Sale!

klwilliams and I are pleased and proud to announce our first cohabited story sale: "The Airship Towers of Trebizond" will be published in January in the anthology Gears and Levers vol 2 from Sky Warrior Books, edited by Phyllis Irene Radford (ramblin_phyl of this ilk).

The byline says "by Mr & Mrs Brenchley". Hee!

The dating game, redux

Hee. I mentioned before how this book I'm checking dates itself, or particularly how its tech dates it. Anyone who knows me could date it another way, into my personal chronology. I've just found the bit where the narrator is lamenting DOS and all at sea in loathsome Windows: which is exactly how I was feeling, back in the mid-nineties, before I discovered Linux. Making a deliberate dinosaur of myself, I used to say: which is an expression I find word for word right here in the text. All art is autobiographical - I have said this before, that we give ourselves away with every word - but sometimes I do the Antony Gormley thing, apparently, cast my own body right there and call it art. All writers appropriate, that's what we do, it's in the job description: but we use ourselves as much as we use our friends, rather more probably than we use strangers, and we do it harshly.

Reading this book fifteen years on, I'm not sure I like the guy very much, the narrator: he's pompous, and he's a coward, and - yeah. Uncomfortably a self-portrait. Also, a blinking idiot.

Prideful boastings

Also - and this I am allowed to brag about, rather than simply announcing - my busy wife has sold another story, to another antho. I'm in that one too, as it happens. Hand in hand, and on and on...

Pandaemonium

Here's other news, as m'wife reminds me: Pandaemonium is available now for pre-order, from Amazon.com and from Amazon.co.uk and very likely other places too. Your local independent store, no doubt. Your call.