I have some news! You can now get the US small-format paperback in the UK via The Book Depository!

Click here for Blood in the Water at £5.01 inc delivery.

Click here for Banners in the Wind at £4.99 inc delivery.

To recap for more recent readers, the Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution were published in mass-market (small) paperback in the US but the plan in the UK was for a trade (large) paperback edition to be followed by the mass-market edition.

And then stuff happened, like the financial crunch hitting everyone’s non-essential spending and Games Workshop putting the Solaris imprint up for sale just as the first book came out and cutting back the print runs drastically and then Borders failing just as the second book came out – and well, the whole saga is an object lesson in how many things can screw up a writer’s career, which have nothing to do with their books, and which they have no control over.

The first book, Irons in the Fire, eventually came out in mass-market paperback in the UK but the second and third volumes were repeatedly delayed and finally cancelled. Much to the ongoing annoyance of folk who’d been waiting for the cheaper, smaller format, who had purchased the first book and then…?

But now, after discussions about the relevant issues around publishing territories and such, UK readers can now buy the US mass market paperback online.

Spread the word!

Good Monday morning. The sun is shining and we’re back from a much needed family holiday – our first break of the year thanks to inconvenient overlaps of my work, husband’s work and sons’ school/college timetables making any kind of getaway before now impossible. It was a good holiday – of which more later. First I really had better tackle the email and post that’s arrived in our absence.

Happily I can take my own time doing that. I delivered the final draft of Defiant Peaks, aka The Hadrumal Crisis Book 3, to my editor at Solaris the day before we went away. I await his verdict with interest. Meantime I have some short story commissions to drag forward from the back burner where they’ve been simmering for the last few months. One SF, one fantasy and one… somewhere in between.

I am also idly contemplating a few Einarinn short stories – specifically detailing events/episodes which I refer to in Defiant Peaks but where I had to resist the temptation to include them in full. Doing so would have significantly delayed and/or distracted from the main narrative thread and besides the points of view would have been all wrong. We’ll see – maybe early next year, if I can work out how to write them without being too spoilery for the novel itself.

One other thing I did just before we went away was have a chat with Sandy Auden about Defiant Peaks and that’s the basis of this interview with SFX which will hopefully whet appetites from Defiant Peaks.

Next novel project? Nothing to announce as yet – I’m having a few conversations with a few people and we shall see what we shall see.

Right, I had better get on with that email and post then.

Life continues busy… Congenial in Cambridge was indeed splendid fun and this weekend I am off to the annual St Hilda’s Crime & Mystery Weekend in Oxford, to enjoy erudite papers and genial discussion, this year considering humour in crime fiction. And yes, obviously, when I put these things in the diary, the firm intention was to have delivered Defiant Peaks before now. Ho hum. Last lap starts Monday and at least I’m on track to deliver it without pulling any all-nighters. A few late nights, perhaps, but it’s been that sort of year.

Meantime, you may be interested in a piece I wrote for Erin Pringle, an American writer I met at the Phoenix Convention in Dublin the year before last. A very nice lady and a very talented and interesting writer as you will discover at her website/

She’s hosting a summer series of articles where various writers from the US and the British Isles are reflecting on our relationships with libraries. They make fascinating reading and my piece is now live, something of a memoir about my local branch library when I was a kid in Poole, Dorset.

Enjoy!

I am currently extremely busy, but I imagine you’ve guessed that from the lack of updates. I’m currently finishing up Defiant Peaks, the third and concluding Hadrumal Crisis book – and that’s taking up most of my time and mental energy.

What’s over is being devoted to my Chair of EightSquaredCon (Eastercon 2013) duties, where I am pleased to say plans and arrangements are progressing very satisfactorily indeed. We’ve just spent the weekend on a site visit for recce and meetings with hotels purposes – which is why I wasn’t at Edge-Lit in Derby by the way.

I will be at Congenial in Cambridge, August 10th-12th by the way and that’s going to be a splendid weekend. If you can make it, do!

I have a busy diary from September onwards so I’m also trying to get ahead with a few other things, reviews, articles and such. And of course, it won’t be long before the next slew of Arthur C Clarke Award reading starts hitting the doormat…

And then there’s been more than the usual family and household stuff with both teenage sons at crucial points in their education/exam schedules over these past few months.

