This Writing Life (No Longer Updated)

Moving to a new home

2008-03-07T13:06:00.001Z

This blog has been written using Blogger for five long years. In that time, I wrote and published my first novel, got an agent, and generally moaned my way through the seasons of this writing life.

It's time to move on to new pastures.

Those pastures are: right here!

That's right. The moaning will continue on my new blog.

I'd be grateful if you could update your bookmarks:

The URL for my new blog is http://ianhocking.com or http://www.ianhocking.com (though the former is preferred). (Just in case something screwy happens with my web provider again, UK2, here is the direct URL: http://ianhocking.com/index.php.

The RSS feeds are now:

Full Articles: feed:http://feeds.feedburner.com/ianhocking/twlart
Comments: feed:http://feeds.feedburner.com/ianhocking/twlcom

So come on over to the new blog. You know you want to.

(The old blog will remain up as an archive, but I've transferred all the posts to the new blog.)

Light Reading

2008-03-01T13:56:00.001Z

Macmillan New Writing is an imprint whose founder, Michael Barnard, wanted to create a springboard for talented, unpublished writers with work that might be overlooked by the more behemothic players. When MNW was created, there was significant broo-hah-hah and palavery. Hackles were raised and tea cups rattled home to their saucers throughout London. "It's the Ryan Air of publishing!"

Barnard wrote a very slightly odd but informative book on his battle to create the imprint, which I reviewed on my blog here. (Note Michael Stephen Fuchs' comments to that article.) I've also reviewed both of Fuchs' MNW efforts, The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, as well as Taking Comfort by Roger Morris. To make matters more complicated, Aliya Whiteley, a MNW author, served a stint as an editor for the UKA Press. There she edited my first book, D�j� Vu, for which Herculean effort she will forever be in my good books - or at least the one that is good.

Last Thursday, Aliya launched her second MNW book, Light Reading, at Goldsboro Books. Is Macmillerati a word? No? Good. It would be silly. (Macmillistas?) But it was nice to see a good turn out from Aliya's fellow authors, as well as others in the loose network that has sprung up around her. Aliya gave a little speech and we all bought copies of the book. Goldsboro Books did a fine job of the hosting. The shop, on Cecil Court just off Charing Cross Road, seems to be part of a collection of specialist and curious book shops.

(As we were leaving the do, my cohabitual overunit spotted a tour group entering the road. Before I could stage whisper, "Stop! We haven't paid!" she had skipped over to join the back of the throng. Directly we overheard that Cecil Court had been used in the Diagon Alley sequence for Harry Potter and Philosopher's Stone. One lives; one learns.)

It was great to catch up with Aliya. One of the curious things about meeting people that you've only previously known electronically is that, while you know them in the sense of having lots of information about them, you aren't really familiar with they way they talk, their mannerisms and so on.

For example, few people expected me to look like such a scruffy bastard.

A big shout out to Matt Curran, whose writing is going strong. He's the author of The Secret War. We chatted about the perils of writing full time - i.e. I get all excited with the postman comes, and sometimes discuss plot points with my gerbils. Matt somewhat convinced me that Lulu might be the way forward for one of my novels (that gets lovely feedback from editors and then a couple of lines about how full their lists are). Roger Morris was there, too, and he's every bit as personable as his plog suggests. As he has mentioned on said plog, we're both struggling to write St Petersburg novels (though Roger has two in the bag already). Roger has always been quick to answer my queries on esoteric Russian things, like the name of the equivalent 'detective' rank in the Russian police force.

Also bumped into David Gardiner, who is now helping out at the UKA Press (the publisher that put out my first book, D�j� Vu) and the troubadour Jon Stone (and his girlfriend whose name, I'm afraid, I didn't catch). Neil Ayres and his girlfriend (muppetly, I've forgotten her name as well; memory like a) were also there, and it was great to meet Neil, finally. Back in the day, he published an early short story of mine called Afterlife in his online magazine, Fragment. Neil wrote a very interesting book called Nicolo's Gifts and is now co-writing an epistolary science fiction novel with Aliya, which I look forward to.

This industry. Nothing happens for long periods. You're on your own when you write a book. The sense of pointlessness is sometimes overpowering. Even if you write something that you're happy with, the fiction publishing business is so small that you need a good dose of luck to get the bloody thing actually out there. As we were making the two-hour trip back to Canterbury, my girlfriend remarked that I should try to write something really mainstream. I had to sigh. She was saying this for my own benefit; she knows that I'm losing the will to engage in the publishing game and wants me to get some motivation back. Well, I got some motivation back from talking to Aliya (she's a good writer; publishers will buy her stuff; she illustrates that the route is possible) and the other Macmillan New Writers.

