the recording of your entry. This is just for fun, okay?

2. Post it to me at bookofmorden1@blueyonder.co.uk (that’s a ‘one’ at the end, not a small L) and put as your subject line something like Competition entry or Petrovitchy goodness. Try not to break my inbox with massive video files…

3. I would like very much to be able to share any of the entries on a gallery here. If you don’t want me to do that, do say at the time, and as the creator of the work, you retain copyright at all times.

4. Closing date for entries is going to be one month from today, August 16th, 23:59 GMT

5. The three entries I deem have captured the spirit of the competition the best will receive one copy of Equations of Life, narrated by Toby Leonard Moore. I will post to anywhere on the planet and will even include low-earth orbit for the crew of the ISS.

Get going…

There will be authors -Tim Lebbon, Philip Palmer, Nicole Peeler, and me. There will be books – Tim’s Echo City, Philip’s Hellship, Nicole’s Tempest Rising, and with luck and a following wind, all three Metrozone books. There will, undoubtedly, be some witty banter and authorial sagacity, and there will be the opportunity not only to buy books, but have them signed.

It will be in the Forbidden Planet store in Shaftsbury Avenue,  Olde London Town, 3-4pm on July 30th.

It would be brilliant if anyone’s within striking distance could come along (I know you’re all coming to see Tim, but share the love, okay?).

However, a bunch of us regulars thought the literary side of the programme could do with some oomph. And oomphed it has. You can see the details here, but we have poets and novelists and short-story writers doing all sorts of things like workshops, readings and talks. Actually, Greenbelt is shaping up to be awesome this year – the music especially: Billy Bragg, Martyn Joseph, Show of Hands, Idlewild and the Unthanks, to name just a few. Old folkie that I am.

I’m doing three programme items this year: Saturday, 4pm in the Hub, I’m having tea and cake with the lovely RS Downie. Okay, we’re also answering questions on anything writing and publishing related too, but tea! Cake! Authors!

Sunday 5.30pm in the Hub is my retrospective “Where are we now? Sex, death and Christian fiction revisited”, where I see if anything’s changed over the last six years since I delivered the now infamous talk.

Monday 12:30pm in Crest (in the main Grandstand – I should point out here that Greenbelt is held at Cheltenham racecourse, sans horses) is my workshop, “You’re doing it wrong: how not to write a novel”, which should be fun.

In between times, I will also be doing a signing (hopefully of all three Metrozone books) in the bookshop tent. If the idea of Petrovitch and a liberal Christian arts festival is too much cognitive dissonance for you to handle, just imagine the cover of Another War nestled in amongst the Bibles and “I had a really exciting and dangerous life, then Jesus saved me” biographies. And I’m being interviewed for the website Surefish.

I’m sure this actually counts as work, but Greenbelt is a brilliant place: very family friendly, not-at-all in-your-face Christian (no altar calls, and hey, I’ve been going for all my adult life, assuming that’s any form of recommendation), and now it’s at Cheltenham, it can pretty much survive whatever the weather. If you’re within striking distance, you can just come for the day, or you can camp the whole bank holiday weekend like we do. If you do come, don’t be a stranger…

In Theories of Flight, Petrovitch sets his two post-grad students a task: “Society. I want you to go and design me a human society. Not a utopia: one that acknowledges its faults and includes mechanisms to correct itself. One that’s better than the one we now have. Info-rich. Post-scarcity. Knowledge as currency. Stuff like that…Can you do it?”

Even though it’s meant to be a bit of make-work, to cover a turbulent time with a bit of focus, it does – of course it does – turn out to be pivotal. There’s a lot in a very few sentences. Non-utopian. Info-rich. Post-scarcity. Post-money. It’s a capitalist’s nightmare in black and white.

And user Hereford Eye has taken Petrovitch’s task as the starting point for their wonderment. Feel free to sign up and join in.

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31432

And in honour of this auspicious occasion:

Okay. The charge is that Degrees of Freedom (and the whole Metrozone project) descends into “a politically correct thriller” that “barely deserves the sf label”. I’ll take the last one first, because “SF is what I say it is when I point to it and say ‘that’s SF’.” But also, Degrees of Freedom is (hopefully) clearly a story that wouldn’t exist without science, and has a scientific solution – which, to my mind and probably more importantly, my publishers, makes it SF.

The charge of ‘political correctness’ is more interesting, because the phrase itself is code. In and of itself, ‘political correctness’ (which I’m going to abbreviate to PC from now on, to save pixels) doesn’t actually mean anything that’s associated with either the P-part, or the C-part. Put them together, though, and what you have is a meta-contextual value-judgement favoured by those on the political Right to dismiss, without argument, something they disagree with. Labelling something as PC is not an argument. It’s not a knock-down blow. It’s code, and it’s complex. It’s meant to be an insult, but there are much more imaginative and accurate ways to be insulting. To whit: it’s lazy.

