Reminder: BFS Awards 2007 - voting deadline looming

Just a quick memo to fellow members of the British Fantasy Society to remind you all that the deadline for voting in this year's BFS Awards is next Wednesday, August 1st, so get your postal ballots sorted out over the weekend or complete the online form, if you haven't done so already. I sent mine in this week (he says, virtuously) and I'm looking forward to the annual round of cheering and friendly barracking that is the awards dinner at Fantasycon, where I think Pete Crowther might be roping me into hosting a table on behalf of PS Publishing (cough Best Small Press Category cough), or something...

July 27, 2007 | Filed Under Books | 6 Comments

Son of Scalpel rising from the ashes..?

I'm very glad to see that following the recent and rather ignominious collapse of what looked to be an exceedingly promising review outlet, one half of the Scalpel editorial team - Jonathan McCalmont - has declared that he's contemplating starting over and trying again with a similar concept and framework.

This information should be filed under Good News, and I for one welcome our new online genre fiction reviewing overlords.

And on a similar, review-related note, Paul Raven points anyone interested in the subject in the direction of Paul Kincaid's thoughts on the topic. Well worth a read if you're a reviewer, a reviews editor, or rely on book reviews when contemplating your book purchases.

July 26, 2007 | Filed Under Reviewing | Leave a Comment

Harry Potter and the Mission to Tesco

I read the final Harry Potter installment on Saturday, publication day.

Having managed to avoid all potential spoilers and plot-hints for the past couple of weeks, it was vital that I managed to read the book without any outside interference ruining the event. I've had a good reading experience wrecked for by spoilers a few times before (one case I clearly remember was Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons) and it's always been dreadfully disappointing. And as I've thoroughly enjoyed the entire Harry Potter series so far - and have invested dozens of hours of precious reading time in getting to the final episode - the last thing I wanted was to end up reading the entire book subconsciously waiting for such-and-such to occur, rather than reading the book as J.K. Rowling presumably intended it to be read.

I therefore formulated and enacted the following minimal human interaction purchasing plan: Out of bed 06.40. Arrive Tesco 07.00. MP3 player on, something suitably raucous - Oasis as it happens - to drown out any possibility of over-hearing some evil bastard of a career shelf-stacker with a grudge against people who can actually read discussing the denouement with his mates just inside the entrance... Enter store. Work out where they've stashed the Potters. Grab a copy of The Book. Head for self-service checkout...

[So far so good. Sticky moment here when Tesco's checkout programming threatened to thwart my carefully laid scheme and a member of staff has to come over and press the right buttons for me. Luckily she didn't say a word about the book. I'm very glad, for both our sakes, as bludgeoning her to death with the new Harry Potter could quite possibly have led to an unacceptable reading-schedule delay due to police interference.]

Right then, purchase complete, mission accomplished. Head for home. Kettle on, large mug of tea and packet of biscuits to hand. Lie back on the sofa, and begin to read...

Okay, why all the rigmarole? Easy: I'm pathologically allergic to spoilers. Paul Raven wondered the other day whether a book that's susceptible to spoilerage is worth reading in the first place, so I'll explain how this unfortunate condition affects me, personally: Well, actually, an allergy to spoilers is probably the wrong way of putting it; I think it's more to do with my having an addiction instead; an addiction to the anticipation of the unknown, to the satisfaction that's gained from the gradual unfolding of narrative events and the corresponding thrill of the moment of eventual revelation.

The way I see it, if an author has crafted a novel so that the plot unfolds in a particular sequence of events, with a specific effect in mind, then it's only right that those events should be discovered by the reader in the sequence that the author intended, wouldn't you say?

Knowing that a particular event is going to happen at some point in the novel - or even the nebulous hint or possibility that something specific might occur - can actually change the way you experience the book, sometimes dramatically, often detrimentally. It can also lessen the impact of other key scenes by drawing the focus of your attention away from them ("Oh, so that's not the bit where so-and-so happens, then..."), and of course, at a very basic level and if the plot element is a key one, it simply ruins the surprise ("Oh, yeah, there it is. Ho, hum...")

