“I have no doubt that every myth is based on some event, and so is the myth of Atlantis,” the University of Rhode Island’s Sigurdsson said. “An event of this magnitude must have left its imprint.”

The guys at Memetherapy have published an interview they did with me recently. They asked a bunch of intelligent questions about how I approach writing and research, like “Writing novels has been described as hard and emotionaly brutal. Is that true for you? What was it like writing Jack of Ravens?” and I gave them answers.

My novel The Hounds of Avalon has been shortlisted in the Best Novel category for this year’s British Fantasy Awards. That makes five out of the last six books that have been shortlisted for Best Novel, which must be some kind of record. (Also, no wins, which must also be a record on the nominations/failure to win ratio…)

The award will be presented at Fantasycon in Nottingham next month, which is shaping up to be one of the best British conventions in recent years. Well worth a visit.

And there are some great books also on the Best Novel shortlist: Ramsey Campbell, Secret Stories; Hal Duncan, Vellum: The Book of All Hours; Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys; George R R Martin, A Feast For Crows; Mark Morris, Nowhere Near An Angel.

1) Crawling along a tunnel barely bigger than a coffin more than two hundred feet beneath the ground, one person in front of me, one person behind, around one hundred feet from beginning to end - impossible to back out if you got stuck. It linked two main tunnels in a now-defunct coal mine in North West Leicestershire. The sense of the vast weight of rock and earth above my head was palpable. The claustrophobia reduced my throat to a pipe-cleaner.

2) Interviewing gangsters. Not the most psychologically stable of people, at one point they got paranoid for no visible reason and held me in the back of a locked shop at gunpoint.

3) Watching an autopsy (or Post Mortem if I want to use the Brit terminology). However much you prepare yourself, it’s still traumatic to see a once-living person reduced to component parts.

4) Interviewing a family who have undergone an exorcism and hearing tapes of same. However much of a rationalist you might be, those sounds and images will still pluck some ancient dread from the deep unconscious.

5) Travelling in excess of 240 mph in a race car. Exhilarating? Not when you haven’t got a seat belt and there’s a madman at the wheel…

Fiction is not disconnected from the real world.  This might be stating the obvious, but some people seem to think that books just get written, published and sold at the whim of authors and publishers.  But it’s possible to map out a correlation between trends in publishing and real world events.  That’s just common sense - we are all at the mercy of what’s going on in the world, and we unconsciously adjust our perceptions and tastes accordingly.

Fantasy and science fiction are interesting cases in point.  Fantasy has always been published to discerning tastes, but the great ages of commercial fantasy were in the late sixties, (slightly shading into the early seventies) with the rediscovery of Lord of the Rings and the Weird Tales authors with Robert E Howard’s Conan in the forefront; and in the late-seventies, early-eighties with books like Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara and Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant stories.

The first of those coincided with the rise of the Hippie movement, the Vietnam War protests and mounting disillusionment with elected officials.  The second coincided with cynical right wing Governments on both sides of the Atlantic, great fear in the waning days of the Cold War and even more disillusionment with elected officials.

The superficial reading would be that these were both times when the general public fled from harsh reality into the comforting and conservative arms of fantasy.  I don’t think that stands up, as people were regularly confronting the powers they feared in wide-ranging protests, not running away.  The common thread, in my opinion, was the deep need for heroes, in the mythological sense.  Champions of right (not Right) who could help make sense of the world.

Which should, by all rights, put us on the brink of another golden age of commercial fantasy publishing.  Politicians of all stripes are generally despised across most of the west.  With the events in the Middle East - a massive failure of elected officials (again of all political positions) that has caused a devastating death toll - and the weak-kneed attempts of politicians to tackle issues that really concern the public, like climate change, there has never been more of a need for heroes.  Sales of fantasy novels have declined a little in recent times (partly due to more widspread problems in the book trade).  I reckon a few good marketing campaigns could turn that around nicely.

