The move went well, even though the piano didn’t make it (the movers hadn’t foreseen the lift wouldn’t be large enough, and it takes special people to move a fragile piano upstairs). The H is a little sad, but normally we should have it on Monday.

Our flat has been completely done over, and it’s very pretty (parquet floor, nice kitchen with all-new appliances, and the suppression of a wall that cost us space in the living room).

I’m also close to the new job (about half an hour, as opposed to the hour I used to commute before), which definitely feels nice.

Computer’s still in storage, so I’m typing this from the small laptop–and, of course, we’re in a room full of boxes (they’re winning, trust me). And yeah, writing has been pretty much not happening in this corner of the woods…

And our move has been under the sign of Doctor Who: we finished up the Tennant specials during the packing of boxes (nothing extraordinary, though I can’t quite understand the bile against them. They’re pretty average episodes with nothing special, except perhaps “Waters of Mars”, and “The End of Time”, which doesn’t have a fantastic scenario, but is worth it just for Timothy Dalton as a Time Lord 🙂 ). And our new, mini living room setup was christened with the first few Matt Smith specials (so far, I like Smith more than Tennant, and I have to say “The Eleventh Hour” was a terrific ep).

Now, if only we could have a TARDIS to move things around…

6600 words total. It’s mostly going very fast because I’m combining existing sections rather than writing them from scratch.
(also, yes, if I keep this up, I should exceed my target of 30k by a large margin–prov. total is in the high 40ies. However, I probably have tons of things to prune from the worldbuilding, which should help)

To tide you over: Gareth L. Powell has just released his SF novel The Recollection with Solaris:

(and if that cover doesn’t convince you to check out the book, try this handy summary over at the Solaris website)

The blurb is bittersweet, though, and reminds me that today is the day of Colin Harvey’s funeral–my thoughts go out to his family and friends. Still angry, and very sad at the hole he leaves behind him.

Isn’t it pretty?

(Chinese print purchased in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Sorry about the wonkiness on the edges, I had to weigh the scrolls down with something, so I basically cropped the picture to get an unobstructed view… I love the little house perilously perched atop the mountains–not very visible in the small version, but much better in the large one)

Am home from Worldcon. It was a good one, though I’m thoroughly exhausted at the moment: con fatigue + jetlag does not make a happy writer, or indeed sane human being…

More later when I have had some sleep (though a quick impressed shoutout to American Airlines for managing to transfer both us and our luggage in under 30 minutes at Fort Worth airport. Compared to this, the 30 min wait at the French end feels painfully under-efficient…)

I was stunned to learn this morning that my friend and fellow AR author Colin Harvey had died of a stroke. I’ve known Colin for a while–I met him at my first Eastercon, way back in 2008; and then again at Worldcon for the launch of Angry Robot. We saw each other at Eastercon each year; and he was nice and friendly, and funny and generous as he could always be, introducing me to a bunch of people, and quite happily chatting away around a beer or a coffee. The last time I met him in person was at this year’s Eastercon, where he briefly dropped by–intending to use the rest of the holiday to spend some quiet time with his wife. As usual, he had plenty of projects he wanted to tackle–from anthologies he wanted to edit to his novel in progress, and to the courses in film-making he took at Bristol university–and I had been looking forward to meeting him again next year. Now, of course, all I’m left with is the painful knowledge I won’t meet him again.

I’ve only read Colin’s recent work, the two novels he wrote for AR–he had a way all his own of making gritty, deprived futures feel real, and to create sympathetic characters who struggled against oncoming disasters. He also did so much for the field, by working hard on Bristolcon, and by editing those wonderful anthologies (I still have my signed copy of Future Bristol, though I think I’ll never look at it quite the same way).

The news leaves me stunned, and saddened, and angry at the unfairness of the world (but then, the world’s hardly ever fair). Colin leaves a gaping hole, and he will be much, much missed.

My thoughts go to his wife Kate and his family on this sudden loss.

(“San Francisco arises”. Famous French song 🙂 )

Having now safely arrived in San Francisco (I may not have been clear in my previous post, but we were delayed by 4 hours–we didn’t remain stuck in Chicago), we now set about to a. sightseeing, and b. eating out with friends.

