The Scotsman Abroad | The Deleted Testament of Hal Duncan

Sorry it's been so long! I'll explain The Situation in a few days, I swear.

For the time being, as I'm sure some of you know by now, it was my pleasure yesterday to help tease Testament—the first novel to come from my fellow Scotsman Hal Duncan in damn near a decade—over on Tor.com.

Testament itself is a properly exciting prospect, but to tell the truth, anything that has to do with Hal has a special place in my heart. You must be wondering why. Well, I spent a wee while explaining exactly that in my first pass at the aforementioned article—though I realised the error of my ways before hitting submit on the thing, given that said section would surely be rather more relevant here on The Speculative Scotsman than on Tor.com. 

Without further ado, then—a deleted scene from The Testament of Hal Duncan:

It’s been damn near a decade since The Book of All Hours blew my tiny mind. 

I was still a student in 2005—of English literature, largely, alongside a spot of philosophy. As I recall, I was within sniffing distance of my degree, and well pleased to be, but by then I’d become so sick of my subjects that the prospect of never having to read anything else ever again had real appeal. 

Clearly, it wasn’t to be, because come the conclusion of my course, a couple of books broke through. These books—books like The Scar by China Mieville and City of Saints & Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer alongside Hal Duncan’s tremendous two-volume debut—opened my eyes to a whole new world of words. In short, it’s fair to say that Ink and Vellum helped made a speculative fiction devotee of me. 

Duncan has been pretty prolific as an author and as an editor in the short story scene since—see Fabbles the first, Scruffians! and Caledonia Dreamin’—and as my two year tenure as co-curator of the Short Fiction Spotlight shows, I hope, I’m a huge fan of the form.

But sometimes a novel is needful. Sometimes an author requires the room long-form fiction allows to thoroughly explore a theme or an idea. To wit, I’ve been watching Notes from New Sodom like a hawk, and in April, the aforementioned author teased something called Testament. I reached out to find out more about the project post-haste, and today, it’s my pleasure to tease you about Testament in turn.

Read the remainder of the reveal right here.

Rest assured, in the interim, that you and I will talk again shortly.

Status Update | Google Drive of Doom

Last week, something horrible happened. Not something properly horrible—nobody's dead or anything, thank the heavens—but something went wrong behind the scenes of The Speculative Scotsman. Something that's made me more than a little miserable since.

Long story short: I broke the blog.

Long story long: I got myself a fancy new phone a month or so ago, namely an HTC One M8. It's proved a huge improvement on the Samsung Galaxy S2 I'd been toting about essentially since the turn of the century; hasn't hurt that it's so easy on the eye either.

In any event, it's an Android, so it's tied to Google from the ground up: the opposite of a problem insofar as it automatically imported most everything I needed from my old mobile. My contacts and whatnot. My pictures and preferences. Then, when I took a few photos, Google Drive offered to store them in the cloud. I said sure.

This was my first mistake.

I made my second when Google Drive decided to start syncing the thousands of images tied to my email address, which, as it happens, is also my Blogger login—to wit, every picture I had ever embedded in posts on TSS was about to be backed up. This seemed an almighty waste of space and time to yours truly, so I deleted these files from the list of images to sync. What I didn't realise I was doing was deleting the images from the internet as well.

Didn't take long for the penny to drop, but by then, the damage was done.

And here we are. Since bodging the blog, I've spent any number of hours uploading old images. It's taken days—days I don't have—but I've managed to redo 2014 to date. Only four more years of posts to go!

So if you were wondering what I've been so busy with in recent weeks: this. And I'm afraid I'm far from finished fixing my fuck-up. One day, eh?

In the interim, I ask only for your patience, dear readers. That said, your sympathies wouldn't go amiss...

Status Update | An Evil Easter

Over the Easter weekend, I was beside myself with surprise to find that I had a few hours free.

To be clear, this has not been the norm for me recently. Indeed, it's been brutal hereabouts this year: at home, 2014 to date has been a combination of sickness and sadness, and at work, with most of my students sitting their English exams soon, trying to keep on top of my various other obligations has been hard... hence the lack of late of what I want to call casual content here on The Speculative Scotsman.

With a little luck, though, that should be sorted shortly, and given the wonderful weather this weekend—oh what fun it was to sit in the sun!—suddenly it feels like summer is nearly here. I won't give anything away today, but I have big plans for the holidays, when they happen. Plans that I've been hatching for a period of years.

In any event, this weekend, I found myself with a few extra hours, and I deliberately did something different with them. Something I wasn't sure I ever would do. Readers... I started playing a certain game.

