Take three on this clip, not so much due to the mistakes I was making but because of the clicking sounds I kept making with my mouth in the pauses. It’s only by doing something like this that you start seeing all your own annoying mannerisms. I hope you enjoy it!
Tag: Books
XiXiDu Pictures.
More Questions Please.
To continue my video learning curve I’d like more questions from you all. Try to avoid repeating the ones you’ll find here and try to be specific. Any “How do you write a book?” questions will be answered with “A keyboard” and “How do you be a successful writer?” with “I sell books.” I don’t mind answering stuff outside of my SF, but I’m not going to get political … or too political.
Shadow of the Scorpion – New Cover.
Well, Jon Sullivan has now produced another new cover, this time for Shadow of the Scorpion. If you want to check out any more of his art, which is bloody cool, go to jonsullivanart here.
Neal Asher Video Clip 1/12/09
Little Bit More Orbus
Here over at Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column is an interesting review/column:
Oh how we love our monsters, as does Asher. More importantly, he knows how to put them to work in a novel, in this case, ‘Orbus,’ where the main character, the title character is a creature that most normal humans would say is utterly monstrous. But he’s just the tip of the iceberg here. What Asher excels at is giving readers sympathetic monsters, giving us the comic relief characters who are AI “subminds,” sprouting tentacles and spewing bile. These are the “good guys” in Asher’s universe. And the good are just as grotesque and deformed as the bad; sometimes they’re also as bad as the bad. Situational ethics have permeated the fabric of Asher’s Polity universe.
And here at concatentation:
Is this Asher’s best book? Not from a question of plot, characterisation, and action? But more importantly, from the viewpoint of the writing itself, and his control over his own labours. Maybe he just keeps getting better which makes you wonder what his next book might be like, because Orbus is a cracker from start to finish.
Thank you very much.
Reader Alert!
Just to let you all know that, for reasons all to do with the mysterious and deeply arcane arts of publishing, The Departure will be published after the one I’m presently writing: Gabbleducks. I also need to add that for reasons of clarity (I’ve already published The Gabble which is too similar a title) and other reasons entirely my own (because the story has taken some seriously odd turns) Gabbleducks will have to remain a provisional title for now. It might end up being called The Technician, The Ballad of Jeremiah Tombs, Sculptures of Bone or even Alien Resurrection (Hur Hur). I just don’t know right now.
Update (because of Mark Chitty’s comment): There will be a book next year – I just have to work harder on the one I’m presently writing so it’s ready for then. The two titles will simply be swapping places in the publishing schedule.
Video Clip
Well, I did my first video clip a few posts ago and have been thinking on what to do next. Just prior to this I’ve posted an interview from Death Ray Magazine. Interviews generally demonstrate the interest of the interviewer (if any) and what he thinks might interest his audience, and he won’t necessarily get that right. So, why don’t we dispense with the interviewer sitting between me and you? YOU ask me questions. Put them here in the comments section and once I’ve compiled enough I’ll do another video clip to answer them, if I can, if they’re not to personal or abusive!
Neal Asher Test
Deathray and Borders.
The credit crunch (silly name) continues to bite, though maybe in the case of Borders that’s credit crunch plus Internet and supermarket competition:
Borders UK, the bookshop chain, went into administration last night, putting 1,150 jobs at risk and raising the prospect of a firesale before Christmas.
It also seems we might not be seeing further issues of Deathray, which is a shame:
As some of you may have heard, and others who popped along the shops to pick up the latest issue of Filmstar may have feared, Blackfish’s two magazines, Filmstar and Death Ray, are currently ‘on hold’. What this means is that there will not be another issue of either of them along for a number of weeks – or, likely, months. Indeed, whether there will ever be another issue of either is a moot point, and at this moment in time impossible to answer. But we hope so.