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The voyage out

This morning at 7 o’clock, Chris set sail from our island for the final time. I ran down to the quayside to see him off. Playing on my headphones was Fairport Convention’s ‘A Sailor’s Life’, which seemed fitting to mark the beginning of a limitless journey through the Dream Archipelago, and dovetailed well with Sandy Denny’s ‘Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz’, which was played at our wedding. The committal music Chris chose was the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 in A Major.

We decided not to have a funeral. Neither of us could bear the thought of it, and the imposition it would have placed on people, to travel up to Scotland in the middle of winter, made the decision easier for us to take.

There will instead be a memorial event for Chris at the Glasgow Worldcon in August, a chance for us to come together and celebrate Chris’s life, work and legacy. Much more our kind of thing.

Prix Medicis et Prix Femina

I am thrilled and a little overwhelmed to announce that the French edition of Conquest (translation, as ever, by the incomparable Bernard Sigaud) is a finalist for the 2023 Prix Medicis. It has also made the second selection for the 2023 Prix Femina for best translated work. You only have to look at my fellow shortlistees to see what an honour this is.

The growing visibility and success of my work in France is in no small part down to the dedication and commitment of my French publishers, Sylvie Martigny and Jean-Hubert Gailliot of Editions Tristram. These are very special people, who live and breathe literature. Their generosity and sensitivity, their belief in what I have done and what I can do is indeed a beacon in dark times.

Bravo, mes amis, bravo. C’est tout pour vous.

Tying the knot

Eaglesham House, Rothesay, 30th September 2023 (photo by Garry Charnock)

Chris and I were married on Saturday, surrounded by friends and members of both our families. It was a joyful day, marking the end of what has been a summer of difficult news and major life adjustments.

In July, Chris was diagnosed with cancer. He spent six weeks in hospital in all, mainly on account of a broken leg, an injury that came about as a direct result of the disease, though of course we did not know that when it happened.

He is now home, and concentrating his energies on his current writing project. His spirits remain high, his resilience remarkable, his sense of humour undiminished. We are relieved to have regained a passable version of what we think of as normality, and aim to keep things that way for as long as possible. We are doing the work we love, being together, and focusing on the positive.

Faith in the Future

My new novel, Conquest, is published today.

Jonathan Thornton’s insightful and generous review at Fantasy Hive offers an eloquent analysis of its structure and intentions, while Steve Andrews brings his particular knowledge and engagement to our ‘interview-review‘ at Outlaw Bookseller. As always, I hope that readers both familiar with my work and entirely new to it will enjoy discovering their own reactions and responses to a book that was a long time in the making and is to an extent a personal commentary upon the last few years.

Conquest is a novel about truth and post-truth, the familiar made strange, communal crisis and personal epiphany. But on the day that sees the book pass from my hands into the hands of readers, I would like to reflect upon the theme that perhaps most of all provided its guiding inspiration. In one section of the novel, my private investigator Robin remembers how at the age of twelve she fell ill with pneumonia and as a result was absent from school and from her normal life for more than six weeks. Feeling weakened from the disease and with no one to talk to, she listens to Radio 3 for hours on end. This is where, for the first time, she hears the Goldberg Variations, and falls in love with the music of J. S. Bach.

The same thing happened to me, more or less, and I count those six weeks spent listening to music as some of the most formative in my cultural life, a period in which I was able to experience works that might not otherwise have crossed my path until much later. Where I was able to think, in privacy and without interruption, about what music meant, not only in terms of my own emotional reaction to it but in the abstract.

Unlike Robin, this was not when I first heard the Goldberg Variations. I came to know Bach through others of his compositions: through listening endlessly to the violin concertos and playing the flute sonatas, through singing in the B minor mass, a valuable and joyous apprenticeship that meant when I finally did come to know the Goldbergs, in my middle twenties, it felt like coming home.  