And I discovered, despite my doubts, that I am prepared to die. Again and again and again, in a cycle of violence I was sure would make me hateful. But it hasn't so far. How about that?

That's really all I wanted to say. Dark Souls II has dibs on the rest of my day. :)

But hey, if there are any old hands out there, a few words of advice for a Dark Souls amateur would be very welcome.

Season's Greetings | The Fun of the Future

Four years to the day my time with Tigana compelled me to launch this blog, 2014 is here, and though I'm still very much in holiday mode, and of course, horribly hungover, I wanted to take a second to say: welcome to the future, folks!

I can only hope it's as bright as Orange promised.

So what's to come in 2014? Well, one wonders. For me at least, not knowing is perhaps half the fun of the future — and I don't, in any great detail — but plenty, I expect, including a few fairly major changes. 

Before all that, though, stay tuned for Top of the Scots. I already have my lists locked. All that remains is for me to explain, because I imagine my choices might surprise some of you. Expect more on that momentarily. And in the meantime?

Sincerely, readers dear: I hope you all have a happy New Year. :)

Status Update | A Lion King Christmas

I don't know about you, but with Christmas day just a week away, I'm finally feeling festive.

Not least because last night I realised a dream more than a decade in the making, when the entirety of my family got together to attend a performance of The Lion King live. Simba's spotty performance did not ultimately undermine what was a wonderful show overall; a real visual feast that I'm so pleased to have seen.

I've been humming 'Be Prepared' ever since leaving the theatre, and this morning it occurred to me that I could do worse things in life than take Scar's advice.

Which is my way of saying that though I'm usually one of the very first folks to bang on about the year's best books — Top of the Scots has in the past happened in early December — in 2013 my other obligations have regrettably had to take precedence. I've had to stockpile columns, including this morning's edition of the British Genre Fiction Focus, and ready a fair few reviews to run on Tor.com over the holidays. Truth be told, I've been so busy in November and December to date that it only just hit me that Christmas is coming.

And you know what? I want to enjoy it, so instead of spending the few days remaining to me this year putting together Top of the Scots, I'm going to give myself over to the Christmas spirit. To wit, I warrant you won't be hearing a whole lot from me over the holidays, but when I do get back to blogging, it will be worth the wait. Scots honour!

For a sneak peek at a few of my favourites, check out the Tor.com Reviewers' Choice, in which I count down the three best British books I've read in 2013. I've contributed to another end of year feature as well: Strange Horizons has a few hundred words from me about the books I've gotten most lost in this year.

Now to lose myself in festive merriment...

You all have a brilliant Christmas, and a happy New Year, you hear?

Status Update | Sayonara, Summer

By gum, it's been a busy week or three! Not here, clearly. But with the summer well and truly behind us — sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's true — the classes I teach in the evenings are in session again, and I dare say I may have overcommitted elsewhere in an attempt to fill some of all the free time that I hardly remember happening.

I suppose I have had a few hours to relax. I certainly played the hell out of Saints Row 4 — just the kind of mindless madness I needed, really — and the other half and I both stole a moment to learn all about Sam and the family from Gone Home. I never thought I'd be nostalgic about the mid-90s, but The Fullbright Company showed me just wrong I was. Yet Gone Home is a game as much about the future as the past: it's a glimpse into an age — fast-approaching, I hope — of more mature gaming.

Now that I think on it, I've seen a few movies, too: Star Trek Into Darkness, which wasn't half as awful as many made out, and Zero Dark Thirty, which impressed the hell out of me — and made me want to rewatch Kathryn Bigelow's vampire masterpiece Near Dark. I'm hoping to sit down with World War Z before the weekend, as well.

What? I said movies, not new movies. What do you expect? I haven't been to the cinema in nearly a year...

But by and large I've been filling my every minute with fiction. You'll start seeing the fruits of all that on The Speculative Scotsman shortly, but for the moment, recent highlights have included More Than This by Patrick Ness and Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of my favourite book of 2012. Still to come, there's some good-looking new Lavie Tidhar, Parasite by Mira Grant, Proxima by Stephen Baxter, and — of course — Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, which I've been reading this week... alas, I can't say much more about it than that.

For the foreseeable here, I have two more great guest posts in the can, not a few related reviews, a temperature to take and an announcement to make. The blog'll be back in business in a bit, basically, but no less than ten imminent deadlines mean I'll be occupied with other obligations a little longer.

