THE SKINNER

Showers and Sharks

2013-05-11T16:42:00.001+01:00

Monday 6th May

It’s been boiling hot lately – 25C up in the village and 30C down in Makrigialos – so on Sunday we decided to go for a swim. It being Paska we found that most of our usual haunts were closed so tried one called by some ‘the shack’ (I tried translating the Greek name for it and its comes out as something like ‘service’). There we had some souvlaki before venturing down on their sun beds where, despite the umbrella, we were soon frying. Into the sea for a cool off, therefore... I have a feeling that we have been in the sea before at this time of year and my recollection of the experience is the same. It was too hot not to go in the sea but the temperature contrast was almost painful. I got past that by throwing myself in head-first when the water was deep enough (about twenty yards out) while Caroline dithered standing on tip-toes with the water up round her waist. I later took a swim to the harbour, checking everything unusual under the water because of someone telling us of a nine-foot shark recently caught off the coast here.

Tuesday 7th May
Of course when I write about our time here on Crete it always reads like Paradise but, unfortunately, Paradise has its snakes. The first snakes we encountered where neighbours that just would not leave us alone until I finally got angry enough to shout at them. At the time we got on okay with another neighbour called Yorgos. Now things have switched around. The neighbours that were originally a pain are no problem at all now, while Yorgos is a dick. He plays his crappy Cretan music at ridiculous volume as if it his prerogative to ensure everyone in the village hears it. Meanwhile some new neighbours have turned up between us and him. Three houses next to us are owned respectively by three daughters but have only been used occasionally. Now one of the daughters, after a divorce/depression/affair saga three years ago, has moved here with her new squeeze. We’re hoping they’ll tire of Yorgos’s loud music and shout at him in his own language.

Wednesday 8th May
After I’d polished off my 2,000 words yesterday we went down to Makrigialos more in hope than expectation of a swim. It was a mistake. It was hot up here and as we drove down it got progressively cloudier and cooler. In the end we found ourselves sitting in Revans buggering about on the internet, drinking wine and watching hardier souls than us braving the sea. As we returned here the temperature steadily rose again and we ended up sitting outside until sundown. Later we returned inside and got all soppy watching Forrest Gump.

Thursday 9th May
We had a down pour yesterday but, even so, the temperature was up in the 20s. It was really needed because after a dry winter and the soil here was like powder. As usual I did my 2,000 words then spent the rest of the day finishing off Elizabeth Moon’s Trading in Danger (brief review here). Later we started on the third season of Deadwood – it took me one episode before I even understood half of what they were saying.

This morning there’s a bit of cloud about but whether or not it’ll rain I’ve no idea. I wish it would. After just one day of it the plants out there are looking a lot better – rain always boosts things better than any equivalent amount of watering. And, regarding plants, as is becoming a bit of a tradition now, here a picture of how my salad veg is getting on just to annoy Heidi (next door neighbour in England) and my brother Paul:

Friday 10th May
Two days of cloud and a brief heavy shower and we wake this morning to rumbles of thunder coming from Sitia way. I suspect we’re in for a hammering but it’s needed. The downpour of the day before yesterday still left dry patches under various shrubs and other sheltered places where the soil remains dry and powdery. I am also still finding places for our waste water, while last year at about this time I was using it to wash down paths.

Writing: Penny Royal III is clear of 130,000 words but I’m now working a bit slower as I chop out large chunks of text and shift them around. It’s very unlike me to do this but yesterday I chopped out a whole space battle, shifted it off the end of the book where I keep such ‘spare’ bits, then wrote a whole new one at a different location. Why? Because there was something the Polity AIs had to know that would stop them dead in their tracks, while there was something a nasty AI had to know (not Penny Royal) that had to put it on a different course. There are fine lines to walk here. I am writing about entities with superior intelligences who won’t be fooled my something a dumb human would miss, so they have to be a few steps ahead of the story. Meanwhile I don’t want to insult the intelligence of my readers, but simultaneously I don’t want them to be confused by what’s going on.

Saturday 11th May
Yup, it did absolutely hammer down yesterday and I finally had to admit that two of our roof windows weren’t dripping condensation but are leaking. Off to Sitia today for shopping inclusive of a couple of tubes of mastic for repairs. Then down to the taverna this afternoon to put up this blog post along with the two book reviews prior to it.

Trading in Danger - Elizabeth Moon

2013-05-11T16:33:00.001+01:00

Elizabeth Moon is a name I’ve heard in science fiction for a long time but I’ve never read one of her novels before. She’s American (and a former marine) and I may have come across her in Asimov’s. I guess the fact that I’ve now read one of her novels is down to the power of having a book, with an eye-catching cover, sitting on the shelf in a book shop. Now I have read one I’m happy to discover she’s written over 20 of them, and I’ll be happy to buy some more.

Trading in Danger has a slightly old-fashioned feel to it in that it could have been written 30 or 40 years ago. You’ve got the space ships, space marines and merchants, the needle guns and the ansible that were all staples of the kind of books I was grabbing from the second-hand book shop to feed my rapidly expanding teenage SF habit. No off-putting slide-rules are being used to calculate a ship’s course and there are concessions to the modern age in cerebral implants and advanced medical technology however, that there isn’t much detail about the tech you’ll find in the Hamilton GNR or in my books doesn’t matter at all, because this is about the characters and story. I began to care about the people quite rapidly, thoroughly enjoyed their interactions, and was engaged and dragged along in their story from page one. Highly recommended.

