Yellowcake Summer: 50,000 words down
I set myself a target of writing 50,000 words on my new novel, Yellowcake Summer, in six weeks over the summer of ’11/’12. Happily, I’ve managed to achieve this target with six days to spare. My plan is to write the second half of the novel throughout 2012, if possible, then get it edited and beautiful and ready to look for a publisher in 2013. Sounds good? I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it, too.
Writers of Interest: Megan Abbott
I’ve recently discovered an American author by the name of Megan Abbott, whose work goes some way toward hitting the spot that the best work of Raymond Chandler hits. I don’t know quite what it is: something dark, something both hard hitting and slyly reflective. Anyway, The Big Sleep does it. The Long Goodbye does it even better. And Megan Abbott does it in her own way, too.
Abbott has five novels to her credit, as I’ve discovered, and it seems that recently she’s moved away from crime fiction, or at least noir set in 40s and 50s L.A. The other four are all period pieces. In order of publication, they are Die a Little, The Song is You, Queenpin and Bury Me Deep. So far I’ve only read the second and third of these, and it’s the third, Queenpin, that’s the knockout.
I did enjoy reading The Song is You, a tale about ‘Hop’ Hopkins and his search for a missing starlet. It was chock-full of period detail (Abbott is clearly not only extremely well read in the genre, but interested in the history of this period in general), but I felt it to lack something in the way of a killer punch. There was so much period detail, in fact, that I thought it actually bogged the narrative down a touch. Not so in Queenpin. Told from the perspective of a young woman plucked from obscurity by the notorious Gloria Denton, the ‘queenpin’ of the title, the novel has a sledgehammer effect. I read it in about three hours and Abbott didn’t miss a beat throughout. Our narrator has a down-and-out paramour by the name of Vic Riordan (tip of the hat to Chandler there, methinks, with that surname), and increasingly she becomes torn between his rough handling and Gloria’s icy cool. I guess the knockout comes about two-thirds of the way through, but the rest is just as strong too.
So what’s the difference between Queenpin and some of Raymond Chandler’s best novels? In terms of quality, very little. You could say that there are fewer twists and turns here than in Chandler, but that’s neither here nor there. The characterisation, dialogue and settings are just as good. One thing that needs to be said is that Abbott is writing what might be termed ‘feminist noir’, in that she offers strong female leads where in Chandler and those of his era most of the ‘broads’ were just there to be killed and/or fucked. I think I’m right in saying that our heroine is never named, which isn’t to say she lacks definition. But Gloria Denton and Vic Riordan steal the show, as they’re supposed to.
Queenpin won something called the ‘Edgar’ Award, which I’m guessing is a crime fiction prize, so it’s not like it hasn’t received some attention. Still, I wouldn’t have heard of the book or its author if I hadn’t picked up a copy of The Song is You at a discount pile at the front of a local bookstore the other week. Long live the discount pile. Queenpin is the best novel I’ve read this year, and I’m not just saying that because 2012 is, at the time of this writing, two weeks young.
Book Review – 2012 edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Ben Payne
2012 was the first anthology from Perth’s Twelfth Planet Press, and it was first published in 2008. Now that the dreaded year in question has rolled around, I thought it time to give this slender anthology of doomsday stories a try. The ToC contains some very familiar names, virtually a who’s who of Australian spec-fic writing. In fact, the only author with work collected here whom I hadn’t previously read is David Conyers, and I thought his story was one of the best in the volume. Each of the stories imagines various variations on the apocalypse (some natural disasters, some man made), set in what was then the near future and is now the immediate present: 2012.
Water is, as you’d expect, a precious commodity in many of these stories. Deborah Biancotti’s “Watertight Lies” is a claustrophobic account of an ill-fated descent into a subterranean cave. Gabrielle and Pete are on an important but dangerous mission, but there’s some funny business occurring on the surface, and it seems that the cave may in fact be a safer place to be after all. This is tightly written and well realised, like most of Biancotti’s work.
A story with a completely different feel is Tansy Rayner Roberts’ “Fleshy”. Told in the form of an email, “Fleshy” features “a lump of bio-engineered flesh” (p14) created by Kelly’s boyfriend, Matt. A genetic experiment with potentially limitless possibilities, Fleshy shares rather too many similarities with his inventor for Kelly’s liking, especially given that Matt brings Fleshy home to stay with them. The situation reaches flashpoint when Fleshy takes a liking for Kelly herself, and it’s all downhill from there.
