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.

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.

I make no apology that some of the pieces suggested themselves simply because of a commonality between the setting of the film scene and the relevant book section (although frankly, battles are battles, and battle music in films has a particular tempo all its own). I have also not even attempted to have a crack at leitmotifs, as that would, frankly, be entering the realms of OCD.

Soundtracks to at least books 2–4 to follow.

Empire in Black and Gold (un)original sound track

Track 1 — Kinden Overture (Main Title, from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, by Jeremy Soule)

Track 2 - The Fall of Myna (Fort Battle, from Last of the Mohicans, by Trevor Jones)

Track 3 — Collegium (Sky Ferry, from The Golden Compass, by Alexandre Deplat)

Track 4 — Escape from the Sky Without (Septimus, from Stardust, by Ilan Eshkeri)

Track 5 — Slaves into Asta (Caverns of Isengard, from The Fellowship of the Ring Complete Recordings, by Howard Shore)

Track 6 — Atryssa Remembered (Slughorn's Confession, from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by Nicholas Hooper)

Track 7 — The Darakyon (Light of the Sun, from Shadow of the Vampire, by Daniel I. Jones)

Track 8 — Thalric does his Duty (Martial Law, from Battlestar Galactica Series 2, by Bear McCreary)

Track 9 — Tynisa (Armada, from The Virgin Queen, by Martin Phipps)

Track 10 — The Pride Battle (The Battle, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe, by Harry Gregson-Williams)

Track 11 — End Title Song — Insect Nation by Bill Bailey.

I forgot completely to link this which is issue 70 of Comic Book Outsiders which includes an interview talking about the future of Shadows of the Apt.

I've finished Tom Lloyd's Stormcaller with some delight at watching it take a standard fantasy plot, lure it close by playing coy, and then kick it repeatedly in the crotch until it falls over. In other words, lovely twist at the end.  The world itself is interesting too, lots of history, which is how I like it.

Warren Ellis' Ignition City graphic novel is a thing of beauty that I cannot recommend too highly.

Back to editing The Scarab Path, over which my editors are currently wielding the whip as the August release date is going to take some doing.

For those that can't, for reasons geographical or otherwise, I now have a solution, as promised.

Byron Godfrey, who runs the independent bookshop in Garforth where I live, is able to provide signed copies on request, on the basis that I can pop down and sign some for him as and when necessary. You could therefore do worse than contacting him on:

 byron58(at)tiscali(dot)co(dot)uk     (1)

He will happily post to international readers.

It's also worth noting that Forbidden Planet in London has books in stock and may be able to mail signed copies out — their website is here

(1) Replace the (at) and the (dots), obviously, but this way I'm hopefully protecting him from being spammed by bots or botted by spam or however it works.

For those that didn't, and that do want a signed copy, watch this place. I have plans afoot.

It's been a while since the last new story went up, partly because of, you know, writing books'n'all, but also because of being unable for some reason to upload to the site, which is being looked into. I actually have two stories waiting to be popped on, so look forward to some more shortly.

So: go here for "The Price of Salt" which, in a blatant display of false advertising, isn't a sequel at all, but is arguably one of a series, for the first time, following up on the adventures of the four reprobates we met in "An Old Man in a Harsh Season". More on the content of Price in a moment. However…

One of the FAQs I get concerns the longevity and future of the series, so I thought I'd better set something out here to satisfy those people who want to know but haven't already read the yadda in an interview, and haven't asked themselves. Obviously, book 4 of the series has come out. A great many people seem to have been surprised by this, such surprise manifesting itself round about the middle of book 3 when it was clear thata any conclusion fo the "trilogy" would have to be horribly rushed.

There is nothing magic about trilogies. Ok, not entirely true. The basic story structure of beginning-middle-end obviously lends itself to a trilogy, which may be why many trilogies flag in the middle. However the fantasy genre got hooked on trilogies after Tolkien, and Mr T didn't intend to write one, instead producing a long book in six parts. I think the publishers decided to chop it into three, and so unleashed the trope that is still stalking about the place making a nuisance of itself. The two most prominent fantasy authors who were Tolkien's contemporaries — Lewis and Peake, neither of them had trilogies in mind (although the tragedy of Mervyn Peake's medical condition meant that Gormenghast ended up as a trilogy with a very odd last book (which I love(1)) he intended to write more. This is one of the great losses to literature as a whole, and to fantasy in particular.)

These days you get three book series, and you get series that aren't. Notably, the two biggest names in epic fantasy are looking far further — Erikson and Martin are both going for broke, with Erikson's 10th book due to round off the Malazon Book of the Dead, but still unlikely to close the pages of the world that he and Esselmont write in. So: Shadows of the Apt — also a 10 book series, if all goes according to plan(3). However there are plot arcs and plot arcs. Whilst the overshadowing plot will run from 1 to 10, the series itself will be subdivided into three segments (think not of trilogies, but of insects, after all). Salute the Dark brings the first segment to an end, and the next three books (and I'm getting beyond my brief here, because we're still in negotiations, but hey) will be a second plot arc, but slightly more stand-alone. If fortune favours me, books 8–10 will then be the final arc that will conclude matters. Will the world remain open for further writing(4)? You betcha.

Next topic then: Vampires.

Yeah, well, not exactly. Vampires have had a stranglehold (6) on the genre recently, or at least a sub-sub-sub-genre of vampire/supernatural romance seems to have been lording it around the place. Yes, yes, yes, the Mosquito-kinden are vampires, or rather magically-powerful blood-drinkers, as they're not undead in any way. However Uctebri surely owes Nosferatu for a few pointers, possibly through a filger of Shadow of the Vampire. If he's a vampire, he's old-school bald and creepy, yo (7).

