| Author | Message | ||
     Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Just a wee reminder that this is out now, and among the usual superb commentaries and fiction it contains a substantial interview with me. There are also reviews of my two latest books and a new story. There are even a couple of photos of me, in case you want to put them on the mantlepiece to keep the kids away from the fire.  http://ttapress.com/754/black-static-14/0/5/ | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.166.189.235 |
Lookng forward to my copy. Congratulations, Gary. des | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Thanks, Des. I hope you enjoy it. | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 99.227.90.149 |
There are even a couple of photos of me, in case you want to put them on the mantlepiece to keep the kids away from the fire. I don't think I ever told you this, Gary, but my last girlfriend saw a photo of you once and spontaneously aborted. It was a horrible experience, but frankly you got me out of a real jam! | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.220.55 |
Got my copy today. Great interview, Gary. Nice one. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.166.189.235 |
Got someone out of a real jam, but someone else into one? | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 78.145.31.28 |
Mine arrived today, haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'm still hugely excited by our paragraph mention in White Noise, I can't imagine how you can contain yourself with whole pages to yourself... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
I can't, Nathaniel. I soiled my copy. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.173.78 |
How much will that copy fetch on e-Bay, Zed? Terrific interview – just like hearing you speak. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Hey, thanks Joel. Much appreciated, my friend. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.251.12 |
Zed, all Brummies are gripped by vowel envy when they hear a voice from the North-East. We flatten our vowels out like extremely thin tinfoil: the concept of resonance is as alien to us as the concept of a river. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.105.158 |
God know how you conceive us Norfolk-ites! While you are around Joel, just want to let you know I am currently reading, and really enjoying 'The Terrible Changes' After Christmas, I will be hunting down your two novels...Off Amazon I expect, unless you can point me elsewhere? gcw | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.126.207 |
I was amused to see Joel's "From Blue to Black" only get two stars from one 'reviewer' on Amazon - he felt the book wasn't what he was expecting, although he seems to have drummed these expectations up from his head rather than from any blurb. Twat. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.141.63 |
Thanks, GCW. Glad you're enjoying The Terrible Changes. You can buy the second (mass-market) edition of From Blue to Black from the Serpent's Tail website, though it no longer lists The Blue Mask (which Amazon, confusingly, is still selling). Bookshop distribution of both books is a thing of the past, though. I remarked to another RCMB member only an hour ago that my books were just not selling: a nice coincidence, or is there a secret Lane support network on the RCMB?  | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.43.214.156 |
Congrats - Gary! | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.105.158 |
"I remarked to another RCMB member only an hour ago that my books were just not selling: a nice coincidence, or is there a secret Lane support network on the RCMB?" Well they are selling to me mate! I think it is important to let people know when you are reading their books (if you can) as much as it is to 'review' them - Perhaps your comment may come at a time when the writer, whoever she or he may be, might just need to 'hear' it. Maybe. Thats what I like to think anyway. gcw | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.141.63 |
"God knows how you conceive us Norfolk-ites!" You seem to manage it for yourselves, though the flatness of the landscape suggests it takes repeated efforts. (Unless you do it for fun – I've heard that happens in some quarters, though not around here.) | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.105.158 |
..I keep trying to tell Simon Bestwick I have a copy of Tide Of Souls, but I seem to keep missing him! gcw | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.105.158 |
"God knows how you conceive us Norfolk-ites!" Aside from recording albums, there ain't much else to do! gcw  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.141.63 |
Start a thread on New Model Army: he'll be there faster than a people's militia on the track of a lost cause. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.105.158 |
Ha!!! gcw | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.141.63 |
Posts overlapping... Cheers, GCW. Happy recording! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
I remarked to another RCMB member only an hour ago that my books were just not selling: I can't even begin to say how much this depresses me. I have all your books, Joel, as you know. When my wife read From Blue to Black, it broke her heart. She loved it. She's just been blown away by The Witnesses Are Gone, too. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.43.214.156 |
