A Good Week
The majority of my working life is spent sitting at my computer, toiling away at whatever latest project I'm working on, with nothing much happening from one week to the next. Occasionally, though, I have weeks where lots of good stuff comes in a rush, and last week turned out to be one of those. Here's what happened:
On Tuesday I travelled to Lincoln to take part in the Lincoln Book Festival. Lincoln is a northern cathedral city with the feel of a small town. Our hotel was opposite the cathedral itself, in a beautiful part of town full of steep, winding, cobbled streets, quaint cafes and the best kind of second-hand bookshops - musty and labyrinthine. I say "our" hotel because I was attending the Festival with a couple of old mates, Simon Clark and Graham Joyce. Our evening event was listed simply as 'Masters of the Macabre', and ultimately took the form of a freewheeling discussion, which ended up encompassing such topics as 'horror' stories and writing in general, our own personal influences, ancient superstitions and human belief systems, and lots more besides. The audience was modest, but attentive and enthusiastic, and to be honest we could all have rabbited on for far longer than our allotted ninety minutes. Everyone went away happy, judging by the feedback we received, and afterwards Graham, Simon and I had a curry and a few drinks with the Festival organisers. A thoroughly enjoyable night.
A couple of days later I was in Borders bookstore in Leeds when who should walk in but crime writer and thoroughly nice bloke, John Connolly. I don't know John very well, but we'd done a panel together at last year's FantasyCon, so I wandered over to say hi. He was on a whistle-stop tour of the UK to promote his latest novel, The Unquiet (doing something like four towns and cities a day), and promptly invited me out to lunch at his publisher's expense. So, once his signing was out of the way, off we toddled to a nearby Chinese restaurant and its all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet, where we stuffed ourselves silly and chatted about writing for an hour. Lovely.
A further pleasant surprise was waiting for me when I arrived home. I had an email from old pal and editor extraordinaire, Steve Jones, saying he'd like to buy a story of mine, What Nature Abhors (which originally appeared in Night Visions 12), for Best New Horror 18. As I've only appeared in BNH once before, in volume 12, I was well-chuffed. As far as I'm concerned, BNH is the annual benchmark for genre excellence, and it's a privilege to be included.
And as if all that wasn't enough, on Saturday I received - again, out of the blue, having only delivered the novel a few weeks before - the excellent cover for my forthcoming Doctor Who book, Forever Autumn. If all goes well, and I've followed my webmeister Ariel's instructions properly, you should be able to see the cover here:
Lovely, isn't it?
On Tuesday I travelled to Lincoln to take part in the Lincoln Book Festival. Lincoln is a northern cathedral city with the feel of a small town. Our hotel was opposite the cathedral itself, in a beautiful part of town full of steep, winding, cobbled streets, quaint cafes and the best kind of second-hand bookshops - musty and labyrinthine. I say "our" hotel because I was attending the Festival with a couple of old mates, Simon Clark and Graham Joyce. Our evening event was listed simply as 'Masters of the Macabre', and ultimately took the form of a freewheeling discussion, which ended up encompassing such topics as 'horror' stories and writing in general, our own personal influences, ancient superstitions and human belief systems, and lots more besides. The audience was modest, but attentive and enthusiastic, and to be honest we could all have rabbited on for far longer than our allotted ninety minutes. Everyone went away happy, judging by the feedback we received, and afterwards Graham, Simon and I had a curry and a few drinks with the Festival organisers. A thoroughly enjoyable night.
A couple of days later I was in Borders bookstore in Leeds when who should walk in but crime writer and thoroughly nice bloke, John Connolly. I don't know John very well, but we'd done a panel together at last year's FantasyCon, so I wandered over to say hi. He was on a whistle-stop tour of the UK to promote his latest novel, The Unquiet (doing something like four towns and cities a day), and promptly invited me out to lunch at his publisher's expense. So, once his signing was out of the way, off we toddled to a nearby Chinese restaurant and its all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet, where we stuffed ourselves silly and chatted about writing for an hour. Lovely.
A further pleasant surprise was waiting for me when I arrived home. I had an email from old pal and editor extraordinaire, Steve Jones, saying he'd like to buy a story of mine, What Nature Abhors (which originally appeared in Night Visions 12), for Best New Horror 18. As I've only appeared in BNH once before, in volume 12, I was well-chuffed. As far as I'm concerned, BNH is the annual benchmark for genre excellence, and it's a privilege to be included.
And as if all that wasn't enough, on Saturday I received - again, out of the blue, having only delivered the novel a few weeks before - the excellent cover for my forthcoming Doctor Who book, Forever Autumn. If all goes well, and I've followed my webmeister Ariel's instructions properly, you should be able to see the cover here:
Lovely, isn't it?
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