Films Comics Therapy

While meandering round the comic shop after a frankly unsatisfactory session with my therapist - this woman may cause me to progress from being agoraphobic to actually being a hermit - the theme music from Buffy the Vampire Slayer suddenly started playing. I was pleased. So pleased in fact that I launched into a Buffy conversation with the shop assistant standing beside me. But this did not go well. He wasn't a fan of Buffy, and furthermore he obviously had no desire to discuss it with a stranger who was apparently prepared for an in-depth analysis of all 144 episodes. He backed off rapidly, leaving me rather embarrassed. I realised ruefully that assistants in comic shops have no desire to engage in tedious conversations with over-enthusiastic customers. Which is understandable, I suppose. Probably if I worked in a comic shop I'd hate the customers. I left the shop quickly, still feeling quite embarrassed.

Last week I signed a film option for Lonely Werewolf Girl. I've signed many film options for my books in the past, and no film has ever appeared. It's difficult for producers to raise the necessary money. This producer however is very enthusiastic, with a good track record, and I do have faith in her. So perhaps she might succeed. But I won't expect too much, because of past disappointments. The American producers who currently hold the option for The Good Fairies of New York are still optimistic of making progress, though nothing much seems to have happened yet.

I've taken a violent dislike to my website, and am now attempting to redesign it. This is a challenge, as I have no art or design skills. Still, I've never let this stop me in the past.

Heating engineers currently 'waiting for parts'. Hah.

No Heat

I woke up this morning to find my heating had stopped working. Called heating engineers. They will arrived to fix it at some indeterminate time in the future.

To get me by, I dragged out an old convector heater from the cupboard. Plugged it in. It didn't work. Damn. Was plunged into crisis. Though last week was pleasantly sunny, today is cold. I can't stand the cold. I have no warmth inside me. I need a source of heat. Sometimes when I've arrived home after being cold outside, I've found it impossible to warm up again, and needed to make a hot water bottle.

So on a cold day, with no heating, things were looking grim. I dealt with the crisis by hurrying to the cheap shop which sells everything, and buying a new convection heater. It warms up the room nicely. Probably at ruinous expense, but it will get me by till the heating is fixed. I can't stand being cold. Hmm. Maybe I should live somewhere warmer.

Have abandoned all efforts at working. Till my heating is repaired I'm lying on the couch wrapped in a quilt, with the convection heater beside me. Fortunately, I have a new bundle of manga to read. I really like Naruto, It's a great comic. I wish I was a ninja with amazing ninja powers.

Or maybe I wish I was Catiline, a strong and rebellious figure in Ancient Rome who, I remember, was described by Cicero as being completely indifferent to the effects of either great heat or great cold. That would be good. You wouldn't catch Catiline shivering under a quilt. Still, Catiline was killed when his rebellion failed, so maybe he'd have been better off just lying on a couch anyway. Which, of course, Romans were keen on doing.

Tor will publish its mass-market paperback of The Good Fairies of New York in America in June. The Soft Skull edition of The Good Fairies has already sold more copies than any book I've had published before, and this will make it more widely available. Soon you won't be able to move anywhere without bumping into a copy. Tor are a very large publisher, so I hope it works out well. Here is some Good Fairies wallpaper, from Pablo Defendini's cover art for the book.

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More Killer Insects

I was strolling home yesterday when I suddenly felt a sharp pain. I looked down and was appalled to see some weird insect had settled down comfortably to chew on my arm. I shook it off and carried on, but was troubled by the incident. One positive thing about living in Britain - among our many problems - is the lack of harmful, venomous insects.

It looked like some sort of dark ladybird. I'm alarmed if ladybirds have started mutating into new hostile species. And it's a bit of a cheek really, going around being all cute, red and spotty one moment, and the next suddenly sucking your blood. But perhaps it wasn't a ladybird at all, but some new killer variety, moving north into Britain as a result of temperature increases. I worry about global warming bringing harmful new bugs to London. In general, you could say I don't like bugs.

The paperback of Thraxas Under Siege, the eighth book in the series, will be released in the USA soon, in August I think. It's been out in hardback for a while.

I wrote a blog a few months ago about the ending of the Thraxas series, and this blog still gets replies, many of them very unhappy about the whole thing. And one or two of them quite angry at me for not writing a ninth book. I appreciate people's replies on that blog, and wish I could be more accommodating in producing a new Thraxas book. But I don't know what to do about that, I'm afraid, as I explain in the blog.

Here is a brief interview with me about Lonely Werewolf Girl on the news page at the SCI-FI channel. The book is selling really well in the USA, and has already been reprinted. I'm about to reprint it here too. So this is all good. I'm writing a sequel at the moment, which is going very slowly.

Another Week

My Playstation2 is becoming increasingly erratic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It's so annoying. I suspect the universe is sending me a message.

* Stop playing video games and write something instead *

Hmm. No, I don't think that's the message.

* Get rid of your old console and buy a Playstation3 *

Yes, I think that might be what the universe is trying to tell me. If only these machines weren't so expensive.

I did read recently about a dating agency for really rich women. Apparently these female millionaires can have trouble meeting suitable boyfriends and husbands, so this agency finds men for them. Possibly I should put my name forward as suitable partner.

* London Author. Will be quite happy if you buy him a PS3 and leave him alone. And maybe a box set of Buffy DVDs too. *

But a man last seen wandering round the supermarket wearing cut-off army trousers, sandals, and a Sunnydale High School t-shirt, who's apparently not shaved for five days, may not be the dream target for rich women. I would just embarrass her at social functions.

The supermarket had run out of rhubarb crumble. It was the first crumble disappointment for some time, and I felt quite gloomy about the whole thing. Arrived home with soup instead, but could not raise any enthusiasm, for the soup or anything else. But will hopefully be revived later in the day, when Arsenal are on TV.

