One pleasant thing about visiting Scotland was the sunny weather.  You might imagine that, living in India, the last thing I’d enjoy would be more sun.  While there’s an element of that, the sun in India during summer is too hot to indulge, and in practice you spend your life moving quickly from one air-conditioned building to another rather than hanging about outside.  In Scotland, it was hot enough for proper walking about, but not too hot, if you see what I mean.

Just picked up my mail today, and among many splendid books, I discovered my contributor copy of Dark Faith.  I knew it was a packed anthology, but had no idea it was quite as weighty looking as this – very impressive.  I’m already reading the book on my iPhone, thanks to the fantastic app of the book (which is cheap too), but there’s nothing like paper.  If this one slipped your mind, check this review and have a think about whether you can really be without it on your shelf.  Once read, you can also use it as a handy burglar-clubbing tool in case of emergencies.

I was also pleased to see that while I was away, more advance reviews appeared for Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow.  Anton Cancre reckons it’s effortlessly entertaining, calling it “snappy, punchy and unafraid to be a bit rough in the sack” over on his Pustule Oozings site, which is not a bad thing to hear.  Kurt Criscione also enjoyed it, declaring it to be the Bruce Willis movie of the series due to the physical pounding Hiram staggers through from the very opening of the book, and demanding that the story doesn’t finish here (we’re working on it, though people have to buy these ones first).  Anthony Monge at the Horror Drive-In also had a good time with the book, and the way it sets up future Hiram tales.

As you’d imagine, it’s a relief to see that early readers are enjoying the book.  I hope it’s enough to make you take a breath, and pre-order it from the publisher.  Pre-orders are a good thing.  The more the publisher gets, the more confident he feels that investing his time and money in my writing was a good thing to have done, and that does only good things for my professional reputation.  This is the case for anthologies too, but on this occasion I’m not one of several authors, many better known than me, that the publisher can use to sell the book.  It’s my name on the cover, nobody else’s, so the book stands or falls on that.  As such, I hope you’ll forgive the barrage of Hiram information and inducements to buy that you’ll get here and elsewhere.  If you’re going to buy the book at all, particularly if you’re in America, please do consider plonking your $7.99 down now, rather than waiting for the post-publication Amazon listing.

To close for the day, although squeezing it in as an ‘and finally’ end-of-news sort of way doesn’t quite do it justice, there’s Iris Wildthyme.  Originally created by Paul Magrs, this drunken transtemportal adventuress moved into several Doctor Who adventures before getting bored and wandering off for more of her own tales.  In her full length audio adventures, she’s voiced by the lovely Katy Manning.  In her print incarnations she’s scribed by numerous fine folk, many of them luminaries from the good Doctor’s tales. She travels through time, space, and the icky bits in between in a double decker bus that’s slightly smaller on the inside than the out.  Her best friend and constant companion is a pompous talking stuffed panda bear, called Panda.

Iris Wildthyme and her universe are, basically, as mad as a box of frogs.  I mention her here because her publisher Obverse Books have announced the line-up of their third Iris short story collection, Iris: Abroad, and it includes my short story ‘The Story Eater’.  It’s due in November as a beautiful little hardback, so watch this space.

Trust me, unless you’ve met Iris and Panda before, this is going to be like nothing you’ve ever read…

There have been some spectacular storms here over the last couple of days.  Driving rain, crashing thunder, and hours of amazing lightning – everything I look for in a good storm.  The first one broke at the outdoor birthday party of one of my daughter’s classmates, and made the evening for us.  All is quiet tonight so far, but I have my fingers crossed.  The downside is the humidity afterwards, and we’re warned that what we’ve experienced this weekend is just a taster of what’s waiting for us later in the year.

Mo’Con happened in the US over the weekend, and this marks the official launch of the Dark Faith anthology.  I hope you’ll buy a copy.  It’s published by Apex Book Company, an independent press.  Publishers are often an invisible lot, with authors getting the bulk of the praise or condemnation for a book’s success or failure.  Even as a writer, somebody who can’t function professionally without a publisher stepping in, it’s easy to forget (or at least, forget to acknowledge) the massive role they play.  As such, I read this short essay from Apex head Jason Sizemore with something close to guilt.  While it’s fine for me to write the story, take the money, mention it on my blog a few times, and move on to the next one, putting this book together has been a rollercoaster for Jason.  Now the success of the company he built up from scratch depends on it doing reasonably well.  It’s an eye opening demonstration of… well… faith, so do have a read.

If you want to buy the book as well, all the links are here.

Faith.  So much of our reality is determined by what we believe, and it can so easily become … undone. Editors Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon have created an anthology that explores the dark side of faith and what it may mean. These twenty-six stories and five poems (130k+ words of content) may make you cry, may make you laugh, and will certainly terrify you. You may never look at the light the same way again.  Features the short story Sandboys, by Richard Wright (Apex Book Company, 2010)

Order from the following stores:

Apex Book Company

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca

iTunes

New Delhi is one of those cities where a car becomes important.  Not having one makes the city daunting and inaccessible.  While it’s possible to do ordinary things like taking your child to school and popping to the shop without one, six months of taxis becomes a gruelling haul.  Another two and a half years of the same was pretty much unthinkable.  Now we have this big, boxy, beautifully air conditioned thing, complete with driver, and the city is suddenly easier.

