The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Hair
I've just had my hair cut very short -- the shortest it has ever been!

Truth
Recently I've been playing around with Yahoo Answers, an online service that can answer any question. These are the questions I have asked so far: One, Two, Three, Four...

Infamy in Spain!
I've just heard from the Madrid based publishing house, Bibliopolis... They are starting a new line called "Malabares" that is dedicated to fiction that straddles the line between fantasy and mainstream... The first few books in the line will be Blue Light by Walter Mosley, In Milton Lumky Territory by Philip K. Dick, The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein, The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings and Dream Science by Thomas Palmer.
My own New Universal History of Infamy is also included on this list.
They offered me an advance of 1500 euros. I accepted...

The Postmodern Mariner
Coconuts aren't fruit -- they are nuts -- but they are often carried along on the currents of the ocean... and washed up on distant shores! My new book is like a coconut -- it's pithy, spherical, hairy and full of milk. Also it can be added to curries for that extra exotic flavour. Yum! It is partly set at sea. Like coconuts often are.
Hopefully this book will be published this year. (But I can't be shore.)

Which means that my publishing schedule for 2007 is shaping up as follows:
* A SEREIA DE CURITIBA, Livros de Areia (collection of linked stories published only in Portuguese),
* WORMING THE HARPY, Prime Books (reissue of my first book with an introduction by John Clute and an afterword by E.F. Bleiler),
* A NEW UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY, Polis (the Greek customised edition of the American edition),
* THE SMELL OF TELESCOPES, Eibonvale (reprint of my fourth book),
* THE CRYSTAL COSMOS, PS Publishing (my first SF book with an introduction by Michael Bishop),
* THE LESS LONELY PLANET, Humdrumming (my book of 'Happenstance' stories),
* THE POSTMODERN MARINER, Screaming Dreams (my most recent book).

So it's possible I might be having 7 or 8 books published this year, though I won't be surprised if some of these titles drift over into 2008!

Collaborations
I hardly ever do collaborations. I tried when I was younger with several writers and the results were always disappointing. True, I've collaborated very successfully with the cartoonist Anthony Lewis, but he was my illustrator. The only writer I've ever produced a decent piece of work with is Stuart Ross.