“Soft Viscosity” by David Conyers is the longest story in 2012 and it’s probably my personal favourite. Set in South America, it features Ecuadorian terrorists, an oil war, the machinations of the CIA, and more. Told from multiple points of view, the story weaves together disparate narratives that are all nevertheless infused with dark and gritty violence. ”Soft Viscosity” demonstrates a level of realism greater than in some of the other stories in this volume, and indeed in speculative fiction in general. There’s enough material for a novel in here, and yet Conyers packs it into twenty or so incendiary pages.
Dirk Flinhart’s “The Last Word” is a clever tale which revolves around an ex-couple, Lewis and Jane, who also happen to be involved in sensitive scientific research. Jane is close to a breakthrough in her quest to find a cure for melanoma, but she needs money, and that’s where Lewis comes in. Still smarting from their breakup, Lewis inflicts as much hardship as possible onto his ex in exchange for the funds, and he even hijacks her research for his own nefarious ends.
Kaaron Warren’s “Ghost Jail” is a fabulous story, which I’ve previously covered in my review of Dead Sea Fruit. It’s one of Warren’s most powerful works. Angela Slatter’s “I Love You Like Water” is another water scarcity tale, in which the unfortunate poor or ill are harvested for their precious bodily fluids. Ben Peek’s “David Bowie” is slight but effective, riffing on Bowie’s song ‘Five Years.’ And Sean McMullen’s “Oblivion” contrasts a dying, bankrupt millionaire with his poorer but happier son.
All in all, 2012 is a strong collection, even if it is a little on the short side. None of the futures imagined are very cheery, and some of them seem likelier to occur than others in the coming year. You can purchase this collection from Twelfth Planet Press directly for a mere $10, and at that price it’s more than fair value. 2012 also offers as a good introduction to these writers, all of whom are well established in the Australian spec-fic community. You’ll be glad you did.
What I Read in 2011, and What I Plan to Read in 2012
2011 was a good reading year for me. Over the past four years, I’ve been in the habit of recording the author and title of every book I read to completion. I tend to average about 50 books a year, which I consider to be a reasonable number but not in the league of someone like Tehani Wessely. I’m pretty voracious but fairly finicky at the same time. This year I managed 67 books read, which I’m pleased about. One of my goals for 2012 is to read more books by women. The ratio of books by men and women has tended to be about 3:1. I’d like to see that approach parity for this calendar year.
The books in bold are those I enjoyed the most. I don’t go in for stars or scores out of ten, but the bolded titles were all exceptional. This does not mean that I didn’t enjoy the other titles – far from it. I’m quite prepared to abandon books half way through, so there are probably 20-30 books I attempted but didn’t complete in 2011.
So, the list, in alphabetical order. Note that I have read some of these books before, especially the Chandler novels:
Bacigalupi, P – The Windup Girl, Pump Six and Other Stories
Barker, Pat – The Ghost Road, Life Class
Biancotti, D – A Book of Endings
Baxter, John – J G Ballard: The Inner Man
Beecher, J – The Chinese Opium Wars
Bergen, A – Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat
Boyne, John – The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Burroughs, W – Naked Lunch 50th Anniversary (I’ve read this 4-5 times at least)
Campisi/Peek – Above/Below
Chandler, R – The Big Sleep, Playback, The Long Goodbye, Farewell, My Lovely
Cobain, K – Journals
Conrau, O – The Importance of Being Cool
Coetzee, J M – Summertime, Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man, Diary of a Bad Year
Donellan, J – A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India
Emshwiller, K – The Mount
Haines, P – The Last Days of Kali Yuga
Hammett, D – The Maltese Falcon
Haynes, S – Hal Junior: The Secret Signal
Hiney/MacShane – The Raymond Chandler Papers
Hosseini, K – The Kite Runner
Hyde, D – Pink Beam: A Philip K Dick Companion
Isle, S – Nightsiders
Johnson, R – The Lost Years of William S Burroughs
Johnson, D – The Life of Dashiell Hammett
Kerouac, J – Big Sur, The Dharma Bums
King, S – On Writing
Laidler, J – The Taste of Apple
Lebedoff, D – The Same Man – George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh
Lethem, J – You Don’t Love Me Yet
McMahon, N – The Rock Pool
McCarthy, C – Blood Meridian
Morgan, J – A Kindred Spirit
Nietzche, F – Beyond Good and Evil
Orwell, G – Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters Vols 2, 3 and 4
Preston, D – The Boxer Rebellion
Rickman, G – Philip K Dick: In His Own Words
Rossi, U – The Twisted Realities of Philip K Dick
Salvidge, G – Yellowcake Springs
Shiner, L – Love in Vain
Slatter, A – The Girl With No Hands
Stewart, K – Treespeaker, The Dragon Box, Mark of the Dragon Queen
Steinbeck, J – Of Mice and Men
Thomas, S – The Death of Mr Y
Trost, C – Letterbox
Utley, S – Ghost Seas
Warren, K – Dead Sea Fruit
Welsh, I – Porno, Filth, Glue
Weisel, E – Night
Wessely, T (ed) – Australis Imaginarium
West, N – Miss Lonelyhearts
Zamyatin, Y – We
Looking at this list, it would seem that my major literary discovery for 2011 was J. M. Coetzee. I haven’t read most of his earlier work, but I plan to get through most of it in 2012. I’ve been searching for a Raymond Chandler replacement, and haven’t been able to find one, but Dashiell Hammett is the next best thing. I’ve got the rest of his novels to read in 2012. A contemporary American writer, Megan Abbott, has also recently caught my attention. I’ve just read her novel The Song is You, my first for 2012.
