Somehow, Christmas is always associated with films by Tim Burton - maybe it's the 'snow' theme, or the annual resurgence of Jack Skellington - he's become as seasonal as looking forward to your stocking on Christmas morning.

And this year sees the release of 'The Art of Tim Burton', the ultimate insight, an astounding, definitive compilation of forty years of the master's artistry. Containing over 1,000 illustrations from his personal archives, it follows his passion for humanity’s oddities and misunderstood monsters through 434 pages of fascinating, beautifully showcased artwork - furnished with the thoughts, anecdotes and insights of his many friends and condifidantes.




Also available is a Deluxe Edition that comes with a hand-signed and numbered lithograph (1,000 in total). Each of these rare and collectible books come in a fabric-wrapped slipcase through which the dramatic, spiral cover will still be visible.

Ideal to ensuring you have no nightmares before Christmas!

...get suckered in by this stuff.

This one snuck up on me, I swear. I was defenceless.

SF Signal reports the death of a man whom I met (for the second time) only recently, a man who's gentleness and wicked sense of humour endeared us all to him within moments of his arrival in the FP office.

He didn't remember me from our first meeting - when he had been on a panel at EasterCon in 1990 - and, indeed, why the world should he?

But he did ask me if I'd read 'Mythago Wood' - and he scolded me, with a grin, when I sheepishly responded, 'I will, I promise'.

I guess I better.

Farewell, Rob Holdstock.

I'm being haunted by a dream I can't remember.

The images don't stay for long enough for me to even grasp them - but they trigger a huge dump of adrenaline and fear... whatever it is, it's very real and I can't access it for long enough to assure myself it's nothing.

This has been going on for about a week.

There's something in the back of my head that isn't me.

And I am freaked right the FUCK out!!

FORBIDDEN PLANET and Gollancz Publishing are delighted to be hosting an open-format, multi-author signing. Five authors, one event – at 6pm on Thursday November 26th, Forbidden Planet 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London will be playing host to: -

• David Devereux
• Paul McAuley
• Justina Robson
• Adam Roberts
• Chris Wooding

To promote the release of Justina’s new book CHASING THE DRAGON, Forbidden Planet and Gollancz Publishing have gathered a host of science fiction and fantasy talent into one event – an event to bring writers and fans together and to promote interest in new and different kinds of fiction.

This is a free-form and open signing, bringing the authors out from behind their tables and giving their readers a chance to meet them and talk to them about their work. An array of fantastic books will be on hand to be picked up and signed – including works by every one of the writers present.

And, as usual with these events, there are likely to be more than a few surprise guests...

...and a subsequent visit to the pub!

...the little bugger will start getting ideas!!

You ever get one of those itchy feelings - when you know you've pissed someone off but have no idea how to even broach an apology?

Indeed - by apologising, you'll only let the individual know you know they're pissed off... and complicate the situation even further.

Bollocks.

Sadly, I can't make this myself, but...

Get your mitts on Stan Nicholls’ newest novel Orcs Bad Blood 2: Army of Shadows, when Stan, Juliet E KcKenna, Chaz Brenchley and Kari Sperring sign at Forbidden Planet Bristol Megastore, Clifton Heights, Triangle West on Saturday 24th October from 1 – 2pm.

The Write Fantastic is an authors’ initiative to introduce fantasy to readers who unfamiliar with the genre, and to entice back those who have drifted away. Their combined work covers fantasy writing from orcs and dragons, swords and sorcery, right through to the to re-imagining of myth and history, and the magics of matter, mind and spirit. Contemporary fantasy is about far more than escape. Freed of the constraints and preconceptions of other fiction, it holds up a mirror to this world and time and engages the imagination like no other genre.

In Orcs Bad Blood 2, Stryke and the Wolverines are back with more frenetic action, nail-biting adventure and black humour – this time, stranded in a parallel world. To escape, they must ignite an uprising and reawaken the lost martial spirit of the world's indigenous orcs.

As well as Orcs, there will be other titles by Stan Nicholls, alongside novels by Juliet, Chaz and Kari. Come and meet The Write Fantastic – and talk to them about their work!

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.

"Which road do I take?" she asked.

"Where do you want to go?" was his response.

"I don't know," Alice answered.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

Thank you, Lewis Carroll.

It's been a very peculiar weekend.

Those of you who follow me on twitter know that my little calico cat, Ayesha, was finally put out of her pain earlier today. From a little, bright-eyed bat-eared kitten that I brought home in a box, she's been the most gentle kind and loving creature - a ditsy blonde, full of affection, with a little voice that cried for love. She was an empath cat - it's never been possible to be near The Eesh and upset without her coming to you and mewing in distress, butting you to make both of you feel better. In her last days she was being eaten from the inside by cancer; in her last hours she was sat in the garden in the sun with her family stroking her gently.

