Minor update and RS special edition

 Things are moving in the direction of publication for HALCYON YEARS, I'm pleased to report, although I don't yet have a reliable publication date to share. I'd take September with a modicum of salt as I've yet to see any cover art or copy, and not much tends to happen in publishing during the traditionally slow summer months - although I could be wrong! I've completed the proofreading stage, though, which is generally the last point at which I have any real input into the text, and we've selected a voice artist for the audiobook, which is good.

Meanwhile, in the realm of things which are definitely about to happen, I've seen the Gollancz twenty fifth anniversary REVELATION SPACE limited edition and it's a gorgeous thing:

The hardcover book includes six colour illustrations by Richard Anderson as well as two pieces of double-page artwork for the inside cover and endpapers, also by Richard. The cover includes an adaptation of the line drawing of a lighthugger I did many years ago (distinctly weird to see it looking all posh and proper on a book now) and the text includes an introduction I wrote earlier this year, documenting the writing and road to publication of RS. The whole caboodle comes in a lovely black and silver slipcase, which is beautiful in its own right but which I particularly like because it reminds me of a Flaming Lips album:

Yes, I like black/silvery/shiny things. I must have been a magpie in a previous life. The RS special edition is available from July 3rd in the UK.

Also imminent are the two new-ish collections of Revelation Space-universe short stories and novellas, supplanting and expanding on the earlier books GALACTIC NORTH and DIAMOND DOGS, TURQUOISE DAYS:

Volume 1 gathers:

Dilation Sleep

A Spy in Europa

Galactic North

Great Wall of Mars

Glacial

Diamond Dogs

And Volume 2 gathers:

Turquoise Days

Weather

Grafenwalder's Bestiary

Nightingale

Monkey Suit

The Last Log of the Lachrimosa

Night Passage

Open and Shut

Plague Music

I'm seeing pub dates of 17th July for these two books.

In the mean-meanwhile-time, while all this is theoretically going on, I've been getting on with writing the much-mentioned Merlin book. I'll be honest, it's been a much more difficult project than I initially thought - what seemed like a simple-ish exercise in bringing together the existing Merlin stories, with some linking material, has proved to be anything but. I've ended up writing a LOT of new material, so much so that at least a third of the book will be totally new stuff, and of the earlier stories, only THE IRON TACTICIAN has escaped significant redrafting. But, it's getting there. It's been an interesting exercise, going back and collaborating with my much younger self, and seeing what I could and could not live with - mostly the latter. 

And when I've not been working on Merlin, over the last few weeks, I've been re-reading the first three volumes of James White's SECTOR GENERAL series, with a view to writing an introduction to a forthcoming and much-needed omnibus edition, about which there'll doubtless be more to say in the future.

That's it for now, hope the weather is fine wherever you are, and keep sane and safe as best you can.

Al R

Two Colson Whitehead books

 If you'd asked me to read a 600-plus page novel about a Harlem furniture salesman trying to walk a line between the crooked and straight worlds, I might not have felt I had the stamina. But I blasted through these two recent books back to back, and I think they've cemented Colson Whitehead as my favorite contemporary American writer.

They're not exactly novels. Each book takes a decade as its broad theme and traces the story of Ray Carney through three novella-sized capers that are equal parts crime story and equal parts social history. Carney is a good guy who's basically just trying to run a furniture store and look after his family, but he's been a fence in the past and he can't quite escape the ties to his old life. I read Crook Manifesto first, which is set in the early-mid seventies, then backtracked to Harlem Shuffle, which begins around the turn of the sixties. You'd read them in publication order, ideally, but I didn't feel that my enjoyment was in any way tempered by taking them out of sequence. If you've encountered Whitehead before (I've read The Intuitionist, Zone One and Underground Railroad, so still have a way to go) you'll expect to be dazzled on an almost line-by-line basis, and these books don't disappoint. I presume there's going to be another set of Carney stories and I'm already looking forward to it.