Like I said, busy, busy, busy. So while I haven’t forgotten about blogging, all too often when I think about a post, all I can come up with is … um, well this list of things keeping me busy.

Fortunately, there are other folk out there doing more interesting things. One of whom is the ever-charming and talented Kari Sperring (author of the highly recommended Living with Ghosts). Slide on over to her LiveJournal and see her adorable cat Ish. Offer up the best caption and you can win copies of Dangerous Waters and Darkening Skies, Books 1 and 2 of the Hadrumal Crisis

And while you’re doing that, I’ll get back to writing Book 3.

I now realise I didn’t post my usual Christmas Eve sign-off for the holiday season the week before last. I still had so much prep to do, I just never got round to it – which sums up my last year pretty effectively. 2011 was remarkably hectic and not necessarily always in a good way, both personally and professionally.

I parted company with my literary agent back in the Spring since that working relationship was well, just not working. At least in part as a result of that, I certainly didn’t achieve all the things I had hoped to. In some instances that was down to factors beyond my control. Then there were a couple of happenings/wrangles which I could have managed better. So appropriate notes have been made and lessons learned and all that kindathing.

On the plus side, I did some things I hadn’t expected to, notably going to California, spending some days in the Bay Area as well as attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego. That was a fabulous trip. I’m also expanding my range and testing my mettle as a writer with some new projects of which more in due course.

I did far more guest blogging and I’m particularly pleased with the contribution my pieces have made to the vexed questions and on-going debate about equitable representation of women (and other minority) writers in the SF&Fantasy field as well as the challenges for all genre writers in the wider literary landscape. Being part of this conversation has also shown me that while very real issues remain to be tackled in our genre, there’s a lot worse goes on elsewhere!

We had a very pleasant Christmas to New Year break, including the seasonal slew of family birthdays. All told, it’s been a most welcome recharging of our mental and physical energies in this household – which has led to a degree of collective resolution not to let ourselves get as overscheduled and overtired as we did towards the end of last year. Not least because 2012 is Junior Son’s GCSE year and Senior Son will be finishing his college course in the summer and heading out into the world of work…

I say this, already committed to the SFX Weekender at the start of February, P-Con in Dublin at the start of March and Eastercon in April. I’m also deeply engaged in the Arthur C Clarke Award judging process and will be judging the James White Award short story competition. I’m chairing the Eastercon 2013 bid, EightSquared, and will be helping out with Congenial, the Unicon/BRS gaming convention in Cambridge, 10th-12th August, specifically on the book-related programming.

That’s all as well as working on an update and redesign of my own website and on publishing my backlist in ebook form. At least for those last two projects, I have the able and generous assistance of two splendid women with the talents and time that I lack.

On the writing side, I am in discussions with a new agent, of which more later. Darkening Skies, second of The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy, will be published in March/April – precise date tba, and I have three assorted short stories in anthologies due this year, first of those being my contribution to The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity in March. Meantime, I will be getting on with writing Defiant Peaks aka Hadrumal Crisis 3, due for delivery in August.

So… time to draw up the first To Do List of 2012…

So how did I get on with that list I posted on Monday?

Pretty well, actually. I have about a day’s work still to do on that steampunk short story but other than that, the rest is ticked off.

Which leaves the rest of the Christmas To Do List to be tackled.

Plus sundry essential domestic chores. Sigh.

Still, the lads have finished school and college and I’ve already given them fair warning that next week will see them doing their share, according to established custom and practise.

Now it’s time to cook dinner and open a beer.

Okay, here’s the plan

– review page proofs for Darkening Skies
– write catalogue/cover copy for Defiant Peaks (Hadrumal Crisis Book 3)
– finalise my steampunk story for ‘Resurrection Engines – 16 Extraordinary Tales of Scientific Romance’
– write and post Christmas/holiday season cards
– teach an aikido class (Tuesday)
– go to school concert to cheer on Junior Son (Wednesday)
– continue with the Arthur C Clarke Award reading

Then Friday’s the end of term and we get to start doing Christmas preparations.

So, overall, not the best Monday to wake up with a surprise new headcold. Sigh.