Great North Road - Peter F. Hamilton

2013-05-11T16:31:00.001+01:00

It’s been a while since I picked up a Peter Hamilton book, mainly because of an aversion to great big doorstops. However, I really shouldn’t have let that effect me since I very much enjoyed his previous enormous tomes including a trade paperback version of The Naked God that made my wrist bones crunch every time I turned a page. My version of The Great North Road weighs in at over a thousand pages and, had I not started it in England and then finished it in Crete (with much ado between) I would have finished much sooner than now. Was there stuff that could have been cut without detriment to the plot? Well, yes, but that was world-building and thoroughly enjoyable. Did I find myself skipping any of this and thinking, ‘Oh get on with it?’ Not at all. Right from the start I enjoyed this look into this future and every time I put the book down it was with growing confidence in future enjoyment when I picked it up again. A great big sprawling enjoyable science fiction read. Does what it says on the tin. I finally closed it with a sense of satisfaction and the intention to now get hold of the Void trilogy...

Into May

2013-05-02T15:50:00.001+01:00

Sunday 28th April

The new taverna at the bottom of the village is a handy addition for us here. I’ve learned that it’s called ‘To Avli’ which translates as ‘The Yard’. We like chilled white wine in this climate while the old kafenion down there was limited to beer, coffee, raki and soft drinks, not so the Avli. We don’t have internet in our house here because, until recently, every option seemed to work out at about €50 a month. Our only internet connection was a 20 minute drive away, but not any more: it is now available just a couple of minutes stroll away. It’s free for customers, but purchasing a €2.50 carafe of wine, with free mezes, is no hardship. Civilization is now reaching Papagianades, which comes as a surprise since Greece as a whole is still falling apart, tourism is down, unemployment is 27% and money is tight.

Tuesday 30th April

Back to work today, which seems a shame what with the temperature having climbed about 10 degrees in the last week. When I say work I of course mean writing. I was going to start yesterday but I had one more thing to sort out for the house. Our way of stopping insects getting in through the terrace doors has been a bead curtain. After last Autumn, which I shall call the Autumn of the Wasp, I decided we needed something a bit better. The problem, however, was a combination of doors and shutters which, due to the thickness of the walls, only have 90 degrees of movement, while the gap between them in just an inch or so, which leaves little room to manoeuvre. So I spent yesterday constructing a fly screen hinged at one side and in the middle, secured with magnetic catches, and with chunks carved out to stop it snagging on various items. They work, but warped wood and some slightly haphazard sawing means they are still, ahem, under development.

Wednesday 1st May

Damn, not a very good day yesterday at all. It was over 20C in the house and higher outside yesterday but I felt cold and quite rough. Too much wine, too many cigarettes? No, in retrospect I realise I wasn’t treating the sunshine here with the respect it is due. Having spent most of Monday in direct sunlight with little in the way of protection my head was roasted. I believe I was suffering from sun stroke. Daft really, since we always warn visitors here of that and chortle at the lobster tourists on the beach.

After further work on the fly screen it is now past the development stage and working properly i.e. I don’t have to bugger about it every time we want to open and close it. Now I just need to tidy the thing up: fill in various screw holes where I moved hinges and catches, paint the thing, cover the rough edges where I cut the netting ... but I have to say I prefer this kind of work to mixing up cement to fill holes in the outside walls.

Thursday 2nd May

You gotta laugh at the white man’s guilt at the BBC. A clothing factory collapses in India and what do they concentrate on? Do they examine the rampant corruption in India, the politicians planners and local officials taking back-handers, the builders who increase their margin by putting just a bit less cement and reinforcing steel in their concrete, or the inspectors looking the other way either because they’ve been paid too or because they’re too lazy to get off their arses and step out of their air-conditioned offices? Do they buggery. No, in BBC land this cannot be the fault of anyone with dusky skin. It’s our fault for buying cheap clothing. What do they honestly think would happen if the price went up? Would the extra money in any way reduce the corruption and inefficiency? No, the people involved would just end up pocketing more.

In a partial answer to this a sour faced harridan said that the EU must place restrictions on such trade until such places get their act together. Oh yeah, that’ll work. The EU already has trade restrictions on other countries. Many African farmers, for example, cannot sell their goods to the EU. The result of this is less wealth heading that direction, and poverty. But that’s okay, because then we feed them money via the likes of the DFID making them dependent on charity. They can look admiringly at their fucking windmills while they starve. Gotta keep them in their place. Strange how those who are so active against racism cannot see how implicit it is in their attitude.

Rant over. I did my 2,000 words yesterday and I’m back on track. Penny Royal III has reached 123,000 words and I’m now into the end game.

Weeds 'n Stuff

2013-04-26T14:02:00.002+01:00

Wednesday April 24th

So, we’ve been back on Crete for six days now, the first three of which were colder than in England and required us firing up the stove throughout. It is much colder than last year because then we only used the stove in the evening, and that was upon arriving here two weeks earlier. There was surprisingly little wrong with the house. Yes, the paint is flaking off part of one wall in the hall and there are patches of mould here and there, but we’re now a long way from the days of black ceilings and water features in our bedroom. I’ve also found a way to deal with that flaking paint/damp area. I’ll do what I did, and which seems to have worked, around the lower half of the kitchen arch here: after scraping it I put on a layer of waterproof tile cement. There have, however been other annoyances, some unexpected.