Meantime, I hope you've been keeping up with the British Genre Fiction Focus over on Tor.com. This week's column went up earlier this afternoon, in fact: there's some Adam Nevill news and a bit about Ireland's bid to host Worldcon in 2019, but the starring attraction is a whole lot of talk about The Time Traveller's Almanac, complete with a mini-interview with Ann VanderMeer about the process of putting together what is an incredibly ambitious anthology. Read all about right here.

Status Update | On Belgium and Banks

Home again, home again... but I'm afraid I didn't bring my jiggedy-jig.

Don't get me wrong, I have a bloody lovely time on holiday — Antwerp was brilliant, the beer was as well, and sometimes I forget what a wonderful thing it is to read for pleasure — but the bad news about Iain Banks' passing broke the day after I got back, almost immediately after I'd finished The Player of Games, and it pretty much knocked me for six.

Kept me busy yesterday as well. In the afternoon, I wrote a long tribute to the dearly departed author for Tor.com — you can read it here right now, but I'm hoping to share it with you all on The Speculative Scotsman tomorrow — then in the evening I had a couple of classes to teach, during which I discussed a particularly fantastic chapter from The Wasp Factory with couple of the older kids I tutor.

For what it's worth, they seemed to enjoy it. And if just one of them went home and ordered a copy, my work here is done.

Or has it just begun?

In any event, I'm going to hold off on publishing the special something I mentioned before I went back to Belgium. Dragons are awesome, obviously, but I need to be happy to introduce this thing with the unbridled delight it deserves, and I'm just not now.

Completely missed E3 as well, which is complete unlike me. I'm still hoping to stay unspoiled, the better to watch a press conference or four later today or tomorrow, but let's face it: this is the internet.

Actually, now that I mention it, this is the internet — fancy that! — so you tell me: what should I watch? Any events I can afford to ignore? Or were they all a wash?

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Back to Belgium

I would say it's been ages since I had a holiday, but strangely, that's not the case. The thing of it is, when I went to Skye last, I took my work with me. I spent four of the five days I was there pecking away at a few reviews I was due. A bad move, however necessary it felt; it left me wondering whether I'd had any time off at all.

So what I thought I'd do was go somewhere that would preclude the possibility of me doing much in the way of work — excepting a little light reading.

And the answer? Belgium again. Because of the beer. And the resulting drunkenness. :)

The other half and I plan to stay in Antwerp this time, as opposed to Brussels, which was a bit too much of a tourist trap for my liking. Then again, the beer — I mean the biere — made everything better, and I expect it will again.

Long story short, I'll be back before you know it — sadly a week was all we had to work with — and things will be normal enough on the blog in my absence. I already have two reviews in the queue, and there's something special in the works as well. If it doesn't go live while I'm in Antwerp, expect to see said soon.

Anyway, here are a few of the books I've packed in my bag:

The Adjacent is for review, it's true, but Americanah and The Player of Games are for pleasure; if I write about either of them, it'll be because I choose to — an ever more important distinction in my eyes.

Anyway, cheers, m'dears!

Giving the Game Away | Among Other Things

It's been a quiet couple of weeks here on The Speculative Scotsman, hasn't it?

Sincerely, I'm sorry about that. I've been meaning to blog about any number of things, but I just haven't had the chance till today. I've been sick as a dog, you see, and what little time I've had with my wits about me I've had no choice but to dedicate to deadlines, which of course grow ever more pressing the longer you put them off.

Funny how that happens.

Anyway, as of today, the most desperate of my deadlines are defeated, and I'm officially over the worst of whatever it was that ruined my Easter week, so expect regular service to resume soon.

For the very moment, before we get any further out from the Among Others giveaway so many of you fine folks entered, allow me to announce the lucky winners. They are:

• Darren Goldsmith
• Kristini Wilde
• and Kunal Modi

If you so happen to be one of these three people, expect a brief email from me later today to confirm your details. Then, thanks to the kindness of the fine folks at Constable & Robinson, a copy of the brand new British edition of Jo Walton's wonderful novel will wing its way to wherever you are.

Massive congratulations to the winners—and commiserations, of course, to the less lucky. There's always next time!

Now in advance of a full-fledged post here on TSS, I've blogged a bunch about Iain Banks in the latest edition of the British Genre Fiction Focus, as I said I would last week when the devastating news about his health broke. Later on, there's discussion of a number of other stories—including Joe Abercrombie's comic book and the hundred best novels ever according to a superteam of teachers—but truth be told, today's column is mostly an ode to Iain Banks, whose work has always occupied a special place in my dark heart.