Her bonkers Tortie sister, Lilith, is wandering the house bemused - and getting lots of love.

In the light of losing Ayesha, the strong positive feedback from my potential publisher has kind of got lost. I should doing a squeeee-wall-of-death at this point - but it's both surreal and too real, somehow and oddly distant. It's surreal because it's been so long that I can't quite get my head round it; too real because I have many writer friends and few starry-eyed illusions. One subplot needs a complete rewrite (and not the one I thought it would be - that'll teach me) and there are other freaky tweakies that were mentioned.

I have some ideas of my own about how I could improve and streamline the story, but I guess I have to wait for that whole 'second draft' thing.

Anyway, random mutterings about two books and optioning a third (it's early days and I am so green behind the fucking ears with this stuff I feel like ten kinds of frog) may well spin out to nothing, I don't know. I want to squeeee - but I almost don't dare.

Maybe the line between 'perspective' and 'pessimism' got lost under the weight of the little cat, finally and peacefully asleep in my lap. Right now, it's all a bit overwhelming and I may well have too many whiskey toddies this evening.

This has been very self-indulgent - sorry about that.

I'm sure the giant squeeeee will come in a bit :)

I'm pretty sure this one's gon' be big...

I trust that the signing with Ubu Bubu creator Jamie Smart will not involve scrotal sacs being exposed on the shop floor.

Just saying...

From @davestokes!

The Seven Sisters, Birling Gap, Beachy Head.

Eighteen miles.

Ankle-breaking cliffs.

In the pitch dark.

A torch, a bottle of JD and a bar of Green & Black’s. My partner my company; my iPhone my lifeline.

There is no feeling like sitting on a chill, black clifftop – out of time, out of sight, out of reality – with nothing between you and the sky but a foot of scrub grass.

That, as they say, was fucking awesome.


 

I'd noticed that my LJ has been ominously quiet since I completed the dread manuscript and sent it off to the Powers That Be.

Four weeks of waiting, and I'm beginning to understand what I will need to change, and where, and why it's necessary. And, moreimportantly, how I can make it work better. And that's all good.

You're never too clever to learn something.

But something else is also beginning to dawn on me... as if I've been gleefully swimming along and the shoreline has receded further and further into the distance... until it occurs to me to look round - and I discover I'm totally the fuck out of my depth.

Writing shit, I can do. Writing shit for a market, I can learn. But the rest of it..?



Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...

...really hate questions that begin 'What's your favourite..'?

GAH!!

Four months of snatched hours, temporal wizardly and plate-juggling - and I'm done.

Something that followed Orbital 2008 as a random on-line whim is now 116k of completed manuscript - one last rub-down with the belt-sander and cue One Giant Reality Check... of one form or another.

Even if it does get accepted, then I face the bizarre realisation that something that's been in my head twenty years doesn't belong to me any more - it belongs to editors, to agents, to marketeers, to critics... and to the public.

The shift from 'writing for myself' to 'writing for potential publication' has been a hurdle in itself - accompanied by a sudden snake-like rear of my professional industry awareness: like a hydra, I found myself with two heads. It was no longer something to haphazardly amuse myself and my Twitter friends, something I was writing  to show my son (when he's old enough to care!), overnight, it became self-aware. It demanded structure, and marketability; it needed to be critically analysed in every word and sentence. The chance in perspective, the onslaught of self-doubt, were inevitable, but I guess we all go through them.

And the more we face that cold page, the more we realise we can. And that we enjoy it. And that we can't leave it alone. And that it plays on, the interweaving of characters and plot-lines and insights and tableaux, whether we want it to or not.

And that we have...
To keep...
Typing...

(I swear my family are going to kill me).

This moment should be celebratory, but my writer friends have tormented me with enough horror stories about What Comes Next... no starry-eyed illusions for me!

I'm chuffed to have finished - but find myself oddly bereft. I'm twiddling, looking for things to occupy my brain and time - and finding the plot for the second one is already laying itself out, unrolling like a length of multi-coloured ribbon.

The belt-sander is ready and waiting for the weekend.

And so, as they say, it begins...

Yes, it's that time again - this time an interview with Sarah Miskelly aka Lunabee, the lovely lady genius who designed this...




I have to have it. This is not a choice, you  understand.

Anyway, as ever, Sarah's interview about how it feels to be a girl in a man's world is now up on Forces of Geek!