Movies viewed this year so far, in no particular order:

Shutter Island, Inception (x2), Toy Story 3, 2012, The Wrestler, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes, Shrek Forever After, The Age of Stupid, The Reader, The Taking of Pelham 123 (new version), Duplicity, The Boat That Rocked, Zombieland, The Princess and the Frog, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Fantastic Mr Fox, Paranormal Activity, 24 Hour Party People, Adventureland, District 9, 500 Days of Summer, Triangle, Mesrine Parts 1 and 2, A Perfect Getaway, Antichrist, The Hangover, Flawless, Night at the Museum 2, Moon, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Drag Me To Hell, Monsters Vs Aliens, The Damned United, State of Play, Revolutionary Road, Brandy for the Parson, Friday the 13th parts 1-7, Miller’s Crossing, Coogan’s Bluff, Donkey Punch, The Killers, Psycho IV, Kick-Ass, Avatar, A Christmas Carol, Iron Man 2, Seven Samurai, A Day at the Races, Go West, The Big Store, A Night at the Opera, A Night in Casablanca, At the Circus.

And re-watched: The Man Who Wasn’t There, Rear Window, How to Steal a Million, Paint Your Wagon, The Gauntlet, No Country For Old Men, Fargo, Raising Arizona, Contact, The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, The Fearless Vampire Hunters, The Dark Knight, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Zodiac, Creepshow, 10,000 BC.

And a few more I’ve forgotten.

After completing the latest draft of The Scar-Crow Men, the next Will Swyfte book, I took a week off to re-charge in one of my favourite UK locations, the Penwith peninsula on the far tip of Cornwall. Some time in the surf, local beer and good food, with a lot of reading and a trip to Tate West thrown in.

It did the job – which is good because I’ve come back to several projects piling up on my desk. More on those later.

What started as a joke on Twitter and Facebook – in which I complained that my four nominations for Best Novel on the British Fantasy Awards longlist made me look like an inhuman writing machine – has taken on a life of its own.

Artist and reader @Madnad ran with the idea – and you can now buy her creatively-designed ‘Inhuman Writing Machine’ t-shirts here. Good for authors, journalists and anyone who makes – or aspires to make – a living from words.

And, no, there’s no cash coming my way for this. Go on, you know you want to…

Nobody likes to think they can be measured by a stranger. But I’m very interested in psychology and I recently took a VisualDNA personality test. It involved clicking a stream of images in response to various questions. The result:

“You’re a bit of a rebel at heart. You enjoy being challenged intellectually. You’re energetic and curious, with a love of life and an infectious enthusiasm for new adventures. Conscious of your place in the world, you like to stay informed about social and political issues and feel a duty to be environmentally responsible. You are inspired to make your mark and leave a positive legacy. You are energized by your vibrant network of friends and colleagues. Tech savvy and hungry for knowledge, you live life to the full, always seeking new adventures that broaden your horizons and take you out of your comfort zone.”

Which is horribly, horribly close to the truth.

Happy New Year everyone. A quick catch-up post as I get my head back into work-mode after the seasonal festivities, during which I saw and enjoyed both Sherlock Holmes and Avatar amid the usual carnage of what is my favourite time of year. I’m definitely a mid-winter person.

I’m currently snowed-in and watching the reports of Britain grinding to a halt (again). I’m afraid to consider how we’ll cope in a real catastrophe.

My work had a good showing among the usual “Best of…” lists, published at the end of 2009.

The Silver Skull (Swords of Albion) appeared in the favourite novels of Locus magazine critic Paul Witcover, SteveReads, Fantasy Book Critic Cindy’s best of 2009 list, and Fantasyliterature.com.

Meanwhile, Age of Misrule was flagged up in the best of 2009 lists of Rob Will Review, Fantasy Book Critic Cindy’s list (again!), and Nethspace.

Thanks to all.

Complimentary copies of World’s End, Darkest Hour and Always Forever (courtesy of Pyr), The Burning Man mass-market paperback and the hardback and tradepaperback editions of Destroyer of Worlds (courtesy of Gollancz) have all recently arrived and are now piled up in the middle of my study. And there’s still Lord of Silence to come from Solaris.

Latest book deliveries

I’m going to need a bigger study.

I come from a long, long line of coal miners (certainly on one side of my family – there’s some strange blood on the other, to be sure). Coal dust is in my veins, as it is in the area where I grew up in the English Midlands. The houses round here used to be black with the coal embedded in the brick from centuries of the stuff being transported from the mines. The landscape was apocalyptic – slag heaps rising to the sky, and palls of smoke from where the seams underground had caught alight.

Against the grim outside world, there was a powerful sense of community. The miners existed alongside death and disability on a daily basis, and lived life to the full whenever they came back into the light. I remember pubs packed with thick-armed, tattooed men, downing pints of bitter and singing raucously, the wives joining their husbands on Saturday nights for singalongs and dancing at the working men’s club, the tall tales, the ghost stories and underground mythologies, and most of all the laughter that bound everyone together.

It’s all gone now. In the early 1980s, the Conservative Government decided to break the back of the troublesome miners’ union and close the pits, including my local ones. The ensuing strike was furious and hard-fought. It tore apart families, villages, friends. Eventually the union lost and the mines were closed. No one round here has forgotten it. Children are told tales of the wicked witch Margaret Thatcher who threw all the men on to the poverty line, brought depression and suicide, left families hungry and killed off the villages. Killed the communities dead.

On the one hand, it’s better round here now. The slag heaps are gone, replaced by green parks and forests. The houses are clean. Work has gradually crept back, but only after years of pain. But that sense of community was gone. The pubs all seem strangely empty to me. Not enough laughter, not enough joy in living. I miss that old world.

A friend of mine, David Bell, has written a book about the strike – The Dirty Thirty – Heroes of the Miners’ Strike (Five Leaves). It celebrates the struggle of the thirty Leicestershire miners who showed great courage in standing up for their beliefs and coming out on strike when many around them argued against it.

Dave interviews the surviving members of The Dirty Thirty, and also talks to the womens’ support group. On the blurb, Tony Benn says this book “is of the greatest importance”. You can order it directly from Dave and get it signed or pick it up from Amazon, Borders and Waterstones.

You can now find me on https://twitter.com/Chadbourn.