The chief exponents of PC-as-insult in these domains are parts of the British tabloid press. “PC gone mad!” is the reaction when a council bans parents from taking photographs of their kids in a Nativity play. And whilst you appreciate the child protection issues involved, it does seem more than a little stupid. It seems very stupid, in fact, and an error that is compounded by conflating such displays of wilful ignorance with either the Human Rights Act, or the Health and Safety at Work Act. But a lot of PCness boils down to basic decency. We don’t refer to blacks as niggers or coons, or people from Pakistan as pakis, Italians as wops, the Spanish as dagos, folk in wheelchairs as crips, those with physical disabilities as flids – because they don’t like it. Hell, I don’t like it. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we ought. We shouldn’t go out of our way to offend.  Making public buildings accessible to all is not PC. Insisting that women are paid the same as men for doing the same job is not PC. Suggesting that airbrushing black people out of your publicity material is wrong is not PC.

I don’t think Degrees of Freedom is guilty of that, however. Using my secret decoder ring, I’m taking a stab at the real reason for calling it PC is because religious Americans are the bad guys.

And actually, that is such an unnuanced statement, I’m going to qualify it: Reconstruction America, as portrayed in the Metrozone series, produces a mindset that inevitably leads to a set of motives and actions that are internally consistent and logical, but which appear to the protagonists as ‘the Americans are the bad guys’.

Reconstruction is, by the time the Metrozone series starts, a two decades-long experiment in social and economic engineering. It is extremely socially conservative, highly capitalist, and religiously patriotic. It takes seriously American Exceptionalism, is isolationist, and brutally Romantic, in that it holds up a Platonic ideal of America that everyone must strive for. It’s a binary ‘for us or against us’ view. It’s a reaction to the previous sixty years of expansionism and social change, and also to Armageddon. And while it’s clear to me that some people in the real USA would not only want the kind of society I describe but are actively campaigning for it, I know and thank God for the fact that it’s never going to happen. There’s the constitution and the amendments, there’s the Supreme Court, the elected representatives, the people. It’s a what-if. It’s not even an original what-if. American writers have used the right-wing quasi-fascistic government card so often, it’s almost a trope.

Religion is inextricably linked to that trope. There’s something iconic and eminently writable about the unholy marriage between American patriotism and protestant Christianity. Not all patriots are religious, not all Christians are ‘my country right or wrong’ patriots. But, yes, iconic and writable, and very visible. I actually get to hear speakers like Jim Wallis and Tom Sine – good evangelical Christians – who are of the left, so I know there are many flavours and textures to the religious landscape in the USA: all the same, the stereotype is the right-wing Christian, and you can’t be an evangelical without being on the right.

So this is the America I’m painting as ‘the bad guys’. Are they actually bad? That depends on your point of view, and the American government in the book doesn’t do anything that they don’t do either in real-life, or haven’t been portrayed as doing in other films and novels, written by Americans. Once you’ve taken Reconstruction as a given, the rest follows like night follows day. The US administration’s actions are entirely in line with the prevailing philosophical and religious outlook, and that’s as it should be. They don’t see themselves as bad. They’re not rubbing their hands like a cartoon villain. They’re doing what they need to do in order to further the interests of the United States of America. Which is again, entirely right and proper.

Am I being taken to task then, for showing the actions of a fictitious future government of a named country? Quite likely, yes. The rub, of course, is that the protagonists are an alliance of unstable hackers, traitors, and ne’erdowells who, if they profess any political allegiance would most likely tick the box marked Anarchist. If it’s unconscionable that a fictional USA is bested by this fictional gallery of rogues, can I suggest the problem might not lie within the book?

But I can’t know any of this for sure – because the charge of PC is, as I’ve already said, lazy. If you’re going to be critical, be specific, and be smarter.

Which is why I’m baffled at some of the contradictory responses to the words what I wrote…

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned either the Amazon or Goodreads reviews here before: ‘my’ Goodreads page is here, and by clicking on each individual book, you get a breakdown of readers’ responses. There are comments, too, and some of the reviews I’ve mentioned elsewhere also pop up here. All well and good – it’s a bit of fun, sharing your response to a book with others. And I’m gratified to see, I get some 5s, loads of 4s, some 3s… and so on. And no, I don’t expect everyone to love the books – they’ll appeal to a certain section of the audience, while leaving others meh.

The Amazon responses are a bit more, well, serious. It’s a market place. It’s where people come to buy books, not just swap opinions about them. I’m not going to poke holes in individual reviews, but yes. Contradictory about sums it up.

So – Equations of Life: Blue Gargantua calls Equations  “hands down, some of the best cyberpunk I’ve read in quite awhile”.

SFRevu has it’s third review of Equations (some sort of record?) by Liz de Jager: “Equations of Life is a great opener to this trilogy by Simon Morden. Petrovitch’s character shines brightly and Morden has given us a new kind of anti-hero, one who is likeable for all his unlikeability, and that is no mean feat.”

I’ve also stumbled on SFFMeta, which is a sort of review agglomerater. But rather than just take all reviews, it takes them from “trusted online sources”. Since publication Equations of Life has sat quite happily in the “Last 90 days high scores” table, and since reprinting, the “Last 90 days high scores – reprints” table, with a respectable 73 – which puts me in some very respectable company. And now the score has gone up to 75. Take that, rubbishy Amazon reviewers!

