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July 31, 2010

Another review on the SF Signal blog, this one by Scott A. Cupp of my Luff Imbry novella, Quartet & Triptych (PS Publishing). His bottom line: "Fans of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Cordwainer Smith, or Donald Westlake should find this a wonderful time." And he adds this note for collectors: "There are two editions of this novella - a regular one and a signed one. Go for the signed one. He's the real deal and you will be looking for signed books at some point. Get it now while it is less expensive." You can read the first five thousands words for free.

I'm coming up to 20,000 words of the first draft of the as-yet-untitled Pathfinder RPG tie-in novel for Paizo Publishing. So far I've worked in a carnivorous plant, a half-orc, an undefined something flying way off in the distance, and a couple of wizards; now I'm about to bring on stage Skanderbrog the juvenile troll. Oh, also magically enhanced boots and a sword.

July 20, 2010

The staunchly fantasy-resistant sf critic John Denardo gives Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn a warm review on his SF Signal blog. He says: "Hughes's writing style is the real star, using a pitch-perfect delivery of stylistic prose that sets the mood and dry humor that is sure to elicit a few smiles."

Is Anybody Out There?, the DAW antho with stories based on the Fermi Paradox co-edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, gets a mixed review over at Tor.com. Reviewer John Klima says, "I found 'Timmy, Come Home' by Matthew Hughes fascinating... After so many stories exploring going out into space and leaving the planet, it was really refreshing to have one that went the other way."

July 19, 2010

I see from the blog at Paizo Publishing that Template has arrived in the publisher's warehouse. It's a $14.99 trade paperback, so those of you who balked at buying the PS Publishing limited editions now have your chance to read a stand-alone Archonate novel that I think is as good a piece of work as I've yet done. Maybe Hespira has more depth and nuance, but I had six magazine stories and two other novels to build up to it. You can order Template directly from Paizo here.

I've heard from Thomas Haitsma (see below), who based a third of his master's thesis on the animating ideas behind my novels Black Brillion and The Commons. Reading the thesis, I was struck by a coincidence: he alludes to another theological conundrum -- why would a perfect Creator feel the need to create us? -- which is the main idea behind the Hell and Back series that I'm doing for Angry Robot Books. Small world. Or, perhaps better, small universe.

It now looks as if the Luff Imbry novel, The Other, from Underland Press will not be out until September 2011.

Gordon Van Gelder asked me for a light and short contribution to an anthology of stories he's editing for OR Books. The title of the antho is Welcome To The Greenhouse: Tales of Climate Change. My story's title is "Not a Problem."

July 13, 2010

Here's a first, for me at least: an American post-graduate student, one Thomas Haitsma, appears to have based a third of a master's thesis on my Guth Bandar novel, The Commons. It's a discussion of "Epic fantasy and archetypal therapy for young adult males: The many meanings of 'the Hero'" according to the title of the thesis on the DocStoc webpage. It sounds like quite a fascinating paper, examining the Jungian (and Campbellian) influence on the book, but it would cost me $50 to read more than the first few pages, so unless someone can send me the whole thing, I will remain untutored. I am, however, gratified to the very limits of authorial egotism that the other two fantasists in the thesis are J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan.

July 9, 2010

The Table of Contents for PS Publishing's quarterly anthology Postscripts 24/25: The New and Perfect Man is out. I have a story entitled "So Loved" in it, and fair warning to my Archonate fans: it is not set in the Archonate universe. But it is a pretty good story, nonetheless, and Postscripts is a hell of a good series.

Night Shade Books has run into some well earned flack this week for their general fecklessness when it comes to dealing with authors. Readers of mine who pre-ordered Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn then waited sixteen months for the book to finally appear will recognize the situation.

July 6, 2010

My apologies to those of you who drop by here every week or so looking for fresh news. I've mostly had my head down, working on a new crime novel (on spec) while boning up on the world of the Pathfinder role-playing game, because I'm going to write a fantasy-adventure novel set in that universe. I've set aside the second novel in the Hell and Back series after the date for me to turn in the ms was moved back to December 1 -- the change in ownership of Angry Robot Books has meant a rescheduling of the release dates for all of their titles. The Pathfinder book, to be published by Paizo, which is bringing out Template this summer, is a way to make some grocery money, but I'm expecting to have fun doing something in a Fritz Leiber or Jack Vance mode.

Here's another fine review of Is Anybody Out There?, the DAW antho examining the Fermi Paradox co-edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, two of my favorite editors. My contribution gets a favorable mention.

I was a writer-for-hire for thirty years or so, doing all kinds of commercial wordsmithery for business and government clients. I've left all that behind me to travel the world and write fiction, but I still do occasional paid jobs for an old friend, a British Columbia aboriginal artist named Richard Krentz. Richard is also a visionary entrepreneur in aboriginal tourism, and this summer he's the guiding hand behind a fairly cool project to put carvers, storytellers, dancers and authentic west coast native cuisine into Vancouver's treasured Stanley Park. If you're going to be in Vancouver this summer, don't miss Richard's Klahowya Village in the park.

June 20, 2010

I came across a rather good (and spoiler-free) summary of the Henghis Hapthorn books on a review blog run by an insightful fellow named Robert William Berg. He says, of the three Hapthorns: "Funny, mysterious, complexly layered, and often ingeniously melded, science-fantasy rarely gets better than this." If you haven't read the Hapthorns and are wondering if you'd like them, Berg's review ought to give you all the clues you'll need.

Yesterday, I proofed the typeset for Quartet & Triptych, the first of three Luff Imbry novellas to be published by PS Publishing over the next three years. The first five thousand words are here. The book can be pre-ordered from PS.

June 6, 2010

For the next three months or so, I'll be housesitting near a little town in Victoria, Australia, called Porepunkah. The place is quite beautiful and I expect to have a fine time writing here. But for the moment, I have only intermittent internet access, so posts here may be infrequent for the next week or so.

May 30, 2010

Quartet and Triptych, the first of three Luff Imbry novellas I'm writing for PS Publishing, is now listed for sale in the "forthcoming titles" catalogue. It comes in two limited editions: an unsigned, unjacketed hardcover for 12 pounds ($19US) or a signed, jacketed hc for 25 pounds ($40 US). It's a substantial novella at 29,000 words, and you can read the first 5,000 words here.

On Wednesday, June 2, I leave for a housesit in Porepunkah, Australia, a little town in the highland ski area of Victoria State. I'm hoping there's a writers group in the area.

May 27, 2010

My birthday today. I'm sixty-one.

Editor Marty Halpern has sent another link to a review of Is Anybody Out There?, the DAW antho examining the Fermi Paradox that Marty co-edited with Nick Gevers. Reviewer John Ottinger III said of my story, Timmy, Come Home, "Hughes's story becomes an exploration of self, and a look at humanity itself as the alien and the 'other'. Nicely constructed, with a clear-cut use of the concrete and mundane to cement the character in our world even as another intrudes on his mind's eye."

May 17, 2010

Google's "alert" function is useful. It looks for new reviews of my books and, when it finds one, sends me an email with a link. That' how I learned that The Spiral Labyrinth is reviewed by Rob H. Bedford on the SFFWorld.com site. He liked the book and says, "Hughes's style is very approachable and the ebb and flow of the characters with each other and as they navigate the world of science fantasy was very welcoming. . . This Archonate world is a fun place to visit through Hughes's stories, thanks to his exceptional wit, character, and dialogue."

May 11, 2010

There has been a change of ownership at Angry Robot Books. The imprint is now owned by Marc Gascoigne, the man HarperCollins hired to create it. Marco has a distribution deal with Osprey Books in the UK, a specialist publisher with expertise in niche markets, and Random House in North America. What this all means for me is that the release of The Damned Busters, the first of a contemporary urban fantasy series called To Hell and Back will be set back about nine months, until the summer of 2011.

So I won't have a novel coming out for a year after Paizo releases the trade paperback of Template in about three weeks. But it's possible that Underland Press may move up release of The Other, the first Luff Imbry novel, to early spring of 2011. More news as it comes.

I'm 8,000 words into Costume Not Included, the second in the To Hell and Back series, and it seems to be coming along fine. No idea yet what happens once I get the plot rolling, but it's always fun to find out.

May 6, 2010

The cover art for the Paizo Publishing trade paperback of Template is viewable on Amazon. The first chapter is on the Book Spot Central site. I've said it before, but I think Template represents my best work as a stand-alone Archonate novel.

