Modem Noise

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July 13, 2006

Cold Enough For You?

Recently the overnight minimum temperature here in Perth got down to -0.7C. This was the coldest night ever recorded in the city. Here at Chez Bedford, where we have no insulation and a great big open-plan house (it seemed like a great idea at the time we looked at the model home), temps like that get our attention. I always know when it's getting cold because my hands hurt.

While that particular night was distressingly cold, other nights in recent times have been plenty cold, too, though not to the same level of purely gratuitous, almost show-offy chilliness, as that one night. Thing is, if the weather were warmer, you'd think it was summer. We've had next to no rain. A couple of days of reasonable showers, and that's been it. Otherwise, it's been fine, clear--and damned chilly, even during the day. It's weird and disturbing.

In other news: I've been enjoying a couple of weeks of time off from the scribble caper, catching up on books I've long wanted to read, and in general having a fairly decent time of it. Not even all that many headaches, I'm delighted to report.

This week, by contrast, it's been all go again on the scribble front: I learned early in the week that Publisher Brian is heading off for a couple of weeks holiday, starting tomorrow, Friday, and that during his break he would be reading UMBRA. I thought this would be a good opportunity to go through the manuscript, tightening up flabby text, getting rid of "to be" formulations and similar nonsense, and maybe have another look at the ending, to do any necessary reinforcement that might be necessary. That it has been necessary to perform a whole bunch of fix-ups, particularly on the final 30 pages, is unsurprising. It is true that you never actually "finishes" a manuscript; you just one day stop fiddling with it all the time. And I can see that quite a bit of fiddling is ahead of me yet.

One thing I can report is that going through the whole manuscript a while back and performing extensive surgery on it (and completely rewriting the ending) was entirely worth it. It reads better now than previously, and the new ending works much better. All the same, the task of going through the whole thing to prune out the flab is not yet complete. Looks like it might keep me busy for another week at least.

About this year's Worldcon:
I've been picked for the program! I'd written the Program department of LA Con IV a couple of letters pleading for a gig on the Program, but thought I'd missed out--it's only a matter of weeks before the convention starts, after all. Then, out of the blue the other night, an email shows up with an invitation to participate, and the usual incredibly thorough, incredibly enormous questionnaire in which you identify any topics you think you might be able to contribute the odd intelligent (or at least funny) thoughts. The whole process, while very involved and time-consuming, is very efficient and slickly organised. Should be an excellent convention!

In related news: Publisher Brian also told me this week that HYDROGEN STEEL is now at the printers, and should be ready for launch at Worldcon. I'm particularly keen to see how this book goes over. It's more of a "romp" than ECLIPSE, and contains, here and there, actual humour. Don't miss out! (This book also resolves a number of background storyline threads that ran through ORBITAL BURN and ECLIPSE, such as the truth about what happened to Earth, etc.)

Last: a request. If you've read ECLIPSE, I'd be enormously grateful if you went to the book's Amazon.com page and posted a review or testimonial. It would help the book, and that would help me. So far it's got exactly one such review, from the esteemed David Shanahan--thank you, Dave! You're a legend.

UPDATE: And a mighty big THANK YOU, GUYS to Treefen and Charlie Stuart! What you both said was excellent. Need I remind you that HYDROGEN STEEL features a character with Treefen's real name (she comes to a bad end, sorry), while UMBRA features a certain Sir Charles Stuart, head of a branch of Service Intelligence, and who features prominently in the story.

Posted by adrian at July 13, 2006 07:06 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Charlie at July 22, 2006 12:57 AM

Posted by: dshan at July 16, 2006 06:16 AM

Posted by: Terry at July 15, 2006 07:48 AM

Posted by: river selkie at July 14, 2006 09:35 AM

Posted by: Charlie at July 14, 2006 01:07 AM

Posted by: treefen at July 13, 2006 11:39 PM

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