Really I need a new Buffy comic. It seems like a long time since the last one. They don't come out frequently enough. I blame these lazy comic artists, who are probably sitting around playing video games when they should be working.

Endless Work

It was quite a big week for literary activity in the Millar household. First I went to the local pub to met the foreign rights editor from Kedros, the Greek publisher who will be issuing Lonely Werewolf Girl later this year. After that I was busy again because the reprinting process for Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me is underway, for Soft Skull in the USA. I had to go through the manuscript again. This can be quite a tedious procedure, for an old book. Mercifully, I do still like this novel a lot, and didn't cringe with shame and embarrassment on reading it again, something I certainly would do if forced to read some of my other old books.

Then a bundle of covers arrived from Baen, for Thraxas Under Siege, eighth book in the series. Well OK, that wasn't much activity. All I had to do was open the envelope and look at the covers. It felt quite arduous anyway. Thraxas Under Siege has been out in hardback in the USA for a while. This is the paperback edition, soon to be published. It's good to have unleashed eight Thraxas books on the world. I would rather like to do a ninth sometime. (For reasons why that won't happen any time soon, see this blog.)

So that all seemed like a lot of activity. Having run out of manga and Buffy comics, I recovered by lying in the bath reading Samuel Pepys' Diaries.

February 12th, 1660 - Hence home, where my wife and I had some high words upon my telling her that I would fling the dog out at the window if he pissed the house any more.

A little harsh perhaps, but you can't entirely blame him. He's trying to write his diary and there's a dog pissing everywhere. It would be annoying for anyone. However, his wife was capable of mounting a spirited argument, so I imagine the dog survived.

Soup

Two new pictures. One, sitting down, taken by Lucy Levene for the interview in The Telegraph last year. (And now carelessly cropped by me, to make it fit). And another taken by a friend outside my flat, showing me apparently about to embark on some dangerous military/ninja training. I notice in both pictures I'm attempting to force a smile, something I struggle with in front of the camera.

Soup. You know when you eat soup while you're sort of slumping in front of the TV? I mean, practically horizontal, like Homer Simpson on the couch? It means the soup spoon is travelling over quite a large area of clothing before it reaches your mouth. Leading, inevitably, to soup stains on the t-shirt. You can't transport soup this far horizontally on a spoon without spilling some. There just doesn't seem any way round this. Apart from sitting up straight, I suppose, but that really defeats the object of slumping on the couch. Technology should have solved the problem, inventing some new device. I mean, how long have we been using spoons? It's practically stone-age technology.

While my soup-stained t-shirts were in the wash, I lay in the bath reading New Scientist. Scientists are puzzled as to why there isn't as much anti-matter in the universe as there is normal matter. Various theories to explain this have been proposed. After diligently working my way through the article, I now have a vague understanding of these theories, though I'd have difficulty explaining them. When the new CERN particle accelerator starts operating, there may be more information about anti-matter. And maybe more about the mysterious Higgs Boson. I like popular science articles about nuclear physics, and wish I had the mathematical prowess to understand it all better.

Out Damned Spot

I approached the bathroom mirror with my customary greeting of "Hello you handsome dog,'' when I noticed I'd developed a spot. Was immediately plunged into gloom. It's so annoying. One compensation you might expect for growing older is not to get spots any more. But this has proved not to be the case, dammit.

So this seemed like a grave misfortune, coming as it did right after Arsenal's defeat on Tuesday - a quite scandalous affair of poor refereeing decisions. Bad refereeing decisions have really blighted Arsenal's season. I suspect a wide-ranging conspiracy against us.

So with the serious spot situation, and Arsenal falling victim to the illegal machinations of referees, there was nothing to do except make tea, and lie on the couch till things got better. After flicking through hundreds of channels without finding anything good I was reduced to watching the Kerrang rock channel, which was actually slightly better than I expected. If I was fifteen again, I'd probably love Evanescence.

Lying on the couch wasn't such a bad choice anyway, in view of the cold temperatures outside. There was a lot of snow last week, more than I can remember seeing in London for a long time. It doesn't often snow here. Unlike my childhood in Glasgow, where it wasn't uncommon to be struggling through snow on my way to school. I walked a long way to school every day in Glasgow, from a very young age, on my own, often through bad weather. I could be several hours drying out when I got there. Everyone walked to school in those days. No one does now, probably for very good reasons.

Quick investigation reveals 60,000 entries on Google for my Shakespearean title, Out Damned Spot. OK, I'm lacking in originality. But it wasn't just the facial woes that brought it to mind. I remember studying MacBeth at school, and I always liked Macbeth's castle. I liked the word Thane too, which is probably why the term appears in Lonely Werewolf Girl, and also a castle.

Public Lending Right

I've been forced to retire to the couch, exhausted from filling in forms for Public Lending Right. Which I've neglected to do for the past 18 years. I did register my first few books but forgot about it after that. For 18 years. Hmm.

Public Lending Right allows British authors to earn a little money when their books are borrowed from libraries. It would never earn me more than a few hundred pounds a year. But you know, I want that money.

It might be safest to stay on couch for a while, with the curtains drawn. Any moment now my modest South London apartment may again be besieged by hordes of the world's most glamorous women, driven mad with desire by my new story in Skin Two. It's probably safest not to answer the door for a while. After filling in these forms, I'm just too tired for company. I had to write down a lot of ISBNs, and now these are 13 digits long, that's a lot of writing.

After mentioning the Barnes and Noble promotion of Lonely Werewolf Girl and The Good Fairies of New York, and saying I'd like to see it, some people sent me pictures from bookshops in the USA. I thought that was extremely nice of them. These are from Matt in Jackson, Mississippi, Mara in Athens, Georgia, and Scott in Denver, Colorado.