I think that it's primarily a question of maintaining the element of mystery. I don't necessarily mean that as in 'whodunnit?', but in a very essential, psychological sense. As Jung said: "Before mystery one retains a certain awe along with the yearning to explore and comprehend." And if that isn't the essence of a good reading experience, then I don't know what is.

So, that's why I hate spoilers. Not because they lessen the intrinsic quality of the book, but because they take away some of the narrative mystery, and in doing so they lessen the power and quality of the reading experience. And I have so little reading time these days that I feel I have to do whatever I can to ensure that everything I read offers the highest quality reading experience possible. Even getting up at 6.40 on a Saturday morning and then reading for eight and a half hours straight, if that's what it takes.

Anyhow, what did I think of the book?

Thoroughly enjoyed this one, too.

No, it's not a work of supreme literary genius. No - as James at Big Dumb Object pointed out - it wasn't perfect in every respect. But you know what? It was 600 pages of bloody good children's / young adult story-telling and it offered a very satisfying conclusion to the series. And given all the hype and the pressure and the sheer weight of expectation on J.K. Rowling's shoulders, then what more could we have possibly asked for? And personally, I can honestly say that I was perfectly happy to turn that last page, finally knowing how it all turned out, and safe in the knowledge that I'd finished the narrative journey in the manner in which J.K. Rowling intended it to be experienced.

Yes, Saturday was a pretty good day. Sunday, I had double chores... :(

July 26, 2007 | Filed Under Books | 9 Comments

Meme-Tagged: 10 Blogging Tips

James over at Big Dumb Object has tagged me with the Blogging Tips meme that's doing the rounds... let's see... I have to copy and past such-and-such then add a thingummy... okay:

-Start Copy-

It's very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.)

Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general.

After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends!

Just think- if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already!

1. Look, read, and learn. ****
-http://www.neonscent.com

2. Be, EXCELLENT to each other. ******
-http://www.bushmackel.com

3. Don't let money change ya! ***
-http://www.therandomforest.info

4. Always reply to your comments. ****
-http://chattiekat.com

5. Link liberally -- it keeps you and your friends afloat in the Sea of Technorati. ***
-http://chipsquips.com

6. Don't give up - persistance is fertile. **
-http://www.velcro-city.co.uk

7. Give link credit where credit is due.**
-http://www.sfsignal.com

8. Follow your own path. Do anything you want to, it's your blog. *
-http://www.bigdumbobject.co.uk

9. Don't put off until tomorrow what you can blog today. Backlogs are the primary cause of Bloggers' Block.
-http://www.thegenrefiles.com

-End Copy-

My own addition may give you an idea of my current state of mind, vis-a-vis blogging... :(

Now then, ten people to tag in turn? Right then:

Joe Gordon
George Walkley
Iain Emsley
Andrew Wheeler
Niall Harrison
Brian Ruckley
Mark Chadbourn
Mark Morris
Philip Palmer
Steve Wilson

Go to it, chaps!

[Edit 26.07.07] Andrew Wheeler quite rightly points out that this sort of exercise is a blatant bit of self-promotion on the part of the original blogger and is tantamount to chain-letter spam, which is perfectly true. But then, he still joined in... ;)

Hopefully I haven't lost whatever credibility I might have had in Andrew's eyes as a result. And hey, just for the record, if it hadn't been something vaguely useful, like actual blogging tips, then I'd most probably have ignored it as well... before anyone tags me with anything too similar.

July 25, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging | 4 Comments

New client website goes live: philippalmer.net

Philip Palmer is a new British science fiction author whose debut novel, Debatable Space is being published by Orbit Books in the UK and the US in January 2008. I've read it, and it's an anarchic, mind-bending space opera about revenge. And love, and hate, and killer robots, and sex, and all sorts of other stuff. But mostly revenge. You can read an extract on the site, of course.

I've set up Philip's site - www.philippalmer.net - on a full Wordpress-based blog, because both Philip and the guys at Orbit really get the whole blogging concept. Philip is really interested in the immediacy of the blogging process and the opportunity that it will give him for instant feedback, especially once Debatable Space is out in January.