One of the fringe benefits of my many years spent working in a music shop was the opportunity for listening. I was responsible for our whole stock of classical recordings, which meant I could buy in and test drive anything I wanted to. The effect was similar to being let loose in an enormous playground. One of the lessons I learned from all that listening was that recordings I initially considered my favourites could and often did cede their position to other performances, sometimes in the same day. That the point of studying different recordings is not simply to establish a hierarchy, fun though that can be, but to come to a deeper understanding of a piece of music through its various interpretations.

You would be surprised at the number of times you rub shoulders with Bach – through advertising, through film or game soundtracks, even through lift music – during the course of a single week. Without our consciously realising it, Bach reveals himself to us through an accumulation of encounters over many years, sure proof of his continuing ability to speak directly to millions of people across every conceivable divide of age or culture or background. Bach’s work deepens our relationship with the past, even as it informs our present. Through an intricate interweaving of sound and meaning that seems hardwired into all of us, Bach gives us faith in the future.

I have tried to convey something of Bach’s timeless and magical appeal in my writing of Conquest. I have not felt ready to write at length about music before now, precisely because the subject means so much to me, and also because it is difficult, for any writer, to add anything to what is already present in the music itself. In setting out to explore Robin’s world, and most especially Frank’s, I have found myself constantly in mental dialogue with those writers who have struggled with similar questions, and in so doing provided inspiration of their own. I hope I have added something to the conversation. I hope most of all that anyone reading Conquest who has for whatever reason persuaded themselves that Bach is not for them will throw aside their preconceptions and listen again.

Announcing A Traveller in Time

When the news broke earlier this year that Maureen Kincaid Speller was seriously ill, like all of her friends and colleagues I felt deeply upset. Maureen had seemed still in the very prime of life; she still had so much to offer to the world and to her community; there were so many books and ideas and questions she had still to write about. The thought that she might be leaving us was not one I was ready to dwell on, and still find it hard to come to terms with.

Once the initial shock had subsided I began to think about conversations I’d had with Maureen about assembling a collection of her criticism, a selection of work that best expressed her passion for books and for thinking about books, as well as shining a spotlight upon the particular authors and subject areas she felt most drawn to write about. I knew this was a project close to her heart, one she was eager to see fulfilled so that she could move on to the next phase of her work, uncovering new insights and drawing upon fresh enthusiasms.

When I tentatively suggested to Maureen’s husband, Paul Kincaid, that I would like to help Maureen put together such a collection he was immensely supportive. When I contacted Francesca Barbini at Luna Press and asked her if she might be in a position to provide a home for Maureen’s work, she came on board immediately. And so A Traveller in Time was born. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Francesca and to Paul for their enthusiasm, for their instant understanding that this needed to happen.

Of course, the original and cherished intention was for Maureen herself to be a part of this process. Time, and Maureen’s illness, were sadly against us in this. But I am happy and glad to know that Maureen knew about the project, that even until a couple of weeks before she died we were planning to meet in person and discuss it. Since Maureen’s death in September, the project has seemed if anything more urgent, more necessary. I am delighted to tell you that I have now completed the bulk of the editorial work, and Luna have scheduled A Traveller in Time for release in September 2023, exactly a year after Maureen died, and in time for launch at next year’s FantasyCon.

We are lucky enough to have secured cover art from the award-winning Iain Clark, who designed the wonderful poster and artwork to launch the bid for the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon. I look forward to sharing that cover in due course – it is truly beautiful.

I am delighted, gratified and very proud that this project is on its way to becoming a physical reality. Maureen was special. The work she did was uniquely her own. In reading her words, we remember her. I hope and trust that we of the science fiction community will be doing exactly that for many years to come.

