News and Stuff

[Ragnar]

Bang go my royalties...

LOL

If its any consolation, I bought The Skinner last week.

 

[Neal Asher]

Escape Pod.

Hey, check out Escape Pod and listen to Steve Ely reading my short story The Veteran.

Escape Pod » EP118: The Veteran

Seated on a bollard, the man contemplatively removed his pipe, as if to tamp it down or relight it. Instead, he placed it stem down in the top pocket of his shirt, then reached up and pressed his fingers against his cheekbone and forehead. His face came away from his hairline, round behind his ears, down to a point just above his Adam’s apple. The inside of his mouth and much of his sinus were also part of the prosthesis, so only bare eyeballs in the upper jut of his skull remained – the rest being the black spikes and plates of bio-interfaces.

Very enjoyable -- they were suderdiles not superdiles, but I've no problem with that!

 

[Neal Asher]

Okay, on the 18th August I’ll be on the DaveO Prog Rock Show which runs from 10pm till midnight. Probably I’ll be talking a lot of nonsense about my books, SF and life the universe and everything in general, and listening to the likes of Pink Floyd. Here's the blurb and links to the show:
Welcome to the DaveO Prog Rock Show's world of progressive rock, broadcasting out from Phoenix 98FM!! If you like progressive rock, both new and old, then this show is for you.
The website for Phoenix 98FM is: Phoenix FM
Want to listen to the show, but don't live near enough to pick it up on the radio? No problem, here's the URL:
http://dream.wavestreamer.com:2963/listen.pls
Copy and paste this into your favourite listening software. I use iTunes and it works without fault.
Why don't you visit my presenters page on the station's website? Each week I post a write up on the last show. The address is:The Dave O Prog Rock Show on Phoenix FM.

 

[Neal Asher]

This tickled my so I thought I'd ask if I could put it up here. It's from Andy on Myspace.

 

[Neal Asher]

Film Deal (Not).

Ah bollocks. A month or so ago I got an email from a guy asking me about the film rights for Hilldiggers and, ever since, I was understandably keeping my fingers crossed what with the guy concerned being a story editor from 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately he couldn’t rally up enough interest amidst the executives.
It seems that what I need is one or any combination of three things to become attached to said book: talent (I’m presuming we’re talking about some actor here), book-to-film agent or a producer. So if any of you guys know anything about this sort of stuff…
It is annoying to google ‘book-to-film agent’ and find, for example, this on one screenplay agency site:
Looking for completed feature sci-fi scripts. Only interested in big-budget summer blockbuster-type stories with strong fantastical elements that require lots of special effects.
Damn, apart from the fact that none of my books are scripts, the second sentence describes them perfectly. I need to have a look at my screenplay writing stuff and maybe have a pop at it myself. Either that or try to get someone more experienced with this sort of thing onboard.
Sigh.

 

[Rane Longfox]

i get the impression that getting films made is almost as frustrating as getting published. Not that i know vast amounts about either good luck with that though, hilldiggers would make a spectacular film if it was done properly!

 

[Neal Asher]

I'd love to see Cowl or The Skinner as films, but whatever. I'll just keep writing the books and hope someone in the film industry grabs up the baton.

 

[Soggyfox]

hilldiggers would make a spectacular film if it was done properly!

ain't that the truth in it, but then along comes Hollywood dumbs it down, makes it all PC, adds in some stuff in takes some stuff out and you get left with.......................................Eragon.

 

[Neal Asher]

But the book remains unchanged and would certainly, as a result, sell more copies. And prostitute that I am, I'd laugh on the way to the bank!

 

[Soggyfox]

But the book remains unchanged and would certainly, as a result, sell more copies. And prostitute that I am, I'd laugh on the way to the bank!

are you with Northern Rock too?

 

[Neal Asher]

Luckily not, but now the chancellor of the exchequer has guaranteed all the money owed, by any bank, which rather seems like license for irresponsibility.

 

[Jon George]

Re: Film Deal (Not).

I need to have a look at my screenplay writing stuff and maybe have a pop at it myself.

That road can lead to madness - read Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. Apparently it seems like you need to add an extra three hours to your normal twenty-four and have to dig a hole in the garden for your pride. Oh, and no-one knows what will be succesful. Take the money and run if you can.

 

[AE35Unit]

Excuse the ignorance of a newbie but

This one is a full-blown, flat-out, unabashed Space Opera, and a thriller of the first water, so don’t miss it!

sounds great to me!

Oh, could I get Asimovs in this country without going thru a difficult web order contract?

 

[Neal Asher]

Here’s a bit of an update on the writing and so forth:
My Czech publishers - Polaris - have offered for rights of The Voyage of the Sable Keech. Publication will be within 12 months, licence limited to 4 years.
Nightshade books are publishing Shadow of the Scorpion on May 1st this year. This is a book (longer than Prador Moon) covering some early episodes of Cormac’s life:
Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and the vicious arthropoid race the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember. In the years following the war he signs up with Earth Central Security, and is sent out to help either restore or maintain order on worlds devastated by Prador bombardment. There he discovers that though the old enemy remains as murderous as ever, it is not anywhere near as perfidious or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some closer to him than he would like. Amidst the ruins left by war-time genocides, he discovers in himself a cold capacity for violence, learns some horrible truths about his own past and, set upon a course of vengeance, tries to stay alive.
As for writing done while in Crete: I completed the above mentioned book, a 10,000 word story for Gardner Dozois’s New Space Opera II and am more than a third of the way into Orbus, a follow-up to The Voyage of the Sable Keech:
The Old Captain, Orbus – a sadist in charge of a crew of masochists – became a reformed character at the end of The Voyage of the Sable Keech and took over the captaincy of the spaceship the Gurnard. Meanwhile, the Prador Vrell, mutated by the Spatterjay virus into something powerful and dangerous, had seized control of a Prador dreadnought, killing its entire crew, and was heading back to the Prador Third Kingdom to exact vengeance on those who tried to have him killed. Both these characters are heading for ‘The Graveyard’ (mentioned in Alien Archaeology – Asimov’s) a buffer zone between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom, the perhaps into the kingdom itself. Orbus has a few unresolved issues about the Prador and about Vrell in particular …

 

[Lord Soth]

I love the fact that im only 2 books (3 if you count Cowl) into this series and there is soo much to come!

 

[Neal Asher]

You can find two of my Mason's Rats stories in the The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction edited by George Mann.
And you can also listen to my story Acephalous Dreams on Escape Pod.

 

[AE35Unit]

Oh i never realised there was a volume 2! I have the 'first' one with your story Bioship in. I've not read it yet but its the second story in so its up next

 

[AE35Unit]

And i'm about to start reading it. Is it part of one of your universes?

 

[Neal Asher]

Mason's rats aren't part of the Polity stuff ... unfortunately.

 

[Neal Asher]

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.