May 4, 2010

Gardner Dozois has reviewed Is Anybody Out There?, a DAW antho examining the Fermi Paradox (i.e., "With a universe full of planets, where are all the E.T.s?") edited by Marty Halpern and Nick Gevers in the May Locus. He says, "A bit dry and abstract, perhaps, with lots of metafiction of various sorts, this is still a good deal more substantial than the average DAW anthology, and contains a lot of good reading -- although not, I think, any award-winners. The best stories here are "Permanent Fatal Errors," by Jay Lake, "The Taste of Night," by Pat Cadigan, and "The Word He Was Looking for Was Hello," by Alex Irvine, but there's also good stuff by Matthew Hughes, Paul Di Filippo, Sheila Finch, David Langford, Felicity Shoulders and Leslie What, and others." Pretty good company, I'd say.

May 3, 2010

This hasn't happened to me before: for the second month running, Locus magazine has printed a review of one of my books. Last month (see below, in the April 6 entry) Russell Letson gave Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn a very kind write-up; and now the May issue carries another one from novelist and critic Paul Witcover, who says the book "is not so much an homage to [Jack] Vance as it is an outright impersonation. Hughes channels with astonishing fidelity Vance�s elegant if cool prose, his sharp, Swiftian ironies, his picaresque plots, his delightfully droll dialogue, and his affection for heroes who are not quite as clever as they like to imagine themselves to be. I admit to loving this book because of its Vancian aspects, and I tip my hat in admiration and even awe to Hughes, who carries this off better than anyone since Michael Shea."

The second Luff Imbry novella I've just turned in to PS Publishing (see the April 16 entry below), will be called The Yellow Cabochon.

April 16, 2010

I hear, from other authors, that one thing that definitely helps to sell books these days is a longish list of four- and five-star testimonials posted on Amazon by satisfied readers. I would appreciate the effort by anyone who takes a few minutes to add a review to the listing of any of my books. Assuming, that is, that you actually read and liked it.

I've finished the first draft of an as yet untitled Luff Imbry novella for PS Publishing. It's the second of three I've contracted to do for Pete Crowther and Nick Gevers. The first, Quartet and Triptych, will soon be out. The other day I proofed the jacket copy, which is one of the last steps in the process. Q&T is available for pre-order in two limited editions: unsigned and signed.

The British Fantasy Society, making an effort to raise the visibility of under-recognized authors among UK fandom, has created pages for some of us on their bbs. Mine, for anyone who wants to drop by and discuss my work with the scattered few who know me, is here. You'd have to register to post.

April 9, 2010

Amiable editor and Night Shade Books promo czar John Joseph Adams noticed that, back in January, Fast Forward, a cable tv show about sf produced in Washington DC had run a review of Majestrum: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn. Reviewer Colleen R. Cahill says: "There are some books you read for the intriguing plot, others for their charming characters, and still others for their delightful prose. And a few you read for all three, as is the case with Matthew Hughes' Majestrum from Night Shade Books. Set in a science fiction environment that has a sort of Victorian culture, this book is a mystery, an adventure, a fantasy and just a whole lot of fun."

She's right, you know.

April 6, 2010

Russell Letson, a knowledgeable critic and aficionado of Jack Vance's work, has given Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn a very fine review in the April edition of Locus. He says: "The voice at the center of this book is quite recognizable, a performance of the Vancean sensibility and prose style. I also found it to be the center of the book's appeal. (There should be no complaints about basing a book's voice on a predecessor -- compare the voice of hard-boiled fiction that originates with Hammett and especially Chandler, or the Forester-out-of-Austen prose of Patrick O'Brian.) Hughes's command of the irony, understatement, and detachment of Vancean language is unstrained (an Archonate prison is a 'contemplarium'), as is his grasp of the Vancean-ramble approach to narrative. The various puzzles are allowed to accumulate, theories are proposed and tested, and above all places are visited and savored -- hotels, rustic inns, country estates, tourist overlooks, restaurants plain and fancy, ferry boats, space yachts. The puzzles are solved, their connections (or lack thereof) revealed, and a dramatic struggle finishes the whole tale in a satisfactorily gaudy manner. But the getting there is as much fun as the fireworks at the climax, which I take to be the crucial lesson that Hughes has taken from the master."

Exactly. We ramble, we amble, occasionally we gambol, then it all ties up neatly at the end. I write the kind of book I like to read.

March 30, 2010

Noted sf reviewer John Ottinger III has given The Spiral Labyrinth a laudatory review on his blog, Grasping For The Wind. He says, "The narrative centers entirely on Hapthorn, and with his strange companions he engages in much witty repartee that always brings a smile to the reader's face. The novel just becomes easily comfortable, and Henghis Hapthorn a character we like and appreciate for his intelligence and confidence. He is a Victorian hero in a far-flung future.

"I highly recommend The Spiral Labyrinth. Hughes is a superb writer, one whose prose is easily comfortable and familiar, but who also writes a mystery of unusual setting and details that has a surprise ending that should have been self-evident from the text, yet is surprising all the same."

March 24, 2010

An enterprising fan, who goes by the handle Seth, has set up and RSS feed for this page. From now on, you can subscribe to the feed and get updates of any news I post. For some reason, I don't seem to be able to create a link to the RSS page, but if you paste http://page2rss.com/rss/382d436e958f7736319e9b490dbcd072 into your browser, you'll get there. Thank you, Seth.

March 19, 2010

"Grolion of Almery," my contribution to the Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth, has made the longlist for the British Fantasy Awards in the novella category. Making the longlist means that at least one member of the British Fantasy Society or the UK's annual FantasyCon has nominated it. Members now vote for their top three choices in each category, and the top-scoring five items in each category will make up the shortlist for this year's awards. The online voting form is here, but members can also vote by email (bfsawards at britishfantasysociety dot org) or by post, using the voting forms that will be sent out to BFS members in our March mailing. FantasyCon 2009 or 2010 members who are not members of the BFS can request voting forms by email.

March 18, 2010

Former Science Fiction Book Club editor Andy Wheeler has blogged a review of Hespira; A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn. He says: "Hughes is the writer I invariably mention whenever the question of modern underrated writers comes up; he writes the kind of wonderful, funny, thoughtful, exciting, zippy novels that should be massively popular and winning him shelves-full of awards."

Here's the cover art from the anthology Is Anybody Out There?, coming soon from DAW and edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, two of my favorite editors. It explores the question: with so many planets out there, it's statistically likely that some of them support advanced, intelligent life: so why don't we see any aliens?

March 15, 2010

Quartet and Triptych, a 29,000-word Luff Imbry novella from PS Publishing, is now available for pre-order in unsigned and signed limited editions. Here's the blurb I've just sent in: "Millennia ago, a sadistic aristocrat built an underground maze, its walls hung with priceless works of art, its corridors stalked by intelligent torture machines. Here the corrupt noble would imprison and torment any who offended him. The labyrinth and its treasures were long ago buried and forgotten -- except by Luff Imbry, the corpulent master thief of Old Earth's penultimate age. Aided by an unwilling "ghost" -- the preserved essence of the mad duke's long-dead granddaughter -- Imbry penetrates the lethal maze to recover the most precious masterpiece of all. But in the twisted darkness, the fat man finds that the dead cannot always be trusted."

March 10, 2010

Back when I was a young man haunting the paperback racks, looking for a good read, I used to have a soft spot for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Any book I bought that got a good review from that paper was one I enjoyed, and it got so that a review quote from the PCD was enough to make me buy an author I didn't know. So I'm just plain delighted to find Hespira getting a damn fine review from my old reliable guide to good reading. Reviewer John R. Alden says, "This story is a wry, whimsical delight... Grade A."

March 9, 2010

I'm working on an as-yet-untitled Luff Imbry novella for PS Publishing. Then I'll start the second in the Hell and Back trilogy.

I was in Victoria, BC, a couple of weeks ago and dropped into an excellent used-and-rare bookstore called Russell Books where I found two copies of my old semi-comic crime novel, Downshift. One was signed, the other wasn't. The odd thing: the signed one was cheaper.

February 24, 2010

Dave Truesdale sent me a link to this review of my Luff Imbry story, "Another Day in Fibbery," in the quarterly anthology, Edison's Frankenstein aka Postscripts 20/21. Reviewer Kathleen M. Kemmerer says of Imbry and the story: "The story is richer and more complex than I can convey here. This character and the world he knows so well [are]a delight from start to finish. This is another gem of this issue."

The winners of the book giveaway contest have been announced over at Fantasy Book Critic. They are: Jackie Hagman of Nebraska and Stuart Nelson of Minnesota. I congratulate the winners and hope they enjoy the books, and I thank all who participated.

February 22, 2010

It seems the first of the three contemporary fantasy novels I'm writing for Angry Robot will not be entitled The Rum Demon. According to this recently appeared listing on Amazon.co.uk, the book will be entitled The Damned Busters and the name of the series will be To Hell and Back which, for those of you who like to know such things, was the original title of the first book when I was pitching it.