(ok, there was c. awesome reading at Borderlands, thanks to Jude Feldman, Naamen Tilahun and the rest of the staff–and everyone who showed up to listen to me blather on about the Aztecs. Now I’m all set for the Worldcon reading 🙂 )

Thoughts on a.: wow, that is a hilly city. We have a map, but as Nick Mamatas pointed out, what we really need is a gradient map. We walked from Chinatown to Pacific Heights over a bunch of hills, and were mostly ready to collapse by the time evening came around.
Oh, and I’m in love with Chinatown. Definitely more Chinese than Vietnamese (unlike in Paris where the reverse holds true–we call it “Chinese district”, but there’s very little Chinese about it). I love the herborist shops and the teahouses (must snag a tea before I leave), and the crafts shops (lots of touristy stuff, but there’s some really pretty things. Friend and I got a bunch of paintings–mine’s of mountains lit by the setting sun, lost in a sea of clouds with a solitary little house on the peaks). And the food… mmmmm…
Thoughts on b: had drinks and/or food with Mike, Nick Mamatas, Kate Kligman, Jason S. Ridler, Erin Hoffman, Katherine Sparrow, Dario Ciriello and Keyan Bowes (hope I haven’t forgotten anyone…). The Chinese restaurant in particular (Chef Jia’s) had amazing food (mmm, vegetable potstickers), though we managed to eat three meals with it (the original meal, plus the leftovers over two other meals…). And the company was great, though we were a little frazzled by so much sightseeing. Have learnt useful things RE US food: “hot” is not hot at all on my scale, and “sweet” is definitely over the top for me.

To come: more sightseeing, and more food 🙂

And in shameless self-promotion items of the day, I forgot to post that if you’re in the UK, you can get the Kindle edition of Servant of the Underworld for £0.99, less than the price of a coffee. Offer’s good until the end of the summer if I recall correctly–so if you’ve always wanted to try out the book….

So…

We’d just landed in Chicago O’Hare, and the pilot was going on with the usual patter about the weather, when all of a sudden all the lights go off, and the cabin crew screams “we’re evacuating the plane, move move move now!”

As we were in the rear, I mostly had no time to panic–reaction only set in when I slid down the rear toboggan slide (interesting factoid: the landing is rather rough…), and saw three HUGE firefighters trucks bearing down on us with sirens wailing. Then we were standing on the grass and watching the trucks liberally drench the plane’s wheels with gallons of cold water.
Turns out, we had a bit of a bumpy landing, burst a tyre; and the aforementioned tyre caught fire. Just under the kerosene tanks, hence the panic.

As I said; we didn’t really have time to twig on to what was going, and everyone was fine. We did, however, miss the connection to San Francisco because the plane was impounded with all our stuff still on it, and we had to wait 2.5 hours in a no-mans’ land in order to get our stuff (including the passports), and clear Immigration.

Can I just say this was my first experience of evacuating a plane via the toboggan slides?

Yay, LJ is back!!!! Good to be in business again.

I’m in Brittany at my parents, enjoying a break before packing up for San Francisco and Worldcon (and dealing with the renovation works and the move, sigh). They did install Internet, but I’m going to try very hard not to use it–so, to all intents and purposes, this is a blackout 😉

In other, writerly news, you can pre-order the French version of Harbinger of the Storm on amazon, under the title Le Cinquième Soleil. It’s interesting to see the titles: book 1 was “Of Obsidian and Blood”, book 2 is “The Fifth Sun”. Quite a change from the English versions–which, to be fair, are completely untranslatable (you can translate them, they just make sucky French titles).

I don’t post about this much on the blog–but I just emptied my office space over at work, after 4 1/2 years of working with the same company. I’m only leaving tomorrow, but it already feels singularly empty…

Amusing fact of the day: you wouldn’t believe how many mugs and tea-boxes I managed to accumulate on my desk.

Amusing fact of the day #2: my office plant (aka Nyarlathotep, in the grand tradition of naming plants after Lovecraft creatures) is so big it was taking the entire car, and whenever I braked it would poke me in the shoulder. I think it was feeling lonely…

Got a nice going-away party; was given a nice Lancel women’s purse, and a set of Japanese cutting knives, which is going to be a nice change from our old low-end supermarket knife (the H was already eyeing them speculatively. I’m preparing bandages…).

Writing-wise: zero, as I spent the entire day moving boxes from the car to the office space, and back to the car–and then between the flat and the car…

–Bandits, ’cause it was fun and I could always use a rewatch
–Ladyhawke: it looks kind of cheesy, but I’ll admit I can’t resist Rutger Hauer as the good guy (for a change)

Also added to my wishlist: The Scent of Green Papaya, and possibly the Vertical Ray of the Sun. Yup, want to try out some Vietnamese movies. But first, I have a pile of stuff to watch…