I’m back, from what turned out to be not much of a pleasure trip at all.  There were good bits, like walking around Edinburgh and the grounds of Fyvie Castle.  There were many more gruelling bits, and in the end I was glad to get back on the plane and leave it all behind.

Lots of catching up to do, and plenty of writing stuff to tell you about, but I woke up at one o’clock today, and still feel shattered, so I’ll have to knock it back a day or so.  More on Hiram Grange, coming soon, but also a spot of Iris Wildthyme.

For now, unpacking awaits.  See you on the other side…

Apparently, I am still having one, behind all these blog posts about books and writing.  As is often the way, several books have come due at once, hence a plethora of posts in which I try to do my bit to tell people about them.  More of that at the end of the post.

In real life though, well, life goes on.  New Delhi has quietly become the city I’m living in, rather than somewhere I just happen to be.  I hesitate to use the word ‘home’, with all the associated implications, but it’s close.  Random cows in the street are no longer a surprise every time I wander past one.  When a herd of cows wandering through a shopping district doesn’t make you stop and stare, I feel you can reasonably say that you’ve adjusted a bit to living in India.

That said, towards the end of the month we’ll be jumping on a plane to spend a couple of weeks back in Scotland.  I haven’t been away long enough to say that I’ve missed it, especially now I’m familiar enough with Delhi to be able to do or get most of the things I could do or get back in Glasgow, but I’m looking forward to the break.  Specifically, I’m looking forward to the following, in no particular order:

• Eating cows, instead of navigating my around them.  I want beef.  Lots of beef.  Burgers, steaks, beefy beef.  I miss beef.  There will be a bovine massacre of epic proportions when I touch down.
• Having weather.  Delhi in June is just too hot.  Sometimes it’s hot with a hot, dusty breeze.  Other times it’s hot and skin-fryingly sunny.  Very occasionally it’s hot with tiny, teasing splatters of rain that evaporate again as soon as they touch the ground.  I want two weeks of not quite this hot, and possibly even a bit wet.
• Drinking dark beer in proper pubs.  Not much bar-hopping in Delhi, unless you like drinking in upmarket hotels.  I want a real pub, that stills smells faintly of the cigarettes smoked there five years ago, with a toilet where staff don’t follow you around to make sure your have hot towel needs are met before you realise you even have any.

I’m sure there are other things too, which I’ll only realise I miss on stumbling across them, but the above is a good start.  So, anybody reading this from Glasgow?  How’s the summer?  Are there any cows left, or have you eaten them all?

Another bit about books:

Are you, like me, an adopter of all things Apple, and the owner of an iPhone or iPad?  I’ve just discovered that the Dark Faith anthology is available as an app .  It’s the real thing, the complete book, downloadable for $4.99 or £2.99.  That’s a cheap as it’s going to get, and you get a real stack of fiction for your green, including my short story ‘Sandboys’.  You can be reading it in all of thirty seconds, just by clicking this link.  I loves the interweb.

Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow is very nearly here.  That means, for an author, it’s time to start finding ways to tell people it exists.  Among the tools of the trade is the review, and Shroud and I will be approaching places we know very soon indeed to try and garner some.  That leaves places we don’t know.  Are you a reviewer?  Would you like a (very pretty) pdf of the press release and the actual novella?  If so, drop me a line (or leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you asap).  Thanks!

Here’s the third in a brief series of articles about the creation of the Hiram Grange novellas, currently being released by Shroud Publishing, and due to conclude soon with my own ‘Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow’.  You can find part one here, in which Tim from Shroud Publishing lures five writers to him, and here, in which babies are mercilessly (and metaphorically) slaughtered.

I don’t often talk in any detail about what I’m writing at a given time until I’ve actually written it. An idea is not a story.  Everyone has ideas, and everyone blurts them out, and they never sound as good on the tongue as they did in the blurters head.  A story is crafted over time, honed and sharpened, and if the writer knows his or her stuff, far less disappointing than the muddled notion it grew from.  Nothing makes me lose interest in my own ideas faster than telling somebody about them before the words are pinned and polished on the page.