Now, I suppose I should go through the ms and take out all references to the demon's fondness for rum, acquired when he was up here helping out a seventeenth-century pirate, but I don't think I will. For one thing, I wouldn't be able to keep the line, "Avast, ye hog-swivin' mutton-thumper, a pox on yer jibber-jabber," which I rather like.

The book will be out in the UK on August 5, and in October in the US, although this Amazon.com listing also has the August date.

February 21, 2010

One of the members of the sff community that I like is Andy Wheeler, formerly editor of the Science Fiction Book Club until the SFBC was bought by new owners who foolishly let him go. Now I believe he sells the kind of books that accountants like, though I also believe he sells them primarily to accountants. But one of the reasons I like Andy is that he runs a very informative blog, on which he occasionally mentions me and my work. Yesterday he said I was "one of the best (and probably the most criminally underrated) writers in the SFF field." How can you not like someone who says things like that about you? And publicly, yet.

I see that Paizo Publishing's trade paperback edition of my stand-alone Archonate novel, Template, is available for pre-order at Amazon (it will be out in June). Until now, it has only been available in a couple of of Pete Crowther's so-worth-the-money limited editions. I don't usually tout my work (well, not much), but I think Template is a book that turned out just the way I wanted it to. So I unabashedly recommend it to those who haven't read it, or me, yet. The first chapter is here.

February 18, 2010

Alain Kattnig, the editor at Editions L'Atalante, the French press that published Black Brillion and Majestrum in translation, says that although the critics have been kind, the marketplace has not; so there will be no more attempts to stir the Gallic soul. Tant pis, if I remember the correct idiom from my French courses of forty-plus years ago. Or maybe just merde.

February 17, 2010

Just a reminder that the Fantasy Book Critic site's giveaway contest has another week to run. You could win one of two complete sets of the Henghis Hapthorn novels, and there's also a grand prize of $500 worth of slipcased and collectible books, including the Subterranean Press limited edition of the Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth.

February 16, 2010

I've sent the ms of The Rum Demon to my agent, John Berlyne, who will pass it on to Angry Robot. The moment I did so, I realized that I had forgotten to add a paragraph early on in the story that presages something that happens in the last few pages. For those of you who have yet to experience it, this is what it known as getting old.

And for those of you who are trying to write fiction and worrying that doing it this or that way will diminish your chances of building a readership, I offer the following.

First, here's John Denardo in a review of The Spiral Labyrinth on his SF Signal blog: "Enjoyment is derived as much from the writing itself as it is from the carefully laid-out plot. Hughes is a stylist in that his prose is crafted to mimic 19th century fiction. It reads like a Sherlock Holmes story, though perhaps to a lesser extent than previous adventures. (Maybe that association is also affected by the turning of the Great Wheel?) The dialogue, as mentioned, is clever, exhibiting a dry humor that elicits more than a few smiles... I can't wait to see what happens in the newest book, Hespira.

And then we go over to he Best SF blog for Mark Watson's review of "Passion Ploy," a story that appeared in a DAW anthology, Forbidden Planets celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the classic science fiction movie take-off of Shakespeare's The Tempest: "As Donna McMahon said of Hughes�s Luff Imbry novel, Black Brillion: a '..novel which is very much a matter of taste. Bibliophiles, eccentrics, Scrabble players, and readers such as myself who were warped in childhood by over-exposure to Dickens, Dumas, and Gilbert & Sullivan seem most likely relish Hughes�s eccentrically embellished scenery and sardonic persiflage'. I�m a bit of a bibliophile but eccentrics, Dickens, Scrabble, Dumas, and Gilbert & Bloody Sullivan are all things which I would generally cross the road to avoid, and I think this is the rub : they�re all very 19th century (ok, excluding Scrabble) which suggests to me sensibilities of a more nostalgic and backward looking nature, rather than the innovative and forward looking sensibilities which I associate with science fiction."

The point of these two examples, which appeared within a couple of hours of each other, is that you can't please everyone, so don't try.

February 13, 2010

I've seen the cover art for Quartet & Triptych, the first of three novellas featuring Luff Imbry, my far-future master forger and art thief, that I'm doing for PS Publishing. It's by a UK artist whose work I haven't seen before, Ben Baldwin. The story's about Luff's trying to get his hands on a decorative screen made of carved human bone -- the bones of the artist who did the carving -- that's been sealed for centuries inside an underground maze in which a mad aristocrat used to torture his enemies. The usual light reading. PS tells me it should be out in April or May at the latest.

I've finished the second draft of what I'm tentatively calling The Rum Demon, the contemporary fantasy about Chesney Arnstruther, a somewhat autistic actuary who accidentally causes Hell to go on strike. Depending on how the books (there are two more contracted for, with an option for a fourth) evolve, Chesney may turn out to be one of the most important figures in human history. Or he may bring on the end of the world -- I'll figure that out in book three or four. The first book will be out in August in the UK and October in the US.

After I turn in The Rum Demon, I suppose I'll write another Luff Imbry novella for PS before starting on the next Chesney adventure.

February 2, 2010

Today I'm starting the rewrite on The Rum Demon, the tentative title for the contemporary fantasy I'm doing for Angry Robot. I'll turn it in before the end-of-the-month deadline so it can be out in August (in the UK) and October (in the US).

I don't usually consider myself as a candidate for the Hugo award, but here's a reminder to those qualified to nominate that Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn was officially released on December 15, 2009, and therefore is eligible for consideration. I also had some short works published in 2009: "Grolion of Almery" in Songs of the Dying Earth, an anthology from HarperCollins Voyager and Subterranean Press; "Enemy of the Good" in Enemy of the Good and Other Stories, an anthology from PS Publishing; "Hunchster" in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction's August/September issue; "Hell of a Fix" in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction's December issue; and "Another Day in Fibbery" in Edison's Frankenstein, an anthology from PS Publishing.

For my Canadian fans, the above works are also eligible for nominations for the Aurora Awards -- although I'm late in promoting myself. Nominations must be mailed in no later than February 5.

January 29, 2010

Rick Kleffel has given Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn a glowing review on The Agony Column. He says, "...his prose is utterly amazing, his plots move with the precision of jeweled watch and you can't help but love his entertaining characters. Hughes sort of says, 'Aw shucks,' with every word, but he's writing at a level well beyond the apparently low gravity of these books."

January 25, 2010

I've finished the first draft of the contemporary fantasy that will be published by Angry Robot in August in the UK and October in the US. It's the first in a series that will probably be called To Hell and Back and this volume may (no final decision yet) be called The Rum Demon. The draft runs to 94,000 words, but I'll probably add a couple or three thousand more when I rework it over the next month. It's the tale of Chesney Arnstruther, a shy and somewhat odd young actuary who accidentally causes Hell to go on strike, and comes out of the situation as a costumed crimefighter with a boozehound demon for a sidekick. And early version of the first three chapters ran in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction's December 2009 edition as a novelette entitled "Hell of a Fix."

January 24, 2010

A slight alteration to the giveaway contest rules. Those going for the $500 worth of collectible books grand prize do not need to send a separate email to fantasybookcritic@gmail.com. Instead, just put Hespira Grand Prize in the subject line and include in the body of the message the answer to the contest question. Full details are on the Fantasy Book Critic web site.

January 20, 2010

The contest to promote Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn is now on. You could win a complete set of the Hapthorn novels, PLUS a grand prize of more than $500 worth of rare and collectible books. The details are on the Fantasy Book Critic web site.

For a chance to win the collected Tales of Henghis Hapthorn, just send an email with your mailing address to fantasybookcritic@gmail.com with Hespira in the subject line. For a shot at the grand prize, you don't need to send a separate email to fantasybookcritic@gmail.com; just put Hespira Grand Prize in the subject line and include in the body of the message the answer to this question: "What parts of himself did Guth Bandar diminish?" The answer can be found by reading the samples on this web site.

The contest ends on February 24. Good luck!

January 19, 2010

The past week or so, I've been relocating from Northern Ireland to a small town on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, where my wife and I are looking after nine poodles -- which I do believe is the minimum number to qualify as oodles.

Hespira seems to have done well in its first two weeks, judging by the Amazon numbers (at this point, that's all I have to go by). The first Amazon customer review is a rave, which is always a good sign.

In the next week or two, I'll be announcing the contest to promote Hespira that the good folks at Fantasy Book Critic will be running. They'll be giving away two complete sets of the Hapthorn novels, plus some highly collectible (and eminently readable) slipcased copies of Songs of the Dying Earth and Postscripts. Watch this space for the start date.

I'm back to work on the contemporary fantasy novel, and should finish the draft within a week.