The car we left here over winter became the home for a mouse and the little bugger ate through the HT leads. This wasn’t too much of a problem as the guy looking after the car for me had them replaced. However, since then a warning light has been showing. The garage guy traced this to an emissions sensor on the exhaust and blamed water in the petrol. My concern is that it might not be that and that somewhere else in the car bastard Micky has chewed through some other wiring. I also recollect my mother having similar problems with cars she owned – in one of which the dashboard caught fire because the wiring had been damaged.

The garden of course was a jungle, as you can see by the pictures here:

No problem, thought I: I’ll just get out there and pull them up. This will be good exercise for me and a welcome change from my sedentary winter. The problem was that my sedentary winter had turned me into a wimp. After one day of pulling up weeds I was thoroughly knackered, aching all over and had the grip of a pack of wet sausages. Three days of weeding later and this is where we’re at:

We spent two days at the house working on the garden and tidying stuff up. Not having any shopping in we tried the new taverna that had opened in our village last year. Positive points and negative points there: It’s cheap – a half litre carafe of white wine costs €2.50, and a souvlaki €1.50 – they have internet down there, just a short stroll from our house, but the owner, with typical Greek lack of foresight, even knowing that we are here now for six months, overcharged us on both occasions we were there. First time a couple of €s went on the bill for no reason at all, while the second time he charged us for a carafe of wine we didn’t have. My inclination is to say fuck him and never go back there, but that would be shooting myself in the foot. Next time we go down there I’ll warn him, ‘Oshi extras’ and if he questions that I’ll show him the two bills and explain.

It’s warmer now and we’re venturing out in shorts. We took a visit down to Makrigialos yesterday, had something to eat in a cafe called the Obelix, played about on the internet and paid for the next level of that highly addictive game ‘Sugar Crush’. Interestingly, while checking Twitter, I found a tweet from someone claiming to have been about to buy my books but being put off by my ‘abhorrent political views’. As a guy called Jim Braiden pointed out on Facebook: ‘Remind me again which side of the political spectrum spends so much time extolling the virtues of tolerance?’

Quite.

Friday 26th April

In the evening here it was time for us to delve into the collection of DVDs we’d built up over the winter. The first film we watched was called Contagion starring Matt Damon and Jude Law. I usually enjoy this sort of stuff but the film was simply rubbish: disjointed, completely lack of emotion; completely lacking of fear. Oh look, people dying, sigh. Then, a couple of days later, I see a news story about bird flu killing people in China and now appearing outside that country...

The next film we watched was Passengers ... I say ‘watched’ in the sense that we looked at it for a while in a way one would perhaps experience Vogon poetry. I turned it off before my small intestine crawled up my spine and throttled my brain.

We did enjoy the first season of Alcatraz – in fact just about anything with Sam Neil in is good – however, after a few episodes and having nailed down the formula, we wondered if we wanted to watch about three hundred episodes to discover what the hell was going on. Perhaps those who financed this thought the same, since it was cancelled after this season.

And while I’m on the subject of films: I watched a clip of Robert Redford being interviewed concerning his Sundance film festival. Apparently, with the way the film industry is now, he wouldn’t have become an actor but chosen some other career. What a berk. So, you’d have been off to Waitrose to apply for that job at the checkout would you Robert? Seriously, these actors don’t live on the same planet as real people. Oh, and that reminds me of one of the presenters on BBC World talking to someone about pensions and investments. Even he flinched after coming out with, ‘But how does that apply to ordinary people like us?’

Snigger. Update: Having just checked under ther bonnet of my car I see Micky did chew right through the wires leading to the emissions sensor.

Open Thread

2013-04-17T13:41:00.000+01:00

Okay, since I'm going to be away from an internet connection for a while, fill your boots.

Mrs T.

2013-04-14T10:14:00.000+01:00

Martin Durkin’s excellent documentary last night perfectly outlined my thoughts on the dangerous subject that is Margaret Thatcher. You can see it here on the Channel 4 catch-up site.

Many years ago when I received my first poll tax bill I of course did not like it at all. It was only in retrospect that I realised that there it was in black and white: this is how much your council, your police, your fire service … are charging to provide their services and here’s the bill. The knee-jerk reaction to this was to protest because of course it was all the fault of the evil Tories. I didn’t go to any protests because, unlike most of those throwing chunks of paving slab at council offices, I had a job to do. It was a stark reality check. The Poll Tax never went away and was just made more unfair by being rebranded Council Tax and then aimed at a target that couldn’t duck it: the home owner. No subsequent Labour government removed it. In reality it was as unfair as any tax to fund state-run organisations because you have no choice; all taxes are demanded with menaces. Which brings me to the 1970s.

A lot has already been written about how things were back then: just about everything state-run and inefficient, unions demanding ridiculous wage rises and striking at the drop of a hat, 33% and 83% income tax rates, rubbish piling up in the streets, endless blackouts, dead bodies going unburied and stacking up to the extent that one city even considered burial at sea, trains running a damned sight more erratically than they do now. However, one small thing can illustrate it better for people now: you didn’t even own your own telephone. We had the British disease; we were Cuba without the sunshine. Britain, prior to 1979, was under the dead hand of the state. And the British were sick of it, which is why Thatcher got in, three times, with majorities that today’s parties can only dream about.

So, Margaret Thatcher started closing down our industries and putting people out of work. She destroyed our country yada yada. Well, no, what she did was stop us having to subsidize moribund, unionized, inefficient, pretend industries that simply could not compete in the real world. We were living in the illusory world of twenty people building a crap car while hurtling towards us was the reality of one person and a series of robots building a good one. And yes, that did hurt and did put people out of work. However, that was because previous governments had been doing just what many governments are doing now with the financial crisis: kicking the can down the road. Reality was going to bite; it was just a question of when.

