ISBN's sorted, paperback and hardback proofs approved, checked, and uploaded, Kindle edition uploaded and proofed...I think with any luck that's everything ready for the release of Echogenesis 3, Echoterminus, this coming Wednesday 18th.
I have a new rule that wherever I see this crop up, it immediately gets reposted. Still incredible. Best with headphones.
Are you likely to be at the Satellite convention in May?
And while I'm here, should probably mention book 3 in the Echogenesis series is done, dusted and ready for publication on March 18. Ebook is all prepped for Kindle in all territories, with paperback and hardback to follow close behind. Preorder link: www.amazon.co.uk/Echoterminus...
Popping in on one of my rare visits to social media these days to say I'll be visiting Glasgow in the second half of May for, errr...the first time in over a decade. There's a con on around then and I may be at that, and if I know you IRL and you fancy catching up, that would be great.
Cover art for Parsec #15, including my story, Night Like the Devil's Wing. The cover is by Ben Baldwin, who also worked on several of my books. There are also stories by, among others, Lavie Tidhar, Liz Williams, Priya Sharma and David Gullen.
pspublishing.co.uk/parsec-79-c....
I had it suggested to me I do some kind of talk or something at the shop, but with there being other writers local to the area it made more sense to me to bring in other people, particularly Morgan, since he had recently made a splash with his books. I’d run into him before so it was easy to ask.
I remember that.
The cover for Gary Gibson's book, "Xenopraxis", showing a craft rocketing off a cliff edge towards the sky with a vast landscape stretching below the cliff of forests and rivers with the sun setting on the horizon with a flock birds flying towards it.
Xenopraxis is a great continuation of @garygibsonsf.bsky.social's Echogenesis, and I absolutely devoured it. Just like the first book, it has plenty of action, peril, and lots more revealed about the colonisation mission, the indigenous Cents, and the planet itself. Highly recommend this series.
Heard there was a trend for posting first pages of novels on Bsky so figured why not: except this isn't the first page, exactly; it's the first page of an individual novella from a collection called Butterfly Box and other Stories. Link: mybook.to/ButterflyBox
Heard someone talk about it being hard to get traction for their new book. I often pick up books after seeing a review on social media, so if you like a book and think other people would too, then, you know, tell us.
In my own case, i just started 'High' by Adam Roberts, a 120 page ebook novella.
Been flattened by flu since the New Year, but seeing Europa Deep finally broke 1500 ratings/reviews on Amazon makes up for it while I'm hard at work on Echogenesis Books Two and Three.
www.amazon.co.uk/Europa-Deep-...
Would actually make a great Youtube channel as well, although without the budget to actually buy wood, do carpentry and travel very far, could still visit people's book collections (bigger the better) and talk to them about it. I'd watch it.
Haven't finished it yet, but it's the definition of mindfuck by quantum physics. Deep explorations of the very structure of reality. Really don't know how it's going to end, but so far it's great.
Can never think what the hell to say that remotely connects with my writing day job (zero probs posting about cycling), so maybe I'll talk about what I've been reading: Observer by Nancy Kress, in collab with Robert Lanza, a leading medical physicist. The glittering diamond-tipped blade of hard sf.
Came across this nearly half a decade late, but it's still worth it. Stellar work. youtu.be/2Qs1J612nZs?...
Scare your health CEO with this one, simple trick: send them some Monopoly money.
When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.
Well, there’s a story.
Very occasionally I’ll get a reviewer comment about one of my books (hard sf/space opera) having a touch of ‘woo’. I’m guessing none of them have read up on what quantum physics has to say about human consciousness, or about the nature of reality being a construct formed through consensus.
Funny thing is, he said my Scottish accent 'wasn't quite as strong' as his friends. Funny, because back in Scotland I was occasionally accused of sounding 'insufficiently Scottish' to the point I'd be asked if I was English. ENGLISH. "Yurr no' frae aroond here", etc.
Chatted with an American English teacher here in Taiwan and he mentioned a former work acquaintance from Scotland who had to receive special phonics lessons before he could even attempt to speak Chinese without a heavy accent that left everyone baffled. The struggle is real, people.
It's nearly Christmas, there are sales, so...the audiobook of Echogenesis is 70% off? Non-DRM, if that helps.
www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...
That actually gave me a headache.
Should hit 50k on the first draft on the second of Echogenesis's two sequels later today. Now thinking I'll have complete first drafts of both books sometime late January. Hope I'm not overestimating my abilities by thinking I can edit an estimated likely total of 200,000 words by August.
The trick is to never let it out of your sight. Not even for one second.
It's like climbing up a wall. Not going that specific way again.
In case anyone's interested, the bike is a custom-built, titanium frame road bike built by a local company called Performer who, I think, also make bikes for Trigon.
I'm thinking of doing a couple of short multi-day trips next year, but I won't be going that far, or that hard, on each day: based on recent experience, fifty to sixty miles a day is easily achievable, unless there's a lot of climbing involved. And if the way is flat, further yet.
After that, all I had to do was follow my usual route back south, fuelling myself with onigiri rice snacks and a Coke from a vending machine. The good thing about all this from my perspective is it's given me a sense of how much I can achieve in a single day where cycling is concerned.
By this point, I'd passed beyond mere fatigue and into some other realm where all that mattered was keeping the wheels turning: my whole world became reduced to a constantly undulating highway that felt like it stretched out forever--at least, until I got to Beitou, to the north of Taipei.