Of Australian literary fiction, my favourite for the year was James Laidler’s verse novel The Taste of Apple. Andrez Bergen’s Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which is pretty hard to classify, was similarly strong. Far and away, my favourite Australian speculative fiction title was Kaaron Warren’s Dead Sea Fruit, which blew me away. I have her novel Slights on my to-read list. The other title in this category I enjoyed immensely was Paul Haines’ The Last Days of Kali Yuga.
Some other essential works: George Orwell’s journalism is supreme, some of the best ever written. I picked up a copy of Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount and was glad I did. I’ve another of hers, Carmen Dog, to read in 2012. Then there was the excellent The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi, which would have been my favourite speculative fiction novel for the year. Then there’s Miss Lonelyhearts, one of the greatest (and shortest) novels I’ve ever read.
So, my reading resolution for 2012: read more work by women. I think I managed 17/67 in 2011, which isn’t acceptable to me. I plan on reading Megan Abbott’s other crime novels: Die a Little, Queenpin and Bury Me Deep. I’m a fan of British author Pat Barker, whose ‘Regeneration’ trilogy is a must read. I’ll read a couple more of hers. In terms of Australian writers, Kaaron Warren, Deborah Biancotti and Angela Slatter are at the top of the pile at present. Lastly, I read all three fantasy novels by indie author Katie Stewart in 2011, all of which are recommended reading. I look forward to more from this author in 2012.
That’s not going to get me up to parity though, so I’m open to recommendations. A few provisos, however: I don’t read epic fantasy. Ever ever. I don’t like fat books in general, so titles under 350 pages are preferable. I’m happy to read single author collections, but I prefer novels generally. I’m becoming somewhat partial to crime fiction. I’m partial to dark, noir fiction in any genre. I would like to read more science fiction again, but only if it doesn’t bore me. I prefer to read Australian authors where I can, especially indie authors.
Roll on 2012…
Book Review – The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales by Angela Slatter
Angela Slatter has written and published a great deal of stories in the ‘reloaded fairytale’ genre in recent years, many of which are collected in this volume from Ticonderoga and also in Sourdough from Tartarus Press. The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales won the Aurealis Award in 2010 for Best Collection, and it’s not hard to see why. Slatter reworks a host of traditional fairytales, many of which will be familiar to all but some which are more obscure, putting a fresh, feminist slant on these already macabre offerings.
“Bluebeard” is told from the perspective of Lily, the daughter of the girlfriend of a wealthy banker, Davide. Lily isn’t impressed with her mother’s subordination to Davide, and as it turns out they’re all in more danger than they first realise. There’s a locked room hiding a nasty secret, a devilish mother, and no Prince Charming required to save the day. “Bluebeard” cleverly inverts the premise of this familiar fairytale, leaving the reader scrambling to discover the source of the murders.
“The Jacaranda Wife” is an Australian version of the Selkie myths, in which James Willoughby finds a white-skinned, violet-eyed woman asleep under the jacaranda tree in his garden. Set in the 1840s, this story sees James all too happy to take this strange, mute woman for his wife, despite the warnings of the Indigenous workers on his farmstead. Jealous of his new wife’s affinity for the jacaranda tree, and fearful that she will disappear back into it, James orders all such trees in the area cut down, but one stubborn tree remains standing.