Margaret Thatcher destroyed our coal mining industry … except it was the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (managing to restrain himself from kicking that can) who closed three times as many pits as her, but that was okay, because Wilson was Labour, and a man. Never let it be forgotten that the coal miner’s strike was firstly illegal because Scargill couldn’t get enough miners to vote for it, and was secondly an attack by Scargill, and other left-wing apparatchiks, on the Thatcher government. It was about who ruled the country: an elected government that won three landslide victories, or the unions. That man used the miners as cannon fodder and, when it was over, it wasn’t him on benefits, oh no, he just toddled back to his 1.5 million mansion.

Anyway … the interesting thing that Durkin documentary highlighted was that Margaret Thatcher fought the establishment, both Labour and Tory, on behalf of the working class. The Tory ‘wets’ didn’t want the working class to have social mobility because, well, shudder, they didn’t want the plebs having the wealth to move in the same rarefied strata as them. Equally, Labour didn’t want social mobility because shit, if the oiks toss away their flat caps, buy white vans or mobile phones and start making money, where’s the sense of grievance and the client-base that gets Labour elected? The very idea of these people buying their own homes or buying shares in companies was anathema. In fact the unions told their members not to buy shares, and were ignored. Both parties had and still have their total snobs. You can see this attitude reflected in the term ‘yuppies’ and in Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney character – this is the awful sort of thing that happens when oiks and plebs dare to rise above their station. Shudder.

In the end, of course, the dead hand of the state came back with Blair, Brown and the EU while, damn it, I would prefer to see people working in industries rather than as clients of the state – meaning either uselessly employed by it or on benefits – but how do you get round that? How do we get full employment in an increasingly mechanised world? A world which, in their way, the Luddites were right to fear? That’s a post for another time perhaps.

Waffleblog

2013-04-11T16:39:00.001+01:00

Right, I just managed to do my 2,000 words. This was after drinking far too much red wine last night, which resulted in me waking up at 3.30 in the morning and only dozing intermittently thereafter. And this was after I’d deleted some drunken tweets from the night before and while our house was overrun with plumbers – doors open, central heating off, electric fire just managing to stave off the cold. I’m not sure they’re very good words, but they’re down now and I can knock them into a shape another time. I then felt I should do a blog post and asked for suggestions on a subject. These included: hovering robotic coffee cups, steampunk prador, xenobiology and neural warfare.

Nah, as I noted on Twitter, I have a dead pigeon in my mental reservoir.

So I’m just waffling to see what surfaces (hopefully not the pigeon). Some bright spark suggested I do a post about Margaret Thatcher but, just like some of my old posts on Global Warming, I suspect that’d go down as well as bacon sandwiches in a Mosque. People’s opinions on both subjects have petrified and long since moved into the territory of confirmation bias. I have to wonder how much spittle is being wiped off computer screens lately.

More about the Night Shade Books thing perhaps? All you need to know is that I’ll be signing up for the new contract and crossing my fingers. I haven’t got the time to be too paranoid about books I wrote years ago because I’ve got books to write. And as for another idea I’ve been toying with – of all that’s been involved in getting my books published in the US – that I’ve promised elsewhere.

A book review perhaps? Well, I’ve just started Peter Hamilton’s Great North Road so there won’t be any reviews here for a while. Enjoying it btw, and was amused to see a character in there who works in publicity at Macmillan.

No, I’ll go back to those 2,000 words even though it’s territory I’ve visited before.

It’s not actually 2,000 words in total but of fiction. In reality, after I get up in the morning I first fill in a page in my journal so that’s about 200 words. This is sometimes quite difficult as you would expect in extending ‘got up, pissed about on the internet, wrote 2,000 words, ate stuff, went to bed’ to fill a page. Then there are the tweets, occasional blog posts and stuff on Facebook. I kid myself that this is all justifiable advertising and that writing on twitter is a good exercise in précis, but I just enjoy that shit. So, as I alternately muck about on the internet and write, I normally do my 2,000 words of fiction by about 3 or 4. On those occasions when things are going a bit slow the count might be 1,000 to 1,300 at that time, and by then and I’m thinking to myself I’m not going to hit my target. At 4 we have a dance to the Wii because the glamorous life of a writer is sadly lacking in exercise. After 4 I then usually polish off any remainder within an hour. Don’t ask me why. The workings of my brain are a mystery.

But next week things will change because we’re heading back to Crete. There, without an internet connection, I open up my laptop and have few alternatives but to write. There, because hell it’s sunny and I want to get outside, I usually polish off my word count by about 2. This year it’ll be the same for a few weeks as I complete the first draft of Penny Royal III, then I’m going to spend plenty of time editing and generally tidying up those three books, also writing synopses and blurbs. I look forward to the time, after that, when I can sit down and work on some short stories.

So, how do I end this? I know…

That’s all for now.

Final Days - Gary Gibson

2013-04-08T10:45:00.000+01:00

"Science fiction asks what it means to be human; how we relate to our technology; and what our place is in the vastness of time and space" - Gareth L Powell (Ack-Ack Macaque). Gary Gibson’s Final Days fits neatly in there with its wormholes, ancient alien technology, questions about predestination, much more closely linked networked technology (in the form of contact lenses). But it also does all this in the form of Philip (Mortal Engines) Reeve’s reply to Gareth: "But crucially it asks these questions through the medium of explosions and running about in corridors." Both of them have put their finger on it. And this book is another fine addition to the vast questions with explosions genre. Enjoyable.