And it's not like he'll be short of a thing or two to write about in the meantime, either; he may be a debut novelist, but he's also a radio- and screen-writer of numerous years' experience. There are a few posts on the blog already (Philip prepped and posted a few as the design process went along) that talk about subjects as diverse as Spooks, Captain Jack Sparrow and his recent involvement in the production of a 15-minute radio play about the political situation in Gaza.

Here's a screen-shot of the site:

And yes, for those of you keeping score, that's two new websites launched in one day (and another - a bit of a biggie - on the way as well). So now you know why I haven't been blogging much this past fortnight or so... :)

July 17, 2007 | Filed Under Work | 2 Comments

New client, new(-ish) website: RichardKMorgan.com

I've recently taken on the management of Richard (K) Morgan's website, which I'm very pleased indeed to be involved with, seeing as I'm a bit of a fan and all...

I was going to start by just transferring the old site onto a new server, but... well, I couldn't resist having a bit of a tinker (as you do), so we've actually ended up with an interim revamp. It's still fairly close to the look of the original site, but I've broken the pages out of the frameset to improve Google spider access, added a bit more info about Richard's books to the homepage and so forth.

There will be a fully re-designed site going live later in the year, with a design that reflects the re-design work that publisher Gollancz have unveiled for the full range of paperback editions of Richard's books, and plenty more bibliographical information etc. Watch this space. And in the meantime, here's a quick shot of the interim site:

Interim version of www.richardkmorgan.com

July 17, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing, Work | 4 Comments

Quick Question: Author Websites

Quick Question As you may have gathered, I'm running my own business (and loving pretty much every minute of it) these days: I'm a freelance website content manager (or 'webguy' for short...) and a significant proportion of my work involves designing, building and managing websites for genre fiction authors.

I reckon I've got a pretty good idea by now of the sort of key elements that a good author website should ideally include:

A full bibliography of the author's published work, preferably organised by chronological and/or series order.
A biography section, with press-quality photo(s) if available.
A regularly-updated news / news & views / blog section.
Contact information, both for the author and their agent(s).

Those would seem to me to be the core essentials, but in the interests of research and development, I was wondering: what do you folks - as however occasional visitors to, rather than administrators of, author websites, or even as authors and writers yourselves - think are the next most important aspects of an author website?

Content, functionality, graphic design elements, add-ons, enhancements; whatever you think adds the most to your experience of visiting an author website as a reader / interviewer / publisher / researcher, whatever your role or remit might be.

And, conversely, is there anything that you regularly see on author websites that drives you mad, or that you think is largely superfluous to requirements?

Please feel free to discuss in the comments section and I'll post a round-up of the most interesting suggestions in a week or two.

July 13, 2007 | Filed Under Work | 13 Comments

Client website update: new-ish look for Brian Ruckley

Orbit Books have finalised the brand new jacket design for the UK and US paperback edition of Brian Ruckley's debut novel, Winterbirth, and they asked me to integrate some of the new artwork into Brian's site design:

I do like the new cover art: I think the imagery reflects the harsh, chilly landscape and bitter, confrontational atmosphere of Winterbirth quite nicely...

July 12, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Work | 1 Comment

Feed Control: seven highly recommended genre aggregator blogs

The Silence of the Feeds I was forced to take drastic action a couple of weeks ago: having realised that there was just no way I was ever going to be able to keep up with the vast output from the 150+ RSS feeds that I'd merrily subscribed to over the past year or so, I took a deep breath, reached for the 'unsubscribe' check-box, and instigated a full-scale cull.

It was tough, but in the end I managed to unsubscribe from over a hundred. I started with anything just too prolific for me to have a hope in hell of keeping up with (Boing! Boing! was the first to go) and then moved onto the bulk of the expendables: Marketing / Web 2.0 themed blogs that I'd read one or two interesting posts on a while back and had subscribed to out of habit, before I knew any better...