I was struck by their esprit d'corps. They are quite unique, I think, in being a group of writers published more-or-less simultaneously within the same list. They represent a cohort whose members are at the same point in their careers; there are no egos (in evidence) and the sense of a team is palpable. They have not been selected because they are journalists with media connections; or because they've travelled around Moldova with a minibar; or they have a tie-in series on Channel Four. No; the books they submitted for publication were just good, that's all. MNW, for all the broo-hah-hah, is anachronistically meritocratic.

You can buy Light Reading from any bookshop, or online. Aliya has a website, a blog (co-authored with Neil Ayres), and even a book trailer.

Friday Flash Fiction

2008-02-29T17:46:00.001Z

Today's audio instalment is up over at http://ianhocking.com/Fiction_Flash/Fiction_Flash/Fiction_Flash.html.

Flash fiction

2008-02-26T10:30:00.001Z

Question: Is flash fiction an art form in itself, or an excuse to write for about thirty seconds, look challengingly at the cat and say, "And"? Who knows. But flash fiction - also known as sudden fiction, Kato-from-the-cupboard prose, and mashed stanza - has a peculiar appeal. It's short; sharp. Very occasionally shocking.

You'll find many bloggers dabbling with flash fiction. A brief glance at my newsreader app reveals sciffy author Gareth D Jones, Managing Director of the Velcro City Tourist Board Paul Raven, and sciffy author Gareth L Powell, all of whom are blogging flash fiction on Fridays.

Readers of this blog - hey, Dad - will be aware that I've ventured into the flash fiction before. See Stone Sun, for example.

But, Saturday morning, when I was reading the Guardian Weekend, I noticed several 'new media' types on the cover (podcasters, mostly, including Alex Albrecht.) I mentioned to my girlfriend how it's possible now to produce professional(ish) quality audio and video without big-money backing. I must have sounded rather pompous and knowing, because she said, "Well, why don't you do one?"

I blinked once.

Twice.

And here it is, m'readers. My FICTION FLASH. As a correspondent of mine, TheDudeAbides, noted, FICTION FLASH has a Twitter-like feel to it, and I'm happy about that.

FICTION FLASH will be released every Friday evening (GMT). It has an iTunes 'explicit' tag because of the occasional strong language. It will tend not to be science fiction; for some reason I'm not able to fathom, my short fiction seems to be of the non-genre sort. Episodes should be about one minute in length. It might be fun to have some guest flash fictioners - if you're interested, let me know.

Click here to go to the FICTION FLASH website.

Click here to open FICTION FLASH in iTunes

Click here to subscribe in your own RSS reader.

Fiction flash: Mix tape

2008-02-22T16:43:00.001Z

There is an element of capture and preservation in the act of creating a mix tape for a friend. ___ is a poet. He understands metric; blends new words as hues from the primes; writes with a wooden foundation pen. It is summer as he swaps out the second cassette. James Brown for The Kinks. It is summer in his poems too. It is...it is as his left hand makes the chords shapes of Lola that he decides to take his car and drive to the golf course, drive across the golf course, ripping the fuck from the grass of the golf course, and launch off the cliff and into the sea. But ___ is a poet. There is, first, the last song of the mix tape.

Trouble At StoryMill

2008-02-17T20:44:00.001Z

I'm trying a rather different approach to the writing of my next book. That is, I'm going to plan it. Not in great detail; just at a level of granularity that should help me avoid some of the more cataclysmic culs de sac that I've wandered down in the past.

This thing I'm typing on isn't just a type writer. It also computes. So I've attempted - variously - to engage it in the business of helping me organise the novel.

Organising a novel is like herding cats remotely using yet another cat who is completely indifferent to your whistles, hollers of "Come by!" and attempts to use your crook as a javelin on those maddeningly uncooperative but ultimately charming moggies.

I've spent a couple of hours today with an application called StoryMill, released by Mariner Software. It's an application that somewhat takes after Scrivener (though I wouldn't want to suggest plagiarism; the three-paned, database-like organisational approach is a good way to approach the novel).

My impression was favourable at first. It's a very Mac-like application that observes Apple's human-interface guidelines.

On the leftmost panel, above, you'll notice the breakdown into chapters, actors, scenes, locations and so on. This is a great idea. You can create a list of actors, for example, and select one from the drop-down list when you're in a given chapter - signifying that the actor is present in the chapter. Likewise, you can then return to 'actor' list and see all the chapters that contain a given actor. So far so good; this is an excellent and intuitive implementation.