Update: I have to add that he's definitely been watching those video clips of 'Big Dog' from Boston Dynamics!

My Tuppence-Worth on Night Shade Books

2013-04-06T16:48:00.000+01:00

While I meticulously study contracts I see that the whole Night Shade Books debacle is being written about all across the internet. I won’t provide links here – just go to Google Blog Search and get up-to-date posts on Night Shade Books. There’s some insightful stuff available; there’s some bitter stuff out there too.

The essence is this: NSB is on the point of bankruptcy so is selling assets to a publisher called Skyhorse Publishing and another called Start Publishing (ebooks for the latter). The apparent aim of this on the part of Jeremy Lassen and Jason Williams is to ensure that authors can be paid what they are owed. The crux of the matter is that those ‘assets’ are the rights to those same author’s books. It means, for the sale to go through, that the authors must agree to changes to their NSB contracts as they are taken up by the other companies.

The authors are in a cleft stick.

If they don’t sign up to this they risk losing the royalties they are owed and the books dropping into legal oblivion (scare tactics?). If they do sign they get reduced royalties.

Ebook royalties are chopped in half. However, a read somewhere of writers supposedly having to sign over Ebook rights they never sold to NSB. Well, the contract I’m looking at doesn’t say that. It should also be noted that NSB were paying twice ‘industry standard’.

Skyhorse is claiming audio rights even if they weren’t sold … again at ‘industry standard’.

My main bone of contention concerns this 10% of net receipts. Here’s my contractual bit with NSB:

8% on the first 50,000 copies, 10% on 50,001-100,000 copies, and 12% over that, of the retail price of all MASS MARKET PAPERBACK copies sold.

Note that ‘retail price’. Publishers sell books to booksellers at half and sometimes 40% of cover price. Going with half this would mean on a $10 book, and supposing I wasn’t over that 50,000, I would be taking a cut in income per book from $0.80 to $0.50.

But at this point it is worth noting that if you’re not being paid, then percentages are irrelevant.

The whole thing is a bit of a bastard and the decisions of the individual authors concerned will be based on a number of things: how many books they have with NSB (and whether they have books with other publishers), how much NSB owes them, what they think their future earnings might be from the NSB books, how much financial pain they are in …etc. It’s not easy. I really feel sorry for those authors who have one or two books ONLY with NSB. It’s probably heartbreaking.

In my case it’s five books. However, the Owner series – The Departure, Zero Point & Jupiter War – were sold to them by Macmillan who aren’t exactly lightweights. I’m confident that Macmillan will have their contracts department scrutinizing the deal very closely. But personally, at the request of NSB, I wrote Prador Moon & Shadow of the Scorpion for them and sold them the American rights, and it is for these books I must sign up to the contract changes, or not.

I’m not a one-book wonder. The two books are two, thus far, of the twenty books I’ve had published. I have Jupiter War yet to be published and as you know I’m close to finishing the third Penny Royal book, so after JW I'll have another three in the bank. And, because I keep producing books and keep getting published I’ve been doing okay, which is why I never lawyered up and went after NSB. As a consequence they owe me a shitload of money. I might decide to sign up so that I get that money, and consider those other two books loss-leaders – in America, since they are still published here in Britain and in translation. I’m certainly going to push for some changes to that contract. Or I might just say fuck it, shove your contract.

I’m still undecided.

Update:

Jarred and I have been listening to and thinking through what the Night Shade authors and agents have said on blogs, on facebook, over email, and during several very long phone conversations. Skyhorse and Start now have a much more complete picture of what the Night Shade authors been through and it’s helped us to understand the reaction that many of them have had to the deal as offered. Both Jarred and I have decided to make a strong attempt to see this deal through. We’ve decided to take the long view, the view that what we want to do is build a publishing company, build on the Night Shade backlist, and we’re willing to offer a deal that we feel is very favorable to the Night Shade authors and will trade short run profits for long-term relationship. Here are the revised terms:

7 1/2 % of retail for all printing books.

25% of net receipts on all ebooks up to 15,000 copies sold and 30% thereafter

50/50 on audio, with a reversion if we don’t sell the rights in six months. Audio rights money to flow through within 30 days of receipt of payment, provided that the advance has earned out.

The assignment clause, clause 7, would only apply if the assignment is part of a sale of “all or substantially all of the assets of the company” purchased by either Start Publishing or Skyhorse Publishing.

Update: Posted Books & Writing

2013-03-29T08:43:00.000Z

Nice to see that the books I’ve been posting off are arriving safely:

It’s also nice to see the shelves up in my loft steadily emptying. Those books weren’t doing anyone any good sitting up there. Hopefully I’ll get to the stage where I’m only sending off new books. However, I still have plenty of foreign editions I’ve no idea what the hell to do with. Many German readers out there? Because I’ve got a couple of boxes of the things – can’t remember which ones they are right now. If you haven’t received your books yet I shouldn’t worry too much. I’ve never actually posted any off and have them not arrive. Also, if you’ve chosen ‘overland postage’ remember that can take as much as 6 weeks if you’re somewhere like America. If anyone wants any more they’ll find a price list further down this blog, though of course some are missing from that list. Get in contact at the email below my bio on the right here and I’ll let you know if I have what you’re after.