Then there were a few that I was genuinely reluctant to let go: really interesting blogs written by authors, editors and publishers whose work I've read and enjoyed, or whose blogs I know of by their deservedly high repute: Neil Gaiman, Lou Anders, Ken MacLeod, Charlie Stross, John Scalzi, Jeff Vandermeer, Tobias Buckell, to name but a few...

Why did I drop their feeds? Simple time-availability issues: these guys all tend to post regularly on a wide range of topics; too regularly and too widely for me to keep proper tabs on it all. Don't get me wrong, it's the sort of material that's great to sit and read and ponder if you have the time; the sort of material I'd love to be able to keep up with, if I could.

Besides which, it actually occurred to me, about half-way through the process, that if I really wanted to keep a weather-eye on the most pertinent debates of the day, or to be alerted whenever the aforementioned authors, editors and publishers post something particularly fascinating, then it's actually quite easy to arrange. All I really need to do is make sure I was subscribed to the best aggregator sites that I could find; the ones that regularly pull together and present all the best material from around the genre-flavoured bits of the web.

And so here - in no particular order and for the benefit of several readers - is my personal selection of seven highly-recommended genre aggregator blogs; the pick of the crop that I've found to-date. Some of these guys write opinion pieces as well (which is great) but in general, I keep them in a Google Reader tag-group called 'Genre - Essential' because they can be relied upon to aggregate regularly and aggregate well...

Joe Gordon - The Forbidden Planet Blog Log. Joe is a pro-blogger in the truest sense of the phrase; he actually gets paid by his employer, UK genre-specialist retailer Forbidden Planet International, to write entries for the FP Blog. As a result, you can expect several entries per day from Joe, mainly with a general books and comics them, but encompassing a wide range of diverse sf-ish or graphic art -esque sub-topics: everything from previews of the latest Doctor Who merchandise to reports on Iranian political cartooning. He's also usually first out of the traps with the latest press releases from UK publishers, and isn't afraid to speak his mind when the occasion warrants, either.
Niall Harrison - Torque Control. Niall is the current editor of the British Science Fiction Association's Vector magazine. He's often outspoken (he isn't afraid to chuck stones around his own glass house either), always eloquent, and produces regular Links round-ups (complete with pun-based titles).
Iain Emsley - Yatterings. Iain used to run the online bookstore The Aust Gate until he decided to focus his energies on blogging instead. The results are great: Yatterings is regularly updated with interesting news snippets and he regularly takes the time to conduct in-depth author interviews.
Paul Raven - Velcro-City Tourist Board. Velcro-City is definitely one of the most rich and diverse sf / culture / science / tech blogs around. Paul brings all his interests to the table, so there's always a great mix of content, and his 'Fresh from teh intarwebs' round-ups are a great way of catching up.
James Bloomer - Big Dumb Object. James is another regular, nay prolific, poster; he usually manages several updates a day on a wide variety of topics, with plenty of Doctor Who content to explore, if you're a fellow fan. Again, another great site for keeping up to date with the most important news and current events.
JP Frantz and John DeNardo - SF Signal. Online since July 2003, SF Signal is a team-produced blog/zine with regularly updated content that ranges from news snippets and round-ups to book reviews, competitions, readers polls and more. (It's pretty much the sort of thing I always aspired to with The Alien Online, but had to give up on when it all got to be too much on the admin side of things.)
Andrew Wheeler - The Antick Musings of GBH Hornswoggler, Gent. Andrew Wheeler used to blog professionally for The SF Bookclub of America, before they decided (for reasons best known only to themselves) to let him go. At that point he started using Antick Musings as a Blog in Exile, putting out the same extremely regular round-ups of interviews, reviews, podcasts, news and links, until recently when he was taken on by the far more far-sighted ComicMix, so check out his posts there as well. This guy is the uber-blogger's uber-blogger. Seriously, I have no idea where he finds the time...