House of Suns awarded the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire

 La Maison des Soleils, the French edition of my 2008 novel HOUSE OF SUNS, was recently awarded the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire at La Comédie du Livre in Montpellier. I'm delighted with this award, not just because my friends at Belial have been doing a grand job bringing my work back into the French market, but because (as far as I can remember) it's the first award of any kind picked up by HOS. Not that books have an automatic entitlement to awards, but it's one of my personal favorites and the recognition is therefore particularly appreciated.

I wasn't able to attend the festival - I did go last year, and was wowed by Montpellier -  but I had other commitments this May. I was able, though, to record a short message of thanks for the award and to the editors, translator and art team at Belial.

Cheers, Al

Run 100 completed

 That's that done, then. I completed my 100th consecutive run.

For those good at maths who are thinking, hang on, it's only day 99 of 2025, my RED January running challenge did indeed start on Jan 1, but my running streak started a day earlier, when I ran Nos Galan on New Year's Eve. I've logged 499.5 kms of running across these 100 days, but that's a slight underestimate as I forgot to start (or restart) my Garmin properly on a few of the runs, meaning I can be comfortable in saying the total is over 500km.

What's all this got to do with writing, anyway? Good question. Everything, in my view. In order to function properly as a writer, the mind-body machine has to be maintained. While there's a viable publishing model for SF, and I still have the motivation to write it, I want to be able to do so. If I'm lucky enough to be still be doing that in my seventies and eighties, so be it! Writing is inevitably a sedentary occupation so the more that can be done to offset the hours seated at the computer, the better. I don't find that I get any particularly brilliant creative breakthroughs during my running (I don't have enough spare mental capacity for that; walking's a bit different) but I do find that my ability to function holistically as a writer is generally better when I'm in a period of active exercise and general good health.

As to the streak itself, I'm now happily calling quits on it. I'll still be running, but not 7/7. Maybe 6/7 for now. I started to feel that the fitness benefits were not measurably improving after the first few weeks, and while I've certainly been sleeping well and feeling good, my running pace hasn't improved much over the last month. I've dodged any major injuries, avoided coughs and sniffles, but I'm sure a little recovery time will now be beneficial.

Tonight we're starting our four-night run of "Guys and Dolls". I didn't plan for my 100-day streak to conclude today, but it's not a bad stopping point as the time available between writing work and theatre stuff is now very squeezed. Yes, I am still writing! Thanks again for all who supported me and the "Mind over Mountains" charity through RED January.

Newty McNewtface

 My newts are thriving after the winter:

They're beautiful creatures, but I can't help missing the frogs that the newts appear to have displaced. Perhaps the frogs will make a return, though.

In other vertebrate news (vastly preferable to the actual news) we've been enjoying some spectacular bat activity these last few nights, with five or six pipistrelles above us at any one time. I'm still a newbie when it comes to bat identification, but we appear to have a mixture of common and soprano pipistrelles. You can read a bit more about our journey into bats here:

https://approachingpavonis.blogspot.com/2020/05/bat-tales.html

A banger by Billy Nomates

 So good! I played this four times back to back the first time I heard it.

Day 75 of RED January

 Thanks to the support of those who contributed to my RED January running challenge, we managed to raise 180 pounds for the Mind Over Mountains mental health charity. I was feeling pretty good about my running at the end of January, so I decided to push on with the streak. Yesterday was Day 75, but it was actually my 76th day of consecutive running as I ran Nos Galan on December 31st. With the daffodils out, and occasional outbreaks of sunshine, that's starting to feel like a fair while ago.

My total distance over these 75 days is now more than 380km, which places me well into France as the crow flies. I'm not feeling any ill effects, so I'm intending to push on to day 100 and then see how I feel. By then I should be close to exceeding my total running distance in 2024, although at this point in the year I wasn't to know that I was heading for quite a difficult few months with an injury.