Reviews of Theories of Flight are still thin on the ground, but the first Degrees of Freedom ones have started appearing. There’s the usual (possibly slightly incoherent) one from Harriet Klausner. It means 4 stars on Amazon.

Best of all is TChris’ – now, he’s been reading the series through, and has had criticisms to make of both Equations and of Theories. I’ve won him over with Degrees, though! It’s a long quote, but it’s worth printing in full.

“It’s not that often I come to admire a fictional character, but Petrovich is a truly admirable creation:  a self-sacrificing hero, an idealist who refuses to be seduced by power and fame.  Petrovich is the kind of unwilling leader we wish for in the real world:  someone with the wisdom to exercise power nobly for the betterment of society before standing aside to let everyone else do their part.  He’s a character of sufficient complexity to experience guilt about the consequences of his actions without feeling remorse for doing the right thing.  He gives a speech toward the novel’s end about how he’s changed because of the events described in the trilogy, how he’s learned to be unselfish, to value his friends and to be a reliable friend to them, but it’s clear that Petrovich had integrity from the start, and it’s his integrity, his consistent refusal to take the easy path when he doesn’t feel it’s morally correct, that makes him so interesting. “

Believe it or not, I actually put some thought into that one – and the answers are now up on the Orbit website.

… because the ever-lovely Lauren Panepinto has some for you – and in various sizes to fit your preferred electronic device. Click here for the Orbit website and the post in question.

Part of the brief was to, you know, sound intelligent and not squee too much because I’m talking to Iain Banks.

Hopefully I managed to keep a cogent line throughout, and you can judge for yourself by heading over to the Orbit website.

Equations of Life continues to turn up in the most unlikely of places. For example, the Otago Daily Times. Where’s that based, you ask? New Zealand, which is about as far from home as it can get. The headline reads “Futuristic post-apocalyptic thriller pacy, exciting” which pushes all the right buttons.

Hyper-critical.net (which is a cool name for a blog) gives Equations “6 oversized pistols” out of ten, but I have the sneaking suspicion that they enjoyed it more than that… they conclude “Despite being a little predictable in places, Equations of Life is a good, solid read. Morden has crafted out an interesting world, and shown us a brief glimpse of it. The teaser for Theories of Flight, the second book in the trilogy, moves Petrovitch forward in his career as a scientist, and I’m looking forward to see how Morden opens up his story to us.”

Erika over at Jawas read, too, Equations gets 7/10 – again, noted as a good, fun read. “This action-packed, futuristic novel offers readers a quick, pulse-pounding glimpse into a world torn apart by technology and the weaknesses of humanity.”

Disorganised, as usual has some (most likely entirely valid) criticisms, but comes to the opinion that “Equations of Life kept me entertained.  I was fully engaged and absorbed in it, and kept eagerly picking it up again to find out what happened next.  Which makes this a far more successful work, in my mind, than the new China Mieville novel, which I am currently struggling to force myself to finish.  I want to enjoy the fiction I read, and I enjoyed Equations of Life.  And that’s the only thing that matters, in the end.”

The reviews of Theories of Flight have been a bit slower coming in: to be expected, I think, with the 3-in-3 months thing. However, one interesting one has turned up, by Sarah at Workaday Reads. She gave Equations 3 stars. She gives Theories 4. That actually means quite a lot.

When you get stuff published, it’s usual that you get some complimentary copies from the warehouse: and so with three books out in three months, you get a bit blasé about the whole thing. First it’s *squeee* as the first box arrives. By the time you get to the sixth (US edition Degrees of Freedom), it’s “meh, I’ll open them later.” More fool me, for in this box was nestling a copy of “Equations of Life: the audio book”.

I was having a bit of a purge in the study yesterday, and consolidating things: so I get out the Stanley knife and open the unopened crate. Behold, the thing of wonder.

So I cracked it open, slid the first disc into the computer and started playing it.

Now, I am not a man given to bouts of hyperbole. If the phone goes, I pick up and it’s say, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson on the other end of the line, making me a offer for the film rights to the Metrozone series, I’d relate the tale later with a “which was nice” conclusion.

The audio book is jaw-droppingly good. Genuinely the most fantastic piece of craftsmanship I have ever had the good fortune to be involved with. The narrator is Toby Leonard Moore. He is amazing. He’s an Oz, which considering this is a book set in London, you might consider an odd choice. But this man is an Actor. An Actor who can do accents. An Actor who doesn’t trip over speech. Who has a cadence and a melody to his voice. Hearing the crude words (and some of them are very crude indeed) I wrote get spoken by a professional is simply a revelation.

He’s a lot better – and when I say a lot, I mean I’m completely outclassed – at reading this than I am.

It’s UK£25, for ten and a half hours of entirely unabridged, unexpurgated, Petrovitchy mayhem. It deserves to do well, because it is well done, and not because I had something to do with it. It’s the closest thing to the film you’ll get for the foreseeable future…

You can order it from Whole Story audiobooks.

But they won’t ship to the US, due to me having sold the US audio rights to a different, US, company. So you’ll have to wait. But I promise I’ll keep you posted.