Of course, with Hiram we had no choice.  We had discussed him endlessly before wandering off to our own novellas, nailing down details, setting limits, pre-exploring the character as fully as we could in order to establish a consistent central figure.  In the end though, we all had to leave the nest, and get down to the solitary business of putting words on pages.

So, what went into my own Hiram tale?  Clearly, it was first held to the bible we developed, the backdrop, and the character, though I won’t say much more about those because that’s what the books themselves are for.

On the other hand, now is a great time to bring on board Malcolm McClinton, the series artist.  At some point during the brainstorm, editor Tim Deal threw out some sample images from artists he though might be a good fit for the insane, modern pulp feel we were looking for.  While I can’t place exactly when Malcolm joined the party, I can say for sure that the first images we got from him knocked us sideways.  This character Hiram, this pretend man we made up in our collective heads, suddenly had a face.  In general, I’m avoiding speaking for the team in these little essays, but on this occasion I’ll chance my arm and state that there was an instant feeling that Malcolm nailed it.  I’m still a bit staggered every time I look at one of his images, because that’s Hiram.   That’s what was in my head.  There was a very informal group vote, and a very fast one.  We had our series artist.  That we made the right choice is pretty obvious from the covers so far released.  I think my favourite remains the very first.  Hiram, on that chair, the dead piled up around his feet…

Having said that, everything Malcolm’s done within the series has been both astonishing, and absolutely right. There’s one image in particular, that you won’t have seen yet, that defined the conclusion of Nymphs in a very direct way.  It was one of the samples he produced, before the plots of each book were fully defined, and that’s why Hiram’s very final battle in the series so far is with an honest-to-goodness *spoiler*.  That defining image will be reproduced somewhere in Nymphs, though I don’t yet know whether it’s a cover or an interior.

The second big influence on Nymphs was the city of Krakow.  I’d recently taken my girlfriend, now wife, there for her birthday (a blurry but brilliant affair), and it had screamed at me to use it in a story.  Nymphs was a perfect opportunity, and there are many key locations lifted straight from our break, almost as though the book is some sort of literary photo album.  The flat Hiram exits so hurriedly, the club where he staggers to meet his nemesis, so many of them things Kirsty and I roamed by in our brief weekend.  Even the weather, though the snow wasn’t quite as bad during our brief break.  It’s a city that makes an impression, and I hope I did it a little justice.  Go visit.  It’s splendid.

Other ingredients came and went.  In homage to my favourite modern pulp hero, Indiana Jones, I was determined that my installment of the Grange saga would open with the conclusion of an otherwise unseen adventure, that then plays into the main story.  I accomplished that, taking a snippet written years ago, for an entirely different character (Jackson Greene – anybody remember him?), and finally fleshing it out.  It’s a fun storytelling gimmick, that I think be can really only pulled off with a serial character like Hiram.  It means I can drop you into a story that opens at a hundred miles an hour, and I hope you feel a touch breathless when you read it.

Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow (it’s not a random title – a little research into Eastern European / Russian mythology gave rise to the perfect beast for Hiram to race to Krakow to face down) has the further distinction of being the only published piece of writing (except for that opening, three hundred word snippet that was then adapted) I’ve ever written long-hand.  You know those self-important guys you see in coffee shops, pen in hand, looking thoughtfully out of the window?  That was me.  I really was that pretentious.  The first draft of the book exists in a moleskin notebook upstairs, written in fits and starts in Costa Coffee and Starbucks outlets across Glasgow.

Finally, there was the music.  When I write, I usually have a piece of music that I put on every time I sit down to a story.  Once you’ve got the right tunes, they’re like a short cut back into the story, a fast way to get into the particular mood of the piece.  Nymphs was written to the Zimmer/Howard soundtrack to The Dark Knight, a movie I can no longer watch without a part of me rejoining Hiram in Krakow.