January 5, 2010

Hespira, the third Henghis Hapthorn novel, has finally been published by Night Shade Books. Trying to be as objective as an author can be about his own work, I think this is the best of the three. And Publisher's Weekly agrees with me, having given the book a starred review:

"Hughes continues to carve out a unique place for himself in the fantasy-mystery realm with his superlative third adventure featuring Holmesian "discriminator" Henghis Hapthorn. Still recovering from the events of 2007's The Spiral Labyrinth, Hapthorn is granted a glimpse into the future and learns that the world as he knows it will soon be overtaken by magical forces. Despite the impending catastrophe, the investigator attempts to carry on with his usual assignments, but after he successfully recovers some stolen relics, he finds himself caught in a war between his vengeful client and the criminal he ransomed them from. A way out is offered by a mysterious woman who seems ignorant of her own past. A droll narrative voice, dry humor and an alternate universe that's accessible without explicit exposition make this a winner."

Meanwhile, I've passed the 86,000-word mark in the draft of the new urban fantasy novel.

January 1, 2010

Andy Wheeler, formerly the insightful and perspicacious editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, has blogged a warm review of Template, my stand-alone Archonate novel with an introduction by Jay Lake. He says it's "full of wonders and thrills, deeply amusing and thoughtful in turns, a fine mature work from one of the best writers that SFF has today." The first chapter is here, and a trade paperback is now available for pre-order from Paizo Publishing.

December 15, 2009

Here's the line-up of authors in whose company I will be when DAW releases Is Anybody Out There? an anthology of stories based on the Fermi Paradox, edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern: Paul McAuley (introduction) and then in alphabetical order: Michael Arsenault, Pat Cadigan, Paul Di Filippo, Sheila Finch, Alex Irvine, Jay Lake, David Langford, Yves Meynard, James Morrow, Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Felicity Shoulders & Leslie What, Ray Vukcevich, and Ian Watson. Quite a good crew.

December 11, 2009

I've sold a new Henghis Hapthorn novelette to Postscripts Magazine, which now publishes as a quarterly anthology. "The Immersion" is a straightforward Hapthorn tale, dating from the time before the novels, when everything began to change for Old Earth's foremost freelance discriminator.

December 5, 2009

Booklist has given Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn a positive review. Reviewer Jessica Moyer says, "The intriguing blend of far-future science fiction, fantasy, and mystery makes this a good bet for many readers."

I seem to be working more slowly these days, but I've done 70,000 words of the first Actuary novel for Angry Robot. I intend to get the first draft finished before I up stakes from Northern Ireland in January and relocate to the Pacific Northwest for four months. That move should allow me to attend Norwescon, where some of my fans are saying we should all get together for a dinner.

November 26, 2009

I've sold a story called "Timmy, Come Home" to an invitation-only antho, Is Anybody Out There? All the stories have something to do with the Fermi Paradox (the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations being out there somewhere and the fact that we don't see any alien visitors or pick up radio signals and so on). The book is edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, two of my favorite editors. It will be published by DAW in June 2010.

It looks as if there will be no limited edition of Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn. The signature sheets have gone astray in the mail, which led to my starting an email shouting match with Night Shade Books, whose principals long ago stopped answering the emails I sent them to ask when they were going to send the sig sheets and to remind them of my current address. NS has decided to cancel the limited so as to get the book out this year. My apologies to anyone who ordered the limited, and indeed to everyone who has been waiting for the book, which is now more than fifteen months late.

November 13, 2009

Quartet & Triptych, the first of three Luff Imbry novels from PS Publishing, is now scheduled for release in spring 2010. It will be available for pre-order from the PS site in January.

A pre-publication plug for Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn on Charles Tan's blog is succinct: "Matthew Hughes is awesome. That is all."

My cover story in the December 2009 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, "Hell of a Fix," has attracted a couple of reviews. The comix author Kurt Busiek posted this review on Usenet, and Sam Tomaino had this to say on Tangent Online: "This was a wonderfully satiric tale and a real lot of fun.".

Meanwhile, the draft of the novel that extends from "Hell of a Fix" is at 60,000 words and about to enter the home stretch.

November 5, 2009

Here's the cover for Paizo Publishing's trade paperback of Template, my stand-alone Archonate novel with an introduction by Jay Lake. It will be out next May and will sell for $14.99. The first chapter is here.

November 4, 2009

I made it to the George R.R. Martin signing at Eason Books in Belfast yesterday. There was a big turnout, as there usually is for GRRM's events, and he was kind enough to ask me to co-sign any copies of Songs of the Dying Earth that were brought up to the table -- which I believe was every copy the store had got in for the event.

Angry Robot has now given me a date for the US release of the first in the series of urban fantasy novels I'm currently writing. The first book (the title is as yet undecided), will be in US stores by October 2010. The UK release date remains August 2010.

October 31, 2009

George R.R. Martin is doing a signing at Easons bookstore on Donegal Place in Belfast at 1 p.m., Tuesday, November 3, and has kindly invited me to join him, since I'm housesitting not far away. He'll be bringing with him some of the cast of the tv series based on his Game of Thrones.

I'm 51,000 words into the new novel for Angry Robot. I've been slowed down the past couple of weeks by renovations in the place where I'm housesitting. Now there's a possibility that I'll be out of here by early December to begin a four-month sit in Athens. Hard to type with fingers crossed.

October 19, 2009

Publishers Weekly has given Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, a starred review -- my first. PW also notes that the book will be out in December, not late October, which was the fourth (or maybe fifth) date that Night Shade has given me for its delayed release since it was originally due out in August 2008. I'm sure they would have given me December, though, if they hadn't stopped answering my emails.

October 11, 2009

Here's an early Tangent Online review by Karen L. Newman of my cover story in the December/January issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, "Hell of a Fix." She says, "The magazine is to be commended for publishing this story. The premise is bold, thought-provoking, and original." Well, we do aim to please.

October 10, 2009

The award-winning comix scriptwriter, Kurt Busiek -- may his tribe increase -- has posted a laudatory review of my stand-alone Archonate novel, Template, on Usenet. He says: "Put simply, this is the kind of book I'd like to read more of. A lot more of... In some ways it feels like Alexandre Dumas (the elder) writing swashbuckling far-future science fantasy with lots of comedy-of-manners to it." Thank you, Kurt.

Template is available in two limited editions (one of them slipcased) from PS Publishing in the UK. Paizo will bring out a US trade paperback edition next year. The first chapter is here.

The Subterranean Press hardcover of the Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth, is sold out in all editions (lettered, numbered, and trade), and it will be a year before Tor brings out its North American hardcover edition. But if you can't wait that long, HarperCollins Voyager has just released its hardcover edition in the UK. You can order a copy from Amazon.co.uk at a 30 per cent discount -- which at the exchange rate this morning, means you'll pay $28 (US) plus shipping. Not a bad price for what is certainly a strong contender for anthology of the year.

October 9, 2009

I've sold another story to the publication formerly known as Postscripts magazine, which is now a quarterly anthology, though still produced by PS Publishing. "So Loved" is a tale of the demiurge and his love affair with creation. It was submitted as an entry for the Manchester Fiction Prize, but did not make the short list.

My Luff Imbry story, "Another Day in Fibbery," will be out in a couple of months, as part of the big double edition of Postscripts 20/21. PS Publishing is putting two editions into one big, fat anthology entitled Edison's Frankenstein. Pound for pound (yes, that's a pun), it will surely be one of the best values for money in sf publishing this year, because PS so consistently wins the best sf small press award in the UK that the British Fantasy Society has named the prize after it.

October 7, 2009

I'm now 35,000 words into the non-Archonate novel I'm writing for Angry Robot -- tentative title The Actuary: To Hell and Back -- and it seems to be coming along well.

Another sign that the long-awaited third tale of Henghis Hapthorn, Hespira, will soon see print: the always perspicacious editor, Marty Halpern, has checked in with me on how to hyphenate "Henghis" -- it seems he is editing the dust-jacket copy for Night Shade Books. I still haven't seen signature sheets for the limited editions, but it feels as if the book will soon be out.

Songs of the Dying Earth continues to attract strongly positive reviews, including one from Jack Vance aficionado and noted sf critic Russell Letson in Locus. About my story in the antho, "Grolion of Almery," he says, "Hughes provides Cugel with an alias but keeps the expected plot, atmosphere and dodgy character intact." About the collection as a whole he says, "There is considerable pleasure to be found here. The stories are worthwhile in themselves as well as affectionate and perceptive responses to the work of one of the great originals of our field."

I won't be attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose this year. My main reason for going to WFCs past has been to schmooze and make book deals. But with three novels to write for Angry Robot and (probably) another Luff Imbry book to do for Underland, plus two Imbry novellas for PS Publishing and some editing work for various clients, I already have all the assignments I can handle.

