SFFWorld Members big Blog thread

What's your favourite Kate Bush album, Stephen?
Well, that's an excellent question!
I think I'd have to say... Never For Ever.
It combines the extraordinary melodic beauty of her early work with a growing sophistication. Some exceptional songs on that album...
I also love The Ninth Wave too.
Of the later work, 50 Words For Snow was terrific.
 
I know Kate Bush only from 80s radio and music videos. I was 8 when I got my first LP (Thriller) in 1982 and on a low budget, so I bought little music until the end of that decade when I got my first CD player. I never got a Kate Bush LP or 7", but popular music from your youth often has a sentimental attraction. I am familiar with The Ninth Wave, b-side of Hounds of Love, right?

I'm going to look into the other titles you mentioned.
 
I am familiar with The Ninth Wave, b-side of Hounds of Love, right?
Yup. Like Stephen, my first album of Kate's was Never for Ever, which I borrowed in my first term at University and was reluctant to hand back. One of my abiding memories was listening to album looking over the campus as dusk was falling....it became a bit of a ritual.

I had come across the singles on the radio, but I feel that I really got this album. As a Genesis fan, I was attracted by the fact that Peter Gabriel was involved in one of the tracks (Breathing). It still brings a Cold War chill. But I loved every track on the album, and loved Kate dressing up as a bat on the back cover!

kate_bush_21.jpeg


I loved the Hounds of Love album, though: especially when on my first listen I got the sample from Night of the Demon straight away!
 
My online novel is free to read and I also have an author's blog with shorter compositions.
It's a self designed, professional quality website that loads in milliseconds, (in the Western U.S. anyhow)
Here's a link: https://unlawfulpresence.com
This is what the stuffy literary agents and traditional publishers are afraid of ...
 
If you caught "Hapthorn's Last Case," a Henghis Hapthorn novelette that ran in Lightspeed Magazine last fall, you might remember that it began with Old Earth's foremost freelance discriminator receiving an invitation to the launch of a new menu at Hapthorn's favorite eatery, Xanthoulian's.

If it occurred to you that you never receive invitations to gourmet dining in Olkney, and that made you feel sad, now is the time to cheer up. I've just sent out to all my patrons a copy of the very invitation Hapthorn received and which led him into mystery and danger (as things often do). If you're one of my patrons, time to check your inbox.

You will have joined the "select coterie of the cognoscenti." Regrettably, the date of the event, on Fourthday, 12th Omber, will not come around for several hundred thousand years.

But if you missed the story in Lightspeed, here's a link: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/hapthorns-last-case/
 
A GOD IN CHAINS, my new Dying Earth fantasy, is now available for pre-order in paperback and Kindle editions.

Here’s the blurb:

He calls himself Farouche, after a character from legend, but his reality is that his memories and identity were stolen from him by a secret enemy.

In a far-future world of wizards and walled cities, he finds himself trailing a wealthy merchant’s caravan across a dusty plain. Possessed of a soldier’s skills, he hires on with the merchant and begins to build a life. But his efforts to discover his past reveal a dark prospect: was he a participant in a notorious massacre of innocents?

Will Farouche come to know the truth? Will he survive the journey across a lawless land to the remote city of Olliphract, ruled by half-mad thaumaturges? And when he finally lays bare the plot in which he has been ensnared, will it be too late?

Matthew Hughes delivers another dark fantastical adventure set in a decadent Dying Earth, where men and half-men and even the gods themselves contend for earthly power and unearthly prizes.

Here’s a link to the Amazon listing:
 
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Where to find me at WorldCon (Dublin):

It starts with a kaffeeklatch. That's where readers and fans sit down in a small group with an author and talk about whatever moves them. I'll be hosting one on Saturday, August 19, from 14:00 to 14:50. The location, at the Dublin Convention Centre, is Level 3 Foyer.

Later the same day, I'll be on a panel entitled "A gun, a gut, and three ex-wives: the appeal of the gumshoe in SFF." That one takes place in Wicklow Hall 2B, from 19:00 to 19:50.

Then on Sunday, August 18, they're giving me twenty minutes to do a reading, from 20:00 to 20:20 in Liffey Room 3.

And, finally, they've got me scheduled for an autographing session, the afternoon of Monday, August 19. But by then I'll be on a plane back to Canada. I should be able to move it to a better time.

And, at all and any time, I've happy to stop and talk, sign a book, take a picture, accept a beer.
 

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