The writing is going well. Penny Royal I (which may be called ‘Isobel’) and II are finished to first draft while Penny Royal III is past 100,000 words. Yesterday my 2,000 words were written in the first of these. It was a sex scene. I didn’t do it for the gratuitous porn but because I’m taking more time now with character development and personal interactions. One fault to my writing is supposedly that my characters can be a bit cardboard, so I’m working on that. I’m also concentrating on more visceral/emotional reactions from my characters, more detail on aug communications and how that would change people’s behaviour, more on the nanosuites Polity citizens have running inside their bodies and how they’re used, and of course generally tightening up the plot. As I have pointed out before: the moment I think I’ve got nothing more to learn is really the moment I should quit.

Neal Asher Video Clip 24/3/2013

2013-03-24T19:42:00.000Z

Ah, got it at last after much screwing around. I warn you this is over 20 minutes of burbling...

Update: Okay, Laszlo has started off with a question in the comments, which is what I wanted people to do anyway. If you could all ask some more questions for the next video clip that's be great.

Dust Jackets

2013-03-20T11:53:00.002Z

We've just been having a bit of a clear-out and I found these gathering dust atop the unused cookery and reference books. (Who doesn't just print of recipes from the internet and look up stuff on google?) There are two of each.

If anyone out there has a hardback of The Departure or Zero Point with a damaged dust jacket, get in touch (my email is below my bio to the right) and I'll send you one of these. All I'll want is the cost of postage.

Reviver - Seth Patrick

2013-03-19T10:32:00.001Z

One of the things I’ve been noticing over the years is how though I can read or watch and enjoy fantasy and the most outrageous science fiction (and write it) I find myself failing to suspend disbelief when it comes to supernatural stuff that hits closer to home. This is because I simply don’t believe in the soul, ghosts or an afterlife of any kind. I never have, and I guess the hardening of my attitude comes from getting older and seeing people all around me turning up their toes. Death is very final, harsh and uncompromising, which is why people like to believe it isn’t the end.

When I realized what Reviver was about I thought I would probably be abandoning it after a chapter or so. The first line grabbed me: ‘Sometimes Jonah Miller hated talking to the dead’ and the ensuing paragraph was damned good too, but I was still doubtful. However, as it progressed and I realised Jonah was ‘JP Miller duty reviver’ just doing his job at a murder scene as part of a forensic investigation I was fine with that. The combination of a hint of the supernatural with real world police investigation works, and is a good idea. It’s not a new idea since I’d come across it just a few weeks before in Eric Brown’s Necropath (much more sfnal) but it was done in a way that seems very new to me. As it progressed and filled out with the story of revival, and its real world effects, my disbelief was forcibly suspended and I settled down to enjoy a good read. I ploughed through it quickly, staying up late to finish it. What it has also done has reminded me that when I read Stephen King I was fine with the supernatural, and that maybe my aversion to it is more due to the crap TV production of the stuff and not the books. That being said, this would make a great TV series: a combination of CSI and Afterlife. I’ve since learned that it has been bought by Legendary Pictures, the company behind The Dark Knight Rises, Inception and Watchmen. Good.

Highly recommended.

Books for Sale

2013-03-18T13:50:00.001Z

Okay, I spent part of Sunday scrabbling about in my loft sorting out boxes and double-stacked shelves. I've been meaning to do this for some time because numerous copies of my books up in my loft do no one any good. Here's a list of what I have left if anyone is interested. The price will be plus postage and packing which can stack up if you're not in Britain (well, it can stack up if you are). Contact me at the email below my biography here. I also want to give a reminder to those who have contacted me about books: payment first and, if you don't get a move on, I can't guarantee that what you were after will still be available.

Update: For some reason I completely missed The Technician off this list. I have about 8 copies available.

Book	Detail	Number	Price
Gridlinked
Mass-market paperback	USA	1	£4
Hardback	USA Book club	1	£10

Brass Man
MM paperback	UK Old cover	10	£4
MM paperback	UK Sullivan cover	9	£8
Hardback	USA Book club	4	£12
Trade paperback	USA	19	£10
MM paperback	USA	19	£6

Polity Agent
MM paperback	UK Old cover	4	£4
MM paperback	UK Sullivan cover	11	£8

Line War
MM paperback	UK old cover	4	£4

Prador Moon
MM paperback	UK old cover	2	£4
Hardback	UK old cover	2	£15
Trade paperback	US Night Shade Books issue	24	£10

Voyage of the Sable Keech
MM paperback	UK old cover	7	£4
MM paperback	UK Sullivan cover	10	£8

Orbus
MM paperback	UK Sullivan	6	£8

Cowl
MM paperback	UK wraparound	4	£8
MM paperback	US	7	£5.50
Trade paperback	US	9	£10

Hilldiggers
MM paperback	UK old cover	8	£4

Shadow of the Scorpion
Trade paperback	UK old cover	5	£12
MM paperback	UK Sullivan	11	£8

The Gabble
MM paperback	UK old cover	11	£8

The Departure
MM paperback	UK Sullivan	11	£8
Hardback	UK Sullivan	1	£18

Zero Point
MM paperback	UK Sullivan	13	£8

New Books!

2013-03-16T12:56:00.001Z

This is what happens when I'm let loose in Waterstones with a gift card. The card was for £30 and I ended up spending £49. Ah well, in terms of the hours of pleasure I will hopefully find here it's not much to pay. So, after I've finished the one I'm reading now (Reviver by Seth Patrick) which one of these do you think I should read next?