The bit I was most desperate to try - and the bit that has subsequently brought my mood quite, quite low - is the timeline option on the menu bar. Doesn't it look beautiful? Here, let's click on it:

If only the buggersome thing worked.

Allow me to set up just how disappointing this is. For months, I've been searching high and low for an application that will allow me to graphically represent a story: a 'flowable chart', if you dig, that indicates the main- and sub-plots of a novel; uses connecting arrows; and degrades gracefully when information is removed. Having looked at OmniGraffle, Keynote, Lord knoweth how many free mind-map applications, and even the staggeringly expensive Final Draft, there still does not seem to be a story plotting application available for the Mac.

What you see in the above screenshot bears about the same relation to the actual functioning of the timeline feature as...oh, I'm too weary for an outlandish metaphor. Make up your own. Involving monkeys, I'd suggest.

What it should do is this: Allow you set real-time start and finish times for a scene; assign it to a plot thread; and link it through such that clicking on a scene title brings up the text comprising the scene. Brilliant! Authors like me can then finally stop re-drawing huge plot maps whose iterations take about a week and become steadily less tidy.

What it actually does:

Allows you to create scene but, unless the scene is very long, its representation becomes invisible. Then you have to switch to a list view in order to edit the scene, or manually change the scale. How this should be fixed: The timeline should automatically scale to the earliest and latest times in the story.
Brings up the scene representation one minute, then removes it the next. It does so with such impish randomness that you really hope that the thing is actually working - then it breaks. How this should be fixed: It's just a bug; fix it before releasing the software.
It does not live update information about the scenes when information about them is altered in other windows. So, if you change the start time of a scene elsewhere, this new start time is not reflected in the timeline view. Closing the window and opening it again doesn't seem to help. How this should be fixed: If the application will not synchronise between elements that should be synchronised, constrain the user so only one element can be altered at a time.
Some of the fields relating to the scenes seem to be broken. For example, I can set up a smart list (good idea) that accurately uses data like who is in the scene, but the date field won't work. I can't set up a smart field that produces a timeline of dates between 1907 and 1908, say. How this should be fixed: it's just another bug.

Overall, I really tried to like this application. It appears - pardon my ultra-casual glance at the website - to be a new iteration of an older program called Avenir, so you'd think that it would actually work. Why is this a final release candidate? Parts of the software fundamentally don't work. Moreover, the trial period is measured in terms of open-close cycles, not days or weeks, and since I've had to open and close my document about twenty times trying to get parts of the program talking to one another, I'm at the point where I need to make a decision about buying it. I won't, I suspect, be doing so.

Anyone else using software to represent story plots? Surely there must be at least one program out there that works.

Post script: I feel quite bad about this post, by the way. I've spent a longish time on the forums trying to find workarounds and the chap who wrote the software seems very nice. The application does have several excellent features...I'm just too grumpy to list them right now. Alright, just one: the progress bar on the toolbar is great. And one more: and there are some unusual proofing aids, such as a lexical frequency indicator. What's that? Oh, it's like the flux capacitor, only more so.

Post post script: I should point out that I'm running OS X Leopard 10.5.2 on a 2 GHz first-gen MacBook Pro in a lovely red Speck case. My mouse mat is from the Kennedy Space Center.

Paul Cornell on Writing

2008-02-11T19:42:00.001Z

Paul Cornell is one of the writers on the rebooted Doctor Who (and, alarmingly, Robin Hood). He wrote the DW episodes Father's Day - the one with the church and the bat thingies and Billie Piper's dad saving the day - and Human Nature/Family of Blood - the one with the doctor living as a human teacher in pre-Great War England. I reckon he's one of the best writers on telly at the moment. A few moments ago, the BBC Writers' Room newsletter appeared in my inbox with a link to an interview with Paul. Here are highlights.

If someone wants to write for a living, what advice would you give them?

I have one sentence. I have actually lots more but my one sentence is: It is your job as a writer to seek out harsh criticism of your work and change because of it.

On writing:

I think there are two good books, but only two good books, on how to write. One is "Story" by Robert McKee, which is basically everything you need to know from top to bottom. And the other is Stephen King's "On Writing" which is three-quarters an autobiography, but the little gems he has in the last quarter are worth the price of the book alone.

Tell us a little bit about your writing routine.