“Red Skein” reworks the ubiquitous Red Riding Hood myth, empowering Matilda by making her more than capable of defending herself in the forest. The story also focuses on the relationship between the young girl and her grandmother, who is here decidedly not enfeebled. Similarly, “The Little Match Girl” empowers the ordinarily pathetic match girl from Hans Christian Andersen’s story by making her fully grown and with the ability to choose her own end.
“The Dead Ones Don’t Hurt You” is one of the few contemporary tales in The Girl With No Hands and, initially at least, it is also written in one of the lightest tones in the volume. After a string of abusive relationships, Melanie bites the bullet and orders a EZ-Boy, an “ever-faithful Zombie Boyfriend” (p140). The zombie, whom she calls Billy, is perfectly docile, all too happy to clean Melanie’s house during the day and, as she boasts, ”never complains about, y’know, eating at the Y” (p 142). Billy’s passivity and his failure to interpret ambiguous instructions turn Melanie from abused to abuser, and that’s before the appearance of an EZ-Girl.
“Light as Mist, Heavy As Hope” is a retelling of Rumplestiltzkin. In it, Alice is brought to the attention of an impoverished king when her father boasts of her skill in weaving straw into gold. Alice is also in danger of being molested by her widowed father, due to her resemblance to her mother. In the castle, the girl is forced to attempt the impossible task under threat of strangulation, but a mysterious helper comes to her rescue. On the first two nights, Alice is able to pay the extortionist with her mother’s jewellery, but on the third, only her as-yet unconceived child will suffice. Alice is forced to desecrate her mother’s grave to escape this unwanted fate.
The title story, “The Girl With No Hands”, is a particularly gruesome yarn in which the greedy Miller trades “whatever is sitting in [his] backyard” (p180) with the Devil in exchange for unimaginable wealth. Unfortunately, the Miller’s finds his daughter, Madchen, in the backyard when he returns home, and thus begins a rapid fall from grace for all concerned. Madchen’s mother, Hilde, vainly tries to stop her daughter from becoming the Devil’s bride, and the odious Miller chops off the girl’s hands at the Devil’s request in response. Madchen flees and eventually marries a King, but her new-found happiness is again imperilled by the Devil’s trickery.
The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales is a collection of intelligent, lusciously-written fairytales with modern sensibilities. In these pages, our heroines almost never bow before the might of their often-boorish fathers and husbands, and the resulting fare makes for highly entertaining reading.
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
“The Kennedys” published in Eclecticism E-zine #17
I’m happy to report that my short story, “The Kennedys”, has been published in Craig Bezant’s Eclecticism E-zine #17. This is the second time a story of mine has appeared in Eclecticism. Readers of Yellowcake Springs may like to read “The Kennedys” as it forms a ‘bridge’ between that novel and the forthcoming sequel, Yellowcake Summer. Tim and Eleanor Kennedy, minor characters in Yellowcake Springs, are the focus of “The Kennedys”. The story helps to flesh out a little more of the ‘Belt that I sketched briefly in the novel. There will be a lot more of the ‘Belt, East Hills and the Kennedys in Yellowcake Summer.
You can read “The Kennedys” and the rest of this wonderful ezine for free here.
Book Review – Ghost Seas by Steven Utley
This edition of Ghost Seas is a 2009 reprint of the original 1997 collection by US writer Steven Utley. Utley is a member of a talented crowd of Texans who made names for themselves in the 70s. Other members of the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop include Lisa Tuttle, Bruce Sterling and Howard Waldrop, the latter of whom is an amazing (and amazingly oddball) writer himself. There are some similarities between Waldrop and Utley in terms of their writing, and they’ve collaborated on at least one major story, “Custer’s Last Jump,” as well as the delightfully whimsical “Willow Beeman” in this collection. Utley’s solo stories are impressive in their construction, but even more so in terms of the range of subjects and genres employed. This writer’s reluctance to produce novels, or to stick to one genre, is part of the reason he remains an “Internationally Unknown Author”, as the Afterword helps to explain.
Utley’s use of science fiction tropes is often upstaged by his attention to real world events and settings, sometimes to the point where the SF devices are relegated to minor league importance. This is evident in “The Tall Grass”, which is notionally a time travel narrative in which two explorers crash land in the Devonian Period, hundreds of millions of years before our own time. Trapped in the ancient past and doomed to die, our protagonist spends his final minutes recalling his childhood on the island of Okinawa (where Utley himself lived at a similar age). The Okinawan childhood is described in loving detail, and the justification for the time travel motif is only given in the final lines when our unfortunate adventurer encounters a prehistoric centipede which he can’t remember to “flick, not swat” (p39).