Stick me on a desert island with Joel's books and I'd be a very happy woman. Loved THE TERRIBLE CHANGES and THE WITNESSES ARE GONE. These will sell out soon though - many books aren't selling well at the moment (unless through Amazon, and the small presses can't give the 60% discounts that Amazon do) so they have to sell directly from sites, and then if they don't remind people that they are around - customers go to Amazon. The small presses are really struggling with postage costs/Amazon competition etc. There is always the problem that without huge marketing tools/money for marketing - only a few people even know these small presses exist. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.255.202 |
Very true, Ally – and even writers with mass-market publishers are falling foul of Waterstone's stocking policies and then finding that Waterstone's is the only game in town. Nothing but the socialist nationalisation of bookselling will stop books being eclipsed over the next two or three years, the way the music cassette format was eclipsed in a month several years ago. The media corporations that own every major publisher will just decide it's over, the one remaining major bookseller will change over to other media, and that will be it. Unless the same few hundred people all buying each other's POD books is a literary culture. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.155.144 |
Sorry... am not too well, ignore me. This thread is veering OT, and it's my fault. The current issue of Black Static certainly bears witness to the health of weird fiction writing and specialist publishing in the UK. | ||
| Clive (Clive) Username: Clive Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 81.151.116.69 |
I absolutely loved 'The Lost District' Joel. One of the finest collections i've read. I'm looking forward to reading your other stuff. As for Black Static, i think i'm going to have to get a subscription in the new year as there is nowhere in Cardiff that sells it as far as i can see. I've only been here since the summer though so i may stumble across it yet. I lived in Egypt for a year before that and London the previous 15 years and even in London i could only find one place that sold it, Murder One, which i think has closed down now. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.68 |
Hey, well done, Zed!That's great stuff. I'd only read one issue of Black Static (for free in Costa Coffee in Borders, for financial reasons) but it had Joel in it. I enjoyed. Good stuff, both sirs. Accents? Right now I haven't got one. Lost my voice. Just a furry huzzing sound comes out of my mouth, along with the blood I'm coughing up... NHS Direct assures me it's either vocal chord nodules or throat cancer, so that's a relief. It usually tells me I'm having a heart attack and should proceed to the nearest hospital... The doc tells me if I were a smoker, he'd've driven me to hospital himself, but he's settled on a referal to a specialist in January. Could wind up with a voice like Barry White at the end of this! I'm hoping for Joel's novella for xmas, alongside Ramsey's new collection. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.139.66 |
Mark, good luck and take care. Yes, NHS Direct can only guide you to use services and always err on the side of worry. Do get yourself to A&E if things get worse. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.70 |
I'm cool, Joel. Been like this the last few weeks. Doc thinks it nodule, not the cancer stuff. He's not worried. Mind, he was texting a mate as he discussed my case with me... I've gotta drive over the Pennines now, in the snow. Hours of delays there apparently... Better take a flask and spade. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.126.207 |
Take care then, mate - don't envy you that journey at all. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.211.253 |
Hey Zed, 'Teen Spirit' is very good indeed. It reminds me slightly of Graham Greene's 'The Destructors'. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Thanks, Joel. Oddly enough, I have a print-out of that Greene story in my bag. I've been meaning to read it for ages, but keep forgetting it's in there. | ||
| Skunsworth (Skunsworth) Username: Skunsworth Registered: 05-2009 Posted From: 89.241.253.153 |
Nice one Zed! Hope my copy arrives tomorrow... S | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.226.105 |
Mark, I had all those symptoms - the gravelly voice, coughing up blood - about six years ago and it turned out to be something and nothing; went within a month. But certainly get it all checked out. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.114 |
Did someone mention New Model Army? Cheers Gcw- hope you enjoy the book. And thanks, Joel! Congrats again, Zed! Mark- best of luck. I had something similar last year myself. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Is your t'internet up and running again, old chum? I'll try to give you a call before Christmas - sorry about the other day; Charlie was being very demanding of my time, so I had to ring off. | ||
| Skunsworth (Skunsworth) Username: Skunsworth Registered: 05-2009 Posted From: 89.242.178.204 |
I was hoping that my story Knitted Child would be in BS 14 with the estimable Gary, but apparently the artwork was delayed so I'll be in BS 15 instead. Shame! S PS Not shame that I'm in it before you ask, but that I missed coasting along on the coattails of my mate Zed! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
It is a shame - I was hoping we'd be sharing space in the same issue.  | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.43.214.156 |
Loved Knitted Child when I heard it read out at Fantasycon. | ||
| Skunsworth (Skunsworth) Username: Skunsworth Registered: 05-2009 Posted From: 89.242.178.204 |
Me too. And ta Ally! S |