Since putting this website up, I have received spam from, inter alia: “Wiatrek Haisley,” “Kawahara Balmores,” “Koopmann Honea,” “Kubesh Kubesh,” “Hawthrone Doolen,” and “Ferry Estridge.”

I’m never going to be stuck for silly names to give minor characters, am I?

Thanks, spambots!

Fig 1: An artist’s impression of a colony of spambots swarming their prey.

Right, I’m knocking off for the year.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or what have you. I wouldn’t give you tuppence for any of them, but whatever floats your boat.

Personally, I will be observing the Day of Wrath, in honour of the mighty polecat-god, Sredni Vashtar, and his escape from the Hutch of the Oppressors. I have done this ever since I was but a sickly child.

All together now:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

Timeless wisdom! If you should happen to see an escaped polecat of unusual size, perhaps rooting through your bins or scrabbling hungrily at your children’s windows at night, please return him to me c/o my publishers. Beware his teeth. Your reward will be in Polecat Heaven.

Meeting with editor on sequel went well. Looks like I won’t be needing that overdose after all.

Does anyone want to buy 3000 mg of propoxyphene hydrochloride? Cash on delivery, no questions asked.

The folk music of the indigenous people of Brooklyn is very beautiful.

In fact this entire documentary is strangely haunting.

It really captures the essence of everyday life in New York: the spontaneous outbursts of song and accordion music, a trumpeter leaning from every window, a clarinetist on every porch, cellos wherever cellos are practicable. There are twice as many alternative-classical brass bands as there are people, and waifish hipsters serenade you on every corner.

It gets on my fucking nerves, frankly. Don’t these little bastards have jobs?

An ad:

Pretty, isn’t it? There’s something vaguely disconcerting about moving-image advertising for books, one feels that it is a confusion of categories, like a dog walking on its hind legs — but apparently this is how things are done these days.

Two very generous reviews:

“[W]hat an interesting concoction Mr. Gilman has conjured up! . . . [I]f you give the book a chance, you’ll discover more than just a living, breathing world full of marvelous and horrific wonders at every turn; a plot that is at once familiar, yet unpredictable and entertaining; and characters that dramatically evolve right up to the novel’s triumphant finish. What ”Thunderer” offers is an experience that’s not quite like any other fantasy novel out there, and for those that take the plunge, I think you’ll agree with me that Felix Gilman’s first novel deserves to be included in the debate for Best Fantasy Debut of the Year. . .” — Fantasy Book Critic

“Gilman’s first novel, most likely the beginning of a series, creates powerful images of a city as complex as Dickens’s London; citizens’ dreams and nightmares blend in complex patterns that hint at secrets buried deep within the city’s heart. Most libraries should consider adding this tale of broken gods and damaged heroes to their fantasy collections.” — Library Journal

How kind! When I start getting bad reviews, I will sob like a baby, I’m telling you that right now, I’m not even going to try to be dignified about it.

In the business, we call this “tempting fate.”

I got several hundred people coming over from Crooked Timber for that Blyton nonsense, and now they’ve all drifted away.

I need a follow up, quick! It seems like maybe there ought to be a joke somewhere in Plato and Aristotle’s IMDB pages, but I’m buggered if I can think of one.

Come back? I can change!

mechanics

mechanics

mechanics

In the post below, that is, look, “mechanics,” but all italicised, slouching, showing off. Why is the word in italics? For emphasis, I suppose; not emphasis of any point in particular, more just a gesture in the direction of something excitingly emphatic happening in and around the sentence. I do that a lot. (The book was lousy with them in the first draft. Editor and copyeditor rounded most of ‘em up, slapped the cigarettes out of their mouths, made them stand up straight and fly right).

I probably picked the habit up by imitating Martin Amis. That wonderful prose style! For years I wanted to copy every last part of it, even the slightly silly bits, even and especially the italics.

People made fun of Amis’s italics, and I used to think that was unfair. “It’s not a tic,” I’d say, “It’s a style. It lends verve, music, energy to the page.” But there was always a suggestion that it was cheating to use italics, that a Real Author can and should do without them, that they’re a crutch, effective maybe but somehow ersatz. Screw that, I’d say: what schoolmasterly puritanism is this? Writing’s hard, and there aren’t any special prizes for doing it with one hand tied behind your back.

And I still think that’s basically sound. But now it turns out that Amis is a fucking horrible old fascist, and, worse, petulant about it. And suddenly — this doesn’t make sense, but there you go — I find I’m embarrassed about the overuse of italics. I mean, is that how it starts?

No more italics, then. I renounce them.

I, personally, would put no one in camps, save for the wicked.

Frequently people ask me — “Do you mind my asking?,” they say — how I managed to find a publisher. The mechanics of it are fascinating and mysterious to them.

“Did you find an agent first? Did you just mail things out and hope for the best, do you have to have connections? Isn’t it very difficult to break in? I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

I smile knowingly, and lean in close. “I have photographs,” I explain. “Disgraceful ones. Of executives. The negatives go to the Times in the event of my death. Not a word to the pigs, mind, or you’ll be sorry.”

This is simply how the game is played.

To the person who came here via a google search for “what kind of bird has white circles around its eyes”:

Maybe some sort of owl? I don’t know. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.

I’m not qualified for this.

Another old heresy has recently spread beyond measure, arising from those who forsook the Lord when He spoke about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, declaring “this saying is hard,” and turning back. They are called Publicans or Patarines. Everywhere among Christians they have lain hidden since the time of the Lord’s Passion, straying in error. At first they had special houses in the villages where they lived, and all of them, whencesoever they came, recognized their houses by the smoke, as the saying goes. . . Men and women live together, but no sons or daughters are born of the intimacy.

Many however, have recovered their senses and returned to the faith. These have told how, about the first watch of the night, when gates, doors, and windows have been closed, the groups sit waiting in silence in their respective synagogues, and a black cat of marvelous size climbs down a rope which hangs in their midst. On seeing it, they put out the lights. They do not sign hymns or repeat them distinctly, but hum through clenched teeth and pantingly feel their way toward the place where they saw their lord. When they have found him they kiss him, each the more humbly as he is more inflamed with frenzy — some the feet, more under the tail, most the private parts. And, as if drawing license for lasciviousness from the place of foulness, each seizes the man or woman next to him and they commingle as long as each is able to prolong the wantonness.

– Walter Map, c. 1182, De nugis Curialium I.XXX, ed. M.R. James, via Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middles Ages

It’s a mixed bag, isn’t it, satanism? They lure you in with the hip dual-income-no-kids lifestyle, and the promise of occasional orgies, but before you know it they’ve got you kissing the cat’s arse every night.

I do hope this doesn’t get me a bunch of links from furries.