So, something of a news update in brief, but:

I have been asked to make a showing at Nerd East, the Larp fair at Durham on 9th June 2012. There may be some manner of speechifying. The speech may include recycled elements from my Picocon speech. See how green I am? I'm constantly trying to reduce my inspiration footprint. Anyway, I shall be there, and I shall be happy to sign stuff, answer questions, receive drinks and the like.

After that I am one of a host of names at Edge Lit on 14th July 2012 at Derby Quad. No idea what I'm doing there but ditto the signing and the questioning and also probably the drinking.

I have another short story on the way into print, too. I'm not a prolific ghost story writer, but I'm very proud of my creepy little piece, Not a Cat Person, which will be coming out soonish in Newcon Press's Hauntings anthology. I'm also working my way through their back catalogue at the moment. I can strongly recommend Ian Watson's new collection, Saving for a Sunny Day.

Finally, there's this: Waterstones and Amazon are exploring a new Book Coprosperity Sphere . I will freely say that I honestly don't know enough of the ins and outs of the business to make any comment as to whether this will work for Waterstones (or Amazon, but one kind of feels that Amazon will be selling books to the cockroaches long after we're gone (1)), or what other considerations are going to rear their heads, but as I am very much in favour of high street bookshops, I do hope this means that we might have the last chain left for a little longer. It's also potentially a step towards the strategy that was being talked about at last year's Fantasycon, the idea that you could buy the physical book at a store and get the ebook in the same purchase (meaning you could have your library and home, in pleasing paper, and also cart it around conveniently, without having to buy everything twice). Now this current deal is a long way from that, but what it is, is infrastructure that might conceivably lead to it. Anyway, we'll see.

(1) And you know me well enough by now to know that I genuinely mean it in a good way.