From SF Signal:

An excellent rendition on “the end of this world” with the starting of a different one, well written, great characters…a first book that makes you go out and hunt down the next two in the series.

Changing the world is one of those concepts that divides society. Your views on it characterise you as a naive, woolly-thinker or a hard-nosed, selfish cynic, depending on who is pointing the finger.

It’s a topic that most writers are interested in, whether they admit it or not. Stories have always changed the world. They transmit ideas or information that infect other minds and are then passed on virally. That was the whole point of stories in the earliest days of humanity.

I’ve written here a few times about the 2012 meme – not in any literal sense, that ancient prophecies have somehow signalled the end of the world a few months down the road. I’m interested in it more in the abstract sense – how, when a lot of people start to believe a great change is coming, they bring about that change by altering their patterns of behaviour.

I’ve been looking recently at how various 2012 groups have been springing up all over the world – getting involved in environmental issues, or tackling poverty or community problems. This appears to be gathering speed.

But today I want to draw your attention to evolver.net, which describes itself as “a new social network for conscious collaboration. It provides a platform for individuals, communities, and organizations to discover and share the new tools, initiatives, and ideas that will improve our lives and change the world.”

It’s there for creative collaboration as much as the whole world-changing thing. It’s not a place for cynics. Don’t go there. It is about the future, and it is unmistakably utopian. But then a lot of writers are utopian too, even when they’re writing about the most miserable, darkest visions imaginable.

Lou Anders, my editor at Pyr Books in the US, has done a brief round-up of some of the amazing reviews I’ve been getting in the US for The Silver Skull – out in the UK under the title The Sword of Albion, from Bantam, in May. To say, I’ve been bowled over by the US reception would be under-stating.

Lou has been working up the catalogue copy for the follow-up book, which will be announced in the US soon. In fact, it looks like there’ll be news of the sequel before the book is even out in the UK.

There’s also a new review of the The Silver Skull out today here. Enough blowing of trumpets.

A new survey of the Stonehenge landscape reveals the ancient monument once had two encircling hedges that may have been planted to keep secret whatever rituals took place among the stones.

Archaeologist and Stonehenge expert Mike Pitts wonders if the hedges might have been to shelter the watchers from the power of the stones, as much as to ward off the observers’ “impious” gaze. The full story is revealed in British Archaeology magazine.

A new study of the stones themselves, meanwhile, confirms that the majority of bluestones came from hundreds of miles away, in the Preseli Hills in West Wales. However, doubts still remain over the origin of the largest bluestone, the Altar Stone – its composition reveals it cannot be from the Preseli region.

Also one of the funniest: “THE SILVER SKULL, by Mark Chadbourn, is one of the funnest books we have read. Period.”

So that would be The Silver Skull in the US, or The Sword of Albion in the UK – same book, different title – just to avoid confusion.

Also, I’ve just seen the cover for the US follow-up to this book, and it is truly remarkable. By Christian McGrath once again.