One of those collections was Thy Kingdom Come. It had art by Marge Simon to accompany the stories, videos I’d filmed on an early webcam and stitched together on some free software, introductions and links. All crammed on a CD-R and ‘published’ in a limited edition run of two hundred.

So, I have a few of these left: half a dozen, plus my author’s copy. Someone recently showed interest in buying one of them (hi, Stephen!), so we negotiated a donation to the American Red Cross, I wrote the address on the envelope and almost, almost, picked a disc at random and posted it off to the USA.

Instead, I thought I’d better check it would run okay. I opened my CD tray and a can of worms at the same time.

The CD failed to load. The drive didn’t even recognise there was a CD in it. I thought I managed to dodge a bullet there, so I got one of the other discs and tried that. This time, it did find the CD. But when I tried to access the data, I crashed Acrobat. Neither could I successfully copy all the files to my hard drive. Some, yes. All, no.

So I tried again with a different disc. Again, same problem. And so on. Rude words sprang unbidden to my lips. There was clearly something wrong – either the discs were corrupted, or the CD drive (now a DVD drive) and/or software on my computer was just too new to cope with legacy stuff.

One last gasp. I got out my author copy – I know that worked, because I’d played it previously. Almost ten years previously. And it didn’t work either. Arse.

Then a sudden brainwave. I have a disc with all the component parts of TKC on, a copy of which I sent to Lone Wolf a decade earlier. With fear and trepidation, I loaded it up… and it worked perfectly, first time. I copied all the files across to the hard drive, and took one of the video files for a test drive. Bad codec. Bad, bad codec. A codec that Microsoft not only no longer support, but one which all early .avi files rely on to play properly. None of the videos will work in any of the (several) media players I have.

Okay. But I have some fairly robust video editing software – it’s quite old, but I know it’s both upwardly and downwardly compatible. I load it up, and discover it can play the video files – and not only that, but I can now re-render the files using the old, unsupported codec into files using new, supported ones.

Right then: I had all the files ready to stitch together. With a bit of jiggery-pokery I managed to get them all roughly in the right order (the video files still wouldn’t embed – I hyperlinked them instead. I blame my .pdf printer software) and print out the whole thing as a new .pdf file which I know will run with Acrobat X.

Can I learn something from this? Yes. Yes I can. I have a stack of 3.5″ floppies I can no longer read because I don’t have a 3.5″ drive anymore. But I think I’ve got all the files I need off of those – I never thought about the CD-Rs I have, because, you know, they’re CDs and I’ve got a CD drive.

I’ve also got a brand new Western Digital 1Tb drive. Which will one day be as obsolete as those floppies, except it has about five years’ worth of family photos on.

Here endeth the lesson.

See here for sagacity.

(published via Emergency Internets! Huzzah for 3G dongles!)

Especially if you live in Pasadena, TX, where my Subway colleague spotted this on the shelves of her local Barnes and Noble.

Doesn’t that look fine? Even better if it was on a bookshelf at home, of course…

Let’s just go back a bit. See where I said every single word? That’s Every Single Word. Complete and unabridged. Complete. Unabridged. And they’ve done it for Equations of Life. I am vibrating with happiness. And they’ve used the talented Toby Leonard Moore, whose genre credits include Dollhouse.

This is the cover. There are 11 CDs. And it’s yours for UK£25.52. This is the Equations of Life page on Whole Story Audiobooks. Take some time to have a browse while you’re there.

(I am, of course, hoping to blag a copy, but I may just end up sticking my hand in my pocket and shelling out for one. This is simply too full of win to miss out.)

Lynossa has a review up on Deranged Book Lovers. Three and a half stars, and “Only one word to describe this book: crazy! Yes, that’s right, if you think the first book is crazy enough, wait until you read this book. Blood spilled, gun trotted, bodies were piled up everywhere. The pace was even faster that the first book and I just can’t stop reading it.”

Harriet Klausner (who must be one of the most prolific reader/reviewers in the blogosphere) has posted hers on Genre Go Round and other places – including Amazon where she gives it 5 fat stars. We like that.

TChris’ review on Tzer Island (and Amazon – 3 stars): “If you enjoyed Equations, I think you’ll like Theories, even if it lacks some of the first novel’s virtues.  Theories starts well, the middle is action-filled but light on substance, and the ending carries enough promise that I’m looking forward to reading the trilogy’s conclusion.” Fair enough.

Paige over on Writing about Reading gives Theories 4 stars: the review is self-confessedly a little spoilerish, but she does very much like “Bad-ass” Dr Petrovitch, and has pulled out a bunch of her favourite quotes from the book.

Theories has also had some recommendations with (what I believe are called) ‘capsule reviews’: LEC Book Reviews plonk it on top of their list: “This second outing is just as exciting and downright entertaining as the first and is one you too should consider putting on your To-read lists.” Degrees of Freedom pops up on the bottom of the list, too. Which is nice.

Stomping on Yeti has it as one of their April picks: “Theories of Flight delivers a blend of intelligent science fiction and relentless action adventure that Hollywood wishes they capable of.”  

I think that’s about it – I try not to obsess too much over these things, but I’m only human. Still.

Click here for details!

