Nearly back on an even keel…

The last few weeks have been a bit intense, both work-wise and otherwise. Following the recent launch of the all-new PS Publishing webstore, as well as the Wordpress-enabled re-launch of John Berylne's Works of Tim Powers fan-site and the re-vamped version of Richard Morgan's homepage, Jo and I promptly jetted off on holiday for a week, to the quite fantastic Mediterranean island of Malta.

We had a fantastic time, but alas, we also received some sad news on our last day there; suffice to say that a family funeral ensued, which we both attended this week just gone. All of which has resulted in something of a backlog - as you'd imagine - although I think I'm pretty much back on top of things now. So much so that I managed to make time today to put together my new, personal blog site at www.darrenturpin.me.uk.

So from now on, that's where I'll be posting all my music, humour, movie and life etc. related posts, leaving The Genre Files free for more bookish material; like the pile of recommended reading that I want to post at some point. I'm also looking at my work schedule in order to free up more time to work on UKSFBN each day, which should result in more regular posts, or at least fewer content gaps. And of course, any work-related material will be posted to www.darrenturpin.co.uk.

Oh, and the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I've started signing posts as 'Darren' rather than 'Ariel', both here and over at UKSFBN. The reason? Well, 'Ariel' is an old nick-name from high school that stuck through University and my early days in bookselling. I always liked it, because it was quirky and memorable for folks on the other end of a phone; especially when I rang up busy publicists to blag review copies and author interviews for 'The Alien Has Landed'. But now I'm working freelance I think that using my given name is more professional. And something else happened recently to convince me that 'quirky' isn't always best.

My post on the Long Tail economics of genre fiction got a bit of blogosphere coverage; it was even picked up on by Lou Anders, a US-based editor whose work I have an enormous amount of respect for, which was naturally most gratifying... until Lou made the (not entirely unreasonable) assumption that I was a lady.

Not a problem, easily remedied, and indeed, Paul Cornell actually point out the gender-switch in the comment thread to Lou's post and Lou made the correction. But along the way, he replied to Paul's comment, saying: "next you'll be telling me Ariel doesn't have a tail and live under da sea..."

Ba-dum, tish!

You know what? When someone you respect - and whose opinion of you could potentially be quite important from a work-related point-of-view - makes 'Little Mermaid' jokes about your current nom-de-nick then that's probably a signal that it's time to stop being quite so quirky and focus on the professional instead.

So, 'Ariel' is being phased out, at least on anything that carries a public profile that could reflect on me professionally. Although of course I will still answer to my nick-name when talking to anyone that knows me (Jo won't call me anything else...), and I'll probably still sign emails as 'Ariel' from force of habit. But there you go. A lesson learned.

November 18, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging, Life, Work | 8 Comments

A short pause to reflect and reorganise

With the launch of the long-awaited PS Publishing webstore this week I ought to be able to find a bit more room in my head for other things (although there's still plenty of work to be done for PS and I certainly won't be slacking). As a result, I think the time has come for me to put a long-pondered blog reorganisation into effect.

Here's the plan:

The Genre Files from now on will be all about the books [resists the urge to add 'baby!'] and the graphic novels, and the authors, and anything interesting that that's going on in the world of genre publishing and book marketing that particularly grabs my attention. I might even hold forth on the subject of effective book marketing from time to time and, who knows, maybe even post a link round-up or two... oh, and what do you think of the new decor? Stylish, no?

www.DarrenTurpin.co.uk is my recently set-up (but not yet fully functional) work-related blogfolio (if I can get away with that) and that's where I'll be talking about the work I'm doing with all my clients: authors, publishers, SMEs, the lot. I'll be adding a number of short case studies as I go along as well.

UK SF Book News is just over a year old and is ticking over nicely at the moment, with what seems to be a pretty good mix of shorter news-bite length announcement / press release / what's on items interspersed with longer mini-interview and featurette pieces, and I hope the situation will be able to continue pretty much indefinitely.

And finally... at some point I'll be setting up a new blog at www.darrenturpin.me.uk (unless I can think of a more interesting - and available - domain name in the meantime; one that isn't quite so narcissistic and navel-gazey, perhaps). But anyhow, that's where I'll be talking about all the other stuff I find interesting: music, food & drink, football, photography, art, gardening, nature... ah, hell, whatever I feel like. I'll be thinking of it more as an aide-memoire and extended memo-to-self than any sort of broadcast piece and if nobody else ends up reading it then I really won't mind.

So that's the plan. Still very busy at the moment though, and with a week's holiday coming up fast, so it might be a month or so before all the pieces are in place. But so be it.

October 17, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging | 2 Comments

All together now: "Dis place (aaah-ah!) is comin' like a ghost town…"

Hello? Anybody here..? Bit quiet around here lately, I know, but I'm afraid it's a situation that's quite likely to continue for a little while yet...

The thing is, I had a cunning plan, way back when. I was going to finish the new, full content version of Richard Morgan's website (almost done, hopefully it'll be live by the end of the week) and then spend most of September working on a few side-projects of my own, catching up with long overdue blog content, running a few admin tasks that have been on the to-do list for a good while, that sort of thing.

But the Morgan site has been taking a little longer than I planned, if only for all the usual miscellaneous reasons (note to any other would-be or relatively new-start freelancers: when estimating the length of time a job will take, always double it, then add a bit...) And then I got a full schedule data update through from Pete at PS Publishing late last week, which means that I can now crack on with finishing the long-awaited new e-commerce version of the PS website, which is what I've been doing - along with a few other update jobs - pretty much solidly since then.

Having said that, I did manage to get a basic blog setup started for my own work-related info / promo / portfolio site, which is now live at www.darrenturpin.co.uk, although it definitely needs some more work, particularly round about the Portfolio and with regard to contact details etc.

But yes, anyhow, the PS job should take up most of September, which means that my other plans will have to return to the back-burner for a while. October is booked pretty much solid already, and I'm hoping that I'll get chatting about websites to a few folks at Fantasycon the weekend after next, so hopefully I'll end up busy through November. Which means I might have to wait until December to get everything sorted out properly. C'est la vie, and I'm certainly not complaining about being busy.

Although having said that, if I can sneak some schedule space in the meantime, then what I'm hoping to do is: finish DT.co.uk and expand the range of content I'm posting there (marketing, productivity, GTD, freelance working, that sort of thing), then re-template The Genre Files (it's looking a little dark and dingy in here, compared to a few of the cleaner templates I've seen online recently) and re-focus the content on books, bookishness, publishing and related topics, whilst moving out the more general, chatty and / or personal stuff into a new blog. Possibly at darrenturpin.me.uk, possibly at lessordinary.me.uk ("aiming to live a life less ordinary..." yes? no? good? okay? crap?) which I registered a while back on whim and haven't done anything with yet. And of course, I'll be keeping things ticking over on UKSFBN and I will try to pick up the pace again here, pending the re-design...

Phew. Wish me luck!

September 11, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging, Life, Work | 6 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

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