With that, I'll say good day. But there'll be more to look forward to tomorrow, I promise!

We Interrupt This Broadcast | For a Short Sojourn in Skye

I appear to be going on holiday again!

Like last time, I'm just taking just a little trip up to the isle of Skye, which is within a day's drive from where I stay, but still far enough away that it feels like another world. The fact that the internet is almost impossible to access on the island plays into that in a fairly major way.

Now I won't be gone for long, but I expect to be incredibly busy when I get back, so expect normal service to resume ten days or thereabouts from today. To entertain you all in my absence, I'm going to schedule several of the capsule reviews I've written for the Short Fiction Spotlight to date. I do hope you enjoy them.

In addition, I'll be keeping all my usual commitments. Look out for a new Spotlight to go live on Tor.com on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, the British Genre Fiction Focus will be published as per usual. My editors over there are also sitting on two reviews—of two truly beautiful books, namely The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson—that they might well unleash within the next week. 

Relatedly, here are a few of the books I'll be packing tomorrow morning:

One of these things is not like the other! Indeed, one of these things I'm bringing because you all told me to... though Stefan's recent post on Civilian Reader has rather dampened my enthusiasm regarding Assassin's Apprentice.

In any case, these days (it gives me great pleasure to say) short stories a regular part of my reading diet, so I'll be taking a few anthologies too:

Fine fodder, one might imagine, for subsequent Spotlights...

Wish me happy holidays, all! :)

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Happy New Year 2013

Hello again, everyone.

I'm back! If only briefly...

At the crack of dawn tomorrow, the other half and I will be making the drive up to the Isle of Skye, because we find ourselves in need of some time off from our time off. Also it's awesome. :)

To wit, tonight's celebrations will be scaled back a bit from those of previous years, but I can't think of a better place to take in the first day of the New Year than here, really:

Our bags are apt to be madly packed before we first foot a few folks after the bells ring in 2013, but of course I've already sorted the important things out.

Which is to say... the books I'm bringing:

I'm so keen to read each of these three that I couldn't tell you which I'll pick to begin with... and understand that I usually have my next five novels figured out months in advance!

Also coming with us, a handful of movie Blu-rays - the catch-up, it's safe to say, is well underway - and one particularly telling Christmas gift:

Finally, right? :P

Well, wish us luck with our first campaign. I can hardly wait to play!

Meanwhile, you all have an awesome New Year, you hear?

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Christmas Wishes

In my introduction to Top of the Scots 2012, I talked about what a year this has been for me. What a fantastic, phenomenal, unforgettable year!

It's also been an exhausting one, loathe as I am to admit it.

To wit, I'm doing the unthinkable: I'm taking some time off.

Beginning today, I'm off work for two weeks, the better to let the kiddies enjoy their Christmas... and it occurred to me that maybe I should, too. So! I'm going to be AFK for approximately a fortnight.

Which isn't to say there won't be awesome content on The Speculative Scotsman to entertain you all in my absence. I already have a good few reviews in the queue, and I may yet appear out of the ether to blog about what Santa brought me or some such thing.

I wouldn't count on it, is all. By and large, I plan to spend my holiday cosy in the company of friends and family, and if the powers that be judge me to have been very, very good this year, I may just take the New Year in on the windswept, snow-strewn Isle of Skye. Unappealing as that must sound to some, know that there's nothing I'd love to do more — so here's hoping!

Before I go, though, let me wish you all a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year. I wouldn't be doing this thing day and night if I didn't love it, and you folks are the reason I do. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for that.

But they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so...

What more is there to say than that?

Actually, hang on — there is one thing. Remember the giveaway I blogged about before Top of the Scots 2012 kicked off? Well, we have a winner!

Congratulations to David Finley from North Carolina. You, sir, shall be hearing from me shortly.

To everyone else who entered... there's always next time, I guess. Would that I had a hundred copies of The Vorrh to give away!

With which, I'm going to go squish the gifts under my Christmas tree. :D

We'll talk again in not too long, I don't doubt, but for the time being... you all have an awesome holiday, you hear?

We Interrupt This Broadcast | The Maltese Scotsman

Okay, so remember when I said I was hoping to head off for a holiday shortly? Well, my plans came together a little quicker than I was thinking initially. Everything fell into place so incredibly quickly, in fact, that I don't even have a moment to consult you all like I tend to do about what books to take away with me.

Long story less long: I'm going to Malta, guys. And I'm leaving... this evening!

