Signed by the John Jarrold Literary Agency

Well, m’friends, much has happened over the past two weeks. It cul­min­ated on Friday morn­ing, when a phone call to John Jarrold sealed my fate as the latest addi­tion to the John Jarrold Literary Agency. My steely pro­fes­sion­al­ism pre­vents me from writ­ing things like “I hope he knows what he’s let­ting him­self in for” but does per­mit me the odd swal­low of cham­pagne, in which man­ner I spent the greater part of Friday night.

Who is John? He’s a rel­at­ively recent addi­tion to the agently hordes of UK pub­lish­ing, hav­ing set up his agency in 2004. Before that, he ran Earthlight, the ded­ic­ated sci­ence fic­tion and fantasy imprint of Simon and Schuster. He’s also been dir­ector of Orbit Books (an imprint to which most SF read­ers will need no intro­duc­tion). At Orbit, he pub­lished Arthur C Clarke, Iain Banks, Harry Harrison, and many oth­ers. So John is well versed in the dark art of pub­lish­ing, and I’m very happy to have him rep­res­ent­ing me. He also sounds like a nice bloke, which can only help in deal­ing with my mon­strous ego.

The Cunning Plan For World Domination involves work­ing some more on the second edi­tion of Déjà Vu. As I men­tioned in a recent blog post, there is a good­ish chance that Déjà Vu will rise up again in 2008, so we’ll be work­ing on get­ting Déjà Vu into the best shape pos­sible. Next up is the second sci­ffy novel, which is set in the same uni­verse as Déjà Vu. John’s a well-read guy des­pite his genre spe­cial­ism, and I’m wait­ing to see what he thinks of Proper Job, my com­edy novel. If he doesn’t want to ritu­ally burn it, we’ll try to hood­wink some pub­lisher into tak­ing it. Sorry, that last sen­tence lacked pro­fes­sion­al­ism. I meant: We will try to find a pub­lisher that deserves a book like Proper Job.

Hmm. I’ll try to work on my pro­fes­sional pol­ish. Meanwhile, as an example to us all, here is the press release that John pre­pared over the week­end. I’m aware it makes me sound like a cer­tain Aramaic-speaking car­penter, but that’s all part of the fun.

PRESS RELEASE – IAN HOCKING

British SF author Ian Hocking has joined the John Jarrold Literary Agency. His first novel, a sci­ence fic­tion tech­no­thriller entitled Déjà Vu, was pub­lished in 2005 by the UKA Press. The Guardian described it as ‘show­ing quiet skill’ and SFX called it ‘a solid tech­no­thriller’. Author Ian Watson praised it as ‘grip­ping, fas­cin­at­ing, and power­ful’. Other review­ers have writ­ten ‘crisp and pro­fes­sional’, ‘a smart read full of fresh, clever dia­logue’, ‘mind-blowing’, and ‘thought-provoking’. The book is thriller that encom­passes time travel, vir­tual real­ity, and digital minds.

‘Ian men­tions Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Ken MacLeod in his acknow­ledge­ments,’ said John Jarrold. ‘Having had the pleas­ure of pub­lish­ing a num­ber of books by them both, I can say that the many read­ers who love their work will thor­oughly enjoy Ian’s writ­ing. Ideas jump off the page, and his char­ac­ters remain in one’s mind over a long period of time’

Hocking is presently writ­ing another novel in the Déjà Vu universe.

Contact John Jarrold for fur­ther inform­a­tion by e-mail at j.jarrold@btinternet.com or by phone at 01424 440652.

20th January 2007

Cubic Parsec

It is, of course, well known that the dens­ity of our galaxy (Milkus Wayus) is approx­im­ately one star per cubic par­sec. Less com­monly known is the fact that ‘cubic par­sec’ is the name of a new blog by Nick Moberly, a mate of mine. The blog covers…well, er, lots of stuff. Nick is a psy­cho­lo­gist cur­rently study­ing the cog­nit­ive mech­an­isms that under­pin depress­ive rumin­a­tion, so there’s no doubt that some of his posts will about our esteemed is-it-or-isn’t-it sci­ence. Metal music also fea­tures. You have been warned.