And I owe a huge debt to Steve's Fantasy Book Reviews who are running a series of Shadows of the Apt themed articles in the run up to Scarab's release, including an extremely pleasant review of Salute the Dark, together with a cover review and some new Q&A which touches on future releases.

Yeah, about that cover review… well, thunder stolen somewhat — I hadn't realised it was cleared to go, but if you do pop on over there you'll get your first sneak peak at the astonishingly scary cover that Jon Sullivan's done for Book 6, The Sea Watch. New kinden? Oh hell yes. Jon's request to me, in fact, was for something a little more monstrous than before, and thankfully the book does deliver the ideal material (2).

Signings: 14th August at the Leeds Travelling Man as I think I mentioned, southern signings still being haggled over, hopefully news soon on those.

Trivia: at my local Waterstones a growing stain of "Dark Romance" (3) has bloated out from the teen shelves and entirely displaced the fantasy/SF section, which now lives in a ghetto on the first floor, where it clusters around the trashcans and tries to keep warm. Still, one unexpected result is that my books, from being at ankle level, are now on the top shelf, so at least the average height of my readership should climb a bit. You know what they say, if you can crack the tall market, you're made.

(1) Not literally, of course. That would be unnecessarily confusing.

(2) No that's not Stenwold. I know we were talking about it being Stenwold but, seriously, he doesn't look like that.

(3) Teen vampire fetishistry.

Speaking of The Scarab Path, yes, out in August. I will admit to being nervous — Salute the Dark finished the first internal division of the series plot (2), and Scarab has new ground to cover, and so there's an ambiguity about reception and take-up that the previous books didn't necessarily have. Also, despite having seen so much of it recently, I really do like Scarab, and it feels a very personal effort. There is a great deal of character work I'm very happy with, and also a lot of revelation about the world, the Art, Aptitude and some very key ancient history. Crossed fingers for August. There will be signings, by the way, although arrangements are still being made. On the 14th August at 2.00pm I will be at the Travelling Man in Leeds for a signing and perhaps a reading or some such. I'm likely to be down south for a signing a fortnight later, 28th August, possibly in Oxford, but no firm details yet. Apparently there may be all sorts of shenanigans in September as well.

However none of that qualifies for the New Age monicker (3). Tonight, this very night, I put pen to paper on what should be book 8 in the series and rattled off the first few pages (4).

Also tonight on Channel 4 was a program entitled The Untold Battle of Britain about the Polish pilots who fought for Britain during the war.

Book 8's working title is The Air War.

Odd how things work out.

(1) And Mr L has surpassed himself with his notes on Sea Watch. There were an awful lot of moments where he was able to catch exactly what I was trying to say, in a way that I myself hadn't really appreciated, and set it out plainly and simply for me to follow. I am extremely blessed in having his assistance.

(2) Like all good insects, it's divided into three.

(3) and this is nothing to do with the Age of Aquarius either.

(4) which may not be the first few pages if I end up having to restructure as much as I did with book 7.

 Dragonfly Falling (un)original Soundtrack

Track 1 — The Wasps come to Tark (The Blitz, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Harry Gregson-Williams)

Track 2 — Tisamon and Felise (Tooth and Claw, from Doctor Who series 2 by Murray Gold)

Track 3 — Tarkesh Night Battle (Hanging, from Plunkett and Macleane by Craig Armstrong)

Track 4 — Salma in the Wasp Camp (Escape, from Plunkett and Macleane by Craig Armstrong) (1)

Track 5 — Parops's Orders and the Fall of Tark (Anakin's Betrayal, from Revenge of the Sith by John Williams)  (2)

Track 6 — Salma and Grief (Houses of Healing, from Return of the King special edition by Howard Shore) (4)

Track 7 — Collegium Prepares ('Where is the Horse and the Rider', from The Two Towers special edition by Howard Shore)

Track 8 — Scuto on the Workbench (Gelt's Death, from Battle Beyond the Stars by James Horner)

Track 9 — Harbour Assault (Davy Jones, from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 by Hans Zimmer)

Track 10 — Vekken Inside the City (Breach of the Deeping Wall, from The Two Towers special edition by Howard Shore)

Track 11 — Teornis's Victory Parade (Farewell Apollo, from Battlestar Galactica series 4 by Bear McCreary)

Track 12 — The Mantis-kinden (The Warrior, from Lord of the Dance by Ronan Hardiman) (5)

Track 13 — The Battle of the Rails (Raid on the Castle, from Prince Caspian by Harry Gregson-Williams)

(1) Because it would be a crime against music to separate those two tracks.

(2) In actual fact this isn't the perfect piece of music for this — what I wanted to point to here was a track from the soundtrack of Gunbuster, a fantastically obscure giant robot manga involving intergalactic dust mites that move at relativistic speeds (3), but my CD, obtained after a lengthy hunt, has a Japanese sleeve and I couldn't even reliably say which track I mean, let alone the name of the composer. For the purists, the best I can do is suggest the 22nd track on the CD (that I have), which appears to be labelled M10.

