I aten’t ded …

… but I have been busy. Ish. Starting several things which might, in the fullness of time, one day, get completed.

In other news, e-book versions (epub and mobi) of Rare Unsigned Copy are imminent. Ish.

Further details soon. Ish.

In an ideal universe, the fridge won’t work

(True, by the way. Ask any thermodynamicist.)

I haven’t posted anything on this blog for … hey, look, is that the time?

This is not to say that nothing’s been happening: quite a lot has been going on, both in the foreground and in the background. Not much of this, however, has been productive in a creative-writing sense, although I’m hopeful of being able to turn this around. It’s handy that I’ve been picking up a few reprintings (take a squiz at the updated bibliography, if you’d like), and the honourable mention for ‘Dark Rendezvous’, courtesy of Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best, certainly doesn’t go amiss. But it’s undeniable that my recent fictional output has dwindled. Will this change? We shall see.

If God had meant us to slay dragons, She wouldn’t have made us so flammable

Not, perhaps, a particularly pertinent heading, but the point needed to be made.

By way of updating this sporadically-tended site, I also offer the following observations:

1. Worldcon 2010 (Aussiecon 4) has been and gone. I was there.

2. Au Contraire (the NZ Natcon for this year) has also been and gone. I wasn’t there, but I won an award. The Sir Julius Vogel award, for Best New Talent. Somehow. It’s an awesome trophy, and I shall defend it with my life.

3. ASIM 46, Aurealis 44, and the A Foreign Country anthology are all now out, and they are individually and collectively awesome. (I happen to have a contribution in each of them, but that is entirely another matter.)

4. I have sighted two further reviews of Rare Unsigned Copy, both positive, and am impatient to quote therefrom, but must exercise restraint until they have officially appeared in their appointed outlets.

5. As a probably misguided response to the 2010 New Zealand Spec Fic Blogging Week, I have taken it upon myself to publish, on this very web, short pieces of fiction on each of the seven days that comprise the Week. A running list of these pieces can be found on the ‘Online Fiction‘ page.

6. August has also been and gone. I was busy. See (1) above.

Review update, etc.

I’ve updated the RUC reviews page with a couple of recent reviews, one from the YARA school-student book review site and one from the West Australian.

And there’s also an update to ‘Upcoming Short Stories‘, with ‘Hatchway’ (one of my serious-SF pieces) having been accepted by the Anywhere But Earth anthology due out from Coeur de Lion next year.

And in case you were lamenting the shortage of free-access online Petrie fiction, here’s the story known as Postosuchus kirkpatricki for short, and over on Anna Tambour’s blog you’ll find my Dragonblog, published as part of Anna’s fabled ‘Virtuous Medlars Circle’.

The third and final time…

As reported on my LJ blog a few hours ago, I can announce that the final free Rare Unsigned Copy has gone to centenarian, Iraq war victim, and drug-fuelled knife-wielder Nicholas Whyte, for his  Google-revealed biography (if you’re curious, chase up the comments on the contest page). Congratulations to Nicholas (whose copy will be in the mail as of Monday), and, once again, my commiserations to everyone else who missed out.

June’s competition is now closed

The Google-yourself-to-a-free-Rare-Unsigned-Copy contest has now officially closed. In case you missed the notifications of the winners (made on my ‘punktortoise’ LJ account, which in retrospect is not the most transparent connection to this site), the first-week winner was Jacob Edwards (a library, a spazz jazzer, and an actor in dubious-quality children’s TV shows), while the second week’s winning contestant was homeless homicide victim, criminal, and navigationally-challenged track star Regina Patton.

An announcement of the winner for the final week will be announced shortly.

Pssst… want to win a free copy of ‘Rare Unsigned Copy’?

Details here.

Interviews

I’ve put up a page of interviews (that is, those in which I’m the interviewee), of which there are currently four, two from 2007 and two from 2010.

.

I may ultimately get around to posting interviews I’ve done with other people (to whit, Iain M. Banks, Richard Morgan, Greg Bear, Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds, Douglas A. Van Belle), but don’t hold your breath. Granted, they are significantly more interesting subjects than am I, but…

New reviews…

A couple of new reviews of Rare Unsigned Copy – from Specusphere and SF Crowsnest – have come to light, and are now listed on the reviews page.

It’s interesting (well, to me it’s interesting) to identify trends and common threads which have emerged from the reviews to date. Virtually all of the reviews touch on the serious/humorous mixture aspect, the my-word-some-of-these-puns-are-deadly aspect, the some-of-the-stories-are-only-half-a-page-long aspect, and the (related) gosh-42-stories-is-rather-a-lot-for-a-collection aspect, and truth to tell I’d be disappointed if these things weren’t flagged, because they’re fairly obvious features of the book. Several of the reviews have commented favourably on the quality of the writing and the integrity of the background science, and the Gordon Mamon stories are mentioned more often than not (well, they are the main set of interlinked stories in the collection…). Difficulty in identifying a favourite story is a repeated thread, as is reference to the mischievous ‘Product Warning’ which tends to accompany mail-order copies (and, which I’ve privately been informed, had at least one reviewer somewhat concerned for his wellbeing). The story ‘Podcast’ also seems to come in for a fair degree of attention, as do the book’s three Sudoku puzzles. But in some respects it’s the reported versatility of the book, vis a vis the conditions under which it has apparently been read, which are most surprising, and perhaps most revealing…

Rare Unsigned Copy is, apparently, a book suitable for reading on the loo, for coffee-break browsing, for interstate bus journeys, for reading from netbooks, and for reading by generally book-averse domestic partners. Which is all good to hear, because that’s pretty much the demographic I was aiming at. (Well, part of it, anyway.)

What about you? If you’ve had a singular Rare Unsigned Copy reading experience, or if you’d like to know how to obtain a review copy of your own, please feel free to leave a comment…

Out now

Kaleidotrope issue 8 arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It contains my space-freight comedy-of-masses ‘The Speed of Heavy‘, from which an ostensibly-randomly-chosen snippet may (or may not) provide some indication of the story’s flavour:

“So a bat on Vesta, weighing ten kilos, is not the size of a small dog. It could without difficulty eat a small dog. Or several. In serial, if not in parallel.”

While I haven’t yet had time to devour the whole issue, I have sampled the story following mine, which is Jeff Soesbe’s wonderfully daffy ‘Visiting the Ladies Room Exhibit at the Human Museum‘. Well worth checking out.