By January 2009, the first draft was written and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Prematurely, as it turned out.  Editing and rewriting this book has been like nothing else I’ve experienced as a writer.  But that’s for next time.  For now, head over to your local Amazon and tap ‘Hiram Grange’ into the search box…

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…

It’s been two weeks (sorry, bad blogger), but Jaipur seems a very long time ago.  It’s the first city in India we’ve really ventured to, New Delhi aside, and it kept us marvellously entertained for the three days we were there.  Jaipur and Delhi, despite both being bustling, crowded cities, feel like chalk and cheese.  As New Delhi loses its sense of identity in the rush to become a sprawling western city-clone, Jaipur has maintained an essential and indefinable Indianess.  When you imagine a modern Indian city, where development sits side-by-side with the old places, and cows and monkeys wander the streets beneath clear skies and a blazing sun, you’re probably thinking of Jaipur whether you know it or not.

We set off from Delhi early in the morning, and were reminded while navigating the train station that when an Indian tries to be helpful, even when they don’t actually want anything in return, they’re just making things more complicated.  Although we knew which platform we were going to and had tickets in hand, we still managed to get misdirected and sidelined, and got on the actual train with seconds to spare before it left.  We travelled coach class, which is one down from first, and it’s a pretty comfortable way to go.  Tea is served several times, and breakfast is presented en route.  It’s more like airline service than a train, and makes the miles pass pretty quickly.

Four and a half hours later, we were in Jaipur.  The air was clear, and the temperature was in the mid-thirties.  With an afternoon to kill, we took a car down to the Pink City, the old centre of Jaipur, which should more properly be called the Terracotta Salmon City, but was very pretty nevertheless.  Our wanderings took us into the City Palace, a massive sprawl that takes up a seventh of the old city.  There was an illegal snake charmer with a proper cobra, veiled dancing men pretending to be veiled dancing women, and regally attired palace guards who encouraged us to have pictures taken with them, and then demanded a tip for the privilege.  Got to love India.

Day two took us to the desert town of Amer, and a massive desert fort that looked like this:

: but moreso.  It took a long time to get round, and eventually you have to conclude that once you’ve seen one dusty corridor that wouldn’t be out of place in Raiders of the Lost Ark, you’ve probably seen them all.  Spectacular viewing though, and being so high, gave us some stunning views.

Our last day in Jaipur was Holi, the festival of colour.  We were strongly advised to stay off the streets.  At Holi, Indian’s get drunk, and cover each other with paint.  If you’re on the street, you’re assumed to be game.  Initially, we did stick to the hotel, but boredom, and my wife’s peculiar urge to buy a hand stitched bedcover featuring elephants, eventually saw us hail a tuk-tuk (who has, he was delighted to tell us, set up his own website at www.supersalim.com, and actually does introduce himself as ‘Super Salim’).  We got out in the city centre.  Before the tuk-tuk had even pulled away, we were surrounded by slightly sozzled Indians determined to make us multicolured, in deference to the end of the winter and the start opf spring.  We all got covered (the paint is powdered, and fortunately seems to wash off, if you’re persistent), and lasted about twenty minutes (and one over priced bed spread), before having to hail a taxi and escape to the hotel.  Great fun, nevertheless, and without a six year old, we might well have stayed out longer.

A great weekend.  If you’re ever in the area, give it a whirl.

Some things that have happened.

Elvis Presley has applied for a job as our driver.  I am not kidding.  Unfortunately, he is unlikely to get the position.  Having googled for character references, he is apparently nothing but a hound dog.

The weather here in Delhi has made another sharp change, and is closing fast on a British summertime.  It’s gorgeous today, clear skies and temperatures in the mid-twenties.  By next weekend it should be hovering near thirty, and it’s not yet March.

Next weekend, however, is a holiday weekend, with Monday being Holi.  People throw paint over each other enthusiastically, so I believe.  We will be spending a couple of nights in the city of Jaipur, poking around and generally exploring.  It’s known as the pink city, which I suspect refers to the stonework more than a subculture, and we’re taking a slow train there and back.  Looking forward to seeing some of the India between the cities, even if it’s only in passing.

