IN MEMORIAM

I'm stunned to learn today of Rob Holdstock's death. He was a good man, and seemed his usual cheerful and energetic self when I saw him a few weeks back. My sympathies to his family and all who were close to him. RIP.

CHANGES: TIDY!

Faster than the speed of thought, the we-might-move situation turned into looks-like-it's-happening time. Before the estate agent even had time to put one of those signs in the front garden, we had an offer to buy the house, and said yes. Yikes. Looks like the move to Welsh Wales is on. I'll soon be up a valley writing hard (while Al Reynolds is doing likewise in the next valley over). All hail Cymru, the new nerve centre of SF! It's that black hole in Cardiff by the Torchwood Institute that's dragging us all in...

Meanwhile in Official News, I didn't mention that the trade paperback of Black Blood is out in the States. I'll be posting the US publication dates of Edge and Point soon... they're the near-future thrillers written under my pseudonym of Thomas Blackthorne.

You know, it's quite weird working out what you'd like to be called if you didn't have your current name. I was going to post a link to an article written by an American-Chinese person on the practice of Chinese people having multiple names (including a western name) that change over time. Can't find the article, though... The interesting thing is that the Chinese (and Singaporean etc.) notion of a name is less tied to personal identity than in the West.

So, go on then... What name would you like to go by?

BIG MINDS

There's a kind of resonance effect when you read a book -- telepathy in action, as the author's mental state produces some similar state inside your head. I love the way I think with lucid logic when I read Richard Dawkins, and it would be nice to think that some dampened harmonic extends into my post-reading cognition. (With Richard Feynman, you can only feel intelligent while actually reading his stuff. Afterwards, I'm like, what was all that again?)

So the latest novel to produce that lovely feeling for me is Terry Pratchett's latest. And I don't even like football. So there. It's great that he can still do the biz.

Meanwhile, as I try to adjust to my very-nearly-almost-there-full-time writer status, I realize the truth of Heinlein's dictum (as mentioned a little while back) that writers' lives are boring. Or at least, the only interesting stuff (to an observer) is what writers do when they're not writing.

I'm trying to justify my looking forward to Spooks airing on BBC1 tomorrow night. (It's the Season 8 opener, and just what did happen to Harry?) This, from someone whose normal advice is to switch the TV off and read a book or do something physical.

Oh, well. Did I mention that I got kicked in the knee some three months back, during training? Slowly healing, back to being able to do 500 Hindu squats, and sticking to 300 most nights. Nice to progress. Anyone who's rehabbing, or becoming fit after being the opposite, you got my sympathy!

Currently writing: Transmission, book 2 of the Ragnarok trilogy. Still in the early stages. Just letting the words come out as I see the scenes slowly happen. No pressure yet.