30 March 2011

A Romantic Autopsy

It's taken a little while, but Obverse Books have made the first of their Faction Paradox short story collections, A Romance in Twelve Parts, available for preorder at their website. As I may possibly have mentioned before, this anthology contains my 10,000-word sequel to Of the City of the Saved..., "A Hundred Words from a Civil War".

(It's also on Amazon, although there "Twelve" appears to be spelt "Twleve".)

Obverse have also announced the ISBN -- a thrilling 9780956560544 -- and a provisional cover image (as yet without the title added), which looks like this:
















The list of stories is also included, to whit:
  • Alchemy - James Milton
  • Holding Pattern - Scott Harrison
  • Storyteller - Matt Kimpton
  • Gramps - Jon Dennis
  • Mightier than the Sword - Jay Eales
  • The Story of the Peace - Ian Potter
  • Print the Legend - Daniel O'Mahony
  • Nothing Lasts Forever - David N Smith and Violet Addison
  • Library Pictures - Stuart Douglas
  • Now or Thereabouts - Blair Bidmead
  • Tonton Macoute - Dave Hoskin
  • A Hundred Words from a Civil War - Philip Purser-Hallard
Daniel and Ian are among the best authors I know, and Matt, Jon, Blair, Dave -- actually, sod it, nearly all the other authors -- have contributed excellent stuff to previous collections including Obverse's Iris Wildthyme range. The book's going to be fab, and you should buy it.

As if you needed an extra inducement, I'm told that Iris herself features in Stuart's story, her first appearance in a Faction Paradox book since pp165-67 of Interference volume 2, very nearly twelve years ago.

Official word is now that A Romance in Twelve Parts will see publication on 31 May. When I have more information on that, I'll apprise you of it.

09 March 2011

Degrees of Separation

My word, you have all been patient.

The latest word is that publication of Faction Paradox: A Romance in Twelve Parts, initially scheduled for last month, is now expected in April. Final tweaks to my story are being made this week.

So, here's the last of my pre-prepared deleted scenes. In the alternative universe where ‘A Hundred Words from a Civil War’ was published without the guest contributions, this drabble would have acted as a bridge between a scene set in Paynesdown District and one set in the Romuline District:.
     The persistent rain of Paynesdown forms a case-study for the potential weaponisation of the City’s gigaclimate being undertaken by meteorologists from Rullish District University, one of the students in whose Physics Department is secretly accumulating nuclear material at the behest of a cult whose restrictive views on the nature, definition and exclusive right to continued existence of ‘Chromosomal Humanity’ have led to their investigation by a Civil Intelligence Agent, whose partner was recently murdered using contact poison supplied by a neuro-bokor who is practicing experimental zombification processes on a consignment of slaves purchased from mercenaries from the Romuline District, where:
...a bunch more stuff happens. To find out what, you'll have to read the story itself once the book's published.

I'm hoping to do more bloggery shortly -- I very much want to review Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London and Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream, and possibly the film version of Never Let Me Go, which I managed in an uncharacteristically toddler-free moment to see -- but for the moment toddlercare, work and the non-series novel I'm very, very, very slowly writing are pressing rather too insistently.