As you know (Bob), Lauren Panepinto designed the book covers for the Metrozone series. What you probably don’t know is that along with messing with your eyesight, she had plans to implant messages directly into your brain, and was thwarted only by the size of the books.

However, it was too cool an idea to leave alone. Now there’s this poster – which you can win. And a how-to video – which tells you how to mess with other people’s brains.

I for one welcome our new artistic-director overlords.

After the obligatory hotel fried breakfast, I packed my stuff up, checked out and put my case in storage (a huge ballroom with one very lonely member of staff on duty – who I remembered to thank) and did a bit of wandering. Inevitably, I ended up in the Dealers’ room, where I had a good browse without the intention of buying anything: my bags were pretty full as they were, and you know…

Then I spotted a big pile of Target Dr Who books on one corner of a table. I used to read them as a kid, and had dug them out recently so the Boy could try them for size. There were some duplicates – I’d already got The Day of the Daleks, and a couple of the others – but I thought I’d grab a few to add to the collection. When the bookseller said, “Take them all for a fiver.” I hesitated for a nanosecond before cracking open the wallet. I haven’t even checked them against my existing books yet, but I spent a very happy hour with a sandwich at lunchtime reading “The Seeds of Doom”, which when televised (Tom Baker as the Doctor with Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith) scared me rigid.

Before all thoughts of Whoish delights, however, was my final panel: Nuke it from orbit – how to organise a planetary invasion. I was on with Mike Cobley, Charlie Stross and John Harrow, with Nik moderating. I’m afraid the Belgians came off very badly, and the conversations did keep turning back to stuff the British Empire had done already. Sorry world. However, I did try to inject a little humanity into the proceedings when I suggested that dropping massive space rocks on the natives to force their surrender might cause at least some putative astronauts to have second thoughts. Far better, I opined, to offer them peace, prosperity and a future full of promise: few governments could stand against that sort of invasion. I for one, etc…

Lunch, with the good Doctor followed, then I listened in to the Space Opera panel – fascinating stuff, and made me wish I’d looked in on other panels with David Weber. He’s worth listening to.

Then the mundane bit of trains and platforms and travelling. I was home by 9pm.

Sunday. Easter Day. It’s weird not being in church – it was weird last year, and it will remain weird – attending an SF convention over what is several of the most significant days of the Christian calendar with no religious input at all is a strange experience for someone who has always attended at least two services over the four-day period. Yes, I am at work: not so much selling books, as doing that nebulous networking thing that may or may not produce fruit a month or a year down the line. Being seen and showing willing is almost important as meeting people and saying the right things.

Breakfast was a much more civilised affair – no light opera fans mixing it with the SF crowd – so I get to eat my own body weight in fried food again, wash it down with tea, back to my room to blog. That done, because I’d heard good reports about the pool, and having remembered to bring my trunks and goggles, I headed for the hotel pool.

And very pleasant it was too. Being roughly circular and having a strip in the middle laned off for Proper Swimming, I got into my usual swimming fugue of just swimming quite quickly, not worrying about the time or how many lengths I’d done, not really thinking about swimming at all. There were maybe three or four other people in the pool at the same time – certainly not enough to even be vaguely distracting. Just swim and swim and swim until I felt I ought to come out. To be recommended.

Truth be told, signings and readings are odd things for writers. What if no one turns up? I’d chatted to a few of the dealers, and they weren’t doing fantastic business, the Dealers’ room being much quieter than I remember it from Eastercon 2010 – perhaps the effect of folk having less money in their pockets, fewer attendees, the hotel prices. Also, as I found out from the Forbidden Planet people, the hotel’s restriction on leafleting and putting up posters: always a big part of a con, but not allowed except on the very few notice boards dotted around the hotel.

So I yakked to the FP folk, signed their stock, and flogged a couple of books to someone I managed to dazzle long enough that their good sense and judgement was clouded and their wallet opened. Straight after, there was another author event in the Fan bar. I got to sit next to Stan Nichol, who is lovely, but such was the (lack of) interest, we talked to each other pretty much for the whole hour we were scheduled to be there. The lovely Bella from Orbit graciously plonked a pint of Illustrius in front of me, and Liz Williams passed the authorial ‘Consequences’ game to me for a suitably outrageous addition. I had to work with an enraged giant porcupine in the previous sentence, but I don’t know why it was enraged, and what happened to it after I passed it to Stan.

Also signing was Rod Rees. I’d had my eye on a copy of his Demi-Monde for a while, and he very graciously, because I was his first and only customer the entire session, pressed a newly minted copy of the wonderous Quercus hardback on me, signed and stamped, entirely free. An amazing gift, and straight to the top of my to-read pile.

I had afternoon tea (or hot chocolate in Bella’s case) and played on Bella’s Sony e-reader thingy. I still remain to be convinced of its superiority over the humble paperback, but certainly, for an industry pro, it beats lugging around a dozen manuscripts. They certainly have their place.

