February Reading

Around the end of December, I realised that January was going to be a hectic month. By the 31st, I had to:

• Finish planning and write Symphonie Magnifique;
• Finish researching, plan and write The Man Who Ate Germany, a piece on German unification under Bismark for SPM;
• Work with Allegra to plan and write a piece on being a Steampunk every day instead of just for gatherings and conventions for SPM;
• Think about, plan and write my story for an anthology being published through Vagrants Among Ruins;
• Read and review Hartman the Anarchist for SPM;
• And I’ve just found out about a Big Finish competition to pitch an idea for an audio drama featuring the Fifth Doctor (the best Doctor) and Nyssa.

In most realities, any one of the above would take a whole month.

I impressed myself and submitted Symphonie Magnifique to Crossed Genres on the 13th. I’ve since been working with Bismark, the mad Junker. I’m in London for the Steampunk Spectacular this weekend, but I still have confidence that it will all be done on time.

The anthology story has had to be pushed back due to factors outside my control. Partly, I’m relieved. I’m also partly annoyed, because I had a nascent, half-formed idea which I was beginning to nurture when I found I’d have to somehow keep the embryo warm but in status.

All this unfortunately means that I don’t have time for reading this month. Well, I do, but only reading which serves the Greater Good. That’s annoying, because I got some books for Christmas and spent the few pence I had left from my wages this month on more books. So, February I’m going to read. And no one can stop me!

As well as all the magazines and 'zines, we have:

• The Judge Dredd/Batman Files and Vendetta in Gotham. Seriously, Dredd vs. Batman? The first scene, the first scene, has Batman squaring off against Judge Death.
• Grandville. Written by Bryan Talbot and inspired by the work of nineteenth-century French illustrator Gerand, who worked under the pseudonym Grandville and frequently drew anthropomorphic animals. When it was claimed by both the furry scene and Steampunk scene, I decided I had to get it. It arrived on Tuesday, and it’s a beautiful book. It’s hard-backed and the covers are textured like those volumes from the 60’s which still lurk on my parent’s bookshelves, and the inside covers have an almost marbled design which echoes those same books. The binding is solid… in short, it’s turned all the shortcomings of graphic novel production into things to be proud of.
• Steampunk. Steampunk short stories collected and edited Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. I’d be a fool to walk away. Especially because I submitted Of Mice and Journeymen to the follow-up anthology, Steampunk Reloaded.
• The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar. Difficult though it’s been for me to accept, the world of SF/F has tended to be dominated by white, western, able-bodied men. The strange new worlds and brave new civilisations imagined have, a lot of times, had WWAM values at their core no matter the fantastical creatures which populate them, and the colonies and cities of the future are images of our western metropolises. It takes delicacy and skill to open up new cultures to old minds like mine, and I trust Lavie’s judgement to collect stories which, above any sort of agenda, are stories. They entertain, create and are driven by ideas and characters first and foremost. I brought this book because I need to read it and because the publishers need to be supported for producing it. Also, the publishers need to be supported!
• Crimea, by Trevor Royle. The Crimean war is, in my opinion, the Steampunk European war. In the comfortable houses of those in charge, it was a cluster-fuck of diplomatic and military blunders with each side only being saved by the disasters of the other. In the tents of the soldiers, it was filled with breath-taking acts of humanity and bravery by both sides which have become part of our treasured history. It was also the first ‘media war’, the battlefield ending up on the breakfast tables of London the same way the Vietnam war was beamed live into the living rooms of a generation.

There are probably enough straight reviews out there already, but I may write something about the Apex book on it’s Amazon page as @apexjason would like some good reviews there (even if he wouldn’t send me a review copy :P). I’m sure I’ll be inspired to write something here by all my reading. And I’m expecting to reap bountiful harvests of fiction-fertilizer, especially for The Colossus Engine, my Crimea war story about a plucky group of rag-tag soldiers and their attempts to destroy Britain’s ‘ultimate weapon’ before it can be used.

And it looks like I’ll have a chance to put some of those fiction-flowers to good use: I’ve just got an email from Absent Willows about a new fiction contest they’re running. The universe may or may not be trying to tell me something, but I’m going to err on the side of caution and act like it is. After all, of all the things you could piss off the universe is probably one to avoid.

My Arbitrary Numbering System is Better than Yours

(I actually wrote this on Boxing Day, but didn't have access to the Internet to post it today...)

Jeff VanderMeer and his wife Ann are putting together an anthology of Steampunk short stories called Steampunk Reloaded. The catch is that all the stories have to have been previously published, which is kind of handy for me: The only 'Steampunk' story I have presentable is Of Mice and Journeymen. So, I sent it off for consideration. It'd be nice to be accepted, but my hopes aren't high. They say they want things outside of the of normal Victorian Gentlemen in steam-powered spaceships thing, but I think Journeymen is a bit too far out.

It's not long now before it's exactly a year before the decade of the noughties closes. Apart from three major terrorist attacks in the West, two wars, a world banking crises and a global recession, what the hell has happened this decade?

When I was growing up, my family didn't talk much about the past, about who they were or where they'd come from. There was this set of rules that our extended family worked within, which they never really explained and I never really picked up. (My brother managed to pick them up perfectly though, so I must have been doing something wrong.) Now we're all older, they're a bit more open and I'm a bit more emotionally sensitive.

I spent Christmas Day with my parents, my brother and his finance, and my aunt and uncle. Everyone apart from me, my mother and my aunt (her sister) went to see where my dad works (I'd seen it already), and my aunt started talking.

When they were young, both my maternal grandparents worked. Their children--my mum, my aunt and my uncle--were looked after by a friend a few doors down who had four kids of about the same ages. I'm reliably informed that chaos--and in a few cases, bloodshed--ensued. The children grew up, my mum became a party girl, my aunt became the party girl's older sister and my uncle got into cars. The kids down the road grew up, one joining the army at fifteen, one moving to Australia, the others going their own way too.

The one who joined the army had six weeks leave, and came to see his childhood playmates. Knowing what was what, my aunt kept making excuses and leaving the strapping young lad and my mother the party girl in the room, alone together. Boys, you see, always came around to see her.

It wasn't until my mother cornered her sister in the kitchen and told her that the strapping young army lad hadn't come all this way to be left in the room with the sister of the girl he was in love with that something clicked.

And the best part is that they were married and lived happily ever after, the army lad and my aunt.

Childhood playmates becoming life-long partners. Isn't that the kind of wonderful thing you don't expect to see outside of cheap TV shows? Apparently it happens in my family, too.

(My uncle's career in the army was far from life-long and happy. It's a bit of a shame I can't talk in depth with him about it because it could be a real light on my opinions on armed forces, but I'm not going to poke old, open wounds.)

I'm not going to use that story in anything I write, because I don't want to write cheap TV shows. It's a lovely story, though, perhaps all the better because I'm not going to annex it. It can just stay as it is, a little slice of my family history.