So, there you have it. My current list of the seven best genre fiction-themed aggregator blogs. Not that these are the only feeds I read, of course. There are several other close-call candidates in the 'Genre - Important' tag folder, including British Fantasy Society News, the aforementioned ComicMix, Irish Sci-Fi News, SFScope, Neth Space and, of course, Locus Online. Then there are a bunch of genre publisher blogs: Orbit, Solaris, Pyr, Subterranean, TTA and some general publisher / book news / bookish blogs as well.

But hey, this is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list and I'm always open to new sources of news and hard fact, so please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments. If anyone suggests anything I find particularly fascinating, I'll run an update in a week or three.

July 10, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging, Life, Work | 20 Comments

Facebooked

My Facebook Friend... I've finally succumbed and joined that-there Facebook thing, after receiving a friend request from Paul Cornell this morning. Paul's such a lovely chap (as well as writing some of the very best Doctor Who scripts of the last three series) that I just felt it would have been supremely churlish of me to refuse. And besides, he's going to be turning 40 very soon, and I'd hate to upset him this close to the big day... >:)

So, anyhow, I'm on there now - under my nom-de-RL, Darren Turpin (not to be confused with the other Darren Turpin on there, who may or may not be the other other Darren Turpin, the one who writes video game reviews for several publications; he isn't me either, in case you were wondering...) - if anyone wants to, you know, be my friend. Hey, I promise to share my sweets and swap my bestest star wars cards and not tell tales on you and let you use my tree-house, and everything. Can't say fairer than that.

Seriously, though, does anyone know if Facebook has a genuinely practical application, or is it just yet another dangerous, time-consuming, life-sucking fad? No, please, do let me know, I'm genuinely interested in whether or not I ought to be talking to my clients about developing a presence on there...

July 5, 2007 | Filed Under Life, Work | 16 Comments

Client website updates: Les Edwards & Edward Miller

Spent most of last week with my head down, working hard on the July update for the two sites I run on behalf of Les Edwards and his artistic alter-ego, Edward Miller.

Les is a truly terrific artist; I've been a fan of his work since I was a teenager and our house is decorated with prints of some of mine and Jo's favourite pieces: 'The Darkest Part of the Woods' and 'Atkinson Revenant' in the dining room, 'The Croglin Vampire' here in the office, 'Cities' and 'Blood Follows' in our living room (actually, 'Blood Follows' is the original artwork, but we don't like to show off...) and we've just acquired a print of 'This is Now' for the bedroom. We would have bought the original artwork of that one as well, but we were reliably informed that a certain author (whose mini story collection it graces) beat us to it...

Anyhow, there are about 50 new images across the various galleries on the two sites. Generally, the first few images in each gallery are the new ones (although I'm working on ideas for the best way to make that a bit more user-friendly and obvious). Here are some of my favourites from the new batch:

The afore-mentioned 'This is Now', which was used on a Subterranean Press chapbook of three Michael Marshall Smith short stories given to attendees of the 2007 World Horror Convention in Canada:

Edward Miller artwork for 'This is Now' by Michael Marshall Smith

The quite lovely artwork for the Subterranean Press edition of Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora (note to Gollancz with regards to their original UK cover: this is how it should've been done, folks...)

Edward Miller artwork for 'The Lies of Locke Lamora' by Scott Lynch, Subterranean Press edition

And here's the artwork for the Gollancz UK (just to show they're back on the ball...) edition of Chris Wooding's forthcoming novel The Fade:

Edward Miller artwork for 'The Fade' by Chris Wooding

They're all 'Edward Miller' rather than 'Les Edwards' pieces, I know, but that's because there's just something in the use of colour, form and texture in the Miller work that really appeals to me.

I also sent Les a few questions for an interview piece, which I posted yesterday evening over on www.uksfbooknews.net. He has some interesting things to say about the use of fantasy art in book design, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

And I shouldn't leave without mentioning that Les is having a summer sale between now and the end of September. Buy any of the fine art prints available on either website (the vast majority of the images are available as prints, apart from the pencil sketch prelims and anything where the copyright of the work is no longer owned by Les) and you'll enjoy a 20% discount on the usual prices.

July 3, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Work | Leave a Comment