Well I never believe those writers who say I get up at seven o'clock in the morning, put on my business suit, go to my office and work an eight hour day, stopping only for a cup of tea at lunch time. I go for amount. I will write two thousand good words of prose, or five pages of comics, or five pages of screenplay in a working day. If I do that by lunch time then I can do what only writers can do and pop off to the cinema in the afternoons, which is the whole point of being a writer. It's what it's for. But if I don't manage to do it during the day I may even be up until the early hours hacking it out.

Flash Fiction: Stone Sun

2008-02-11T17:50:00.001Z

It is all for a right turn of the head, mid-field, and there is the sunset. The mud explodes from foot to foot, from foot to foot, and the now-gone sun makes a stain. My airless mouth hangs in shock. My hands flop and a stone trips me back to last Friday, discussing the hard problems of consciousness with some students. Finally: a bird. What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to run and run?

The royal road to research

2008-02-07T18:13:00.001Z

Plagiarism: passing off another's work as your own. It's a tricky issue, and one highlighted with aplomb in an article recently posted by Alma Alexander on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists blog. To paraphrase Ms Alexander, plagiarism is an emotionally-charged word whose darker connotations should not be, er, connoted in the case of those carrying out specific forms of research. Novelists, for example.

For the most part, I agree with Alexander's post, though I wince at this sentence:

Academia puts it thusly, that lifting information from just one source is plagiarising; lifting from many sources is research.

Indeed we do not. I've spent several tedious (but necessary) two-hour seminars with my first year psychology undergraduates setting out the parameters of plagiarism. [Side note: On the mid-course evaluation questionnaire, students were asked: 'What would you like to see more of in this seminar series?' One answer: 'I'd like more of those really long seminars where we do plagiarism and referencing, please'. The 'please' kills me.]

I teach plagiarism as this: When you include something - could be a criticism, a description, anything - in an essay or a report and you do not provide a correctly referenced source for that something, then you are plagiarising. By omission, you imply that you are the creator of that something. You also obscure the work that you've done in the construction of the essay (range, depth and your understanding of certain papers).

Now, plagiarism is a sliding scale. "Freud was rather pants" might be a useful summary of much work into the worth of early psychoanalysis (a somewhat stubborn stain on the rep of psychology, that) and I'm not going to a mark a student too harshly if this statement isn't referenced; the student is quite capable of coming to this conclusion themselves, even if the conclusion peppers the literature. But if the student writes, "It might be argued that Freud considered dreams to be the royal road to the subconscious," and does not include a reference, my nostrils will twitch. If the whole essay stinks - i.e. it includes an HTML horizontal line that the student hasn't been able to delete since copying the text wholesale from Wikipedia - then I'll press the plagiarism alarm beneath my desk, which is linked to the Vice Chancellor's heavy mob.

Ostensibly, the issue of plagiarism in regard to literature is different, but I'm not so sure. Basically, the consensus seems to be: You can take things from other people's work because (a) they're probably dead (most people are, at this point in our evolutionary history); (b) it's too bothersome to attribute originality, so why go to all that effort?

Well, that may be true on occasion. I've no doubt that Norman Mailer's last book (The Castle in the Forest) contains a great deal of research into the early life of Adolf Hitler and I'm certain that, at its close, I'll have no idea what sources he used. As a reader, do I need to? Probably not. And yet, there are elements of the book that I've - either correctly or incorrectly - identified as original to Mailer. The idea, perhaps, of God as the Dumkopf, or that Fallen Angels fiddled with Hitler's childhood. If I were to look at Mailer's sources and see a book that introduced this idea, I would feel somewhat let down.

At the back of my mind is the notion that there is a compact between the reader and the writer. It has many levels. Verisimilitude is one. Meaning is another. A third, perhaps, is historical accuracy unless fictional demands cause the writer to swerve around it. I understand, I think, the reaction of those who felt a little cheated that important parts of McEwan's Atonement were not really authored by him. (Please excuse the fact that I haven't read the novel.) To author something is to provide it with a meaning in context. If the context and meaning already exist in the primary material, it is a natural reaction for the reader to think that the value of the book has diminished. It is a form of cheating outside the cheating permitted by the tacit compact. There is a sense in which the materials of a book must be digested and re-configured; not inserted wholesale. (Though having read some beautiful passages during the research for my current book, the idea is bloody tempting.)