I wanted to have it written into the driver’s terms and conditions that I could call him James, particularly when asking to be driven home, but wiser heads prevailed.

Have I convinced you to buy a copy of the Dark Faith anthology yet?  This review might help.  Apex Books are also running a daily devotion of mini-interviews with contributors right up to the release on May 1st.  Whether you’re making up your mind, or have already ordered and want a taste of what you’re buying into, it’s worth a read (because, you know, it’s not all about me…).  Alethea Kontis, Mary Robinette Kowal, D.T. Friedman, and Tom Piccirilli have all had a go.  At some point, I probably will too.

Or, the three stages of life.

Well, the three stages of this blog, anyway.  Firstly, it’s hot.  Bloody hot.  Oven hot.  India, let me tell you a final and definitive time, is currently hot.  Today was around 42 degrees of hot.  Tomorrow and Saturday promise (yes, PROMISE) to be around 44.  It is not chilly in New Delhi, my friends.  Because it’s hot.

This is a curiously difficult thing to photograph, but I give you the above in evidence.  That green pool in a bucket is a candle left out for a couple of hours this morning.  Hot, I tell you.

On disease, I can happily tell you that I am easing away from one, or at least, easing away from the symptoms.  On Saturday I was brung low by what I thought to be simple Belly of Delhi, with all the usual vomiting, cramps, and other excretions.  I endured it through a child’s party, mostly so that my wife wouldn’t have to face that parental horror alone (yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m that heroic), watching infant tug-of-war while my internal organs tried to re-enact the very same, then pretty much collapsed for the weekend.  Not pleasant.  On Monday I staggered, possibly slopped, to the doctor, and found out that I may have had a parasitic infection since my first weeks in India.  This explains why I get (usually less extreme) variants of this every three or four weeks like clockwork.  The parasite has a life cycle, apparently, very much along those lines.  All very lovely.  Though I feel better, three days of antibiotics haven’t entirely cured me (apparently, a day of them is usually enough), which supports the parasite theory.  We’ll see.

I have to provide samples.  Nothing about this is pleasant.

As for Last Rites, I really mean Last Rites.  Here’s Stephen Gilbert’s beautiful cover for the chapbook.

Only 500 copies of this chapbook book exist, and you can’t buy one (at least, until it turns up on eBay for ridiculous sums).

You can, however, buy a copy of the forthcoming anthology Dark Faith (which has my story ‘Sandboys’ in it).  If you do so, directly from the publisher Apex Books, they’ll send you one, while stocks last.  New stories to complement those in Dark Faith, original, beautiful, and free.

You know what you must do.

Some crazy fool has put it in my head that I should perhaps venture over to the 2011 World Horror Convention in Austin, Texas, this time next year.  It’s a hell of a way to go, but I’m tempted, expense be damned.  I thought if I mentioned it here, you might be of a mind to talk me out of it.  What do you think?

I woke up the other morning, rolled over in bed, and checked my email (on my iPhone, docked next to me in an alarm clock widget).  I was pleased, and a bit surprised, to find that one of the two pitches I made when I got back from Thailand in January has been commissioned.  Nothing has been publicly announced yet, so far be it for me to jump the gun, but it’s a piece for an anthology, and is left-field of my usual fictional territory.  I’ll let you know more when I can, but it’s going to be fun…

That means that 2010 should see four books published with my work between the covers.  With the slight mid-season break in the Hiram series, it looks like the first could well be the super-anthology from Apex Books, Dark Faith, which contains among others my new short story ‘Sandboys’.  Check out the link, the contributors, and the Publisher’s Weekly review at the bottom of the page.  It’s due on May 1st, and if you order from that page (ie, direct from the publisher), you’ll also get an exclusive, limited run promotional chapbook of extra stories, called Dark Faith: Last Rites.  The gorgeous cover art for the additional volume can be seen at the bottom of the page, after the reviews and blurbs.

Shortly after that should see Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow, which I’ve been banging on about for months, for good reason.  Have you read the first two books in the series yet?  Enjoying them?  If not, go search them out on Amazon.  Hiram’s waiting…

Over the summer sometime, I’m also expecting to see Withersin 3: Turpentine, Iodine, and Arsenic, which features my short story ‘Hermanesha’, and will ship with three variant covers (you get to choose which one when you order).

And around about November, mystery anthology project should be ready to go, just in time for Christmas.  Not a bad year, and it’s only April, so there’s time to add to the list.

This is the current view from my study window.  I looked, and it wasn’t there.  I looked three hours later, and it was.  We’ll have to get rid of it, of course, but it’s also pretty cool.

