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Well, maybe not technically, but it sure feels like it. Heat, almost cloudless blue skies, not a breath of wind, butterflies, six buzzards drifting in big circles way, way up above the house. Each winter, I half-forget just how much nicer, how much easier on the spirit, the summer is. It’s good to be reminded. And if summers are going to start in April from now on, they’re going to be looong.

On a whole other subject: you didn’t think Superman’s Fortress of Solitude was imaginary, did you? Oh no. Here’s the photographic proof.

That I have stumbled across the following at a time when there’s hostage-type stuff going on in Iran is, honestly, entirely coincidental … I have been reading (and enjoying, but that’s beside the point) Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I was thinking what a cool movie it would make in these days of CGI wonders, and did a bit of idle web-searching. I soon discovered that it was nearly made into a movie in the 1970s. It doesn’t seem to ever have got out of development, but the work done on it wasn’t entirely wasted, since it apparently did become a key component of a CIA plan to extricate 6 Americans from Iran during the hostage crisis that started in 1979. Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up. Here’s the evidence (complete with cool concept art by comics legend Jack Kirby):

Just thought I’d highlight one of my favourite blogs, which seems to be going from strength to strength: Strange Maps. It does what it says on the tin. Unmissable if you like maps (and there can’t be many fantasy readers/writers who aren’t at least a little cartographically enthused, can there?), a goldmine of surprising nuggets if you’re into history, and just generally interesting in an all round sort of way. Couple of recent fantasticalish posts: The Hollow Earth and The Most Generic Country Ever.

And here come trailers for a couple of movies I’ve been eagerly anticipating for some time. Strangely, the trailers had contrasting effects: I’m now only mildly interested in one of the movies (which would make it an anti-trailer, I guess), while I’m positively trembling with feverish excitement at the prospect of the other. I’ll leave you to decide for yourself which is which: 28 Weeks Later and Day Watch.

Ariel, proprietor of The Genre Files, tagged me with this meme, which is an old one that’s crawled its way around much of the blogosphere by now. No bad thing to be made to think a little bit about such matters, so here’s the required five reasons:

1. I was reliably informed (by Ariel, amongst others, as it happens) that blogging would be a handy way to disseminate info about my writing, interact with readers and so on – all the now widely received wisdom, in other words. Seemed plausible to me then, and still does. It’s a self-evidently simple and accessible way of putting stuff out there for folk to see, and for those same folk to respond by way of comments if they see fit.

So far, though, the most effective way of getting reader feedback has actually turned out to be just publicising an e-mail address (on the Contact page), rather than having a comment-enabled blog. Which made me wonder about subsets: there’s some indeterminately-sized (but presumably quite small) subset of readers, and potential readers, who actively browse author websites, and a small subset of that subset who are inclined to interact in some way with the author. Of that little group of interaction-inclined readers, my tremendously limited experience so far suggests that more are likely to settle on the e-mail route than the comment-on-a-blog route. Is that dependent on the kind of blog posts that appear, or is it that people are deterred by the more public nature of comments and prefer the direct, private nature of an e-mail exchange?

2. I like other peoples’ blogs, and my fancy was (and is) tickled by the idea of dipping my toes in the pond of this new style of communication. Not in any expectation of emulating the success some have had in building profile or readership for their blogs (I’ve neither the time nor the inclination – nor the natural talent for this particular form of writing, I suspect – to attempt to create an uber-blog), but more out of curiosity about what it was like to participate in the blogosphere, in however limited a way.

A tenuous analogy: one of the reasons I liked living in London was the sense of being where the action was, being immersed somehow in buzz. I was not personally much involved in said buzz, but it was there, all around, and I liked its proximity. Now, I live a tiny bit of my life online, and the virtual world of the internet feels a little like a virtual London: a seething mass of activity in which I’m a highly peripheral participant, once again enjoying the occasional sense of being able to distantly glimpse somewhere where the action is.

3. Nothing to do with why I started, but a reason for persisting, is that blogging has made me much more engaged with the whole internet. I kind of knew that there was a lot of interesting stuff going on out there, but I really wasn’t doing much by way of exploration until I became blogified. Now, suddenly, I’m starting to get my head around just how astonishing it is. I’m listening to podcasts, scouring websites for RSS feeds, browsing discussion boards, and it’s slowly sinking in that this really is some kind of revolution, just like the media’s been saying for all these years. What kind of revolution, I’ve no idea, but blogging is the bit of encouragement I need to pay attention to it.

4. I have latent techno-geek tendencies. My inner geek manifests in unpredictable ways, sometimes hibernating but never wholly fading away. He is pleased, and soothed, by the mechanics of writing and publishing a blog post, of playing around with digital images for the blog, of figuring out what html tags do. Were he a cat, he would purr. He would be despondent – possibly even sulky – if I stopped blogging now.