More cohesive is “The Dinosaur Season”, a contemporary tale of Angstrom and his fellow dinosaur hunters at work on a dig in Texas. One of the scientists, Brian Barbee, meets an unfortunate end in the desert at the hands of those who would seek to oppose conventional scientific thinking regarding the vintage of dinosaur remains. At one point I thought this story was going to take a leap into the fantastic, but it remained firmly planted in the real world to the end, and the narrative is better for it as a result.
Utley’s fully science fictional stories, at least those collected in this volume, tend to be brief and often flippant in character. In “Upstart”, the all conquering and apparently omnipotent alien Sreen finally meet their match in the form of a human captain with the arrogance to defy them. “Race Relations” is more developed, but based on the premise that aliens kidnap humans for decades and return them to Earth transformed into hideous, hairy monsters who can only eat fruit. “Dog in the Manger” features a man vainly trying to save the Unipolitan Center (which houses many of the precious artifacts of world literature, music and art) from the military who would rather burn it down than have it fall into the hands of all-conquering aliens. The most amusing of these brief SF stories, “Michael Bates Michael Bates Michael Bates Michael”, is a fresh idea (to me at least) in the well-worn time travel paradox sub-genre.
My favourite story in Ghost Seas is probably “The Electricity of Heaven”, a truly fearsome tale that recalls the apocalyptic power of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. Mr Maury is a newspaper editor living in Richmond during the American Civil War. Not especially concerned with printing the ‘truth’ in his paper, he refuses to believe that General Lee has been routed and that the Union forces are poised to destroy the Confederacy until he sees the proof with his own eyes. Skilfully written and obviously meticulously researched, and without any attempt to put a SF spin on proceedings, “The Electricity of Heaven” showcases the power of Utley’s work most impressively.
I can’t help but feel that Utley’s work demonstrates an ambivalent attitude toward the science fiction genre in general. “Haiti” helps to explain why this might be. The story is again lovingly crafted, and again contains a science fictional element that is here quite deliberately sidelined. The place is Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and the time is an indefinite future in which Man, and specifically American Man, has just landed on Mars. “Haiti” revolves around the trials of an American working in a local hospital, and specifically in trying to contain an outbreak of cholera in the city’s worst slum, Cite Carton. The slums and their piteous inhabitants are described in searing detail, and the turn of events, in which our protagonist fruitlessly seeks the assistance of the U.S. Embassy for medical supplies, seems all too real. The contrast between the squalor of Haiti and the opulence of America, with its colossally expensive Mars landing, is made explicitly clear. Mars, Utley seems to be saying, should be off limits until humans can provide a basic standard of living for those right here on Planet Earth, and it is here that the tension between Utley’s realism and the conventional optimism of science fiction is starkest.
And there, I think, is one of the reasons why Steven Utley is an excellent writer but not, at least not as far as Ghost Seas is concerned at least, an excellent science fiction writer (his upcoming collections, due out from Ticonderoga Publications over the next couple of years, may prove otherwise). Utley’s stories simply don’t embody the optimism of traditional science fiction. To my way of thinking, this is less a criticism of Utley and his work than it is of the field itself, which hasn’t always encouraged unpleasant truths to be aired.
Book Review – Love In Vain by Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner is known to me as one of the early cyberpunk authors, but his collection Love In Vain isn’t cyberpunk. It’s not even science fiction for the most part. It is, however, very good. Published by Ticonderoga in 2009, this collection of nearly two dozen stories showcases Shiner’s abilities at lengths ranging from flash fiction to novelette. Personally I found his longer works more interesting, not least the newer, previously uncollected “Perfidia”.
In “Perfidia”, Frank Delacorte, a collector with a penchant for ebay auctions, stumbles on a highly irregular recording of a Glenn Miller song. In his attempt to unravel the mystery, Frank travels to Paris to trace the recording back to its original owner. Meanwhile, Frank’s father, who had been one of the American soldiers that liberated the Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War Two, lays dying in a US hospital. Shiner’s depiction of Paris circa 2000 is particularly atmospheric, and the story of Miller’s last tape is original and engaging. My only complaint is that the story ended long before I would like it to, which I guess is a compliment to Shiner’s technique, given that “Perfidia” is around 50 pages in length.
