A bit of an update… and an announcement

Well, it's been a busy few weeks since I last dropped by and no mistake. For a start, I'm very happy indeed to report that the new job is going extremely well. My to-do list went ballistic in week one and doesn't show any signs of letting up - quite possibly for the next couple of years or so - which is all to the good as far as I'm concerned. Life's too short to be bored, especially at work.

Out on the road: Jo and I Had a great weekend in Derby at Alt.Fiction. I managed not to make a complete arse of myself on the 'Writing and the Internet' panel (I hope) and the two of us caught up with a whole load of good friends and causal acquaintances who we don't get to see much more than once or twice a year, which is always the highlight of any convention or genre-related social event.

And speaking of which, I went on down to London for the Arthur C. Clarke Awards last week as well; another chance to catch up with folks, drink a couple of free beers and talk shop. After the Clarkes I followed the crowd to a bar up the road and ended up chatting to Dean Haglund (one of the Lone Gunmen, the geek-trio from the X-Files) for about an hour, about comics, movies, television, comedy, books, you name it. Top bloke.

Anyhow, big congratulations to (ex-client) Richard Morgan on the Arthur C. Clarke win for Black Man. Thoroughly deserved, although officially I was rooting for (Orbit author) Ken MacLeod, of course... :)

Reading-wise: I've been catching up with a few PS Publishing novellas: The Mermaids by Robert Edric, The Lees of Laughter's End by Steven Erikson and No Traveller Returns by Paul Park. My favourite of those was the Erikson: another of his tales of the sinister Bauchelain and Korbal Broach; this time loaded with dark humour as well as his trademark high-action fantasy. I've also read issues twelve and thirteen of PS's Postscripts magazine; the stand-out tale from the two volumes was most definitely Hal Duncan's camp-as-tits buccaneer romp 'The Island of the Pirate Gods', which I wish I'd read before I sent in my recommendations for this year's British Fantasy Awards last week. Never mind. Surely someone else will have nominated it.

I've also read Alan Campbell's Subterranean Press novella Lye Street, which is set before the events of his debut novel Scar Night and had a very Erikson-esque feel to it, now I come to think of it. I finally found time to read a Jonathan Carroll novel that's been on the to-be-read shelf for years: Kissing the Beehive, a pretty intense psychological murder mystery. I've read a couple of Orbit titles that I thoroughly enjoyed: Charlie Huston's latest Joe Pitt novel, Half the Blood of Brooklyn and Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come; a highly-enjoyable mix of Elizabethan and faerie politics and intrigue.

And I've indulged in a few graphic novels recently as well: David Petersen's Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 is beautifully drawn and tells a simple but compelling tale of warrior mice dealing with a threat to their homeland from a shadowy traitor. Re-visiting the first three collected volumes of Garth Ennis and co.'s Hitman tales was a whole heap of fun; as was the first volume of new indie publisher Ablaze Media's Peckerwood which turned out to be a lot more amusing than I have to confess I was expecting from a gratuitous 24 spoof. And I made a start on all 11 volumes of Mike Carey's Lucifer series, having filled the gaps on the shelf with the help of FPI and a birthday cash donation from the missus (ta, love!)

But the best thing I read recently has to be the Humdrumming volume I bought at Alt.Fiction: PS head-honcho Pete Crowther's collection of four short stories entitled The Land at the End of the Working Day. Now, I happen to count Pete among my very good friends and I worked with him on the website and marketing for PS Publishing for the past few years (until very recently), so you can take the following with as large a pinch of salt as you like... but this really was a rather wonderful collection of stories.

They're set in a New York walk-down bar, the sort of locale that will be familiar to fans of Spider Robinson's Callahan's yarns - and with good reason, as Pete's a huge fan of the series - and these four tales speak to the reader of some of the most essential elements of life: love, loss, pain, pleasure, friendship, good company and good beer, all of which is exactly my pint of stout. As a result, I expect I'll be picking up Arthur C. Clarke's contribution to the bar-story oeuvre, PS Publishing's Tales From the White Hart, before too long. I might even re-visit Callahan's Crosstime Saloon all over again. And Pete tells me that there are two more TLATEOTWD stories in the works; I'll be buying copies of whichever mag puts those out, without fail, or a second Humdrumming volume if that's how they appear. Great stuff.

All of which pretty much brings me bang up to date, I reckon. Oh, apart from that announcement...

I'm going to be moth-balling UK SF Book News in the very near future. It's something I've been thinking about on and off for about six months now. The recent re-design was my attempt to re-ignite my enthusiasm for the project, but alas, whilst tinkering in the belly of the Wordpress beast is always interesting, I'm afraid I didn't manage to over-come the essential problem that's been weighing most heavily on my mid for a while. Which is that spending however many hours per week updating the site just isn't fun any more...

Plus, it's been somewhat superseded in the past couple of years: firstly by a whole number of rather excellent new blogs (run by bloggers with much more free time and enthusiasm for their calling than I can muster these days) and secondly (but perhaps more importantly) by RSS feed aggregators such as Google Reader, Bloglines and co. And what's the point of attempting to gather and present the most current and relevant UK SF Book News when anyone who's interested in the subject matter can subscribe to any number of feeds - by their favourite authors or from the aforementioned super-bloggers - and get a much wider range of news items, discussion topics and humorous Star Wars Fan Videos, delivered straight to their desktop or browser-of-choice?

So, there you go. Time to call time on a ten-year (eleven-year? twelve-year?) hobby, if you include the old fanzine days of 'The Alien Has Landed' back at Waterstone's. Time to get in touch with all the hugely supportive publishers who have been sending in books and news items in for all those years and let them know that the site is going on hiatus. And then it will be time to look around at what else is out there, try my hand at something new. I've already discovered the joys of gardening (if you can believe that) and I'm thinking of finally learning to play the guitar. I might even get me one of those new-fangled games console thingies that the kids today seem to spend so much time on. I'll definitely be reading a few more of the many, many books on the to-be-read shelves. And hey, I might even try my hand at this fiction-writing lark. A bit unlikely, if my track-record in that department is anything to go by, but you never know...