Yesterday I gave a very successful lecture at the world-famous Tate Britain art gallery in London, entitled ‘Myth, Memory and the Art of Richard Dadd’. The event was a sell-out, and also pretty ground-breaking on several fronts. I was one of the first – if not the first – genre writer to be invited to the Tate to give a lecture for one of their rightly-acclaimed study days. And personally, it was one of the most high-profile appearances I’ve made.

I only have praise for the staff and academics at the Tate who treated both myself, and the genre, with a great deal of respect. Before the lecture, the audience toured the gallery to see Dadd’s work and many took the opportunity to ask me about my opinions on the artist and his work. After that I gave the lecture, touching on not only my interest in Dadd and my novella about his most famous painting, ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’, but also about other authors influenced by Dadd – Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Angela Carter, Robert Rankin and more. We followed this with an at times intense debate with an art historian about the meaning of Dadd’s work, and a couple of readings from The Fairy Feller novella.

The novella has gone from strength-to-strength since it won the British Fantasy Award four years ago. The limited edition by PS Publishing has nearly sold out, and the added attention from this Tate event has created interest from across the world. Now I need to find a mainstream publisher interested in reprinting it as part of a collection so it can reach a wider audience.

[cross-posted]

..has just been agreed:

Old gods never die. They wait for the right time to regain their grip on humanity.

In Egypt, in Greece, China, frozen northern Europe, America, ancient forces are awakening. Only a handful of heroes know the truth and stand ready to defend our modern world from powers rooted in a more brutal, terrifying time.

But behind it all lurks something even worse. The god of gods.

The Burning Man is coming…

Ask ten authors how their covers get made and you’ll probably get ten different answers. Luckily I’m not one of those who reels with nausea when they open a package to find for the first time the completed cover art, usually looking like it should go on a totally different book, if not genre.

For a while now, my editor has always asked me for detailed cover briefs - probably because she thinks it saves months of authorial moaning, whinging and foot-stamping once the cover process has begun. And that’s just how I like it. I have a clear vision for my novels - so why shouldn’t I have one for the illustration?

My personal tastes run to a more designery style. I find the representational style of too many genre covers tired and dated.

The Burning Man is scheduled for February 2008 and you can get a first look at the cover here.

And if you don’t like it, you now know who should be blamed…

I have spent eight solid hours working on one piece of dialogue for the BBC script - approximately fifteen words. And I still haven’t got it. My brain is now officially jelly. One more hour and I’m going down the pub…

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.

Writers write.  And sometimes when you’re plumbing the dark depths of your head, you have ideas that won’t be confined to one genre or even one medium.  I’ve written fantasy and SF and horror, I’ve written crime and psychological mysteries and contemporary drama.  I’ve recently published a graphic novel in the US, and I’m about to do more comics.

But what many people don’t know is that I also earn a crust as a screenwriter.  Today I’ve just finished the second episode of a new science fiction series I’m developing with the BBC.  It’s still a long way from appearing on your TV screen, and, in fact, may never do so.  It’s a long, exhausting and arduous task to get a series from idea to commission, with numerous, increasingly higher hurdles to jump over.  And even if you’ve finally shaped the best idea in the world, it can still fall at the last because there’s not a free slot in the schedule.

Yet to a novelist, used to toiling away in a lonely room, it’s a fascinating, invigorating process.  You get to work with other committed, creative individuals who take your idea in a surprising direction, and then you get to do the same with their ideas.  (Whether I would enjoy it so much if I didn’t have the singular visions and sole authorship of my novels to fall back on, is a different matter - you can’t beat being in complete control).

I’ve also got another supernatural series in the early stages of development, and a movie project.  And there’s been some initial movie interest in World’s End.

It’s all wait-and-see, but that’s part of the excitement.  You never know what’s going to be around the corner.