“Love in Vain” features the first of this collection’s failed marriage narratives. Dave McKenna is an Assistant D. A. tasked with interviewing Charlie, a convict who has confessed to far more murders than he could ever have possibly committed. He even admits to made-up murders, but oddly enough many of the facts he provides turn out to be true. Dave has problems of his own, primarily his tenuous relationship with his wife Alice. Dave’s old friend Jack tries to lift him from his funk by taking him to see an old flame, Kristi Spector, who is now an exotic dancer, but nothing much seems to help. Jack explains:”There’s things you don’t want in your head. Once they get in there, you’re not the same any more.” (p61) Dave’s personal problems, coupled with the stress of dealing with the unreliable Charlie, begin to loosen his grip on reality, and by the end of the story Dave is poised to lose more than just his home and marriage.
“Scales” features a female narrator with relationship problems of her own. Her marriage to Richard having hit rocky ground, she becomes increasingly concerned as her husband begins to behave erratically. The problem seems to be one of Richard’s students, Lili, who appears to have a particularly insidious hold over him. Having finally had enough of her husband’s cheating, she makes off with their infant daughter, Emily, but like most breakups it’s not as straightforward as that. Here Shiner verges on the territory of the fantastic, as Lili seems to be not only an adulteress, but perhaps not wholly human.
Fathers come in for a bit of a beating in Love In Vain, and “Match” is the purest example of this. Fathers in these stories are generally aged, inflexible and cruel, but the son in “Match” isn’t much nicer himself. Tennis provides the arena for a clash of wills between the frail and disapproving father and the absent, ungrateful son. The son wins the battle on the day, but loses the war as the father suffers his latest mini heart attack. “Match” is a good example of the emotional power of Shiner’s writing, which here as elsewhere is typically devoid of literary flourishes.
Another powerful realist tale is “Dirty Work”, in which a down-and-out type falls in with an ex-school mate of his, Dennis. Dennis has made good for himself in the world, and is now working as a lawyer getting rapists off their charges, even if some of the proceeds do seem to find their way up his nose. Dennis gives our protagonist a job trailing Lane Rochelle, an alleged rape victim. Feeling bad about the whole thing, but entirely too poor to contemplate knocking the money back, he starts following Lane around with a minimum of stealth. Perhaps significantly, “Dirty Work” is one of the few stories in Love In Vain where the protagonist is fairly happily married. Things turns nasty when the rapist Javier turns up at Lane’s house, but both he and our protagonist get their just desserts.
“Primes” is just as good as the stories described above, and it’s one of the few in this collection to contain science fictional elements. As Shiner explains in his Afterword, many of his stories are about failure: failure in relationships, failure at work, failure at life. In “Primes”, Nick returns home from work to discover that not only is his house now occupied by his wife’s dead former husband, but also that he has been made redundant at work by a cosmic occurrence on the grandest of scales. Two parallel universes seem to have merged into one, doubling the world’s population in an instant. This soon has disastrous consequences, and poor old Nick loses pretty much everything in the reshuffle that follows.
There are other kinds of stories in Love In Vain, and most of them are better than decent. The shorter works tended not to appeal to me as greatly as those described above, but there is one historical ghost story, “Gold”, which I found quite evocative. Famous personages like Elvis Presley, Nikolai Tesla and Lee Harvey Oswald feature in the shorter fantasies, and many of Shiner’s tales revolve around rock and roll in one way or another. “Jeff Beck” was my favourite of these. This is my way of saying that Shiner is a versatile writer whose work is likely to appeal to a variety of audiences, and thus you’re likely to find something to like here, too.
Yellowcake Summer: insert manuscript here
This is my writing regimen. I work full time as a teacher so I barely write a word during the school term. Teachers get twelve weeks holiday a year though, which is enough for me to produce a novel every two years or thereabouts. I was naughty last year: I was ‘between’ novels. That’s what I told myself. This summer will be different. This summer I will produce 50,000 words of my new novel, Yellowcake Summer, in 46 days. Sounds easy right? Riiight. The older I get, the slower I’m writing. It takes me at least an hour to write 1000 words. Sometimes I can only manage 700. Some days, writing is an exquisite torture. Many of you will know about that 
This is my ‘modified Nanowrimo’, but as you can see, it’s a bit easier than trying to write 50k in 30 days. 50k in 46 days is plenty for me. Wish me luck….
