It is 4th April, and that means is it exactly two months until DARK RUN comes out in English across the world! Well, apart from North America, I think you have to wait. Sorry. Also, Fantastika in Russia have bought rights to have it translated into Russian. Someone decided to buy what I wrote and put it in another language. ‘Excited’ doesn’t really begin to cover any of this.
Only I suppose it does, really, because I still have the rest of my life to be going on with and I can’t be walking around just gibbering with excitement all the time. I still have my day job to perform full-time (at the moment, anyway), I still have my band to play in, I still have cats to feed, last night I went out and spent most of the evening dancing at Rock City, tomorrow I’m going walking in the Peak District. I would be pretty damn insufferable if I did all those things just wandering around going “I HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT SOON I HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT SOON”, so I have to shunt it all to the back of my mind and just get on with stuff, and not least because those things deserve all my attention in their own right and I’d miss out on the enjoyment if I was distracted. But of course, if it’s one of those days at work then there’s far worse positions to be in than being able to step back and go “eh, I’ve got a novel coming out in two months.”
Last night one of my friends asked me about my book’s release date and associated stuff, but qualified it by saying ‘I wondered about asking you this because I thought “I bet he gets tired of talking about this”… but then I thought, “no, I bet he doesn’t really!”‘ And that’s the thing: it’s not that I get tired talking about it as such, I just worry that everyone’s going to think that I’m bragging endlessly. I’m proud, of course – why wouldn’t I be? – but there needs to be a limit. I’m well aware that I have a tendency to ramble on about stuff I find interesting, somewhat oblivious to whether the person I’m talking to is equally interested, so I don’t want to respond to a polite enquiry with a verbal essay on the life of a soon-to-be-published author. That’s what this place is for, for crying out loud.
ANYWAY, if you want to read the first chapter of DARK RUN before the book’s released then you can do so by the simple method of purchasing the current issue of GRIMDARK MAGAZINE from here. You get some excellent short stories, plus a couple of interviews, and excerpts both from DARK RUN and from THE SWORD OF THE NORTH by the Crown Prince of Grimdark (and the guy who introduced me to my agent) Luke Scull. It’s well worth your time and money, let me assure you.
Purchased, and I can’t wait to read it.
And then I got to thinking about who would be a good Logen Ninefingers, as that question was also posed in the same issue – and I thought of several actors, but then I thought to myself “yes, but who do I know in in real-life…” – and I will come back to you on that…..
R
…you have me intrigued.