5. I have never been able to keep a diary. One or two youthful attempts fizzled out in a cloud of apathy and inertia. Blogging is not diarising (not the way I do it, anyway), but it does feel like something is slowly being constructed. The slow, steady accretion of detail creates a record of something – one particular aspect of me and my life. Were I to keep a blog going for years, what would I end up with? Not a diary, but maybe a series of snapshots, a litany of passing interests or activities that I would otherwise have forgotten about, a vague impression of the way my mind works? Or just an ugly, shapeless mess clogging up valuable space on a bit of hardware somewhere? I don’t know, but I’m mildly curious to find out.

I’m not going to tag anyone else, which I know is playing fast and loose with the rules for such things, but this meme is a pretty old dog: lost its bark by now, I should think. Kind of fun for a neophyte like me to do it, but I’m not in touch with enough other new bloggers to pass it on.

Ten (trivial and largely useless) things I’ve discovered, come to suspect or had confirmed since making the switch from wannabe writer to contracted fantasy author …

1. Checking your Amazon ranking can occasionally be fun, but it’s not useful. Googling yourself can sometimes be useful, but it’s not necessarily fun.

2. Others are pretty much guaranteed to see stuff in your text that you didn’t know you’d put in there. It’s best to regard this as interesting rather than alarming (especially if the stuff they see sounds cleverer than what you originally had in mind).

3. Even as a complete nobody, if your book’s in hardback it could be a potential speculative commodity for some people: if collectors or dealers want signed copies, make them available. If nothing else, it means you get to watch people trying to put a value on your name on ebay.

4. Even as a complete nobody (still), there’s a chance someone somewhere in the vast sprawl of the internet will want to interview you. Unless you’re a natural, being a good interviewee takes a bit of practice, so it might be worth trying to train yourself not to be too boring or offensive.

5. Writing a second book, to a deadline and for definite publication, is a very different experience to writing the first one, in your spare time in the hope that something might come of it. Whether it’s harder, easier, more enjoyable and/or more stressful probably depends on the individual. It’s definitely different, though.

6. Bricks and mortar bookshops – not Amazon – are still where the main sales action is. It’s therefore handy if their staff can be convinced it’s selling well. If your friends and family seem inclined to buy the book, dispatch them to high street bookstores. Ideally on a carefully designed and supervised rota structured to create the illusion of steady demand.

7. People from your past will get back in touch with you if you have a book published and a website gone live. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your past. Psuedonyms would be indicated for those anticipating potential problems …

8. Some of those you meet will be fascinated by the fact that you’re a published writer. Some will be wholly unimpressed and uninterested. Both reactions are entirely sensible, and both are good for you. In moderation.

9. If you expect people – publishers, agents, bloggers, booksellers, readers, interviewers, anyone really – to be helpful and nice to you, be helpful and nice to them. Not rocket science, that one. Works, though, on the whole.

10. Once the books’ published (as soon as you write ‘The End’, probably) its success or failure is no longer entirely under your control. It may sometimes feel as though you have your hands on the steering wheel, but as often as not it isn’t connected to anything, so just try to enjoy the ride. If it gets too hairy, close your eyes.

I’m a pretty recent convert to the joys of the podcast, and still only listen to them now and again (that’s the problem with working from home: drastically reduced reading/listening time. That and the unsolicited phone calls trying to sell me new windows. I already have windows, they came with the house, why would some stranger calling me up suddenly convince me I need new ones? I mean … oh, never mind. ) Anyway, back to podcasts: I’m pretty much convinced they’re a damn fine invention. Here’s a few I keep an eye/ear on:

Mark Kermode’s Film Reviews. The best film reviews you can get on your PC. Or radio, for that matter, if you’re more traditionally inclined.

The Bat Segundo Show. Possibly the best known author interview podcast on the Web? Don’t know, but it’s a good one. Wide-ranging discussions with loads of authors, mostly US. I’ve never heard of quite a few of them, but still enjoy most of the interviews.

Starship Sofa. Two Geordie blokes get together and talk about famous sf authors. The entertaining digressions are half the fun, but these guys obviously put some effort into researching their subjects. Almost always a funny and interesting listen.

Agony Column. Loads of sf/f stuff – mostly author interviews.

Nature Stories. A US documentary podcast about people, wilderness and wildlife. This is probably the one I listen to most regularly, mainly because its episodes are very short (just like my attention span, perhaps?). The best of them transport you, for a few minutes, to another place.