But not to worry. I'll be back before you know it -  in time for Halloween week - and in my absence The Speculative Scotsman should be business as usual. There will be news, there will be reviews, and I should have access to the internet while I'm away, so if anything huge comes up, you can be sure I'll blog about it.

Well, as sure as you can ever be with me. :/

For obvious reasons my time today is awfully short, so I won't burble on much longer. But I did want to mention the books I mean to read over the next ten days.

I've packed two fantasy novels: Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates (again), and A Different Kingdom by Paul Kearney.

I'm also going to be bringing one spooky book - namely The Ravenglass Eye by Tom Fletcher - as well as Osama by Lavie Tidhar... because it's about bloody time, and what with all the awards it's won, I can't really go wrong, can I? 

Maybe you're wondering why no sci-fi. Well, I only finished reading Great North Road on Wednesday - stay tuned to Tor.com for my review in the not-too-distant - meanwhile Helix Wars was the week before, and I like to hop from genre to genre instead of spending too long immersed in any one.

Anyway, I really should pack some pants, so I'll sign off for now. Hard as it is for even me to believe, the next time we talk, I'll be in Malta.

Wish me warmth! :D

But I Digress | Reading Rituals

Well, that's it, isn't it? Summer's over.

And winter, of course, is coming. I've felt the frost already, and if you squint into the slate-grey skies, you can nearly see the snow. Hell, if the supermarkets are to be believed, it's a fine time to start thinking about Christmas.

But let's not get quite so far ahead of ourselves!

Let's lament the end of the summer before we start celebrating the beginning of winter.

'Twas a mean season for me, I suppose. I had hoped to take a few weeks away from work over the holidays, but other factors intruded: a death in the family, changing obligations, sudden monetary troubles and so on. All the while the kiddies kept coming in, so I kept showing up to the education centre I teach English at.

As it stands, the plan is to steal off somewhere warm as soon as humanly possible - more on that as the story develops - but I'm running on empty at the moment. Have been since I got back from America in March: coming back from a life-changing experience only to have life kick in immediately will do that, I know now.

It hasn't, however, been doom and gloom all day and night in my little corner of Scotland. The rare sunny days we've had hereabouts have been a huge highlight, because earlier in 2012, I got myself a hobby: I decided the time had come to turn the rampant wilderness I called my back yard into a proper goddamn garden.

Well, it isn't perfect yet - and I don't imagine I'll be able to do much more with it till next spring - but six months of back-breaking, at times bloody labour later, I've got a lawn, a rock garden, and a pretty paved path between the two. A pretty paved path that proved the perfect place to drop a pair of camping chairs and improvise a table.

I have many happy memories of afternoons in my brand new garden this summer. Yes, the weather could have been better, but often enough there was some sun, and whenever there was, I took out my book, and I read.

And I read and I read and I read!

This became rather a habit. A ritual, if you will — which brings me to my point.

Now that I can't go out there, under pain of mild frostbite or a simple soaking, I've had to say goodbye to the garden for the time being. That I can live with. What I've having more trouble overcoming is the loss of the spot I spoke of, where I spent, shall we say, some serious time reading.

I'm a creature of habit, I confess. Most of what I read, I read in bed, immediately before nodding off. I did this all through the summer, in addition to which I had a couple of hours every couple of days with my book in the back yard. Absent that, it's back to burning the midnight oil until some replacement pattern arises, so my reading, recently, has dropped off dramatically.

How I miss my afternoons in the garden! :(

On the bright side, this got me thinking. Am I just an oddity, or do we all have specific spots where we get the bulk of our bookworming done? Places where we can go, or things that we do, to get away from it all, you know?

With so many other things competing for our attention, reading for a protracted period - for me at least - isn't easy these days. Without my camping chair in the garden, I'm having trouble getting through more than a book a week.

So I want to know: what are your reading rituals?

Inspire me, people, please!

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Literally... But I'll Live

Ladies and gentlemen: today on The Speculative Scotsman, we're on autopilot.

And not, I should stress, because I'm busy, or better yet, busy being lazy. Oh no, not today. Today, we're on autopilot because the power company - I'll not name names - has opted, in its infinite wisdom, to cut the electricity to my entire town. From 7AM till 7PM.

At least they're being sort of symmetrical. 

(I'm the kinda guy who can get behind a thing like that. Does that make me crazy? Anyway.)

In fairness to the folks, they let us know that this was on the cards a couple of weeks ago. I mean, they didn't give us any choice in the matter, and they're demanding access to the property at an ungodly hour OR ELSE, but at least we had a little while to acclimatise ourselves to the idea. So there's that.

