Speculation, Fact and Fiction

Today's the day! Irons in the Fire, first book of the Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution trilogy, is now available from all good bookshops and online retailers. Hurrah!



It's rather a strange feeling actually, given my last new book was late 2006 - the intervening delay having less to do with writing issues than the inexplicable vagaries of fate and publishing.

So, er, there's going to be reviews and stuff. That's been a while. Feel free to send me links to any that you come across, and also sightings of the book in the wild.

P-Con in Dublin, this past weekend, gave us an ideal opportunity to launch the book. And better yet, with a point and some entertainment value. Given I dislike simply waving a book at people and hinting if they buy it, they are naturally helping keep my children in shoes.

desperance's presence was invaluable, given people always ask 'where do you get your ideas' and we writers are so often at something of a loss. In this instance though, I could explain how I wrote the novella 'Turns & Chances' for PS Publishing and how Chaz Brenchley's introduction showed me something I just hadn't realised. These people were heading for a revolution...

So we talked about that, and Chaz read from T&C and I read from Irons and it all went with a swing.

For those of you unlucky enough not to be at P-Con, you can read something of my thoughts on those lines at the Solaris editors blog.

P-Con was, as ever, great. I had a lovely time, and would have had an even more of a lovely time if I hadn't been still tiresomely low on energy following The Vile Cold. I did one panel on why fantasy heroes bother getting out of bed to go on quests and stuff - and if you'd been there, you'd know the answer has a lot to do with MICE.

Then what was billed as a masterclass on being an Evil Emperor became a role-playing exercise, courtesy of the inimitable John Vaughan, where I was inexplicably cast as the Evil Empress, with Kim Newman as my Minister of Happiness. Actually, we worked extremely well together. So well some people were giving us apprehensive looks for the rest of the weekend...

Then me and Chaz and George Green of Lancaster uni's creative writing department spent two hours discussing various sets of Rules of Writing in the Sunday morning, with a roomful of interested and interesting participants - and we didn't come close to using up our material. Same again and more so next year? Hopefully.

Then there was the chat and the socialising and the listening to other folk's fascianting ideas and experiences and all the other stuff that makes a convention so much more than the sum of its parts. And if that's not incentive enough to make you save up your pennies and make the trip to Dublin next year, Iain M Banks is going to be the Guest of Honour! (1st weekend in March 2010, get it in your diaries now!)