On Writing - Writer's Group

2013-03-15T08:01:00.000Z

I got an invite to a local writer’s group a few weeks back and, since it was local, in fact in a pub I used to frequent over many years, I thought, ‘why not?’ though I added the proviso that I’d just go along for a chat and wouldn’t be giving a talk or reading. It all seemed to go pretty well and hopefully I said some stuff they found interesting. I also took along some professionally edited sheets from Zero Point for them to have a look at – the kind of stuff I would have killed for many years ago. Interestingly, they had a session of writing, whereby someone provided a sentence or line and everyone keyed off that for ten minutes. A sheet of paper was pushed my way and I considered running at that point, but then I told myself not to be such a wimp.

The line was, ‘I never suffer from writer’s block, but…’ and here’s my contribution:

I never suffer from writer’s block but, when asked by this writer’s group to produce, on the spot, I felt my sphincter tightening to the diameter of a needle’s eye. However, not to be beaten, I’ll waffle on about anything relevant. Too many years ago to count I wrote an article called ‘Beating the Block’. This concerned stream-of-consciousness writing, whereby you write just anything as it comes into your head. You don’t agonize over how much sense it makes or how correct is your English. You just write. The tangled bats were falling from the sky and forming drifts beside the sapphire roads etc. Ad nauseum. Eventually some sort of sense might arise out of this but it doesn’t matter – you’re no longer staring at a blank page. Moving on… One of the biggest causes of writer’s block is the angst about what to write and how to write, which in a way is daft with the editing tools now available. It’s not as if we’re working straight to a typewriter. Typex is no longer required. We have find-and-replace and in the end the ‘delete’ button is always available.

This is as it came and certainly, as I just typed it here, I had to resist the urge to edit. I’d perhaps use ‘size of a needle’s eye’, since a needle’s eye isn’t circular. I’d add more about what you ignore when doing a stream-of-consciousness piece and I would have done a longer piece. I would have added more about the fear of getting it wrong being the cause of writer’s block and more about why that’s irrelevant now and, in fact, always has been irrelevant. Editing, even before we began working on computers, included a waste paper bin.

Anyway, this seems a good exercise to try if you have your own writer’s group, and in fact it might be something worth trying by yourself. Ask someone else to provide that line, or maybe even pick it at random from a book, and just write for ten minutes. Maybe those of you over here on the forum – the writer’s workshop – could try something?

The Departure Review

2013-03-14T09:26:00.000Z

Nice review of The Departure here on David Agranoff’s site.

I was particularly struck by how reasonable these paragraphs are:

The majority of Science Fiction novels with a political message are written by left leanings writers (like John Shirley, John Brunner or Kim Stanley Robinson) or straight-up radicals (like Ursala K.Leguin and Norman Spinrad). I would be lying if I didn't admit that I like to agree with my favorite novels. However as a political writer myself I don't want or expect all my readers to agree with me. So in return it is only fair that I read enjoy authors I don't agree with.

That is the thing, this novel feels very Ayn Rand influenced and seems to call for little or no government. Probably the opposite of John Shirley's recent anti-libertarian novel “Everything is Broken.” I don't really agree with a lot of the message but I enjoyed the story throughout.

Now why is it that a minority of reviewers are so obviously vitriolic about my stuff because they disagree with me politically? The prevailing meme among them seems to be: his political outlook is wrong wrong wrong, therefore he is a bad writer. Perhaps they can’t stomach the fact that I keep selling books? And why is it, I wonder, that the reverse doesn’t apply? I don’t often see reviewers objecting to a writer’s work because that writer is left-wing. And, frankly, if I objected to novels on the basis of the writer’s politics I would have missed out on a vast number of excellent books. It is sad.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

Video Clip

2013-03-11T17:35:00.001Z

As many of you may know I have done a few video clips in which I answer fan questions. Here's the last one I did, last year. Yes, that ugly bugger is me.

Now, being a glutton for punishment. How about some questions for a new clip, or more? Post them in the comments section.

Anti-Ageing Breakthrough

2013-03-10T10:36:00.002Z

Well, I didn’t see this is one coming, and really should have. I’ve always felt that life-extension would go in a series of small steps, just as it has been going. There is no cure for cancer as a whole because there are thousands of different varieties of cancer. If a cure or some kind of delaying treatment is found for one kind then that pushes overall life-expectancy up, just a little. Just as if a better way of treating dementia or diabetes is found. Statisticians have a lot of fun with these figures because, with life presently being 100% fatal, if you cure one thing then more people die of another. Next time you hear ‘dementia on the rise’ just remember that is probably because less people are keeling over from heart attacks.

Since 1970 life expectancy in Western European countries has typically risen by six to eight years, and the rate of increase has been 2% a decade. Of course these figures vary hugely across the world and are dependent on numerous factors, but the trend is ever upwards. There are many coffin dodgers would like to try and stay within that slow rise and, unless our civilization collapses, there will be people born in the next 100 years who are just going to keep on living, with no end in sight.

However, even though most of the low-hanging fruit have been picked – consider how much life expectancy must have leapt up when penicillin was discovered – but the possibility of big jumps in life expectancy should not be discounted. And this looks like it might be one of them. Here is a link at Extreme Longevity, and another at Science Daily and lots more can be found if you just google ‘Anti-aging drug breakthrough’.

Publishing his work in the prestigious journal Science, David Sinclair of Harvard reports a breakthrough in the development of drugs that can block the aging process.

