Obverse Gear

You remember -- well, probably you don't, as I was a bit busy to blog much at the time, and only mentioned it once -- that I spent a substantial chunk of December writing a 5,000-word short story for a new anthology? And that I was going to announce it here when the publishers had made their own announcement?

Well...

Obverse Books, a new publishing venture owned by the estimable Stuart Douglas, has just announced the author line-up for its debut anthology Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, featuring -- naturally -- transtemporal heroine and barroom floozy extraordinaire Ms Iris Wildthyme, created by Paul Magrs. The collection includes my short story "Battleship Anathema", along with stories by Faction Paradox authors Mags L Halliday and Jon Dennis, sundry Doctor Who authors and the category-defying Mr Magrs himself.

Iris's history has been a convoluted one, taking in Paul's Phoenix Court series of magic-realist novels, the original Doctor Who novels and short stories which Paul has written, her own series of CD audio drama adventures[1] -- and one previous short story anthology, Wildthyme on Top, published by Big Finish and including my Shakespeare-rewrites-Iain-M-Banks story "Minions of the Moon", of which I'm still absurdly proud.

I'll be creating a Celestial Omnibus web page on my site shortly. For the moment, though, suffice it to say that my story involves Iris trying to revisit the scene of a series of colourful -- indeed, garish -- space-opera adventures she experienced some thirty years ago, but finding that the people and starships she left behind have become strangely drab and gritty during her absence...

[1] As luck would have it, the postman put my copy of the Iris Wildthyme Series 2 CD box set into my hands an hour or so ago. It's a thing of quite remarkable beauty, the intricately detailed Target novel theming of the covers being offset wonderfully by the shocking pink box and vaguely Buffyesque logo. An awful lot of love and care has gone into designing it, and I'm really looking forward to hearing the stories.

Vamping it Up

I've just been proofreading the pre-print PDF of The Vampire Curse, which promises to be a very pleasing book visually, with some lovely typesetting and formatting. (There's no news on the cover as yet, but I'll update you when there's anything to show there.) The actual content is also fab, of course, with Mags and Kelly contributing clever, sexy, funny stories with the full complement of heart, brain and fangs, which my Predating the Predators is going to have some serious trouble following.

In theory, I think this ends my involvement with the book until I get my free copies through the post. In practice, I still need to write up some extra material to go on the website. Meanwhile, here's my one of the three bios which should be appearing in the back of the book:

Philip Purser-Hallard has written stories about alien shapeshifters, draconian diplomats, robot replicants, hermaphrodites, angels, men in the moon, the risen dead, an elderly science fiction author and a wide range of posthuman beings, but not previously about catholic priests battling evil space vampires. Most of his other stories also have academics in them.

Philip lives in Bristol, where he divides his time between writing and a job you don't care about. He writes a regular online column on science fiction and religion, and occasionally gives talks. He believes that one day in the future, humans will rise up and overthrow their feline masters.

And speaking of Wildthyme on Top (which, er, I was briefly, just then), I'm delighted to see that February 2009 is going to bring us four more Iris Wildthyme audio dramas. (Well, those of us who buy the "Season 2" box set, anyway. The rest of you get them spread out between February and April.) Written by various talented gentlemen (to whit, the resplendent Mark Michalowski, Iris' creator Paul Magrs, my old adversary editor Simon Guerrier, and Paul's brother Mark Magrs), the four CDs pastiche, parody or affectionately homage (according to taste) the four decades of Doctor Who which aren't this one -- ie, the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Which is what Iris was created for, after all.

Despite the work I've done for Big Finish, I don't generally plug their stuff here unless it's directly relevant to the subject of this blog (viz, Me). But for Iris I'll make an exception.

In other news, it turns out that standing for President of the U.S.A. means that people photograph and film you even when you're looking remarkably silly. And make satirical websites about your emergency stand-in, to boot.

Putting the Cartography Before the Horse

I've spent most of this past week worldbuilding -- creating a setting for a potential novel (not one I've actually got anyone interested in yet, I hasten to add), in painstaking geographical, historical, political and social detail.

I'm told this is one of my big strengths as a writer... and I'm inclined to agree that Of the City of the Saved... would be a considerably lesser work without the 20,000-odd words of notes I'd made on the City before I started writing it. I've tried to do similar work (to a lesser degree, obviously) for my various short stories, "Minions of the Moon" particularly, and I think it's paid off. It certainly led to my being asked by Nick Wallace, the editor of Collected Works, to design some background for that book.

I don't want to go into detail about this new setting, because it's a neat idea and I don't want people being "inspired" by it. But for most of the past week I've been painstakingly constructing (in Microsoft Paint, perversely enough) a map of Britain in the 22nd century, after some serious changes to the political landscape. It's not an approach I've used before, but I've found that as I've filled in the changed place-names and coloured in the various political entities, I've found a whole history unfolding in my head.

Of course, I don't actually have a story, plot or characters yet. But I've got a very exciting world to put them into when I manage to come up with some.

And -- if it should happen to become a bestselling sequence of novels and spawn a series of blockbusting films -- I'll have the licensed tie-in Risk board all worked out ready.