(3) I'm absolutely serious.

(4) I know, I know, this and track 10 are far too close to the originals, but when the music fits, what can you do?

(5) Yes, that Lord of the Dance

My first piece is up under the above title, and you can find it here.

2. The German language books are also out, and I think we have threevolumes hitting the shelves at once, with another two to be released (should have gone for a boxed set maybe). The first two volumes are Empire, the next two Dragonfly, and Mantis gets a book to itself. I and my access to online translators are a little thrown by one of the covers, so maybe I've got it wrong, but Die Schwarmkriege (the Swarm War) series runs to: Invasion des Feuers, Der Gepanzerte Spion, Die Geflugelte Armee, Schwartzer Glanz and Goldene Magie, which Google Chrome's in house translator makes as Invasion of the Fire, The Armoured Spy, The Winged Army, Black Gloss and Golden Magic. I'm not at all sure that "Black Gloss" is right. Any erudite assistance appreciated.

3. The US book 3 is out, with Jon Sullivan's phenomenal artwork on the cover.

4. In this month's SFX I have a little article on China Mieville's Perdido Street Station for their Book Club section (I wrote up Titus Groan for them a little whole ago)

5. I will be contributing to Borders'  SF blog, Babel Clash in the coming week. I'll post individually about topics as they come up, but first off I'ma gonna kick Superman in the nuts and then run away (2).

6. Finally, not exactly news, but Scifi London was a good fun time. Thank you to everyone who turned up at the coffee thing, and also to the audience who pitched up for The Thirty Second Commute, the panel I clawed my way on to. I had discovered fairly shortly beforehand that all the other panellists were Experts On The Future, so I had anticipated being the proverbial fifth wheel (3) but, as it turned out, neither having a strong agenda nor a focused speciality can sometimes mean you get to say more stuff. One of the other panellists also turned out to have a good nominee for Most Interesting Job Ever, as he studies slime moulds in order to produce smarter robots. Or possibly robots driven by smarter slime moulds. It involved robots and slime moulds, anyway, and it's a rare thing to sit there and think, This is an actual Scientist. He Does Science to things. (4) (5)

(1) With some extra bits I couldn't reproduce.

(2) What? He can so take it.

(3) Out of four.

(4) And of course in ten years time, when he's riding around on a cyborg slime mould the size of a house shouting about how everyone said he was mad, we'll all say we saw it coming.

(5) I have somewhat fallen in love with that specific kind of science that gets Done to things, in the general style of Dresden Codak and Girl Genius. Needless to say, Drephos Does Science to things too, and sometimes people.

One thing that is, to a certain extent, unavoidable, is that telling a story through individual stories results in compromise, and The Chains of Helleron isn't quite as self-contained and satisfactory as I'd like, for there is a certain proportion of it that only makes sense as a segment of a sequence — notably characters that are introduced but do not get much of the action. In the end I've settled for this, on the basis that there should be a third story along eventually that will help everything along. Working on the later books of the actual Shadows of the Apt series, I've discovered something similar in macrocosm. As the series grows, I am put to greater foreshadowing of future events in order to maintain the series structure. Each book will have its own story arc, its beginning and its end, but a certain amount of material will be unable to resolve, pending developments in later books.

You can find The Sun of the Morning here and, if you've not read it, do get it under your belt before attempting the new one.

After that, you can find The Chains of Helleron here.

(1) Yes, I know Black Company predates Band of Brothers (the book and the miniseries, albeit not the wartime experiences on which they are based).

Check out the websie here. I'm down for:

1.00pm — coffee klatch — come and meet the author (1)

2.15pm — panel: the 30 second commute — how the electronic age will make everything and everyone obsolete.

Please do come over and see me, or indeed such luminaries as China Mieville and Tony Ballantine, who are on at various other times and/or days.

(1) Me.

In the world of the Insect-kinden, all the kinden share a language (2). There is, however, a Reason for this. It's not just that I couldn't be bothered, honest. However, I'm feeling perverse enough not to simply explain, so I will content myself by pointing out that this remarkable commonality of language has not gone unnoticed by the clever men and women of the Great College. To give you an indication of their current thoughts on the subject, I have swiped an itinerary from one of their conferences, which I present for your delectation here.

For reference, this conference is taking place somewhere around the same time as book 5, which is actually important. The keen-eyed may wish to speculate on the import of some of the lesser items in the schedule too…

(1) The film The Thirteenth Warrior at least acknowledges this problem, with the arabic hero having to work hard to pick up the speech of the vikings he ends up accompanying, after an unpromising start where his servant manages very basic speech using mangled latin and greek. Whether you go for the linguistic montage the film lands us with, at least it admits to language as a barrier. (In Crichton's original book, Eaters of the Dead, the hero never really does learn the language, but gets by because one of the vikings speaks latin.)

(2) This isn't English, of course, but your humble author has kindly translated.