The article is entitled Evidence for a Common Mechanism of SIRT1 Regulation by Allosteric Activators, and reveals how interaction with a single amino acid in the SIRT1 enzyme is crucial for the ability of drugs that can activate the enzyme.

SIRT1 is an enzyme in the class of molecules called Sirtuins. Significant research shows that activation of sirtuins reduces cellular aging through its interaction with other cellular master switches such as FOXO3a and PGC-1a

“At the cellular level,” explain the authors. “SIRT1 controls DNA repair and apoptosis, circadian clocks, inflammatory pathways, insulin secretion, and mitochondrial biogenesis”

The increase in centenarians is well known, but this particular comment caught my attention:

“Now we are looking at whether there are benefits for those who are already healthy. Things there are also looking promising,” he says. ”We’re finding that ageing isn’t the irreversible affliction that we thought it was,”

“Some of us could live to 150, but we won’t get there without more research,” he adds.

Zero Point Paperback

2013-03-07T16:27:00.004Z

I just had to put up this picture of the paperback cover of Zero Point. What with the quote an all...

The Blackhouse - Peter May

2013-03-07T08:23:00.002Z

Caroline’s gran used to say that she didn’t give up the booze and fags, they gave her up. I’m starting to understand how she felt. ‘Giving up’ in this case implies an effort of will to stop doing something you enjoy, whereas these things giving you up gets the sense of something you enjoyed becoming noxious; something that is no longer your friend. After consuming more red wine than was good for me yesterday, and enjoying it, I was quite prepared to accept the cost. This was presupposing that the cost would be me dropping into a coma, snoring like a pig all night, then waking up with gorilla pooh in my mouth, a mad dwarf making horseshoes in my skull and that general feeling of icky sickness. Unfortunately booze doesn’t do that to me any more. I did drop into the coma, but just for four hours. Waking at 2.00 I lay fidgeting, itching, feeling depressed and quite rough and by 2.30 knew that was the end of my sleep for the night. However, on the plus side, to distract myself from this malaise, I picked up the book I was reading and polished it off over the ensuing four hours.

The Blackhouse is a combination of a coming of age story and a murder mystery, and so much more than that. I was riveted to the end, fascinated by this glimpse into life on the Isle of Lewis, engaged with all the characters – liking and admiring some, hating others, and in one satisfying scene near the end all but cheering on one of them. If I have any negative criticism it is that a ‘reveal’ wasn’t sufficiently telegraphed earlier on so the reader could go, ‘Yes, of course’. This is an excellent book and well worth the cover price just for the guga hunt on An Sgeir. Highly recommended.

Books, Update, Stuff...

2013-03-05T10:56:00.001Z

Well the book sale went well. I’ve been packaging up books for the last couple of days and clearing a bit of space in my loft. The problem of course is that few people want the older cover Macmillan paperbacks that come later in the Cormac series. I’ve got plenty of copies of Brass Man, Polity Agent and Line War. I also have paperback editions of the Tor US releases. But then I guess the problem here is no one knows what is available. I guess I’ll have to go up into my loft again *sigh*.

Another thing I always forget to do is mention the translations. I’ve got a bookcase up there full of them. So, if you read German (plenty of those), Czech, Romanian, Russian, French, Japanese (just a few copies of Cowl) or Portuguese (and I’m sure there are others) and fancy buying a copy in those languages, then get in touch.

I was thinking back today about my first few books for Macmillan and how I was forever checking my Amazon ratings (well, that hasn’t changed) to check on my ‘success’. But of course a little thought about how people actually buy books and you realise that these things cannot be judged by those initial sales; that initial adrenalin rush when you are the new bright young writer (ho ho). People very infrequently walk into a book shop and pick up a hardback from a new writer; they tend to wander in a year later, perhaps five or ten years later and try a paperback. Hell, I’m only just starting to read Eric Brown and he’s done about 30 books since I read his short story Time Lapsed Man in Interzone back in 1988. It’s a long haul. Still, now, I get contact from people who have just discovered me, who have picked up a discounted paperback (or Kindle edition) and are going on to buy the rest.

Moving on to other things: I was aiming to have done 80,000 words of Penny Royal III before we headed back to Crete. Since I’ve now done 77,000 it seems I’ll be hitting that target. Now I’m wondering if I can get it completed to first draft by then, which gives me plenty of time to iron out the kinks, and ensure all the plot threads are nicely woven together. However, another thought is now occurring … am I going to be able to complete this story in this third book? Could it be that this will be a trilogy (as per Douglas Adams) of four or five books?

Big Dog Again

2013-03-03T10:42:00.000Z

I see Boston Dynamics are at it again. I guess this is one big dog you don't throw a stick for!

Books Sale

2013-03-02T10:05:00.000Z

Having just carted a box containing 20 copies of Zero Point mass-market paperback up into the loft it occurred to me that it really is time for another sale of signed copies. I’ve got paperbacks of most of my books and hardbacks of a few of them. I was thinking of sticking another list here but since that would entail clambering up into the loft, pulling open boxes and counting for half the morning I’ll just say: get in contact and tell me what you want and I’ll see if it’s available. But let me get this out of the way first: copies of the paper version of Mindgames: Fool’s Mate, Mason’s Rats, Africa Zero, The Parasite & The Engineer (ReConditioned) are not available.

My email is on the right below my biography and you can find a list of all my books here. It’ll be full cover price plus postage and packing. However, since so many people are attracted to the Jon Sullivan covers, I’ll knock out the remaining paperbacks with the old covers for £4 each (that’s including the various Tor USA versions).