September 21, 2009

Here's an interview I did with Josh Vogt of the Examiner.com site.

September 16, 2009

Rich Horton gives Songs of the Dying Earth a warm review on the SF Site, with a comment on my work that I wouldn't disagree with: "Hughes also has developed a prose style that is clearly Vance-derived -- and, though he does not equal Vance's skill, his work is quite enjoyable."

Angry Robot, my newest publisher, announced our three-book deal yesterday. Also, my new agent, John Berlyne of the Zeno Agency has some optimistic things to say about placing the Hapthorn books with a UK publisher.

The recently revived (reawakened?) Tangent Online website has given my August/September Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction story, "Hunchster," a nice little review. The reviewer, Steve Fahnestalk, also reminds us that there are plenty of science fiction fans around who've never been exposed to F&SF. That's because the consolidation of magazine distribution over the past several years has largely removed sf digest magazines from supermarket and drugstore shelves -- and, shamefully, even from the shelves of bookstores that sell sf books.

And now, because of a Bush-era rewriting of US Post Office rules, effectively allowing those rules to be rewritten by and for the benefit of big magazine publishers, F&SF has had to drop monthly publication and start appearing every two months -- although the reader gets the equivalent of a fat anthology packed with reviews and other extras.

I'm talking about a magazine that's celebrating sixty years of publishing what Stephen King calls "the gold standard" in contemporary short fiction. My advice: subscribe.

September 10, 2009

I've just come across this very fine appreciation of the Henghis Hapthorn novels. I could not quite figure out who the blogger is, but he or she gets what I'm trying to put across better than any other critic I've yet seen.

September 9, 2009

I've made a three-book deal (with option for a fourth) with HarperCollins's Angry Robot imprint for a contemporary fantasy series about a mild-mannered actuary who becomes a caped-crusader crime fighter, via the unwilling assistance of a demon who talks and dresses like Jimmy Cagney in a 1930s gangster movie. The (somewhat abridged) first three chapters of the first book -- title is The Actuary: To Hell and Back -- will run as "Hell of a Fix," the cover story in the December/January issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The novel itself is scheduled for release in August 2010.

Speaking of F&SF, I noticed that the mag is running another contest and that one of the prizes is an advance reading copy of Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, which leads me to believe that the third (and probably last) Hapthorn novel will be out for late October.

And this one is for all of you who are struggling to get some traction in the writing game. It's a speech I gave to a writers conference eight years (and a lot of knock-downs), ago.

September 7, 2009

My stand-alone Archonate novel, Template, published in 2007 in limited editions by PS Publishing, will be released by Paizo Publishing in a US edition next spring, in trade paperback format.

George R.R.Martin has sent along the Publishers Weekly review of Songs of the Dying Earth, which reads: "This stellar anthology features 22 original stories set in the far future of Grand Master Jack Vance's 1950 classic The Dying Earth, wherein sorcerers, rogues and demons squabble for power beneath the waning light of a bloated red sun. Some of the field's most talented writers successfully adopt Vance's convoluted style, ironic dialogue and amoral protagonists, as in Dan Simmons's epic novella, "The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz,"which relates the desperate quest of Shrue the diabolist to find a dead wizard's Ultimate Library, and Liz Williams's excellent"Caulk the Witch-chaser,"concerning a minor wizard forced to ally himself with his quarry. Exquisitely illustrated by Tom Kidd, these are tales to savor and a fitting tribute to one of the field's finest authors." The Subterranean Press hardcover and limited editions are now sold out, but HarperCollins Voyager will release a hardcover in the UK next month. If you missed out on the Sub editions, now's the time to order one.

September 6, 2009

The Italian version of the Guth Bandar novel, The Commons, has been released by Delos Books and has attracted its first review. There's a cover illustration that shows Guth (I presume), dressed like a nomadic barbarian, on horseback in a desert. I remember putting a desert in the book, but the only occasion when I set Guth on horesback was when he was trapped in the persona of an archetype lifted from Johnny Crawford's portrayal of Mark, Lucas McCain's son in The Rifleman tv series. But cover artists are known for their spirit of innovation. Tom Kidd, for example, likes to put dirigibles in his illos of my titles, and I have to admit they fit the mood.

I'm just finishing a Henghis Hapthorn story of about 10,000 words, entitled "The Immersion," that I will send to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and hope that editor Gordon Van Gelder buys it. It's set about ten years after Hapthorn went into the discriminator business, and thus well before the events described in all the other Hapthorn stories and the three novels that led from them. I may do others if time permits.

August 30, 2009

Here's a warm and friendly review of Majestrum by Colin Harvey on the Suite101.com website. He says, "Majestrum is an entertaining and eminently readable novel."

August 20, 2009

My review of Terry Bisson's Billy's Book is up on the SF Site.

August 8, 2009

Here's another blogger's review of Songs of the Dying Earth.

August 2, 2009

I've just had an email from George R.R. Martin saying that the Subterranean Press trade edition of Songs of the Dying Earth has sold out. The two limited editions were sold out before they went to press.

I'm still thinking of offering my author's copy as a prize in a contest, probably timed to coincide with the release of Hespira, the third Hapthorn novel, at the end of October. My inclination is to run the contest in a way that brings people to this website and encourages them to read some of the samples, because the point of doing it is to attract new readers. But if anyone has any good ideas, send me an email.

July 27, 2009

As I reported back in March, a fan of mine, Ruhan Zhao of Rochester, New York, took it upon himself to translate the first Henghis Hapthorn story, "Mastermindless," and submit it on my behalf to the Chinese magazine, Science Fiction World. The story has now appeared in the August regular edition of the magazine devoted to translated works. I'll be interested to see if I get a sudden uptick in visits to this page from Chinese websurfers. Usually when that happens, they're looking for that UFC fighter guy with whom I share a name.

July 25, 2009

Today I received my author's copy of Songs of the Dying Earth. It's a beautiful book, as I expected. But, in my current phase as a homeless housesitter, I don't have a place to keep beautiful books. So I'm thinking of giving away my copy in a contest. I don't know what kind of contest to mount, and I would be interested in hearing suggestions. Email me at himself@archonate.com if you have any good ideas.

July 22, 2009

Subterranean Press reports today that it is down to the last 250 copies of the trade edition of Songs of the Dying Earth. It might be a good idea to get an order in soon. The two limited editions sold out long before the anthology went to the printers.

I noticed while browsing the Subterranean site that the Tom Kidd artwork that accompanies my story, "Grolion of Almery," is posted on the site as an example of the interior illustrations (one to each story) that richly adorn the book.

July 21, 2009

Here is the first review I've seen of Songs of the Dying Earth.

A nice mention of The Spiral Labyrinth: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn from George R.R. Martin, for which I am most grateful.

July 19, 2009

The big Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois and filled with stories from a pantheon of Vancephile authors (including this one), and artwork by Tom Kidd, is back from the printers and available for order from Subterranean Press. This is the sf publishing event of the year. Get one before they're all gone.

And, speaking of Vance, I am very gratified to see the most underappreciated genius of fantasy and science fiction finally get some recognition from the literary cognoscenti. There's an excellent appreciation of Vance in this weekend's New York Times magazine. (You may have to register to read it). For once, a major sf author is interviewed by someone -- Professor Carlo Rotella, Director of American Studies at Boston College -- who is himself an aficionado of the interviewee's work. I am very glad to see Jack Vance receive his due while he is still with us.

July 18, 2009

My novelette, "Hell of a Fix," will run in the December/January issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and it will be the cover story. The artwork is by Kent Bash. This will be the fourth time one of my stories has been the inspiration for an F&SF cover.

July 16, 2009

I had an email this morning from Jeremy Lassen at Night Shade, confirming that the hardcover of Hespira, the third Hapthorn novel, will ship at the end of October. His new production manager is bugging him to get signature sheets to me for the 125-copy limited edition.

July 8, 2009

I'm safe and happy in Northern Ireland. The two huge wolfhounds are a good excuse to take a two-mile walk every morning, which I needed anyway. I'll post a pic of the canines when I figure out how to do it on this site.

The two-novel offer I mentioned below is a more complicated deal than the ones I've been handling myself, so I've signed with the UK agent and sf legend, John Berlyne, who, I was delighted to rediscover, is already a fan of my work -- there's a link below (June 1, 2008), to his review of Template.

Gordon Van Gelder, editor and publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, has been doing one of his periodic giveaways of free copies to people who commit to blog about the issue. He gave away fifty copies of the August/September issue, which contains my story, "Hunchster." As the blogger reviews come in, Gordon has been posting them on the forum.