The reading. It’s hard, when you’re a classic introvert, to read something you’ve written, out loud, in public. I used to have real problems (as in Too Much Information sort of problems): now I just get incredibly nervous. My secret weapon was BSFA award-winning, Nebula award nominated (and later on that evening Hugo award nominated too) Aliette de Bodard. She’s this tiny bundle of talent who is clearly going places, and I was very lucky to be paired with her – because people came to hear her, and stayed to hear me. I’m grateful. She read a hauntingly beautiful story about the Aztecs. I read stuff that made people laugh. I was even forgiven when I went on too long. But there were cookies and flapjacks as well, and the audience nommed appreciatively.

Phoned home on my steam-powered and increasingly unreliable mobile, then downstairs to hear the Hugo nominations. Orbit have two authors in the Best Novel category: Mira Grant for Feed, and NK Jemsin’s A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

A long beer in the Fan bar with Roy Gray of Interzone, some mad New Zealanders, and a couple of others – the conversation naturally turned to rocket planes and real ale. And so to bed.

Tomorrow sees me here almost to the bitter end, but not quite. I’ve a panel at noon, and the train leaves late afternoon. I have to assume there’s a world outside the con for me to return to – it does become very bubble-like after a couple of days.

I’m signing Equations of Life and Theories of Flight on the Forbidden Planet stall in the Dealers’ room, 2pm.

I’m reading with (Nebula nominated and BSFA-award winning) Aliette de Bodard at 7.30pm in Gladstone. We have cookies.

Breakfast was an interesting experience. There was a concert at the NEC on the Friday; judging from stolen glimpses at programmes and CDs, some sort of light classical/operatic singer person, who attracted a mainly older audience. Who, inevitably, ended up mixed in with the Con goers in a massive queue for the restaurant come morning. It wasn’t pretty, and I think it caught the staff on the ground on the hop – whether they expected all of us to be up earlier, or later, than we were, it was difficult to tell, but seemingly at some signal through the aether, we descended en masse to eat, throwing their carefully conceived plans into disarray. Bwahahaha. I ended up squeezing onto a table with the Angry Robot guys, which was fine.

I went to a panel as a punter – since it has relevance to the Sekrit Projeckt – Is SF winning the Culture War? The answer is, of course, yes, yes we are. If not already won and we’re just stamping out the last pockets of futile resistance before we unite under our SFnal overlords. Two of the last bastions of mundanity being the broadsheet books review sections and the BBC – and this on the very day Equations of Life was reviewed in The Financial Times, of all places.

Facebook had informed me earlier that erstwhile stablemate and all-round tall person Ben Jeapes was coming up for the day. Keen to catch up in the flesh, rather than electronically, I spotted him just as he was going to a panel, but arranged to meet up in an hour.

And what an hour that was: spent playing Bananagram with Anne from Orbit. It could be considered leaving oneself a hostage to fortune playing a scrabble-like word game with a professional editor (and unusually for someone who works in publishing, an engineering graduate), especially when yours truly has a somewhat dubious rep for spelling. However, buoyed up by my suggestion of ‘Khat’ for Bella’s online Scrabble the day before, it was Game On.

I managed to hold my own in the two games we played, losing on the last tile each time (we won’t talk about the horrendous train-crash of tileage brought about by my moving my words up the table, then rearranging them so they made no sense at all), but to give you a flavour of it: second time around, my first word down was VOTIVES, which got rid of both Vs and was seven letters to boot. I glance up to discover that Anne’s opening gambit was QUIXOTIC. Arse.

So, I caught up with Ben, introduced him to the Orbit crew, just in case, you know… and suddenly it was time for me to head to the Green Room and meet the other panelists for SF Infrastructure and Engineering.

It turned out be a very minimalist panel with Nige (whose day job  is Incredibly Important in ways barely comprehensible to mere mortals like myself) and John (who works in Local Authority planning), and me. But we had around fifty people in to listen to us, and I think we kept them informed and entertained in true Reithian style. We’d barely got five minutes in before we decided that what was really holding us back was our lack of a dictatorial command economy. Revolution swept the room, and before long, we’d commandeered the resources of the entire planet, partly enabled by our massive orbital solar power collector/microwave laser. Job done.

It was Doctor Who time shortly afterwards: huzzah for the techies who got the picture on the screen about fifteen seconds before the programme started. Lots has been said about the episode itself elsewhere. I thought it was an excellent opener, and Arthur Darvill as Rory seems to be providing the moral centre as the Ordinary Decent Bloke. Talking to Paul Cornell afterwards, the Neil Gaiman-penned episode is something we should all be waiting for with baited breath. Spoilers.

Then the Cyberwarfare panel at 9pm. From three panellists earlier, we’d gone to six, which was probably too many. I was hopelessly outclassed – by Nige, by another Simon, who all had security access to real secret stuff you’re not meant to know about. Shhh. Fortunately, Lauren Beukes (of Moxyland and Zoo City fame) was ‘just another SF writer’ like me, though more famous. I was more useful in talking about the future developments of robotic warfare – drones, robot tanks and inevitably, Terminator-style robot soldiers.

Then proper beer in the Fan bar with Nige and Philip Palmer, followed by the hotel bar to sweep up the rest of the conversations. Half one. Where did the evening go?

