Forthcoming appearances.
August 28: Ashby Festival After-dinner talk, La Zouch restaurant Tickets: 01530 413371
September 4-6: Mercian Festival, Warwickshire.
September 18-20: British Fantasy Convention,
October 16-18: Imagicon 2,
October 24: Writing Workshop, Richard Hugo House,
October 26
October 29-Nov 1st: World Fantasy Convention,
As I look back it seems impossible that my last update was Twelfth Night. Right after that update I resolved to blog here at least - at least, mark you - once a fortnight. And here we are at the gates of the Solstice. Anyway I just finished the first draft of a new novel. That means the emotional substance has been unearthed and I decamp and move to a different part of the brain for the next draft to mould it. Given the material of the novel it seems highly significant that I finished the first draft on solstice eve. Significant isn't always the same as good, I suppose, but hope springs eternal. And what would you rather have me deliver: lots of these daft blogs or a new novel?
Plenty to talk about if you're in the mood to stick around.
I'm excited about Emilie Simon's forthcoming CD, scheduled for release in the autumn, not just because she's so wonderful but also because I've collaborated with her on the lyrics for a few of the songs. Emilie is very well known in
Or here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8idrhKuNwRY&feature=related
I went to
http://www.randomhouse.com/anchor/ohenry/
The winning story is available in the anthology, and it also contains short essays by the two out of three judges (A S Byatt and Tim O'Brien) who singled it out. But if you're up to speed on Memoirs Of A Master Forger (How To Make Friends With Demons in the US) you will already have seen it, because the story comprises a couple of chapters in that book. Anyway while in
I also got invited see the inside the offices of DC comics by fab Vertigo editor Shelly Bond. Shelly commissioned me to write a Hellblazer comic and we're seeing if we can come up with some original comic ideas for the future.
It's a busy year, and by an odd coincidence (altogether now: synchronicity!) I have two books coming out on 6th August. My new Young Adult novel "The Devil's Ladder" is to be released from Faber and here's a picture of what looks to me like a very nice cover.
http://www.faber.co.uk/work/devils-ladder/9780571242474/
And when you've done with admiring that one have a butcher's at my foray into non-fiction. "Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular" is a footballing memoir inspired by my coming out of retirement at the age of 52 to play for
Anyway, the deep trauma of playing again prompted me to look back and weep bitterly on my goalkeeping experiences since I was a lad. While playing for my storming pit-village primary school team Keresley Newlands I developed the skill of making easy saves look very difficult, an ability I nurtured over the years but which is a little trickier at my age because now even the easy shots are difficult to stop. Anyway it's a humorous memoir. Well I maintain it's funny, but then again I am well known for laughing at my own jokes for much longer than is considered polite. You may recognise some of the characters, including Chairman Bill, who always told me I must be barmy for wanting to be a goalkeeper in the first place. Stunning cover treatment from Mainstream Publishing can be viewed here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simple-Goalkeeping-Made-Spectacular-Footballing/dp/1845964470
It's about more than just football and I like to think that even arrant football-haters will read it and feel compelled to trill and skip gaily through the park afterwards. You know what I mean. Mostly I appreciated telling stories about my dad. It's a kind of Freudian revenge on Chairman Bill, I think. Last time I was interviewed by The Guardian I said something he didn't like and he flew off the handle; heaven knows what he'll make of this. I still haven't worked out how to prevent a copy from falling into his hands. I need a strategy. If I pretend I never got paid for it he won't bother reading it.
When you are a writer you are always being asked to do work for nothing. It comes with the job. Get on with it. Though Breathtaking Audacity Award must go to an organisation called Renaissance LearningTM.
Not a state organisation, nor a charity, not a voluntary org, this for-profit outfit invited me to give a talk about my writing to a couple of hundred librarians and teachers "in the interests of promoting reading". Sure, I said, what's the fee? Oh, there is no fee, but you do get to talk to a key audience, and it is for the promotion of reading. Really, a key audience? Yes.
Right, let's get this straight: all the members of the audience will be paid wages to be there; the local authorities will pay you handsomely so their librarians and teachers can be there; the technicians, the porters, the cleaners and kitchen staff on the day will be paid, as will the people who write the copy and print your glossy brochures; meanwhile the only person in this entire big-wheel assembly who won't be paid will be one of the poor saps who writes the books to make the reading possible that in the pursuits of profit you claim to want to promote? Have I got this straight? Because it seems to me there's just the inciest-winciest thing wrong with this picture.
Of course you are made to feel like a curmudgeon if you don't actually salivate at these invitations. But isn't it a bit like asking the local butcher to provide you with a free leg of lamb so that you can invite him round for Sunday dinner with the family?
Never mind all that because the highlight of my six months while you dear reader have been waiting breathless on the edge of your seat for this blog update was a walk in the bluebell woods. No, I'm not joking. Please don't snigger: I came perilously close to backsliding into poetry, but ultimately I rescued myself from the brink. The experience that so nearly caused this dangerous lapse happened in the Outwoods of
Now this will not seem surprising to those familiar with the folklore of the bluebell: that it was formerly the floral emblem of this country before being usurped by the rose; that it is considered foolhardy to pick or disturb the flower; that you should never fall asleep with your head amongst bluebells; that to hear the bluebells ring is a prophecy of death; that bluebells are teeming with fairies or spirits who will work their enchantment upon you; that even to walk amongst the bluebells is risking abduction; that the bulbs are poisonous; and that the sap of the bluebell was used as a glue in early bookbinding.
(Why does that last detail seem so ominous?)
But I came back, and the savages managed to persuade me not to succumb to poetry, so we can all breathe easily. (I admit I was a poet a long time ago. What happened to poetry, that old aristocrat of literary genres, dispossessed now of its stately powers and made foolish and irrelevant by modernity, living lonely in a decaying mansion it can no longer afford, muttering incomprehensibly into its soup about past glories?)
I mentioned this to a friend (the transcendental experience in the bluebell woods not the thing about soup) who insisted it was not the fairies speaking to me, but God. Well, since I'm not Joan of Arc I didn't quite buy that. But let me speak of fairies.
The word fairy, in the sense of a spirit, is culturally interchangeable with the Arabic world djinn. This (and the derived word genie) is etymologically related to the Latin word "genius" which originally meant "deity of generation and birth". "Genius loci" meant in Roman mythology the protective spirit or guardian of a place - and still means the unique atmosphere of a place.
In my world - and I know it's an odd one so shaddup already - if I experience the genius loci of a place I have already fallen under the enchantment of the local fairy. Come on, it's not hard. Whereas football is much more complicated.
Eve of solstice 2009