June 30, 2009

The Luff Imbry novel (The Other will probably be the title under which it sees print), is done and turned in, at 82,000 words. And today, I've received word that a two-novel (with option for a third) deal is in the works, but I may have to get an agent to handle this one -- it looks complicated. More news when it happens.

On Thursday, I relocate to Northern Ireland for six months for a housesit that involves two huge wolfhounds.

June 17, 2009

I'm at 78,000 words of the Imbry novel, (working title: The Other), and will write the last scenes tomorrow. Then it's time to make the beginning and the middle fit the way it all worked out in the end. I haven't quite decided on the ending yet, but I suspect it may annoy those readers who like everything to wrap up in a neatly tied bow. For one thing, when I'm writing an Imbry tale I do so from the point of view of a character who, although possessed of a normal sense of curiosity, has more important things on his agenda (i.e., stealing, forging, fencing, avoiding arrest or attacks from other criminals), than solving the mysteries of the universe. For another, I might want to continue the story through a sequel. And, finally, I haven't figured out who the villain is.

June 14, 2009

Now here's the best way to start a Sunday. I drop by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction forum and find that editor Gordon Van Gelder has posted a link to a critic's blog review of the August/September issue, which includes my little time-travel story, "Hunchster." I read the review, which calls my story a "little gem," and that's nice.

Only then, half a cup of tea having begun to caffeinate my system, do I look to see who the reviewer is. And it's Tessa Dick, last wife, and therefore widow, of Philip K. Dick, one of my absolute favorite authors during my ill-spent youth. "Oh, wow," as I would have said during that long-ago time, "that is so far-out." And as a matter of fact, that's what I'm saying right now.

June 13, 2009

I see from the Locus list of forthcoming books that Quartet and Triptych is scheduled for release in January 2010 by PS Publishing. It's the first of three Luff Imbry novellas I'm doing for Pete Crowther. Hespira is also listed for November release. I'll take that as a good sign.

June 12, 2009

French sf critic Benjamin K. Framery has written a review (in French, of course) of Patrick Dusoulier's translation of Majestrum for the French sf site ActuSF. Ben also interviewed me about the Archonate novels. Here's the English version of the review. Et voici le version en la belle langue.

I'm at 72,000 words of the first draft of the Luff Imbry novel, and closing in on the climax.

June 10, 2009

Google led me this morning to a nice review of my story "Hunchster," in Aaron M. Wilson's Soulless Machine short-fiction review blog. The story ran in the August/September issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

June 8, 2009

As I reach 64,000 words on The Other, the Luff Imbry novel scheduled to be out from Underland Press next summer, I've received a note from Pete Crowther, principal of PS Publishing, the award winning UK small press that brought out Template last year. Pete was asking for a blurb to go above "Enemy of the Good," a Luff Imbry story that I sold him last year for an upcoming issue of his quarterly magazine, Postscripts. But between the time I sold him the story and its publication, Postscripts has metamorphosed into a quarterly anthology. And an anthology must have a title: the title of what would have been Postscripts #19 will be Enemy of the Good and Other Stories. Which pleases me no end.

June 2, 2009

I'm back to work on the Luff Imbry novel (57,000 words), after having taken time out to drive an old K-car from Saskatoon to the Toronto area, where I'm now housesitting through June for Canada's best known science fiction author, Robert J. Sawyer. Coincidentally, Rob's transplanted himself to Saskatoon to be writer-in-residence at Canadian Light Source, a research organization so decidedly "hard science" that I am not entirely clear on what they do -- but it apparently involves smashing subatomic particles into each other at high speeds and seeing what spins off. Closest I ever came to that kind of research involved Dinky toys and my eldest brother's single-shot .22 rifle when I was twelve.

May 21, 2009

Thanks to a couple of new fans, there has been a sudden increase in traffic at the forum that my official first fan, Mike Berro, set up some years ago. Anybody who is interested in discussing my work with like-minded readers might want to take a look at it.

I've done 53,000 words of the Luff Imbry novel, so I'm still on track to turn it in on June 30. After that, my next project will probably be a non-Archonate fantasy novel for a major publisher. I won't say which because we haven't made a deal yet, though I've made the pitch and been told an offer is in the works. The book is set in contemporary North America, and recounts the adventures of a nerdish fellow who works as an actuary in an insurance company. He accidentally causes Hell to go on strike but comes out of that situation with the part-time assistance of a demon who is assigned to help him live out his comix-inspired fantasy of being a Batmanesque crime fighter.

I've sold the first 16,000 words of the book as a self-contained story -- entitled "Hell of a Fix" -- to Gordon Van Gelder at the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This is my nineteenth sale to F&SF

May 14, 2009

As I typed the date above it was with mild astonishment that I looked out the window, here in the small town in central Saskatchewan where I have been housesitting for two months, and noted that it is snowing. And the stuff is sticking to the ground.

Last summer I sold reprint rights for my story "Petri Parousia," which originally ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, to the Institute of Children's Literature, part of the Longridge Writers Group, a learn-to-write outfit which apparently gets good results. The story will be in their teaching anthology, Voices in Today's Magazines, and will be out in August.

Yesterday I hit 45,000 words in the Luff Imbry novel, still with the working title: The Other. Today was spent doing some money-earning freelance work and finding out that I have not been selected to be writer in residence at the University of British Columbia's Green College nor at the Toronto Public Library's Merril Collection. The latter gig has gone to Karl Schroeder, who I am sure will do an excellent job.

May 6, 2009

My non-Archonate sf story, "Hunchster," will be in the August-September issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which this year celebrates its sixtieth birthday.

As do I, later this month, by which time I will be out of Saskatchewan, heading for a one-month housesit for a friend in Toronto, then a six-month gig in Ireland.

I'm 40,500 words into the Luff Imbry novel -- working title: The Other -- and on track to turn it in on schedule (June 30) to Victoria Blake at Underland Press.

April 28, 2009

Template got a nice Amazon reader's review from Dave Studhalter, a long-time fan of my work. I've been told by other authors that Amazon reviews can be deciders for potential buyers who are considering their first purchase of an author's works. And since I can use all the sales I can get, not having had a new trade title out in quite a while, I thought I'd ask those of you who've read and like my books to consider putting up a review on Amazon. It all helps.

April 27, 2009

I'm now 31,500 words into the Luff Imbry novel, The Other, which will be out from Underland Press next year. It's shaping up nicely. Luff seems to have been lined up to be a reluctant messiah on an oddball little planet. And people around him keep dying. I can hardly wait to see how it all turns out.

April 17, 2009

I had a chat with Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books yesterday. The topic: when will the world see Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn? Last I'd heard, it was to be out next week. Now the target date is September, although if NS can recoup enough of the pre-orders that were lost over the past eight months, it could be as early as June. My apologies to everyone, and I hope you'll bear with me on this -- it's a good book, and a longer one, too.

The explanation is simple: Night Shade bit off more than it could chew; they bought more books than they could produce. However, Jeremy tells me they have hired some new staff, including a production manager, to do some of the work that Jeremy and Jason were trying to do on their own. So all may be well in the garden, for me and for the other authors who are waiting for books to come out of the pipeline. Not to mention the fans who are waiting to read them.

April 16, 2009

My review of The High City by Cecelia Holland, my favorite living historical novelist, is up on the SF Site.

I'm now 20,000 words into the Luff Imbry novel I'm writing for Underland Press. The working title is now The Other. At this point, Luff is a suspect in the murder of one of his traveling companions and has been beaten up by a small-town cop on what he is coming to realize is a planet full of strange people.

One of the things that fascinate me about writing a novel is that it's often only at the point I've now reached, 20,000 words in, that up from my unconscious comes a sense of what the story's about, at the thematic level. Until then, it's just characters in motion and in conflict.

April 5, 2009

I've signed and sent back the signature pages for the limited edition of Songs of the Dying Earth, the tribute anthology to Jack Vance coming out from Subterranean Press this fall. Tor and HarperCollins will be publishing trade editions next year.

After a late start, I'm now 10,000 words into the Luff Imbry novel I'm writing for Underland Press. So far I've got Luff kidnapped and left stark naked on an odd little planet that he, like almost everyone else in the Ten Thousand Worlds, has never even heard of. He's been adopted into a traveling troupe of sideshow freaks and any page now he's going to stumble across the first dead body, because this tale is going to hang on a murder mystery framework. I'm having a good time.

Anyone who's in the vicinity of Humboldt, Saskatchewan, around 7:30 on the evening of Monday, April 27 is welcome to come and hear me read some crime fiction at the public library. It looks as if I'll also do a workshop on story mechanics on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:30 pm in the same venue. I don't know if there'll be a charge for admission, but I'm not charging anything.

March 23, 2009

For the completists, I have brought my bibliography page up to date.