However something's coming to hamstring the vampires and overtake them, I think, and it looks like it's werewolves, ever the cybermen to the vampire's dalek (8). At the SFX Weekender I ran into Steve Feasey, whose Changeling series is a young-adult take on the werewolf myth, and sounded pretty damn good from his reading — and sex, lots of sex (9). Vampires and werewolves are both still going strong, for one reason at least, because they have that undercurrent of sex, taboo, sweaty emotions, all that jazz.

Anyway, obviously no werewolves in Shadows of the Apt. No wolves, after all. Absolutely no way that I could do my own take on the lycanthrope legends in insect form…

So go read The Price of Salt and check the phase of the moon…

(1) An acting friend of mine one held up Richard E Grant's portrayal of Withnail as The Place That Actors Do Not Want To End Up (2). There is a similar cautionary tale for writers, and the character lives within the pages of Titus Alone, in the Under-River, surrounded by stacks and stacks of unsold copies of his book.

(2) Not the portrayal, which is masterful, but the despairing, wretched, battered and hopeless pride of poor damned Withnail on his terminal decline.

(3) There have been writers who have ended up with more books than their numbering knows what to do with, owing to unusually high page count — George RR Martin and Tad Williams, for two. I'm sure there are also authors whose publishers have slapped them and told them to stop it.

(4) Both mine and other peoples', I hope, as shown by some of the third-party stories on this site. Everything on the site is Shadows of the Apt Canon(5)

(5) Or leadshotter, at least.

(6) When it come to vampires I'll mix whatever damn metaphors I want.

(7) As I think one phrases it.

(8) Geekspasm

(9) Not explicit Janine Ashbless Black Lace sex, but from the bit he read, the series is very much aware of just how sexually-charged the whole werewolf thing is.

1. Paul Cornell has the enthusiasm of 1000 fanboys,

especially when talking about Dr Who. One can honestly believe that the timelord business was kept going through the "Wilderness Years" entirely by Paul talking very animatedly to absolutely anyone and everyone about it at every opportunity.

2. Apparently I'm nominated for the Gemmel Awards this year again,

or at least my presence on the panel would seem to indicate it. I think Blood of the Mantis is up, but when voting's open, if you did want to cast a proxy vote for Dragonfly Falling I'm sure Druss would understand. Sapkowski won last year of course, and it's fair enough — his Blood of Elves genuinely is a good fantasy in the vein of Gemmel.

3. People will queue for four hours to get Tom Baker to sign a photograph of himself. And/or James Marsters.

… Tom Baker is an experience. In person, on stage, rambling and digressing, and absolutely and exactly the person that you honestly hoped he would be. None of it's an act. It's all him, like a larger than life mad uncle who, you're sure, could dismantle a dalek (should one appear) without ever pausing for breath. My agent, whose dream to be in the presence of Tom Baker has now come true, spent Mr B's entire spot on stage accosting random people in the audience and saying, "That's Tom Baker" to them in a somewhat spaced-sounding voice. Still, I would not queue four hours for an autograph, and that's no reflection on Mr Baker. I can't think of anyone whose autograph I'd queue four hours for. But enough people did that half the hall was essentially blockaded for the entire morning.

 4. A windowless and apparently unventilated "screening room" left showing scifi programs for long enough will end up smelling strongly of decaying nerd. Enough said.

5. I have engineered a strategic Tor-Gollancz detente by entering into a mutual reading pact with Tom Lloyd, whose Stormcaller I am just about to start. He in turn is having a crack at mine. Peace in our time.

6. Unlike Pokemon, you can never catch them all.

In this case, I missed Jeff Wayne, of War of the Worlds fame, who has a special place in my heart, as a collaborator in sneaking SF into my primary school. In my last year we were forced bodily to study the Victorian era. At age 11 there is little useful insight you can gain into this, and instead I recall it as being extremely dull, and a particular cause of my teachers' general complaint that, no matter what, I would draw insects in the margins of everything. However, I managed to click that HG Wells was, arguably, Victorian, and somehow from this fast-talked the teacher into playing the entirety of War of the Worlds to the class over two afternoons. To this day I don't know how I did it. It may have been the one sole time in that school that I verged on the popular.

7. Holiday camp chalets redefine the word "chalet".

There was little of the Swiss cuckoo clock about them, which is all I'll say for fear of waiting lawyers. Oh, except they look like halls of residence of blocks of flats that have suffered severe subsidence (being only 2 stories left above ground). And I understand that the first open hand of hospitality is when you're presented with a list detailing the precise cost of everything in the room, in case you break it. Enough, enough. Tor sprung for a cottage by the sea, and I spent the weekend in Bohemian splendour, swapping anecdotes with China Mieville, Peter F Hamilton and Mark Charan Newton while editorial assistants waited on us hand and foot and fed us grapes. Ready-peeled grapes. Made of gold.

8. Conventions are no friend to sleep or regular diet

Although I got into the SF London hoedown last year (and hopefully will return this year, as it was a blast), a weekend deal is decidedly more reality-challenging. Certain parts of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas do spring to mind, although it's not the evenings, but the mornings after, that leave you shambling about on your own between appointments, staring at all the people buying film posters and alien abduction lamps and waiting for them all to turn into lizards.

9. Joe Abercrombie is a cracking reader

In the sense that he does a very entertaining reading. I was taking notes. My own reading was esseitnally mike-testing time for the event, and so possibly fell on either deaf or deafened ears. I also got to catch up with Stephen Deas again, after sharing panels with him, Mr Abercrombie and Tom Lloyd at Scifi London.

10. It's all happening again next year.

I am laying in raw caffeine and alcohol already.