Month: April 2023

It is Edinburgh and it is raining. But in a few short weeks it will be June and one can hope for a bit of sun and temperatures somewhere above 15C/60F. After 23 years in the States, I’m pretty sure I will still be wearing an overcoat.

June also means book festivals, and I am lucky enough to be going to two of them. Although they could not be more different: in keeping with my split literary persona.

First, running from June 2-4, is the Cymera Book Festival, an amazing celebration of all things to do with SF, Fantasy, and Horror. Regular readers of this blog will know that I was lucky enough to take the stage there last year on a panel about space-based SF called Ad Astra, with fellow authors Ken MacLeod and Harry Josephine Giles. The panel was a blast but the festival itself was an eye opener. I’d never been to a book festival before. Wandering around shoulder to shoulder with SFFH authors and readers was an inspiration. Surrounded by so many people who take such unadulterated joy in reading and writing books was a real lift to the spirits. So much so that I vowed I would come back as a volunteer, even if it was only to stamp tickets.

Well, lo and behold, here I am! Ann Landmann, the force of nature behind Cymera (thank you, Ann, for everything that you do!), has been kind enough to allow me to chair one of the SF panels, Connection, Interrupted, with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow and Ian McDonald. We will be discussing their respective new creations, Conquest, Red Team Blues, and Hopeland, in the context (both good and bad) of near-future tech. I am sooooo looking forward to it!

After that, it will be time to put my crime writer hat on and head to Shetland Noir, which takes place in Lerwick, Shetland from 16-18 June. Shetland is one of the archipelagoes that comprise Scotland’s Northern Isles, though they are remote from Scotland itself, being significantly closer to Norway. I am very much a small fish in the big, crime-writing ocean but I am very much looking forward to my panel: Crime on Distant Shores with Wendy Jones Nakanishi/Lea O’Harra and Alasdair “AJ” Liddle. This being my first crime writing festival, I have absolutely no idea what I’m in for. Except for one thing.

It’s guaranteed to be an adventure.

The writing life is full of small setbacks. I am typing this post from a coffee shop on the Lothian Road, Edinburgh. But not my usual coffee shop on the Lothian Road, Edinburgh. As I am, in many ways, a creature of habit, this counts as a minor catastrophe.

As I do not have the luxury of writing full time (why did autofill suggest “full sentences?” Does it think I’m illiterate?”), I am in the habit of wandering down to my local coffee shop around seven a.m. and writing for an hour or two before heading off to the day job. Today, however, when I reached my destination, I was horrified to discover that the shop had moved to “temporary” hours commencing at . . . eight.

Like I said, a catastrophe. I ended up trogging along to another more crowded, less laptop friendly location and setting up shop there. But time has been lost! Productivity has dropped! Targets (albeit self-imposed) will be missed! It’s quite unsettling for a delicate artistic type like yours truly. Or an old, overly rigid curmudgeon. Take your pick.

Of course, depending on your perspective, not all waits are a bad thing. I was talking to my good friend, Shelly G., the other day, and she was telling me that she had recommended Braking Day to one of her colleagues. A day or two later, he announced that it would be a little while before he could read it as it was signed out at his local library and there was, wait for it . . .

A waiting list.

Who’d a thunk it?

While a wait is obviously not ideal for my friend’s colleague, I find it immensely flattering that anyone would be motivated enough to get on a waiting list for one of my books. I am keeping my fingers crossed that, after they’ve read it, they still feel it was worth the wait.