March 22, 2009

Continuing to restore the site, I have put up the first chapter of Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn. The book is finally expected to be released on April 20.

I am indebted to Ruhan Zhao of Rochester, New York, who took it upon himself to translate the first Henghis Hapthorn story, "Mastermindless," and submit it on my behalf to the Chinese magazine, Science Fiction World. The editor to whom he sent the translation moved on before making a decision and the submission was apparently lost. Ruhan followed up and made sure it was seen by the new editor. The result: the story will be published in the May SFW edition devoted to translated works. Now, that's a fan.

My Nebula-nominated novella, "The Helper and His Hero," has drawn the interest of veteran Italian science fiction editor Gianfranco Viviani. After a brief email discussion, we have agreed that he will publish The Commons, the Guth Bandar novel which includes the novella, as a 1,000-copy limited edition from Delos Books. Delos is an Italian publishing house devoted mainly to sf. It has published many Hugo and Nebula Award winning authors, including Greg Egan, Harry Harrison, Frederik Pohl, Charles Stross, and Canada's own Robert J. Sawyer. It was Rob Sawyer who published The Commons under his imprint, Robert J. Sawyer Books, at the Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

March 21, 2009

A few weeks ago, Phenominet.com, the company that hosted this site for several years, underwent a catastrophic business failure. Overnight, it went out of business and closed the server that held all of the archonate.com content. I was wrapping up a housesit and becoming temporarily homeless until I could begin the next sit, spending a couple of weeks visiting family and on the road. I wasn't in a position to rebuild the site. But I'm now resettled and beginning to restore the lost content. Please check back in the next couple of days.

January 28, 2009

John Denardo's SF Signal blog occasionally gathers together a disparate bunch of sf writers and asks them all the same question, then posts the replies in a featured called Mind Meld. His latest query was: "what was the best writing advice you ever received, and who gave it to you?" There are answers from Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe (a short one), Kage Baker, John C. Wright, Mike Resnick, and lots of others, including yours truly.

January 26, 2009

Basking in reflected glory: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, by K.A. Bedford, has won the Aurealis Award for best Australian sf novel. I edited the book for Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

For the bilingual amongst us, the French version of Majestrum, translated by my erudite friend, Patrick Dusoulier, is in stock at Amazon.ca.

January 19, 2009

I've never been one for maundering over negative reviews, although maybe that's because I haven't had very many, but someone sent me a link to this one, about Template, and as I read it I did one of those little head-shake/double-takes. That's because I was struck (and not for the first time) by the writerly realization that when you take words out of your head and put them down on a page, there is no way to know how some folks are going to interpret them, once they've picked them up and processed them through their own circuits. It's like the old game of telephone, passing a message around a circle and hearing it mutate as it moves from one recipient to the next. The fellow finds a "complete and utter absence of any seeming relevance to the human condition" in a story that's about nothing but the human condition, looked at from several different angles. Perhaps the protagonist's character was too strange for him to take in. Or maybe he only read the first two chapters.

January 6, 2009

The noted sf critic Russell Letson has given Template a hell of a good review in the January Locus. He says, "Vanceans will catch parallels to the Demon Princes and Durdane series and (more strongly) Trullion: Alastor 2262, Emphyrio, and Night Lamp , but while Template does not venture far beyond the patterns laid down by the master, it does not feel like a mere imitation, partly because Hughes clearly gets Vance and the conceptual space he opens so well, and partly because he has the writerly chops to take on the challenge of echoing that supremely idiosyncratic style--not absolutely note-perfect, but close enough. I never forgot that I was reading a Vance homage, but Template is so well executed that I didn't care. And the novel's thematics, however indebted to its models, are strong enough to stand on their own--the title cleverly points not only to multivalent internal metaphors but to the book's relationship to its inspiration.

January 2, 2009

I've just made a deal with Victoria Blake of Underland Press, a new small press based in Portland, Oregon. I met her at WFC and was much impressed. I'm going to write a novel that will carry forward the adventures of Luff Imbry, my Sydney Greenstreetish master criminal of the entirely improbable far future. Should be out in the summer of 2010.

January 1, 2009

Happy new year.

My review of Robert Silverberg's New Wave classic, Son of Man is up on the SF Site.

December 27, 2008

I have a story in the upcoming Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth, to be published soon by Subterranean in limited editions. Tor and HarperCollins Voyageur will bring out the North American and UK trade editions, respectively, later in 2009. Today I received an email I was expecting, with a pdf of my story, so that I could proof it before it goes to press at Subterranean. When I opened the attachment, I was gobsmacked to find that I'd received a pdf of the whole book.

These are original stories set in Vance's Dying Earth milieu from Dan Simmons, Robert Silverberg, Kage Baker, Liz Williams, Walter Jon Williams, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Hand, John C. Wright, Glen Cook, Jeff Vandermeer, Paula Volsky, Tad Williams, Mike Resnick, Lucius Shepard, Elizabeth Hand, Phyllis Eisenstein, and Terry Dowling. And they are so good!

I've sampled all of the contributions and read the afterwords, where each of the authors writes about how he or she first encountered Vance and the effect he has had on their careers. Now I'm going to sit down and read the tales.

I'm supposed to be working. I've got an opportunity to make a novel sale to a major publisher. I should be writing an outline of the book. But I'm not. I'm reading Songs of the Dying Earth. Because it's just the best damn thing to come along since ever.

If you like my stuff, you're going to love Songs of the Dying Earth. I know I should be telling you to take your Christmas money and buy one of my novels, because I need the sales. But first you should buy this absolutely wondrous anthology.

December 23, 2008

I've sold another story to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. "Hunchster" is a non-Archonate story, another of my crime writer's meditations on time travel.

The best of the season to all who happen by here.

December 11, 2008

While I was still waiting for an answer from my recent emails and voice mail to Night Shade Books, asking when the hardcover of Hespira will be published (original release date was August), I came across a notice on the NSB site, informing all the world that the new release date is now February, 2009.

My regrets to all who have ordered the book and are still waiting. Small press publishing is not an exact science. And I suppose the current sudden dislocations in the publishing industry -- big layoffs and major restructurings at the major houses -- are not helping either.

December 8, 2008

Here's the cover for the French version of Majestrum , coming out in February from Editions L'Atalante.

November 24, 2008

Cory and Catska Ench's painting for the second half of my Nebula-short-listed Guth Bandar novella "The Helper and his Hero" (March 2007), has won the Chesley Award, given by the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists (ASFA), for Best Magazine Cover. I love that picture of Beowulf and the bug-eyed monster (minus the bug-eyes). When I sold all the Guth Bandar stories as a fix-up novel, The Commons, to Robert J. Sawyer Books, I asked Rob if he could get the Ench illustration for the cover of the book. He could and did, and I'm sure that arresting image caused more than a few people to pick the book off a bookstore shelf and give it a looking over.

November 22, 2008

I've finished the Luff Imbry novella that is the first of three that PS Publishing will bring out over the next three years. It topped out at just under 29,000 words and may be the beginning of an episodic novel that could be continued in the next two installments. That would depend on how well my figuring-out circuits work over the next couple of years, because right now I have no idea what happens next. But I've come to depend on the kindness of my unconscious. The title of this first one is "Quartet and Triptych."

The things you learn while self-indulgently googling: it seems I was author of the week at the Tararua Public Library back in September. This news prompted me to seek to discover exactly where on Earth Tararua might be. Turns out it's on the North Island of New Zealand, one of the places I'd really like to be offered a long-term housesit (this constitutes a gentle hint to any Tararuans who pop by).

November 18, 2008

I'm just finishing a 28,000-word novella in which my far-future master criminal Luff Imbry attempts to liberate an artwork that has been sealed inside a rather nasty labyrinth built by a viciously mad aristocrat (most of my Old Earth aristocrats are some kind of insane) guarded by sentient machines for several thousand years. It's the first of three Imbry novellas that the award-winning UK publisher PS Publishing will bring out over the next few years.

Speaking of PS, if any of you who are in the US have been wanting to order either of the limited editions of Template from PS but have been deterred by the price, the current financial turmoil may be blowing you some good. The UK pound is worth $1.48 against the greenback today, a new record low; that means the 500-copy limited is going for $30 US instead of $40, and the 200-copy slipcased edition will cost you $75 instead of $100. I don't usually tout my own work, but I consider Template the best thing I've written to date, so if you like what I write, I doubt you'll be disappointed.

November 9, 2008

Occasionally, I hire myself out to edit other people's books. In case it's of interest to my readers, or to people who might be considering hiring me as an editor, I thought I'd start listing them at the bottom of my bibliography page.

November 4, 2008

I've put up a link that will take you to the first chapter of Template , which appears not on my website, but on Fantasy Book Spot. I've also posted Jay Lake's introduction to the book, which is both generous and thoughtful.

