I just had to put up this picture of the paperback cover of Zero Point. What with the quote an all…
Month: March 2013
The Blackhouse – Peter May
Caroline’s gran used to say that she didn’t give up the booze and fags, they gave her up. I’m starting to understand how she felt. ‘Giving up’ in this case implies an effort of will to stop doing something you enjoy, whereas these things giving you up gets the sense of something you enjoyed becoming noxious; something that is no longer your friend. After consuming more red wine than was good for me yesterday, and enjoying it, I was quite prepared to accept the cost. This was presupposing that the cost would be me dropping into a coma, snoring like a pig all night, then waking up with gorilla pooh in my mouth, a mad dwarf making horseshoes in my skull and that general feeling of icky sickness. Unfortunately booze doesn’t do that to me any more. I did drop into the coma, but just for four hours. Waking at 2.00 I lay fidgeting, itching, feeling depressed and quite rough and by 2.30 knew that was the end of my sleep for the night. However, on the plus side, to distract myself from this malaise, I picked up the book I was reading and polished it off over the ensuing four hours.
The Blackhouse is a combination of a coming of age story and a murder mystery, and so much more than that. I was riveted to the end, fascinated by this glimpse into life on the Isle of Lewis, engaged with all the characters – liking and admiring some, hating others, and in one satisfying scene near the end all but cheering on one of them. If I have any negative criticism it is that a ‘reveal’ wasn’t sufficiently telegraphed earlier on so the reader could go, ‘Yes, of course’. This is an excellent book and well worth the cover price just for the guga hunt on An Sgeir. Highly recommended.
Books, Update, Stuff…
Well the book sale went well. I’ve been packaging up books for the last couple of days and clearing a bit of space in my loft. The problem of course is that few people want the older cover Macmillan paperbacks that come later in the Cormac series. I’ve got plenty of copies of Brass Man, Polity Agent and Line War. I also have paperback editions of the Tor US releases. But then I guess the problem here is no one knows what is available. I guess I’ll have to go up into my loft again *sigh*.
Another thing I always forget to do is mention the translations. I’ve got a bookcase up there full of them. So, if you read German (plenty of those), Czech, Romanian, Russian, French, Japanese (just a few copies of Cowl) or Portuguese (and I’m sure there are others) and fancy buying a copy in those languages, then get in touch.
I was thinking back today about my first few books for Macmillan and how I was forever checking my Amazon ratings (well, that hasn’t changed) to check on my ‘success’. But of course a little thought about how people actually buy books and you realise that these things cannot be judged by those initial sales; that initial adrenalin rush when you are the new bright young writer (ho ho). People very infrequently walk into a book shop and pick up a hardback from a new writer; they tend to wander in a year later, perhaps five or ten years later and try a paperback. Hell, I’m only just starting to read Eric Brown and he’s done about 30 books since I read his short story Time Lapsed Man in Interzone back in 1988. It’s a long haul. Still, now, I get contact from people who have just discovered me, who have picked up a discounted paperback (or Kindle edition) and are going on to buy the rest.
Moving on to other things: I was aiming to have done 80,000 words of Penny Royal III before we headed back to Crete. Since I’ve now done 77,000 it seems I’ll be hitting that target. Now I’m wondering if I can get it completed to first draft by then, which gives me plenty of time to iron out the kinks, and ensure all the plot threads are nicely woven together. However, another thought is now occurring … am I going to be able to complete this story in this third book? Could it be that this will be a trilogy (as per Douglas Adams) of four or five books?
Big Dog Again
Books Sale
Having just carted a box containing 20 copies of Zero Pointmass-market paperback up into the loft it occurred to me that it really is time for another sale of signed copies. I’ve got paperbacks of most of my books and hardbacks of a few of them. I was thinking of sticking another list here but since that would entail clambering up into the loft, pulling open boxes and counting for half the morning I’ll just say: get in contact and tell me what you want and I’ll see if it’s available. But let me get this out of the way first: copies of the paper version of Mindgames: Fool’s Mate, Mason’s Rats, Africa Zero, The Parasite & The Engineer (ReConditioned) are not available.
My email is on the right below my biography and you can find a list of all my books here. It’ll be full cover price plus postage and packing. However, since so many people are attracted to the Jon Sullivan covers, I’ll knock out the remaining paperbacks with the old covers for £4 each (that’s including the various Tor USA versions).
Xenopath – Eric Brown
Xenopath is the second in the Bengal Station series and another excellent novel. These books aren’t numbered and I had to go on the Internet to find out which one to read after Necropath (I have Cosmopath too) and now I’ve been trying to decide whether the order matters. If you were to pick up this one without having read the previous one there’s not much you’d fail to understand. In essence these are your hard-boiled detective book with an SF twist and reading them out of order would be like randomly picking up a Sue Grafton or Peter James. Reading in order enhances your enjoyment because you’re familiar with the main characters and their story, but each ‘investigation’ is self-contained. I can see how this could become formulaic with a whole series of ’paths after Cosmopath, but if it’s a formula you enjoy then there’s nothing wrong with that.