I'm one of those writers who lists his sources and helpers at the end of the book. Not to take the moral high-ground in a plagiarism sense, but I still have the academic urge to cite my references. Not, either, in a PhD-like way (my thesis references ran to over fifty pages, I think) but just to indicate to the reader the provenance of the book, in research terms at least. Its themes and character are mine. I also want the people who helped me to know that their aid was appreciated. Two Boeing 747 pilots have read over the bit of my second novel where I describe an air crash from the point of view of a pilot (opined one: 'I don't think you've understood the basic principles of flight'); it would have been literally impossible to do it without them, and it would be odd not to cite them as a source.

Anyway, the dishes won't wash themselves. Take a look at Alexander's article. It raises some interesting issues.

Fiction flash: The Pilgrim

2008-02-03T16:56:00.001Z

His sadness is my sadness; this man in the subway with his back against the tiles and a Russian-looking cap open by his crossed ankles. His eyes are hard on the cap. He might be expecting magic. I wonder, passing, giving up none of my money, whether his stare is an answer to coming police questions about moving on. How has the young man etched himself into this routine? Are the pennies in the cap his? Do the tiles at his back remember him when he is moved on? The subway tells the Canterbury Tales in cartoonish, life-sized figures. A knight; a baker; a wife.

No, seriously, what the hell's that island?

2008-01-31T11:10:00.001Z

J. J. Abrahams is the creator of Lost (with Damon Lindelof), Alias, and the director of Mission: Impossible 3. Via John Gruber's Daring Fireball, I stumbled across this talk of Abrahams discussing how elements of suspense can help propel a narrative. The talk was given at TED, an organisation that started out as the Technology, Education and Design conference in 1984. Now it's an annual meeting where luminaries get 18 minutes to give the talk of their lives.

"The first question people ask me is: What the hell's that island? It's usually followed by: No, seriously, what the hell's that island?"

Love it.

Science fiction and fantasy novelists

2008-01-30T15:38:00.001Z

Via, Charles Stross's blog, I've just stumbled across a meta-blog of science fiction and fantasy novelists. It seems that blogging authors occasionally pen articles for this site and, so doing, advertise their wares. Noteworthy among the writers are Charles Stross (obviously), Simon Haynes (we share the same agent), Jeff VanderMeer, and Scott Lynch. For those interested in science fiction and fantasy, it should be a useful resource.

Pull!

2008-01-29T10:19:00.001Z

Michael Stephen Fuchs - whose rather good novels I have reviewed for Pulp.net and on this blog - has written an article for the manfully-named www.shotsmag.co.uk. He writes about the difference between British and American authors in their treatment of guns. In summary, the Brits are less expert.

I've made my own, modest contribution to this trend by bungling a description of firearms not once but several times in the original publication of D�j� vu. I described the cylinder of a revolver as the barrel (hey, it's somewhat barrel-like!) and was very loose in my treatment of the term 'firing pin'. Fortunately, an American reader pointed this out - in a genuinely kind manner - and I've put it straight for subsequent versions of the book.

Says Michael:

This cultural difference also results in some very palpable differences between writing about guns and gunplay by British authors versus American authors. With American crime and action writers � if you know what to listen for, at any rate � it�s easy to get a sense that they are writing from first-hand experience. With Brits, it�s equivalently easy to get a sense they are writing straight from research. This is because, generally, at some point in the book, the British writer will let slip one small but enormously glaring boner about the makeup or operations of firearms. When this happens, it�s like getting a brief glimpse around the edge of the cardboard building facade in a Hollywood set: nothing else has changed, all the other details are still right. But, suddenly, the whole thing just looks irretrievably fake.

I'll get m'coat.

Hell, I am busting to fire a projectile weapon. I want to know how much it stings one's palm; what it smells like; how loud it is; does it make that PEEEEOW(OW)(ow) sound liberally employed on the foley track for The Professionals? I also wouldn't mind hitting something, as long as it's made of clay.

I wonder if Michael has any in his cupboard.

Come with me now...

2008-01-21T18:02:00.001Z

Torchwood

2008-01-16T22:13:00.001Z

What is it with Torchwood? Mad as a bag of sonic screwdrivers, this oddly regional series (that region being Wales) returned to BBC 2 in all its genre-bending, inconsistent and occasionally wonderful glory tonight at 9 PM. I'm not entirely sure how to judge Torchwood.

This is what goes through Hocking's head during a typical episode:

First minutes, the teaser: Observing that this kind of thing, a punchy intro, works much better on Lost.

Ten minutes in: Have laughed at several of the one liners, but struggling to see any real sincerity through the postmodern fog.