And I have. That is to say, in time, I acclimatised to the idea. At first, I'll admit it, I declared a state of emergency. I started stockpiling bottled water, bought in a vast amount of snacks — strictly for sustenance, you understand. Furthermore, I stuffed the laptop so full of crap to keep me distracted during this offline apocalypse that I'll have to take some serious time to delete it all after this day is done. Assuming I make it.

But of course I'll make it. I knew that even then. Still, in this day and age, the idea of a whole day without power is sort of a scary thought, isn't it? And if not scary, then cruelly, unusually inconvenient. I mean, I'm going to get nothing done.

Then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, no power - the absence of even the prospect of productivity - could be... brilliant.

So, long story short: today, I'm going to luxuriate - albeit temporarily - in the old ways. I'm going to go without the web, and gladly. I'm going to without the blog, without Twitter, without a connection to anything of any sort, and damn it all, I'm going to enjoy it. No video games, no movies, no music.

I'm even going turn off my mobile phone, because who needs half measures?

Can you imagine?

I can. :)

I've got what looks to be a good book: namely Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey. I've got a warm blanket. I've got a pot, enough bottled water to sink the Starship Intrepid, and a camping stove to make coffee if it comes to that. I may well be hoping it does.

Wish me luck, everyone!

And here, between you and me, if you in the near-to-far future have the chance to get off the grid for a day, pause in your mad panic buying. Take a moment, the better to remember this most excellent advice:

I'll see you all on the other side, alright?

Letters From America | With A Little Help From My Friends

So, the story so far: last Wednesday, I left for America.

I will be back eventually!

 

More's the pity, I expect; such are the height of my hopes about this improbably long holiday. But one way or another, I'll be gone a good wee while, and it must say sort of a lot about me that one of the first things I thought, when this Stateside sabbatical suddenly solidified in the middle of February, was: what in the world will I do about the blog?

 

For a fair while there, I wondered. I seriously considered spending a few serious weeks at the keyboard coming up with a full month's worth of content in advance of my departure, but in the end, with the teaching I do to make ends meet and everything else, it simply wasn't realistic. Then I thought: why not repost a few old articles... make a kind of greatest hits thing of it?

That was a poor plan. I put it with my other poor plans: in a document marked TO NOT DO.

 

At some point during this period, it occurred to me that I was overlooking what must be far and away the most fun and informative of all my options. Guest bloggers!

Now I've certainly hosted a couple of guest posts here on The Speculative Scotsman in the past, but only very occasionally, and mostly only from authors whose writing I admire. It had simply never crossed my mind that I might be in a position to ask the bloggers I've become friends with in the process of keeping this site for a helping hand.

 

When it did - just a few weeks ago, really - I didn't hang about. But nor did I reply all to the many and various folks featured in my inbox. I may only have met a few of 'em, but I know more people now, through doing this lovely thing that I love - did I mention that? - than I ever have in my life. And for all that I'm away for an entire month, I couldn't feasibly co-ordinate guest posts from everyone I found myself in a position to ask.

 

So I made a list of some of my very favourite bloggers. Then I crossed out the folks who predominantly write about other things than speculative fiction... then everyone who had (in my arbitrary estimation) large readerships in their own right... then everyone whose circumstances would have ruled them out from contributing in any case.

 

I was left with a list of twenty-odd perfect potential guest bloggers. And to my sheer surprise and delight, almost everyone I touched base with - with a few understandable exceptions - seemed happy that I'd asked, and happier still to help out.

 

Thus, the coming month. From tomorrow, as a matter of fact, you'll be treated to an assortment of voices that may or may not be new to you. I certainly hope they aren't, but if they are, I hereby wholeheartedly recommend you follow them over to their own blogs. I regularly read the work of every one. Their sites are all on my blogroll - or they surely should be - and coming from a Scotsman, that's a stamp of absolute approval.

 

On the day, I will of course introduce each of the coming contributors in turn, and even burble a bit about why you should be reading their blogs. Because you really, really should be, first and foremost, but also because it's the least I can do, given all the bother they've gone to on my - and your - behalf.

 

So please, everybody, be nice! :)

 

In short, I may be AFK for almost the entirety of April, but expect The Speculative Scotsman as a site to be better than ever for the duration.

 

And one last thing before I finally give the floor over. I'll be keeping as close an eye on the site as I can while I'm away, and the plan - as it stands - is to stop in each and every week to keep you all up to speed on a miscellany of my misadventures in America. Time permitting, I should have the first of those posts ready for Friday.