In other news, stuff keeps happening, so here are some bullet points until I can get back to blog properly.

• Yesterday, we interviewed drivers for the new car, which should be ready to drive in the next week or so.  I’m glad Kirsty was there.  All I want to know about a driver is whether they can actually drive.  This creates a subsequent awkward lull in an interview.  Kirsty was able to think of other things, none of which were irrelevant.  In the end, one guy really stood out, in a pleasant, normal, easy sort of way.  He starts on the first of April.  My wife and I will be the sole employers of two whole people.  These are strange and dangerous times.
• Hiram Grange picks up even more good reviews.  Apparently, it’s not “just a series of books; it’s a force to be reckoned with…“.  Which is nice.  Though I’ve said it before, the third should be just around the corner (there’s been a slight delay, but all for the good).  I saw the interior and cover art recently, and it’s mouthwatering.
• With all my Hiram excitement, I don’t want you to forget that we’re fast approaching the release of the Dark Faith anthology.  It’s always difficult to tell before the publication date, when real readers (like you) get to read the book and talk about it, but advance interest has been quite intense on this one.  It feels like it could be one of those ‘event anthologies’ that come along every now and again, and do something new and exciting.  We’ll see.  You should pre-order it, so you can be among the first to find out.  In the meantime, here’s an interview about it (not with me, but with the editor).
• There are other things.  Hints of good news and interesting stories to be told, but I can’t tell you about them yet. Sorry.
• Because of which, I have less to say than I originally thought.  Erm.  Seems a waste of bullet points really…

Right, a couple of random things to let you know about, if only so that I can de-bookmark some websites.  Is there a real word for deleting-an-internet-bookmark-that-you-created-to-remind-you-to-blog-about-it-and-don’t-need-anymore-because-you’ve-blogged-about-it?  If not, make one up and let me know what it is.

Hiram Grange and the Twelve Little Hitlers, Hiram’s delirious second outing, is now available at Amazon.  That means it should be on international Amazon sites in another week or two, as the first book, Hiram Grange and the Village of the Damned, already is (USA, UK, Canada).  It’s a huge weight off to see the Hiram books being so well received (the latest review of Village of the Damned points out that it’s “an exciting and pulp-filled thrill ride“, and who am I to argue?).  In the next day or so I’ll take you behind the curtain, and tell you how it all came about.  In the meantime, buy a book, why don’t you?

May this year will see the publication of the Dark Faith anthology from Apex Books, which will include my story ‘Sandboys’.  If you think you’ll end up buying a copy, you may wish to pre-order the book now.  The first five hundred people to do so will bag a limited edition chapbook called Dark Faith: Last Rites for free, containing an additional three tales.  It’s a nice little, utterly exclusive, promotional piece.  If you’re going to read ‘Sandboys’ anyway, and you probably should, because I’m very proud of it, you might as well get the biggest bang for your buck.

I keep forgetting about The Flesh Remembers, a novella you can currently (but not for too much longer) find on my website.  This means that it’s always a nice surprise when somebody else doesn’t forget it’s there.  Author (and friend) Mark West dropped me a line over the new year, to tell me he’d left his thoughts on the story over at Goodreads.  It’s never less than gripping, he says.  You can trust him.  He’s an author… (thanks Mark, glad you enjoyed it).

Right, that’s the deleting-an-internet-bookmark-that-you-created-to-remind-you-to-blog-about-it-and-don’t-need-anymore-because-you’ve-blogged-about-it done (please find a credible word for that).  In other news, I’m taking things easy this week.  No point digging into 2010 quite yet, as we’ll be off to Thailand for a holiday next week, so anything too serious can wait until we get back.  Just before we leave, on Monday, I turn thirty-five.  A couple of nights in Bangkok, followed by several more on a beach in Phuket (I have enormous fun pronouncing Phuket, and now you will too) doesn’t seem a bad way to spend the first days of the second half of my thirties, actually.

Is it still snowing where you are?  Yesterday, here in Delhi, I had to put on a light jacket, it was so cool.  Murder.  I sympathise.

Good news this morning – I found out that my short story ‘Sandboys’ has been picked up for the Dark Faith anthology, forthcoming from Apex Books in May next year.  The book is being published in conjunction with the Mo*Con V writers convention in the States, an annual gathering, and per the themes of the event is as interested in spirituality, social issues, and the human condition as much as simple scares. It makes the anthology a perfect home for ‘Sandboys’, which is easily the most personal thing I’ve ever written, and a story I almost decided should never see print.  More on the book and the tale within it as the publication date edges closer…

The bad news is that I remain a human juicer.  Delhi belly, round two.  I confess to an extraordinarily selfish thought this morning, perched on the latrine in some pain.  I thought It’s Kirsty’s turn!

I’m not proud.  I’m hoping that confession will reduce the karmic fallout of wishing my illness on my wife.  Think I’ll get away with it?