Well, I know I’m enjoying a book when everything else stops until I’ve completed it. This had its faults, but probably the same faults as mine in that the reader is too hooked into the action to take in all the detail. I was confused about the political set-up here until the end, and the snake heads were right out of Stargate Atlantis, but none of this was enough to distract me for long. David Gunn’s Death’s Head started off loaded with violent action and horror and continued in that vein, so I was hooked from about page two, then hooked landed gutted and fried in batter as soon as the talking gun put in an appearance. Yeah! Fuck the literarty-farty crap in the SFF world that has the self-proclaimed arbiters of taste creaming their panties. Take those oh-so-worthy tomes and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine. This took me right back to the fun I had reading E. C. Tubb’s Dumarest saga, Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter on Mars or the old Robert E Howard Conan books!
Only those were books I enjoyed as a teenager … um, perhaps I haven’t grown up … do I want to? Nah.
Nice to read unpretentious solid cover-to-cover entertainment without any concessions to the pc-focus-group-bullshit age we live in. Nice to read something that isn’t a dreadfully sincere allegory on our times, or a sophomore comment on this that or the other political, social, racial, religious or environmental situation by some prick having an attack of literature. It’s often the way when describing books to compare them to other books, or films – whatever. This I would call Starship Troopers meets Commando.Great fun.

Well, here’s some nice news. According to Jason Williams of Night Shade Books, my gore-fest-of-flesh-eating-aliens book, Prador Moon, is their second-best selling title. I immediately inquired who was their best seller. I don’t mind … I don’t mind coming second best to Ian M Banks. (hur hur) Oh, and here’s another thing that’s been brought to my notice: The Top 10 SF writers of the 00’s. I’m not sure this list means much, but it’s nice to see that someone thinks like this! Final bit of news. I’ve handed in Line War to Macmillan and am now turning my attention to another –short– book for Night Shade’s. This one will be about Cormac’s early years.

Here’s a couple that were sent to me before we went away. The first is the German Polity Agent — they’ve really caught up there. The title translates as ‘The Gate of Time’ which is maybe easier. The second cover is the Russian version of The Line of Polity. I haven’t attempted to translate it since I’m lacking a Cyrillic keyboard.

Well, we’ve been away for a month on Crete, both holidaying and working, which is one of the great things that you can do when a book can be written anywhere with anything upwards of a pen. Whilst on that wonderful island I did occasionally check the Internet when I got the chance, but felt utterly no inclination to rant here or go mucking about on message boards. There was sun to be soaked up, Retsina to be drunk and a sea to swim in … also there were those ‘shrimps’ out there that back here we call king prawns.

Anyway, whilst checking the Internet I picked up on a couple of bits of news. The first is that I’ve conquered another country. The publisher Eridana in Lithuania is taking on Gridlinked and The Skinner, so that pushes the total of national borders my AG tanks have floated over to a round 10.

Another bit was an email from Gill Mariner. She is a reporter for our local paper The Maldon & Burnham Standard who often does articles about my various achievements. Those articles are always spot-on accurate even if taken from a babbled phone call. This is something you can’t expect from the national papers. Gill sent me the picture here, along with this email:

Excellent, Pocket/Fleuve Noir of the UNIVERS POCHE Group are buying Cowl to publish in France next year. They’ve already bought Gridlinked and The Skinner, the latter of which they’ve already published, but they’re missing Gridlinked to do Cowl, then intend to go with the Polity series afterwards. I look forward to seeing what they do with the covers, since the French cover image for The Skinner – by Stephan Martiniere — is the best yet, I think you’ll agree.