 

 

But between now and then? Some truly terrific stuff, beginning tomorrow with a review of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson from the marvelous Mieneke of A Fantastical Librarian. If you enjoy it and everything else that's in the pipeline a fraction as much as I've loved arranging it all, you'll have a hell of a time in my absence, make no mistake.

With which, as they say in the States - or at least the one I'm in at moment - I'll see y'all! :)

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Back From Bratislava

Hello again, boys and girls!

Feels like a lifetime has passed since we last chatted, doesn't it? Maybe that's just me. I have to remind myself that in reality it's only been two weeks. Two weeks during which I went to the ends of the earth, via Ryanair, and had a hell of a time to boot.

Bratislava was lovely, of course. Quite, quite lovely.

That is, for a city. You can only holiday in so many cities before they all start to look alike, but my fun-sized traveling companion and I made the best of it. We explored till our feet ached. We ate in all the vegetarian restaurants, and drank everywhere that sold Belgian beer. We saw the sights. We took a lot of terrible pictures. We got lost. We got our bearings again, and decided that the thing to do was to go to another city, in another country, and start the whole thing over.

So it was that we found ourselves in beautiful Vienna, in Austria...

But I won't go on. Long story short, a fine time was had by all involved. What with all the things there were to see and do and eat and drink, I didn't have as many opportunities to pull out a book as I had hoped.

Still, I got though a few. Three to be precise.

We'll talk more about those, in markedly more depth, in a bit. That's pretty much what I'm here for, after all... that and snark.

Sadly, I can't stop for long enough to do either thing justice today. More's the pity, instead of sitting here at home, blogging about my happy holidays, I've got to get right back into the thick of it. Paid employment and all that; the classes I teach have been on hold since shortly before Christmas, so it's past time for me to catch up with the wee ones.

Speaking of which, I've got lesson plans to get together, and I really just wanted to stop for a moment to say hey.

Hey! :)

Bear with me for another day or two, folks, and I'll get my head into the game again. Meantime, I've got one last ready-made review to share with you all, and lots of comments to catch up on in the interim, so stay tuned.

Dear Everyone | Christmas Wishes

Is it just me, or have the holidays come upon us awfully quickly this year?

I suppose I must just be getting old, because I hear time does that, the more used to it you get. To keep you on your toes, you know?

But no matter how old I am, I love Christmas. I grant you that I may very well seem the type to humbug all over this, the season of giving, and receiving, and wonderful one-off television specials - I'm holding out for the Top Gear team's misadventures in India myself - but appearances can of course be deceiving. And me? I'm all about deceiving. :)

Anyway, from today on, things will - as you'd expect - be a little slower-going here on The Speculative Scotsman than is usual. I'll write a few reviews over the break, I don't doubt, and I'm certainly hoping to get a huge amount of reading done, but in my experience, time is always on the short side around the new year period, so I wouldn't expect a huge amount of anything other than tofurkey talk on Twitter.

Somewhat to my surprise, I gather I'm also going on holiday in early January - to spend a week in bonnie Bratislava - but your regularly scheduled programming should resume on the 16th of the first month of 2012, and it's hardly going to be a wasteland hereabouts between now and then, I pinky swears it!

In fact, I have a certain something I've been working on for altogether too long already; a certain somewhat surprising something that might be the perfect thing to entertain you all in my absence. No spoilers... except to say: Skyrim.

But we'll talk again before then. For the very moment, it's tofurkey time!

It only remains for me to say, to all the publishers and the publicists, and to all the bloggers and authors and the editors who helped me make The Speculative Scotsman what it was in 2011 - and what it will be again in 2012, but better, all things being equal - thank you! From the bottom of my heart, I really do appreciate your efforts.

Most of all, though, to each and every one of you folks - yes, you folks - merry early Christmas!

And a hippity hoppety happy New Year to all of you, and all of yours too. :)

We Interrupt This Broadcast | Getting Ahead of Ourselves

I've already mentioned that this is the time of the year when I take it upon myself to power through a selection - of some, but not all - of the books I've managed to miss through 2011; those novels, and in particular those genre novels, that have been recommended to me over and over again, that I feel I really should read before I offer up my thoughts on the best books of the year and so on.

The same goes for all the movies that have contrived to pass me by, so Sucker Punch, Super 8, Conan, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, etc. Pretty much all the biggies, truth be told. I've been to the cinema all of three times this year. My setup here at home - I have true surround sound, 1080p, beautiful black levels, comfy sofas, and a big ol' telly - suits me just fine. Plus there's almost no chance that my living room is going to stink of piss and not nearly enough bleach to disguise the stink of piss, as it so happened was the case the last time I went to the pictures, to see Paranormal Activity 3.