What have I done so far? Actually not much, and yet loads. Writing is, by necessity, a solitary task, carried out in private with as few distractions as possible: because as a friend put it, “so much of writing is about Not Writing”. Tis true.

So, I pitched up at the Con hotel about midday, but couldn’t check in as it was too early – advertised check-in being 3pm. The first person I meet is my fellow Orbiteer (and gloriously Scottish) Mike Cobley. The second was the ever-fragrant Gillian from Gollancz, and in short order there after, Anna, Anne and Bella from Orbit, with John Berlyne from the Zeno agency.

“We’re all going to the pub,” they say. “Care to join us?” I dumped my bag with the concierge and bare minutes later we were all sitting outside “The Little Owl” with large glasses of cold fizzy pop, enjoying the sunshine and bees. Joined later by Tom Hunter (of the Clarkes) and other Simon, we managed to talk bollocks for most of the afternoon: writers write because they want to show off. Discuss.

Eventually back at the hotel, I got into my room, and then went to mingle. Chatted to Roy Gray on the Interzone stand, met Sandy Auden, said hello to Darren Nash (ex-Orbit, and the man who commissioned the Metrozone), and went to check in with the Forbidden Planet people, where I’m signing on Sunday.

Back to the room, shower, change, ready for the epic Orbit curry – Charlie Stross and Feorag, Philip Palmer, Mike, Jon Courtney Grimwood, Anna, Anne, Bella, John. And me. Somewhere near Coventry – the Tamarind (very highly recommended – excellent food and service, Cobra in bottles). I’m still boggling at the idea of ending up near Coventry: in the North East you have to travel an hour to get anywhere different…

Hotel bar again – they have Budvar, which is good (even though the price is not), and get a chance to talk to Anna properly. We’ve talked on the phone and email, but never actually met in person. It’s good to know stuff about your editor. Probably less good for the editor to know more about the writer. We’re not inherently interesting, but we can fix your online Scrabble game so you get that triple word score.

I folded about 1am, lightweight that I am. Room is still hot, despite window opening. Meh.

Wake up and discover that I have a sore throat because I have been talking too much. Tea is required.

Come and say hello, even if you’re not buying a book!

I’m chuffed.

A.V. Club – I get a C+ (which is a pass mark where I come from). “If Morden were shooting for pure, hardboiled pulp, that would be one thing, but he’s also reaching for some deeper points about loss, responsibility, and the role of technology—elements far better juggled by writers like Richard K. Morgan. Still, Equations Of Life is a rollicking read, even it does implicitly beg for a brainy audience and a brainless one at the same time.” Meh.

Fantasy Book Critic – Liviu Suciu has given an excellent and thoughtful review (A/A+) here. He does say I might be fifteen years too late for the cyberpunk party, and if I stick with the same formula for Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom, “three same cyberpunk novels (will be) a little too much for me.”  I can guarantee you Theories is very different, while still brimming with Petrovitchy goodness.

Out of Ten gives me a 6.0. He seems to have enjoyed it though: “A good old-fashioned post-apocalyptic cyberpunk adventure, despite sometimes trying to be a bit too clever.”

io9 is simply the gift that keeps on giving. May whichever god you believe in bless them and all their endeavours … Equations has made the April books list, with the quote “Theoretical physics plus action equals win”. It does, too. Epic win.

The answer should have been yes, but was no – but is now properly and formerly yes. If you look in your URL bar (where it tells you which page you’re on), you should see the orange RSS icon. Click on it, and you’ll be asked if you want to subscribe. Click on subscribe, and somewhere up on your menu bar (at least it will if using Firefox – other browsers will have different rules), you’ll get a folder with the RSS symbol on it and, somewhat embarrassingly, my name next to it.

Every time I post something here, it’ll appear at the top of the items in that folder. That’s pretty much it…

I will be a busy little bee – partly due to saying “ooh, that looks interesting” to the Programme Co-ordinator and assuming I’d get bumped off the panels in question when More Important people came along – and partly due to stuff I’ve agreed to do in order to promote the books.

So, in hopefully the right order, and subject to last minute changes, management reserves the right etc etc… I’m kind of assuming I’ll get a chance to eat at some point during the weekend.

Saturday     4:30pm     Earls     “SF Infrastructure & Engineering”
Sub orbital flights, underground trans-continental high speed trains; LEO space station factories; Mag-lev high speed trains; Undersea communities; Floating cities – in the air and on the sea. Pournelle, Heinlein, Harrison, Anderson to name a few all had big infrastructure as a backdrop to their stories. Why don’t we have it now in the 21st century? Is it cost, science or engineering?

Saturday     9pm     Earls     “Real World Cyberwar”
The panel discuss real current-to-v-soon tech, DDOS, robot drones and swarms, cyber espionage, biowar, augmented terminators & legality of it: the push to a cyberwar treaty – a start of a Geneva Convention for cyberwar.

Sunday        At some point       Dealers’ Room – Forbidden Planet stall       Signing
Pretty much what it says on the tin. With luck and a following wind, there will be copies of Theories of Flight available as well as Equations of Life. No idea what time this will be yet. Sorry.

Sunday     7:30pm     Gladstone     “Author reading #5: de Bodard & Morden”
The authors reads from some of their recent works. There will also be cookies. And maybe some flapjacks.

