That was July, that was

 

Sharing a laugh with Peter while on stage. Photo by Thorsten Wulff.

I had a busy, productive July. I got the month off to a promising start by joining Peter F Hamilton in Berlin, where we attended Metropol Con 26, the European SF convention. Our visit was in conjunction with our friends from the Otherland Bookstore, where Peter and I had both done successful and enjoyable events in the past, although not together. Peter and I flew in on separate flights and met up at the Moxy Hotel, just one S-Bahn stop down the line from the excellent event venue at the silent green Kulturquartier, a converted former crematorium. It sounds unpromising but you couldn't ask for a better event space, and everyone there looked to be having a very good time. 

Signing with Peter. Thanks to everyone who came along, it was great to meet you all.

We certainly enjoyed ourselves, with some excellent beers and meals in the evening, and Peter and I also found time to visit the Berlin Technical Museum:

 

I think the C-47/DC-3/Dakota might be one of my favorite aircraft types - but you'd know that if you've read one of my earlier novels. There's just something so totally right about them.

And credit to Peter for spotting this before I did: it's a piece of circa-1800 plateway from, of all places, Merthyr Tydfil, just up the road from where I live in Wales. Fantastic!

I've always been impressed with Berlin as a beautiful, liveable city, spacious and airy, with wonderful public transport and great amenities, and this third visit did nothing to change my opinion. Many thanks to Wulf and friends from Otherland, and to the organisers of Metropol Con; I think it was a great success, and thanks also to my good friend Peter for his usual great company. I'd also like to thank photographer Thorsten Wulff for the beautiful prints he gave me of Bowie and Patti Smith, truly wonderful.

Beers with Wulf. That stuff - a dark lager - was bloody lethal, especially as I hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since the start of May.

Your new favorite band photo, according to Wulf. Photo by Thorsten Wulff.

Upon returning from Berlin I had a short week back in Wales, in the middle of this blistering continuing heatwave, during which I just about managed to continue work on the new book. The second round of edits for MERLIN'S WAY had in fact come in just before I left, but rather than work on them in a fragmented fashion, I opted to hold fire until I'd got back from my second big trip of the month, this time to Spain. You need to be in a certain mindset to focus on edits, in my experience, and it's best done in an uninterrupted workflow.

The Spanish trip was built around attending Celsius, the festival of horror, fantasy and SF in Aviles, northern Spain. The brilliant writer Ian Watson had very kindly invited me to come along in 2020, but, because of Covid, and my mother's ill health, I had to decline. Ian had re-invited me for 2026, and I was more than happy to accept. Ian passed away earlier this year, but his partner, Cristina, was determined that Celsius should proceed. I cannot thank Cristina enough for her warmth, enthusiasm and helpfulness during what must have been an incredibly trying period, but I can only hope that the evident success of the festival offered some small reward for the effort invested. My wife travelled with me and we were very well looked after, and made extremely welcome by all present. Aviles is a wonderful location for the festival - it was actually cooler and rainier than Wales while we were there, which was no bad thing - and I know many writers make a point of returning. It's a very chilled affair for the attendees, and although the events tend to run well into the night, there's no stress and always the promise of some good wine and tapas to reward one's sterling efforts. I was delighted, incidentally, to find out that another Ian, Ian McDonald, was also attending. He's one of those who've made repeat visits, and it was lovely to catch up with him over wine and grub. 

I have to pinch myself sometimes, getting to hang out with the likes of Ian, after first discovering his stories thirty five years ago, when we were both a lot, lot younger, and very much closer to the beginnings of our careers than the ends. I'd sold a couple of stories to Interzone, but they'd not yet published them, when in early 1990 I came across Ian's first short story collection, "Empire Dreams", in the books section of Grace Brothers department store. No, not the fictional Grace Brothers from "Are you Being Served", but the actual one that used to exist in Sydney and maybe elsewhere. Anyway, I read Ian's stories with amazement and envy, blown away by his use of language and seemingly effortless ease with all the gnarly tropes of SF, and it's a source of great delight to get to hang out with him all these years later. I also enjoyed meeting, among others, and in no particular order, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jo Walton, Ursula Vernon, Becky Chambers (we'd said hello in Berlin) and Wole Talabi, who gave an excellent interview full of interesting insights on AI. Anyway, Celsius was great! My wife and I flew in and out of Bilbao, where we've got family, but even the five hour bus ride to Aviles and back went smoothly.

Once I was back and settled in Wales, I cracked on with the delayed edits for Merlin. Those went pretty smoothly and the ms is now back with my editor, who reports that the changes I sent back all look good. Barring any further queries, therefore, the book's next port of call will be typesetting, after which it will go out for proofing. That's about the last stage at which any alterations can be made, and they ought to be small ones by then, after which the book will move to the printers, ready for publication early next year. And I, meanwhile, am now back working on the next one, which has the working title THE DREAM FARMS. We'll see if that sticks.