News

[gaiusbaltar]

well shadow of the scorpion must be out somewhere (US?) because i got a copy from a seller on amazon. and it's gooood only just started last night (got it yesterday) but bonus points for jebel krong being mentioned in the same book as cormac already!

[lolrus]

I got one yesterday too. Book Depository £7.26 with free delivery. Should start it this evening.

[gaiusbaltar]

ha! same place

[nealasher]

Righto, back at a fast constant Internet connection and time to start catching up. First off, I'll be doing a couple of signings this month in Colchester and London. Here's the shop shop addresses:


Waterstone’s, Culver Square, Colchester.

Saturday 22nd November, 1-2pm

Forbidden Planet, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London

Thursday 27th November, 6-7pm

[gaiusbaltar]

Righto, back at a fast constant Internet connection and time to start catching up. First off, I'll be doing a couple of signings this month in Colchester and London. Here's the shop shop addresses:


Waterstone’s, Culver Square, Colchester.

Saturday 22nd November, 1-2pm

Forbidden Planet, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London

Thursday 27th November, 6-7pm

ooh sweetness! glad to see you back, neal :-) london one is on my birthday so i'll try and make that!

[nealasher]

Ah well, I've just done a video interview for Robert Grant of Sci-Fi-London. He'll (hopefully) be editing out my ums and ers to put it up sometime anon. Not sure if I'll look at it myself. I've hated audio interviews I've done because I tend to gabble, lose track of what I was saying and generally don't 'perform' all that well. In the end, if I'd wanted to be a performer, I wouldn't have retreated to my bedroom all those years ago and started writing weird stories. That's the thing about this writing lark, it's not all about celebrity and being amusing and intelligent in front of an audience, it's about an utterly introvert pursuit in which you don' talk to people for hours on end.

[nealasher]

Well, there's a video interview with me up on the Sci-Fi-London site now, which will later be added to the list of interview on their .tv site. I haven't yet watched it myself but Caroline tells me it's OK - not too many ums and ers.

SCI-FI-LONDON was lucky enough to meet Neal Asher at his Essex home to talk about his latest book, The Gabble & Other Stories, about writing and about 15 years of the Polity universe, David Fincher, Heavy Metal and the internet as a distraction from real work.

Now, I really really must get out of Christmas mode and do some of that real work.

[Hobbit]

Think it comes across OK, Neal.

This in-front-of-the-camera business is always trickier than you might think.

I'm always a little mortified when it happens to myself.

Mark

[nealasher]

I've reworked my website, check it out: http://freespace.virgin.net/n.asher

[nealasher]

Okay, a little while ago I finished The Departure, wrote a couple of synopses and some blurbs for it, then sent it off to Macmillan. Good response from the commissioning editor (bloody marvelous). Here’s one of the blurbs for you:


Like Wellsian war machines the shepherds stride into riots to grab up the ringleaders and drag them off to Inspectorate HQ for adjustment, unless they are in shredding mode, in which case their captives visit community digesters, or rather whatever of them has not been washed down the street drains.

Pain inducers are used for adjustment, and soon the Committee will have the power to edit human minds, but not yet, twelve billion human beings need to die before Earth can be stabilized, but by turning large portions of Earth into concentration camps this is achievable, especially when the Argus satellite laser network comes fully online…

Alan Saul has taken a different route to disposal, waking as he does inside a crate on the conveyor into the Calais incinerator. How he got there he does not know, but he does remember the pain and the face of his interrogator. Janus speaks to Saul through the hardware implanted in his skull, sketching the nightmare world for him. And Saul decides to bring it all crashing down…


Not sure if this is what will be appearing on the back of the book, but it gives you a taste of what it’s all about.

http://theskinner.blogspot.com

[nealasher]

I just stuck this post up on my blog. Anyone here know about The Book Depository?

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/

A comment on the previous post is one I've been reading a lot from American readers. It is, apparently, difficult to obtain my books over there. The first reason for this is that Tor US doesn't publish them all, it's a shame, but what can I do?

However, some while ago someone directed my attention to The Book Depository which states on its website Free worldwide delivery on every book. If you go on there and stick my name in the search you get most of my books, and they're even discounted. For example, you can buy a copy of Gridlinked, in its nice new cover, for £4.75 including postage and packing. Still suspicious I checked out the 'to these location' bit and the USA is there. In fact there's a huge list of countries there. They also use Paypal.

Now, I haven't used The Book Depository myself so don't know how good it is or how true the promises on the website. I believe others have used it and been satisfied. Please, if any of you reading this do buy books through them, let me know how it went.

[nealasher]

I'm now a twitterer @nealasher for my sins.

[nealasher]

Here's a banner if anyone wants to use it:

[nealasher]

Damn me, my publisher didn’t change the locks when I popped outside for a cigarette. After four contracts for three books, plus a collection of short stories and two extras first published in America, over a million and a half words having passed under editorial pencils, they’re still not fed up with me. Even after having to tolerate a slightly drunk author wandering around Macmillan offices, snaffling any book that isn’t nailed down and secreting it in a Tesco carrier bag, they’re still prepared to put up with me. Wow!

Now, whilst progressively renewing my covers (using those superb Jon Sullivan pictures), Tor Macmillan have given me a five book contract, which I’ve signed. My last contract underwent a slight redesign with the last two books being swapped around so that The Departure, a novel based on short stories that appeared in my collection The Engineer ReConditioned, will be published last rather than second to last. This book will be the first of the ‘Owner Sequence’ comprising two further books titled Zero point and Jupiter War. After that I’m signed up for three as yet to be named books, so I’ll certainly be writing books for Macmillan for some years to come.

I see the future now. New employees at Macmillan will express momentary bafflement and surprise, “Neal Asher? I thought he was dead?” whereupon oldtimers will point nervously to a big iron-studded oak door, “We keep him in there”. Neophyte editors will be ushered through that door, “Keep to the right. Do not touch or approach the glass. You pass him nothing but soft paper…” Meanwhile, those working in book shops will check their latest delivery and dubiously eye the sagging ‘A’ shelf. A Hogwarts trained shelf-stacker will remove the books from their box with iron tongues, whilst a second employee affixes the chains.

Thanks all at Macmillan, it’s great working with you.

If anyone has any press queries, please email cdothealyatmacmillandotcodotuk

[Hobbit]

Congratulations, Neal. Good news!

Mark