Maureen Kincaid Speller

Yesterday we learned the terrible news that our dear friend Maureen Kincaid Speller had passed away. Maureen was diagnosed with cancer back in March, but she had made remarkable progress and at the beginning of the summer her prognosis looked a great deal better. Her death on Sunday came as a bitter blow. Death is always difficult to come to terms with, but in the case of Maureen it seems doubly so. She had so much more still to give. Her indomitable spirit, her keen intellect, her wicked sense of humour and the all round pleasure in being in her company – these things make her loss all the more painful. I don’t think I will ever get used to the knowledge that she is no longer with us.

I will value in particular the memories of our many discussions of science fiction – its definition and relevance, its unique contribution to literature, the state of the field. So much laughter and so much passion. I was delighted when Maureen was made senior reviews editor at Strange Horizons, because I knew how much she would relish this challenge and how much support and experience she could offer to newer writers. I will treasure especially the time we spent together immersed in the Shadow Clarke through most of 2017. Maureen wrote some excellent criticism – because of course she did – but there was also all the stuff behind the scenes, the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the joy in thinking.

Maureen’s work as a critic and commentator has been a lifelong commitment and I will have more to say about that in the coming months. For now, I just want to say Maureen, your loss to us is incalculable. We love you with all our hearts, and will miss you forever. Our sincerest condolences to Paul, Maureen’s beloved husband, and our beloved friend. Our thoughts are with you.

At the Clarke Award ceremony 2017: Paul Kincaid, Nick Hubble, Victoria Hoyle, me, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Helen Marshall. Photo by Will Ellwood – thanks, Will!

Get well soon

“Literature is self-validating. That is to say, a book is not justified by its author’s worthiness to write it, but by the quality of what has been done.”

Salman Rushdie

In this stunning and prescient essay for the London Review of Books from 1982, Rushdie reminds us – if reminder were needed – how even at the start of his career he was already preoccupied with themes of identity, aesthetics, culture, the transformative power of the imagination and above all freedom of expression. We are so lucky to have him still with us. Everyone’s writing about Rushdie at the moment and that’s not surprising but what we are waiting for, really, is to hear from him again. Opinionated, fearless, controversial – writers like Rushdie are increasingly rare. If the past days have shown us anything, it is that voices such as his are more necessary and more valuable than ever.

Home II

My new office is the perfect size, by which I mean perfect for me.

The office I had in our previous home was just that little bit too small. Most of my books had to be housed elsewhere in our home, a fact that was somewhat made up for by my magnificent view of the firth and of the ferry terminal, but it gave the room a feeling of incompleteness, and led to the annoying side-effect of having thirty to forty books piled up either side of my computer at any one time.

For someone who prefers their surroundings to have a semblance of order, this was not ideal. The office I had before that, in Devon, had room for my books, which blanketed the back wall like a layer of secondary insulation, but as a space was even smaller, almost a box room. The office I had in Hastings had the opposite problem – it felt too big. I like rooms that feel like burrows, enclosing and human-sized. The large, high-ceilinged rooms of our previous, Georgian home always felt overwhelming to me, as if I were a guest in them, or simply camped out. I never felt we properly owned that house, or ever could.

There is a rightness to my new office that makes it seem like the room I have been waiting to discover all my writing life. From my desk, which is immediately inside the doorway as you come in, I can see the firth, the ferry – more distant now as it ploughs its way to and from the harbour but still present, still essential, still ours – the Cowal hills beyond. My books fill the wall opposite and half of the wall that abuts it, and there is room for them all. Our bookshelves were made for us by a local carpenter. We had them dismantled so we could bring them with us from our previous home, in the first instance because we could not bear to part with them, though as it turns out the escalating price of timber means we would not have been able to afford to replace them, had we left them behind. Lucky.

My office is a warm mustard-yellow, the colour of gorse. It has crept up on me over the years, that yellow is my favourite colour for rooms. I feel enclosed, protected, energised. Warmed by the sun, through even the bleakest of Scottish winter days.