Various bits of television are being watched at the moment, on iTunes or DVD.  Season one of Babylon 5 is for the most part comically bad, but extremely watchable.  The last season of Lost is so far daring and baffling, with concurrently running parallel universes in which the characters are living different versions of their own lives being one of the most daring ways to run a narrative I’ve seen (yet to confirm whether it’s going to actually work in drawing the series to a close).  24 is as brilliant and unlikely as ever.  The second series of Being Human is lovely, compelling, and beautifully written.  The first season and a bit of The Wire have convinced me that all of the ‘greatest television series ever made’ reviews may not actually be hyperbole.  There’s more, but I shan’t bore you with it just now.

I now have a lovely Rorschach print above my desk in my study.  I see a praying child, Kirsty sees Kenny from South Park lying on his back, Eva sees a monster.  Your mileage may vary.

Hiram Grange continues to pick up excellent reviews.  The third book should be along shortly, and I’m just about to start work with the editor on my own tome.  Exciting times.  Final edits have also been received and returned for the Apex Books anthology Dark Faith, which is going to be quite a book.

And now it is the weekend, and slumping can happen, with some slouching thrown in for good measure.

Finally, after four months of taxis and tuk-tuks around Delhi, we’ve order a new car.  It looks very much like the above, except it doesn’t have fancy script over the licence plate.  We’ve a short period of waiting to undertake, as various forms get filed at various departments, us being furriners and all, and then we can take to the road proper.

Well our driver will, anyway.  We’ll be in the back, taking in the sights.

It’s a big motor, at least bigger than anything we would have considered buying in the UK, but height is a definite bonus on Indian roads, as is power.  Eight seats, 2.5 litre engine, and in ours anyway, tuk-tuk-intimidating front bull bars.  After that, the traffic can come and have a go, if it thinks its hard enough.

Valentine’s Day has largely involved varying degrees of suffering in this house, but only because we went out yesterday instead (no school run to get up for this morning).  There was beer.  There was bollinger.  There was wine.

There was, today, a great deal of lying still and groaning.

The meal was good though, partaken of at a nearby Lebanese place called Mashrabiya.  We were seated in a tent, with various cushions to become recumbent on, and had a comedy waiter who threw beer around, fell over himself while trying to light our cigarettes, and attempted to set fire to our tent with a brazier of hot coals.

Most entertaining, though unfortunately not the sort of regularly scheduled performance you can call up and book.

So, I was in the study, headphones in, enjoying an atmospheric audio play involving Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and friends.  It was a dark and stormy night.  There was thunder crashing and lightning flashing.  I thought the audio mixing was a little off, because I couldn’t really make out what the actors were saying beneath the storm effects.

Except, of course, the audio was enhanced by the actual storm that had sprung up outside.  Crashing, bashing thunder, a brutal downpour, lightning, flooding – even hail, and not measly flecks of it either, but big, bouncing chunks of ice.

As is our way, we stood in it for a bit, and breathed it all in.  We like storms, and we really like being surprised by them.

Last year, I embarked on both getting fit, and getting very unfit.  The fitness bit lasted until around about June, and was going quite well.  Alas, it hit the brick wall of packing up, getting married, and emigrating to India, followed by prolonged stress while we worked out whether Eva’s schooling was going to let us stay here.  During this period, I embarked on becoming very unfit indeed.

It was, I’m delighted to tell you, a resounding success.  My grandad is fitter than me, and, not to be too crass about it, he’s been dead longer than I’ve been a grown-up.

However, with Eva in school since Monday, and settling in pretty well all things considered, all that stress has vanished.  Suddenly, I feel quite comfortable here, and ready to get on with the new normality.  This involves getting back on the fitness train.

Having had a couple of practise work-outs this week, running about a bit and doing some light upper body stuff, I can confirm that I’m right back to where I started last year.  Possibly further back, if that’s possible.  Truthfully, I may not even be on the train.  I may in fact be on the fitness donkey, and it’s slow, bumpy, and bloody painful.

I feel like a walking* bruise.

Still, at least I remember from last time that this is a good thing, and means things have started.  It’s even a satisfying sort of pain, while also being incredibly inconvenient in almost all circumstances.  Roll on next month, when I should be working out how far I can ‘push it’, rather than worrying whether I’m going to incapacitate myself even ‘leaning against it’.

* Or possibly a hobbling one.