Conversely, I don’t believe this is a very good time for science fiction, which has seen quite significant falls in sales.  We’re living through another industrial revolution.  Techonological changes are increasing exponentially, with the accompanying societal and cultural transformations.  People are burned out by science or blase about it.  They see its effect in every aspect of their lives, 24/7.  They (and I’m talking here about the wider reading market, not the dedicated fan) don’t want to spend their time reading about it.  Of course, SF isn’t just about science, but unfortunately it’s that aspect that the non-hardcore fan focuses on.

This is in marked difference to the past ‘great ages’ of SF (for argument’s sake, let’s just say the thirties, the fifties, the seventies) when there were bursts of scientific advance that left the public exhiliarated and keen to know more.  Has the real world techno-advance left SF unable to create a sense of wonder any more?  I think that’s possible.

But if I were a canny publisher I’d put my money on a horror resurgence.  With that same techno burn-out people are fleeing rationalism to the realms of the unconscious.  And with the terrors and instability out in the world, they want the more manageable terrors of the supernatural.  Yet at the moment, no British publisher (and few US ones) have a horror list.  That has to change, surely?

Two weeks on the North Norfolk coast.  Mysterious Neolithic paths, evocative coastal salt marshes, some of the best food and drink in the UK.

Like everyone I planned to leave work behind.  The trouble with work in the imaginative sphere is that the more relaxed you get, the more the imagination goes into overdrive.  There is no escape.

And so I came back with an outline for a new book.  It’s not fantasy (or SF) and it probably won’t be published under my real name.  It hasn’t got a publisher yet (because my current one only deals in F/SF/H).  But it’s one of the most commercial and stimulating stories I’ve ever created.  I reckon it could give the Da Vinci Code a run for its money (though it’s not in that strange sub-sub-genre of ancient mysteries, which has seen lots of activity in recent months - the Code and that particular area of story-telling is sooo two years ago…)

It’s not going to get in the way of The Kingdom of the Serpent, which is planned, structured and nearly two-thirds done.  One of the advantages of being highly disciplined (the old journalistic background of never missing a deadline) is I can quite comfortably do two books a year if necessary.

Of course, this means I can now justify to myself even more holidays a year.  It’s work, you see.

The BBC reported today that a fire has been burning on Arthur’s Seat - the hill outside Edinburgh - for the past 24 hours, and that fire-fighters are still on-site to ensure that it remains under control.

What the report failed to mention was whether or not the fire was tinged with blue…

[That last paragraph sponsored by the department of Chadbourn in-jokes.]

–Ariel–

As I’m sure most of the readers of Jack of Ravens will already know, the fantasy genre lost one of its most accomplished and popular writers when David Gemmell passed away on July 28th.

Juliet E. McKenna has posted links to various newspaper obituaries on her blog, and I’ve added links to a few additonal items to the article that I posted on the day, over on The Alien Online. And 418 people to-date have signed the online book of remembrance that will eventually be printed and passed to his family.

Always sad to lose an author, but particularly one who was both so prolific and so consistently good at providing his fans with exactly what they wanted to read - action, adventure, heroism, honour, love, redemption - time after time.

–Ariel–

John Berlyne has posted his review of Jack of Ravens over at SFRevu.com.

John writes an insightful overview of the book, identifying the main themes, avoiding spoilers, and most importantly assessing the work purely on its own merits - even whilst Admitting that he hadn’t realised it was a continuation of Mark’s earlier work, which he confesses hadn’t read before - and concludes that Jack of Ravens is “a real bravura display from the author, a very successful attempt to offer readers something truly different from the standard fantasy fare.”

A well-written review, IMHO. But then, Mr Berlyne is rather good at those…

–Ariel–

If you live in London and you’re interested in anything from modern-day magickal workshops to literary readings, esoterica study groups to academic conferences, you should probably check out Treadwell’s Bookshop in Covent Garden.

I have to confess that I haven’t actually attended any of their events myself, but that’s only because it’s a heck of a commute from my place in Manchester. But I have been on their mailing list for quite a while, and there’s never any shortage of fascinating-looking goings-on; just take a look at their list of forthcoming lectures for examples.

Do let us know how you get on if you go along to any events, we might even be persuaded to post a short account of your experiences here on JackofRavens.com.

–Ariel–