Monday     12noon     Queens     “Nuke From Orbit – It’s The Only Way To Be Sure”
How would you invade a planet – whether a rogue colony, a rival or just plain pillaging a civilisation? How would you do a sneak attack with an armada of spacecraft in the sky?

I have homework to do.

Back in yesteryear, authors would have to wait weeks, if not months, to find out how their book was selling. Now, they can check in real time. Reviews would trickle in, be collated by the publisher, and get posted when there were sufficient to make it worth the while. Now, in an era where everything is instantaneous, our hapless scrivener swings from joy to anguish and back in the course of a single afternoon. Readers’ reactions – once largely unknown – are now in the public domain, thanks to the star systems on Amazon and Goodreads.

It makes for an exceptionally intense experience: one of those rollercoaster rides I absolutely hate because I can’t see what’s up ahead (because I’ve had to take my glasses off) and get nauseous with all the abrupt changes in direction. It isn’t what I signed up for, even though it’s clearly a critical part of the business. What’s galling, of course, is that I know make it worse for myself. If I could relax and enjoy it, I’d be having such a good time right now.

The reviews have been almost universally positive – some of them have been downright glowing – and I know there are more to come. The graffiti walls were such an amazing thing to do – so unutterably cool and so totally the embodiment of the Metrozone – that I couldn’t stop grinning after I’d seen them. Sales – well, I’ve actually sold some books. And ebooks. I’ve sold them in the UK. I’ve sold them in the USA. And in Canada. And in France, Germany, and Japan. And on the back of those sales, some discerning folk are pre-ordering Theories of Flight. So I – and the heroic Orbit publicity machine – must be doing something right.

And at the end of April, we’re doing it all again. And again at the end of May. My disreputable writing friends made heavy use of both irony and mockery when we met down the pub last week, along the lines of “Woe! What a terrible thing it is to have three novels published across the globe, one after another, by a major SF publisher, and have them well-received by critics and readers alike. Woe!” Alcohol may have been involved, too, but you get the idea.

It’s not that I’m an intensely shy person, either. I teach at a school, in front of ten and eleven-year old kids. I speak in public about writing, and science, and faith, and other stuff. I go to conventions, and I mingle. But in working through this blog-post-thing, I think what really disturbs me is that I feel both wholly unprepared and out of control. I don’t know what else I could have done at this point. Neither do I know how to manipulate what’s happening Out There.

It feels like an exam that I can’t revise for. I’ve taken many tests in my time, and being the swot I am, I’m meticulous in my planning. I didn’t ace them all, but I knew what I needed to do for each one. Yet when it comes to this, there’s no curriculum to follow and no revision I can do. My precious words are not my own any more. They belong to other people now. There are no right or wrong answers, mainly because I don’t know what the questions are supposed to be.

For someone like me, that’s really hard.

Now go and find someone who, unlike me, actually deserves your pity…

And just to prove that I don’t only link to the good reviews, I shall start with SFX. It’s not online (yet. I assume it will be at some point), but I’ve been told over the phone the outcome. Two stars. I haven’t seen it yet, as it wasn’t in either of the shops I went into today. I am moderately disappointed, as I kind of thought it’d be right up their street, but hey. I pull up my big girl pants and proceed to the sunny uplands of…

The Falcata Times! Gareth gives me 4 stars. It starts “If you like a book where an author creates a memorable character then you really have to try this title by Simon Morden” and ends “a seriously great find from our friends at Orbit and a series that will have a lot to live up to.”

I hadn’t realised I’d made the Stomping on Yeti March picks (being a US-based blog, it came out there on the 29th). “The lovechild of near-future thrillers and theoretical physics”. woot!

I also have not one, but two reviews on SFRevu. Here is Mel Jacob’s, and here is Ernest Lilley’s. Both are good, but the best line of all is Ernest’s last one. “This is a series not to be missed, and as I’ve had a chance to read the other two books, I can promise you that it’s only going to get better.”

The reason I heard of it? Someone, somewhere, by the pseudonym of llathrop has sent maxd a box of stuff. Which not only included Edgar Rice Burrough’s Martian Tales trilogy and a Sesame Street cookbook, but also a copy of Equations of Life. Our gift-receiver says it’s “what excites me most”. Clearly easily pleased, but I’m actually quite chuffed….

Bookgeeks. We like Bookgeeks. Not only is it a brilliant name for a book blog, any review that starts “There’s always room in my life for books like Equations of Life” is absolutely fine by me.

io9. I discovered the joys of io9′s (tag line: we come from the future) blend of cool a few months back, and only then realised just how massive its online presence was. First, they loved the Metrozone walls, then they loved Equations of Life. A massive review – detailed and perceptive – and very, very positive.

Warpcore have also picked up on the joy of Petrovitch with this review. 4 stars – “It’s a breathless near-future thriller with an unrealistic body count and a sympathetic central character”. I would question the use of unrealistic, but meh…

Finally for this post – LEC Book Reviews have decided that “This shockingly fun start to the Metrozone Trilogy is brilliant and well-worth the go.” I concur!