During the twenty years I spent working in retail, I was always aware that in order to write it was essential for me to have the kind of day-job where I could clock off at the end of my shift and not have to think about the work, at all, when I wasn’t there. This inevitably meant low pay, but the up-side – the essential up-side – was freedom of thought. During these past ten weeks of arranging our move and project-managing the renovation of our new house, it has been brought home to me, with bells on, how correct I had always been in this instinctive assumption. The move was timely and right. Giving the house an overhaul has been a landmark experience, a labour of love. But for the life of the mind it has been crushing, and uniquely stressful. The more or less absolute inability to think about anything else – an experience I have been referring to as ‘brain-wipe’ – has taken its toll on me and on those around me.

Thankfully, this mental burden has been lifted. Just a week after moving in, I find myself back at my desk, picking up not where I left off, exactly, but somewhere close to it. The work feels exciting, re-invigorated, above all, possible. Given the state of the wider world, there have been moments these past months when I have found myself wondering if it was in fact possible, if there was a point to it – the kind of feelings I have been lucky enough, for many, many years, to have entirely escaped.

To have felt them again, even for a day or two, has reminded me of what is at stake, if not for me then for thousands of others, daily, hourly.

While I can, I will. While we can, we must.

Thank you for being here. Reading, writing, thinking – it’s who we are.

Home

We moved into our new home on Thursday. In the two days since we’ve been here, we have spent the majority of our time unpacking books. Books on shelves mean we are settling in. We have a little way to go still, but in essence, our move is complete. The cats, who endured their six weeks of indoor living with patience and grace, have begun to get acquainted with their new territory.

Shortly after we moved north to Scotland I wrote a piece for a magazine enumerating the various house moves I have made during my life. From memory, there have been more than twenty in total, a tally that still feels vertiginous to me, a catalogue of displacement and disruption. This particular move has been easier in some ways – we are, in a sense, still in the same place, still on familiar ground – but in others it has seemed all-consuming, exhausting, seminal.

I am sitting in my new office, looking out at the Firth of Clyde. It is a gentle, pale blue evening. I am so glad to be home.

Well, that was unexpected

We have moved house. Or rather, we find ourselves between houses, in temporary accommodation while we do work to the house we have just bought, two miles down the road from the house we just sold, smaller in scale but already, for me at any rate, larger in the imagination.

We were very happy in the house we have now left. This was the house that brought us to the island, the house that sheltered us through lockdown and that features, in various guises, in several of our novels. The decision to sell it was difficult and arrived at only gradually, founded upon the fact that the house was too big and too expensive for us to maintain, that its unsuitability would only increase with the passage of years.

The past six weeks have seen us undergoing all the familiar, unavoidable, anxiety-inducing accompaniments to moving house: the sense of disjuncture, the inevitably upsetting process of dismantling a home and the queasy feeling of unreality that comes in its wake. There has also been the intensely practical problem of downsizing our library of books, CDs and DVDs. It has been incredibly important to us that they find their way into the hands of readers and listeners who will appreciate them, which has meant several trips into Glasgow in order to donate them. I am terribly glad we did this, but it has, in the midst of the numerous other chores and missions of madness, been exhausting.

Keeping me sane through the whole process has been Laura Thompson’s unusually candid and spontaneous biography of England’s most famous crime writer, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery. I am sure there will be those who find Thompson’s approach too open, too opinionated and too personal, but Thompson’s singular willingness to put her own heart and soul on the line has been precisely what I like and admire about the book, a hefty volume that nonetheless has been stimulating and thought-provoking through the whole of its length, and that I have always felt eager and grateful to return to at the end of another tiring day.

Now begins the process of building back up. I love our new home. I feel especially lucky to have retained my cherished view of the Firth of Clyde, albeit from a different angle. I cannot wait for us to move in properly, to get back to work. My current work-in-progress seems like a distant, unfamiliar land. I will need to reacquaint myself with it. I know there will be changes, because I have changed. I look forward to finding out exactly where I have arrived.

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