Twenty minutes in: Have winced at crap special effects that hark back - and not in a good way - to the original run of Doctor Who. (I'm sorry, Weng-Chiang, but those giant rats guarding your lair are so obviously normal-sized rats in EXTREME CLOSE UP. Get OVER yourself.)

Thirty minutes in: Have felt my liberal heart warmed by some en passant gay references that don't - perhaps because of my knowledge of the producer - feel gimmicky.

Forty minutes in: Bite down on my need to voice the words 'Gwen' 'teeth' 'gap' and 'get a bus through'.

At a point between then and end: Have nodded in appreciation at the one special effects element that finally worked, and wonder if Torchwood actually might be, on some level, quite good.

The end: Raise an eyebrow at a couple of twists in the story that demonstrate the scriptwriter, though not 100% capable of writing science fiction, knows his or her drama.

Overall, questions remain. Why doesn't it have a proper theme tune? How long before John Barrowman introduces his fine fore-fendered friend to Gwen in a show-stopping genre-exploding music number that involves a troupe of dancing Nargs (or whatever those dumbs aliens in the cells are called)?

Sunday Salon: Russian about

2008-01-13T23:09:00.001Z

Oh dear Lord, has it come to this? A title whose punnish credentials might see it employed by Jasper Fforde? Too late to correct it, though! For, my friends, this is nothing less than a Sunday Saloon post, and is meant to be produced on the hoof, off the cuff and reeking of first draftiness. The Salon is about (or so it seems to me) things what one is reading. Today, then, I have been mostly reading Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith. It features a Russian militia detective call Arkady Renko and we follow him around Moscow as he attempts to solve the riddle of three bodies - shot, mutilated - dumped in Gorky Park. I'm about 25% of the way through and I'm actually staggered by the quality of the writing. This guy can write. I keep coming across fantastic snippets of prose, after which I tell myself: OK, he's hit the high water mark with that one - it'll be downhill from here. And then Smith tops it. All the while, the story is incredibly gripping. If I was on a beach, I'd burn through this is in a day. But I'm not; I'm at home marking essays, so I'll have to restrict myself to smaller doses. ...And, yes, I feel that there's no point trying to write a beautiful thriller. Smith - the git - has done it. And since it was published almost thirty years ago, he seemed to achieve this height without Wikipedia. What gives?

Can I get a little Holy Ghost power?

2008-01-11T10:37:00.001Z

Sitting here at home, ill, feeling a little sorry for myself - and struggling with first-year student essays - is the perfect time to check out some of my subscribed feeds. Over at Neurophilosophy, I'm amused to see a link to 'Clothes for atheists'. That's right, brothers and sisters, buy a smug hoody from 'A production of evolution: casual designs for the free-thinking truth seeker'. Or perhaps a coffee cup that reads 'Meet my two best friends: reason and logic'.

I'd like to think of myself as a free-thinking truth seeker. When I was younger, I invited some Mormons into my house and proceeded to harangue them for about two hours on the logical difficulties of supernatural beliefs. They left exhausted. Nowadays, however, I'm much more polite.

But I see there are other businesses in the atheism game. Look at these crazy cats over at Atheists online. Love the atomic logo. They've got T-shirts reading 'Weapons of mass destruction' (accompanied by pictures of the Bible and the Koran); 'Atheists scream YOUR NAME during sex' (I'm sure we're all agreed that that will get the ladies going); and a picture of a red devil literally pissing on religion.

I still, however, say 'Bless you' when people sneeze.

Interview with Iain Banks

2008-01-11T08:56:00.001Z

I've just heard that my agent, John Jarrold, will be interviewing Iain Banks at the Lincoln Book Festival at 8 p.m. on Monday, May 12. John's been a friend of Iain for years and it should be great fun. For further information, contact Sara Bullimore, Lincoln Council�s Arts & Cultural Sector Officer, by e-mail on: Sara.Bullimore (at) lincoln.gov.uk

India, baby

2008-01-06T17:49:00.001Z

The human body might fly at the speed of a rifle bullet - and a bolus of dodgy curry slightly faster - but the soul, as we know, travels at a camel's pace. Britta and I are finally back from our adventures in India. At some point, I'll write something deep and possibly meaningful about the holiday, but for now I've uploaded some photos to Facebook (sorry they aren't on the blog, but they're really intended for close friends; if you want to see them, go ahead and register with Facebook (it's free) and ask to be my friend.)