Naked Scientists. I suspect they’re not actually naked, but these scientists nevertheless do a pretty good show, covering all kinds of topics. I, for one, never knew there were bacteria living off radiation at the bottom of South African gold mines … and though it might be totally useless knowledge, my life is strangely enriched by knowing it.

Got a great e-mail from Paul Young, the illustrator whose work graces the cover of Winterbirth, in response to my mention of rain, and of Seven Samurai. It concludes:

‘we went to the mountains in Snowdonia, and we climbed up a hillside for only twenty minutes, up in the lashing rain and wind, and the feeling was primeval, senses were alive, things half seen through the haze and torrent made me feel like I was in the final scene of some epic film, I felt alive. Yes, I agree, The Seven Samurai is my favourite film as well, because thats the feeling I have when I watch that final scene, I feel the rain.’

Exactly. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Wild landscapes and wild weather, singly or together, create moments of great drama, exhilaration, liberation, even here in tame old Britain. And in fiction, the rainstorm at the end of Seven Samurai is an extraordinary, almost physical, presence on the screen, that draws you right in and puts you right there, at the side of the characters, in the mud and downpour and battle. (As Mark quite rightly points out in the comments on the last post, there’s some top quality cinematic use of rain at the end of Blade Runner too, but Seven Samurai edges it in terms of impact for me.)

I’m not suggesting for a moment that anything in Winterbirth approaches that level, but such things were at the back of my mind when I was writing it. I did want the landscape, the weather, even the wildlife – the whole environment, basically – to be a strong presence, almost as if they were minor characters in the story.

On to other matters, and further evidence that truth can be as strange as fiction: the biplane dinosaur theory.

And finally, this has nothing to do with anything, but I figured I might as well share the following information: the best ginger cake ever is right here. So now you know.

A trivial example of the real world intruding into fiction: the weather outside my window tends to leak into whatever I’m writing. When characters in Winterbirth get soaked by torrential rain, there’s a chance they can blame real weather that was going on while I was thinking about the story (except the fighting in a rainstorm that takes place near the end of the book – that’s there mainly because Seven Samurai is one of my favourite films).

In Book Two, there’s a heavy snowfall that forms the backdrop to some large scale bloodshed. That snow comes from the one and only substantial fall we had in the long ago winter of 2005/06. It was just so cool and atmospheric, I thought I should write it into the story. (Much to my frustration, by the way, Edinburgh never gets much in the way of snow, despite its northerly latitudes. A little fell today, but it was more like pre-formed slush dribbling out of the sky than proper snow).

Some sea mist also gets a walk-on part in Bk 2, which it was never going to do until I woke up one day last year to discover that the world outside had disappeared overnight.

I mention all this because ever since Christmas there have been annoyingly high winds here (and elsewhere in the UK, especially today). It’s entertaining now and again, but quickly becomes aggravating when it’s every other day. If global warming means winters are now going to consist of one long, warm Force 8 gale, I’m not in favour. Anyway, sure enough, the treetops have started swaying in the Godless World. The flags of the assemblied armies are flapping in the wind, characters are shouting to make themselves heard above the gale. And horses are rolling helplessly across the landscape like so many clumps of four-legged tumbleweed. Okay, maybe not that last one …

Mentioning wolves reminded me of this current scheme to return a little bit of Scotland to its original state of wildness, complete with the wolves, bears, lynx etc. our ancestors wiped out (albeit behind big fences). Fair to say, as plans go, it’s not met with universal, unreserved approval.

Every so often, someone raises the possibility of re-introducing the wolf to Scotland. The idea never makes much headway, though there’s a lot of people, including me, who find it vaguely appealing. Unfortunately, it’s my heart rather than my head that likes the idea. It’s been a good 300 years since wolves disappeared from the UK, and bringing them back would be trying to rewrite history on a fairly major scale. Even though lots of people think of the Highlands as wilderness, the truth is there are too many sheep, cattle and lucrative shooting estates up there for a big predator like the wolf to be welcomed with open arms. I’m a great believer in the idea that the needs of wildlife should sometimes be given priority over the needs and preferences of humans (seems only fair, since we’ve spent the last few thousand years prioritising ourselves over all other living things), but the obstacles to wolf re-introduction are almost certainly overwhelming.

It’s fun to daydream, though, and it would be a dramatic scene: wolves and red deer stags locked in life or death struggles on the slopes above Loch Ness. That would really give Bill Oddie something to get excited about on his TV shows …

Anyway, here are some links to other – slightly more practical and important – efforts to help wildlife maintain its toehold on these crowded islands:

- re-wilding and large area conservation, for example this sort of thing

- greening the cityscape

- species recovery projects, for spectacular things like ospreys and cranes

- maybe the odd little bit of (non-wolf) re-introduction, just for fun.