(I wonder if there's not an almighty digression in there somewhere, beginning with my lacking appetite for that singular feature film experience, taking in falling ticket sales and the rise of gimmickry like 3D to make up for all those "lost" dollars. But the thought couldn't have occurred at a worse time.)

Now I'm never going to be able to read all the books I'd like too, nor see all the movies I mean to - not before Top of the Scots kicks off in early December, if ever - but you know what? I'm going to try.

This undertaking began on surer footing than I could have hoped for, with By Light Alone by Adam Roberts and a certain movie you'll see reviewed here on TSS within the next 10 days. Last night it continued courtesy of Sucker Punch, which I was fool enough to watch the extended edition of, and Blackout by Connie Willis, because the sooner begun, the sooner done. But even as we speak I'm far from finished crossing my Is and dotting my Ts, as they say.

Still and all, I had hoped to keep blogging at a semi-regular rate through this period. Sadly some of my other commitments have cunningly chosen this moment to kick into high gear. I won't bore you with the details, except to say that taken together, all these shiny new obligations have made it quite difficult for me to get any one thing done; even an itty-bitty post like this.

But one down now! Only, oh... something like 30 more things to go.

What? No, I don't have a to-do list. What are you talking about? :P

Anyway, wish me luck. And please, dear readers: bear with me. There will be blog posts, I promise! And then on the fifth day of December the year-end celebrations shall start, come hell or high water.

After that? Why after that, I have a mind to turn this little old blog quite upside down. Much as I love the black and purple (but shockingly legible) template TSS is based on, my patience with Blogger - specifically with the horrendous formatting it imposes on so many of my posts, no matter which browser I use to put them through, or how long I spend tinkering about in the effing source code - has long since worn thin.

I am officially considering my other options.

But let's not get ahead of getting ahead of ourselves just yet!

We Interrupt This Broadcast | 11-11-11... Or Is It?

No, it is. I'm just being difficult.

That said, here on The Speculative Scotsman, 11-11-11 is going to be all about the things that could have been. If not the good times we were going to have - I mean, who am I kidding? - then the timely reviews I was going to put up today, if I'd only written them.

Thing is I haven't. You folks will just have to go in want of my thoughts on the direct-to-DVD gimmick horror movie named for the date, because I couldn't stand it.

I had hopes for 11-11-11. Not exactly high hopes, but nonetheless, I don't despise the SAW films - of which Darren Lynn Bousman directed the second, the third and the fourth - and I genuinely do adore Repo! The Genetic Opera, which I understand was something of a passion project for the talented young filmmaker.

Would that 11-11-11 evidenced even the barest suggestion of the undeniable passion Bousman brought to his macabre musical... his modern-day Rocky Horror. Alas no, not so much. It is truly a dreadful film, all ham and no jam, and half an hour of it was all the other half and I could take the night before last.

As to last night, well. We went to see Opeth and Pain of Salvation, but mostly Opeth, at the HMV Picture House in Edinburgh, which I was disproportionately pleased to see still rather resembles an old cinema. So we took our seats - oh, seats! - bought some beers and sat back to enjoy the music... which we did.

Failing the 11-11-11 movie review - in fact failing the movie, never mind the review - I was going to post a bit about the three hours I spent nursing a pint of tepid Tuborg while Opeth and Pain of Salvation played last night instead. I was going to write about how I do not disagree with Ryan of the inimitable Battle Hymns blog when he says that the lack of growlage was pretty darned disappointing.

Much as I adore Opeth's latest album Heritage, which this tour is of course in support of, the band played a fair selection of their beloved back-catalogue too, and even these songs seemed... not blunted, exactly; tempered might be a better way of describing it. And tempered is really the last thing I want Opeth to be, especially the older Opeth albums I hold so close to my heart.

Also: no Blackwater Park. What the crap, guys?

Still, had a great night, and a great day beforehand, sampling Orkney ales in the Gillie and wolfing down a plate of delicious veggie haggis in Henderson's, with the very best company to keep me company. Happy birthday, hon!

Anyway, I'm sure I've more to say about Opeth - and maybe one day I'll say some of it! - but my fallback plan for content on TSS today was also comprehensively scuttled this morning.

It was the postie what did it. Isn't it ever?

He only brought me my copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

So... give me a hundred hours or so, and we'll talk, alright? :)

Happy 11-11-11, everyone!