Some abiding moments:

Walking into a restaurant in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, and suppressing a smile as literally all busy breakfast conversation ceases. Britta and I took our seats in the silence and tried to explain to the waiter that we didn't need knives, forks or spoons. After about fifteen minutes during which we demonstrated familiarity with finger-eating, the conversation of our fellow patrons resumed. Other interesting reactions: a boy on a bicycle staring, open-mouthed, as he passed, almost colliding with a bus as a result; babies pointing at our absurdly pale complexions; children too shy to say hello up close but plucking up the courage to shout "How are you!" when they're about almost out of earshot.

Taking a "short" (two hours each way) motorbike ride over potholes and through murderously anarchic Indian traffic until we reach the Indian ocean and spend the day with a ten-mile stretch of beach all to ourselves. Thanks to Mr Spielberg and his friend Bruce, I didn't enjoy the water overmuch.

Having the very enthusiastic students of Nagarajan's college interview me for their fiction magazine (which has been running for twenty years).

Staring slack-jawed at the way vehicles behave on Indian roads. Bus drivers pootle at Mach 1, lorries rattle at a slightly slower speed (with people perched on top), autos (rickshaws) make crazy zigzags, because lorries and buses feel free to kill them. Horn use is constant.

Punting through the titanic, submerged mangrove forest to the east of Nagarajan's village - the same forest that absorbed most of the energy of the Boxing Day tsunami and, thus, prevented thousands of deaths, including Nagarajan's.

Sitting with Britta in "tea chairs" as we gazed around the ball room of the Maharaja's summer palace in the mountainous city of Ooti.

Christmas Eve on the shore of the Indian Ocean with the full moon at our backs.

--

Today, I ate paella with my fingers, but it isn't quite the same. There are essays to mark and emails to answer. England, baby.

Dancing peacocks

2007-12-24T10:26:00.000Z

Cor blimey, guvn'rs and guvn'sses, it is awfully hot in southern India right now - though it is, as our genial hosts never tire of telling us, actually rather cold. I'm writing this in a former French principality called Pondicherry (the computer has already had a Blue Screen of Death; no escaping Windows) under a very large and wonky fan. Any interruption will be due to decapitation and normal service will not, I'm afraid, be resumed.

Too much done already to be fully recounted here. Thanks to the generosity of our host, Nagarajan, we've been privileged enough to visit the inner sanctum of a Hindu temple (had to take my shirt off for that one), been driven the wrong way up a dual carriageway (first clue: driving over a large painted arrow that seemed to be rather too upside-down for comfort), drunk many Indian teas and coffees, visited a charming college, and spent lots of time with Nagarajan's immediate, extended and very extended families. Everyone has been friendly, courteous and treated us like royalty.

Here are a few photos - sorry, time for captions. A fuller report when we get back in a couple of weeks. Happy Christmas everyone!

No captions to follow apart from the next very important photo: baby Madhangi!

Is it just me? Or you?

2007-12-14T12:17:00.001Z

Steve 'Glass-half-full' Stack has a blog over here in which he talks about wonderful, life-affirming things. You know, like when the people in the queue at a supermarket let you go through first because you have fewer items to buy. Rainbows. Certain TV shows. Steve's book It is Just You, Everything's not Shit is published by those crazy cats over at the Friday Project and would probably make an ideal Xmas present (i.e. it's guaranteed to raise a smile, probably an easy read, and could be given to someone who doesn't necessarily want a novel or an in-depth non-fiction tome). Steve will even write you a custom message and send a copy to you directly if you use the form on the right hand side of his website.

Steve is doing a virtual book tour, and I asked him to swing by.

What does your book say on the topic of Good Things that 'Raindrops on Roses' from the Sound of Music doesn't? And will you be bringing out a CD?

I think it is fair to say that my signing voice will not be troubling the contestants of How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria. Correction, it would probably trouble them quite a bit if they heard it. So no, I won't be bringing out a CD, but thanks for asking.

I guess the book isn't too far removed from the song though, it is essentially a list of some of my favourite things mixed in with some silly, inspirational and wonderful entries. But my book is better as it includes Play Doh, Patrick Moore playing the xylophone and bacon sandwiches and I am pretty sure the song forgot those.

The title of your book - It is you, everything's not shit - is mildly arresting in a ooh-he-used-a-swear kind-of-way. Did you have any discussions with your publisher about whether the naughty bit should be written 'sh*t'? How will Waterstone's cope? With stickers, Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses?

As mine is a response to a series of books that already had the word 'shit' in the title we didn't really give it much thought. It hasn't proven to be a problem with retailers, the book is in Asda for goodness sake, but it does seem to have kept me off Blue Peter. So far.

