I just finished up writing a new novel, which I today sent off to my agent. It's called The Silent Land, a title I'm happy with right now. Titles are odd things, and apt to fade quickly. Some titles never feel right twenty years after you've published the novel they tag. Others are already stamped from the baking tin when the loaf comes out of the oven. Anyway, this is a phrase lifted from the well known Christina Rossetti poem.
August was a busy month. My previous YA novel Three Ways To Snog An Alien was longlisted for the Booktrust prize at the same time as The Devil's Ladder came out from Faber. Simple Goalkeeping made Spectacular came out from Mainstream, and survived the fierce scrutiny of Chairman Bill, who features in it greatly. And Memoirs Of A Master Forger appeared in paperback. I had this write up from Chris Fowler, a writer I like very much indeed, and not just because he says kind things:
"At a time when books are being published according to their demographic appeal, Graham Joyce defiantly exists beyond category. 'Memoirs Of A Master Forger' starts as a cynical but very funny rant against modern life, but morphs into a joyous and ultimately moving celebration of love. Stepping back, you see the elegance and grace of a structure that allows for the possibility of demons and angels in the rational world, the need to be the guardian of someone else's dreams, and our infinite capacity to learn from our mistakes. A total joy from start to heartbreaking end."
And if Chris Fowler says that I'm not going to disagree with a word of it. The same novel is now out - I am promised - in the
World Fantasy Award-winner Joyce (The Facts of Life) introduces psychic, alcoholic rare book fraudster William Heaney in a gripping, emotional and satisfying tale. William's ability to see demons is one of many things that haunts him: his wife has recently left him; a beautiful demon-possessed woman is stalking him; and his favorite charity will close unless his latest forgery finds a buyer. When his friend Seamus, a troubled Gulf War veteran, gives William a strange book and then blows himself up, William finds himself on the brink of literal and metaphorical hell. Joyce effortlessly sustains multiple plot lines in smooth prose, by turns comic, philosophical and deeply terrifying. The result, while at times a bit marred by tacked-on political pontification, is a profound meditation upon the evils of cruelty, self-absorption, cowardice and inaction.
The remark about politics is of course inevitable if they are the kind of politics you don't particularly agree with. I do rant on a bit in the novel about the number of homeless children. Look, there is anger in the novel. There's anger in me. Some of it was stamped from the bread tin when I came out of the oven, but a lot of it is just to do with unnecessary cruelty and greed. Whatever it is, I can't write the comment-free fantasy novels that involve a magic sword and the rest of it. We need politics now more than at any time in history.
Tacked on? Constructed out of bits of old string and rage. If only he knew.
It's been a beautiful September so far. The hedgerows are heavy with fruit. As for the neighbour's apple trees, I've never seen such abundance. We have a plum tree at the bottom of our garden under which we buried our much loved lurcher Belle after she died (I wrote about her here quite a while ago.) Anyway that plum tree had never fruited before we buried her. This year the tree is spectacularly laden, branches dragged almost to the floor under the weight of gleaming, dark plums. I said, 'Hello again, girl,' and felt sad and grateful and heartened all at exactly the same time.
Some travelling coming up, with the following appreances scheduled:
September 18-20: British Fantasy Convention,
October 16-18: Imagicon 2,
October 25: Writing Workshop, Richard Hugo House,
October 26
October 29-Nov 1 World Fantasy Convention,
