I submitted the manuscript for Solar Flares last July, and sometime around December came requests for rewrites. I've battle with this alongside everything else, and it was due 14 March. Unfortunately, as I was giving a paper at the University of Herefordshire on then, I suggested I get a day's extension. I spent Thursday applying for two study ( Read more... )

I've needed a day out for at least a week, albeit of the take-the-laptop-and-work variety. I thought of London, I thought of Tunbridge Wells, I thought of Tonbridge, I thought of Ashford... I thought of Ramsgate. But the train service was suspended all weekend, and there was a diversion on Sturry Road, so buses looked a problem. Oh, and the bridge ( Read more... )

136600 / 120000 words. 114% done!

New version of Chapter Two - Chapter Three is a maze of black ink.

Six months ish since submission, and the process of rewriting begins. Meanwhile, the next book and the next book proposal lurk in the wings. Deadline March 14. Let's start with Chapter One...



139900 / 120000 words. 117% done!

Il est soumis



139,000 / 120,000 words. NaN% done!

So close... I reckon I have 200 word to add to end the project and I was going to keep going; but my bulb has gone ping, and I need to read some Ballard stories before I write those 200 words. I could adjurn to a room with a light bulb but I think that's my cue to get the fuck to bed. It being gone 1.40. I am unlikely to have time tomorrow (today) ( Read more... )

I just note that only one story by a woman is in any of the three Andromeda anthologies edited in the 1977/1978.

Couldn't happen now...

The death march continues - fifteen chapters have a penultimate edit, and aside from adding a couple of paragraphs here and there, and an epilogue, and the full bibliography, I'm almost ready to submit.

I am, of course, hoping to awake to discover that the fairies have rewritten Chapter Eleven for me. On the other hand, maybe that's Monday's job.

Term and post term has been horrendously busy, and the book remains unfinished. Where are we?

The book:
Vietnam and homosexuality chapters still need surgery.
Epilogue needs completion.
New Wave chapter needs a sentence on Ballard, Children's stuff on Pete's Dragon
Bibliography!

Meanwhile I've given papers on Survivors (twice) and Bernard ( Read more... )

For those who do not know, this is Solar Flares: A Cultural History of Science Fiction in the Seventies

Introduction: Pretty well done now.

1. The Dinosaur's Last Gasp: needs five hundred words on Sturgeon; Volume XIIII of the stories has arrived.
2. The New Wave: Ballard, Ellison and Harrison to be written; Ballard largely happens elsewhere, so a logical ( Read more... )