I have been doing some radio interviews which have been amusing. BBC Radio Bristol called the book It Is Just You, Everything's Not Poo for the duration. Others have said 'rubbish' or 'bad', whereas in Europe they just said 'shit'. That new TV station from Al Gore bleeped it out (you can see the feature here). The London Paper printed the title as Sh*t but then printed the jacket in full. I am thinking of writing an article on how different media approached the word.

As a fiction author, I'd be tempted to use all this as research and come up with a Hornby-esque top-ten-sporting novel about a manchild who obsesses about the late seventies and early eighties. Were you tempted?

No, because Nick Hornby has already done that. More than once.

Presumably, some 'not shit' things were more difficult to come up with than others...what is your favourite discovery?

I enjoyed discovering www.aquarterof.com as they sent me a big box of sweets. Lovely people. Salt of the earth. Interviewing Oliver Postgate was a real delight.

Thanks to Steve for this. Check out this review, as mentioned above:

D�j� Vu is back!

2007-11-22T21:26:00.001Z

No, this isn't Deja Two (The Sequel) - but there's a second-hand copy going on Amazon.co.uk [UPDATE: make that two!] and it doesn't cost five grand. For all those who've emailed me for a copy of D�j� Vu (both of you), here's your chance to snap one up!

Nike plus Apple equals iSmug

2007-11-16T20:01:00.001Z

Imagine all the hand-rubbing and maniacal laughter that greeted the arrival of this little beauty - the NikePlus iPod attachment - through Hocking's letterbox this afternoon, just when I thought my eyes were going to explode from proofreading (don't laugh; editing-related ocular decompression is a recognised phenomenon). Aha! I thought, fondling the parcel. A method of combining my innate geekery with a bit of exercise.

The parcel was chunkily promising and it did not disappoint. Inside were two bits of kit: first, a tiny pedometer/transmitter that fits perfectly into the trapdoor within one's NikePlus trainers (good and, let me add, grief - into the sock it goes); second, a wee dongle that clicks into the bottom of my first-gen iPod Nano. Bosh. Nothing else to it. The iPod doesn't even need to be restarted. A new menu item appears, and it is a simple matter to enter one's weight and start running. Apple efficiency - it just works. Designed in California by Your Betters(TM).

The interface is a delight. Runs can be of a time, of a distance. Calories are counted. If the pedometer component doesn't do a good enough job of accurately capturing distance, it can be simply calibrated. Once you've completed the run, the iPod will sync the data (distance, times, continuous speed, etc.) with iTunes and you can review your progress. The data are even uploaded to Nike, if you want, so you can compete with people called Chet.

This is so cool I could bust. When preparing for runs in the past, I've actually resorted to driving the route just to get an idea of how long the route is; now, all I need to do is select 'half marathon' or - gulp - 'marathon' from the list.

The uber-cool thing is that, periodically, the music track quietens and a sexy American lady tells me how long I've been running for. She'll say things like "You're half way," and this is just solid gold information. That's exactly the stuff you need to know.

A last thought: I can't quite tell whether this next bit is freaky or cool, but as I finished my run (at the door to my house; how's that for timing?), the sexy American lady told me how long I'd been running for, calories burned, and so on...and then I heard another voice.

"Hi, this is Paula Radcliffe!"

Nervously, I checked the bushes.

"You've just run your longest time. Congratulations!"

"Er, thanks. But that's only because it's the first time I've -"

"Be sure to check your stats online with NikePlus!"

"OK. Bye, Paula."

"Goodbye!"

I stared, awestruck, at the device.

Eighteen quid for geekery like this?

I got in, gave Britta a five-minute debriefing of all the features (in case she missed something during the five-minute briefing I gave her on the way out) and went upstairs to my office. I put the Nano on the desk.

"That'll do, Nano." I wiped a tear from my eye. "That'll do."

Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt, put in a firefight'

2007-11-13T09:51:00.001Z

I didn't compose that title, by the way. I'm quoting Kirkus on Michael Fuchs, a technothriller writer whose books I have (in a spiralling paradox of confusion) actually reviewed too: Pandora's Sisters and The Manuscript (for Pulp.net). Suffice it say that Fuchs has begotten yet a third book. This one, however, is not published via the usual route. It's an electronic download and will cost you one dollar (that's about twenty pence) should you wish to cough up. I would, if I were you. Michael knows lots about guns.

Cowboy Angels

2007-11-12T11:08:00.001Z

A quick post to say that my review of Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels is now available on the Interzone site. Thanks to reviews editor Paul Raven.