November 3, 2008

I had a fine time at World Fantasy Convention in Calgary over the weekend. I got two strong nibbles from small press publishers that may turn into book deals, one of them for a Luff Imbry novel, which is a tempting prospect.

I moderated a successful panel -- not all of them are; it depends on the right combination of panelists, subject and audience. The crew included Jay Lake, for whom I have long had a high regard, and Minister Faust, for whom I developed a high regard as we wrestled with the question of whether or not there are combinations ("Vampire Elves?" was suggested) that ought not to be attempted in fantasy. We covered a lot of ground, from the prospect of a post-apocalyptic two-buddies-on-the-road yarn featuring Gandhi and Hitler, to whether or not The Lord of the Rings is an argument for genocide as the solution to international disputes.

I also did a reading that was well-attended, largely because Robert J. Sawyer, who preceded me, told those who had come to listen to him that I was a writer they ought to stay for -- as he did, himself. The man's a mensch.

I gave an interview to a producer of webcast documentaries who is putting together a feature on Night Shade Books. I'll post a link when it's up.

I reconnected with some colleagues I enjoy seeing, including Graham Joyce, Sean Russell, Janine Cross, Gordon Van Gelder, Eileen Kernaghan. I was sorry to miss Peter Heck, but couldn't find where he was reading.

I was asked to be a judge for the Sunburst Award, the annual prize for the best Canadian science fiction novel. It means I'll have to evaluate almost a hundred books, but -- what the heck? -- an honor's an honor. And I've always believed that you can't just take out; you also have to put something in.

But the highlight of my weekend came at the mass signing that always happens on the Friday night at WFC. Inbetween autographs, I sat and talked with the hands-down, no-question, finest author of historical fiction writing in English today. I'm referring to Cecelia Holland, and I was astonished to discover, at a convention given over to the writing business, that she is not universally known. I make few recommendations, but if you want the full experience of L.P. Hartley's famous opening line -- "The past is another country; they do things differently there." -- which has got to be the main point of reading historical fiction, then you just have to read Cecelia Holland. I have been doing so for nearly forty years, have never been disappointed, and will continue to read everything she writes. Because she is the best.

October 22, 2008

Peter Heck has given my Guth Bandar novel, The Commons, a warm review in the December issue of Asimov's Science Fiction , saying, "Hughes has taken what in other hands might have been just a cute idea and turned it into something considerably richer. His exploration of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious is thought provoking as well as amusing."

I've just seen the programming schedule for the World Fantasy Convention, next weekend in Calgary. Apparently, I'm moderating a panel at 10 p.m.Thursday night on whether or not there are "combinations" that should not be attempted in fantasy. My panel mates are Jay Lake, Cheryl Morgan and Minister Faust. I wonder what I'm going to say.

I'm also doing a reading at 2 p.m. on Saturday in concert with Rob Sawyer, who published The Commons under his imprint, Robert J. Sawyer Books, at Fitzhenry and Whiteside.

October 19, 2008

Charles Tan, the Philippines-based blogger who interviewed me for the Nebula Awards site has posted another review, this one about Majestrum. He says, "Majestrum is recommended if you're looking for that adventure-mystery hybrid that's full of fun and excitement yet different from the usual sword & sorcery fare. Hughes successfully juggles tribute and originality while still telling a compelling story in his own unique style."

October 15, 2008

We're only three months late, but the second Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, The Spiral Labyrinth, is now available in trade paperback at $14.95.

October 12, 2008

Philippines-based fan/blogger Charles Tan, who , has posted a review of Template. He says, "Template reminds me of the Foundation and I, Robot series. The story is tight, it appeals to my intellectual curiosity rather than adrenaline, and a lot is conveyed through dialogue and introspection. With this novel, I can easily imagine Hughes to be the modern successor of Asimov." That's a first for me, but I'll take it. I always liked Asimov when I was a kid.

I've sold another Luff Imbry tale, "Another Day in Fibbery," to PS Publishing's Postscripts Magazine. It should be out next year. Any Imbry fans who can't wait that long to read it could consider buying the 125-copy limited edition of Hespira. The story is the "extra" that Night Shade always includes in one of my limiteds.

I'm planning to attend World Fantasy Convention in Calgary at the end of the month. I've got as membership and a place to stay, but I'm still working on transportation. If anyone's driving west on the TransCanada Highway and wants to pick up an amiable companion who'll pay for gas, send me an email.

And for anyone who's attending and wants a book or magazine signed: don't be shy about asking me.

September 24, 2008

Having been once again turned down for a literary grant -- an outcome frequently experienced by writers of genre fiction -- I need to make some money. So I am once again hanging out my shingle as a critiquer and editor of science fiction, fantasy and crime fiction. I've been told I'm pretty good at it, and will provide references to any for whom my bibliography is not testament enough. Fair warning, though: I don't come cheap.

So, if anyone has a novel in progress and wants a professional evaluation or an edit/rewrite, send me an email at the address in the footer and we'll discuss terms.

September 14, 2008

Ian Sales has reviewed Template in the latest Interzone. He says, "At some point reading Template , everyone is sure to ask why we need Hughes when we have Vance. And the answer is: because we can never have too much Vance. And providing it's done with invention and wit, then it's as enjoyable as the real thing. Happily, Hughes matches the wit and invention of Vance. He also brings slightly off-kilter philosophical musings to his stories, and they provide a depth Vance sometimes lacks."

September 11, 2008

I had a chat with Jeremy Lassen from Night Shade today and got updated on the schedules for the trade paperback of The Spiral Labyrinth and the hardcover of Hespira. The official word is that the Spiral tpbk will ship in mid-October, and the hc of Hespira will be out at the end of October. My apologies to those who have pre-ordered and are waiting by the mailbox, but small press publishing is not an exact science.

September 8, 2008

There's a review of Template by Fabio Fernandes on the Fantasy Book Critic blog. He says, "Template is a very focused novel -- it's as if it tries to reproduce the mindframe of Conn Labro. But it works cleverly making us think about the meaning of life without being cocky about it." He's the first reviewer to have picked up on the fact that the story is told from the protagonist's point of view -- but this is a protagonist who does not (indeed, cannot) see things the way you and I do, for reasons that become clear at the end of the book.

I haven't been posting here much lately. First there was getting moved over from England to a new housesit in Canada. Then I pulled a rib head out of its socket on my spine (an occasional circumstance that I owe to the drunk driver who rear-ended me thirty-six years ago) which makes sitting and typing somewhat unpleasant. I'm in a very small town with no chiropractors. I still intend to get on with the contest I mentioned in the July 27 post, but I'm waiting until I have author's copies from PS and Night Shade in hand.

August 25, 2008

Last summer, Jeremy Lassen from Night Shade Books asked me for a blurb to accompany the Hespira listing in the NS catalogue. I hadn't begun to think about the book, and all I knew at that time was that it would have a woman in it named Hespira (or maybe that would be the name of the world she came from). So I dashed off a blurb that left a lot of avenues open, but assumed that the character would somehow come between Hapthorn and his alter ego, Osk Rievor. Funny thing, though, when I actually start in on a book, it often takes on a life of its own. That's what happened with Hespira , and it turned out the book would not be about a Hapthorn-Rievor-Hespira love triangle. Instead, it's about HH tackling a case all on his own, so that he can put the whole business of magic's resurgence out of his mind. So here's a more accurate blurb for the book, and my apologies for anyone who's been desperately waiting for the experience of Hapthorn in love.

As magic begins to reassert its ancient dominion, Old Earth's foremost freelance discriminator, Henghis Hapthorn, and his intuition (now a separate person named Osk Rievor), are living apart, though they remain on good terms. But now the Archonate's foremost freelance discriminator encounters a woman of deep mystery. Who is Hespira? What secret enemy has marooned her on Old Earth, her memories expunged? And is it only chance that has thrown her into Hapthorn's arms, just as he seeks to prevent a willful tycoon and a rising power in the Olkney underworld from making him a prize in their deadly private war?

August 21, 2008

George R.R. Martin, who is co-editing, along with Gardner Dozois, the Jack Vance Tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth , has posted the almost complete table of contents. It's a heck of a crowd.

I'm relocating back to Canada for a while, taking up a four-month housesit in a small town on the prairies. I haven't been out in the wide open spaces since I drove my old 76 Dodge Dart from Vancouver Island to Toronto back in 1997. I'm looking forward to being under those skies again.

August 19, 2008

Charles Tan, the Philippines-based uberfan who maintains the Bibliophile Stalker blog, recently conducted an interview with me that has now been posted on the Nebula Awards site.

August 15, 2008

I had an email from a fan today asking, as fans occasionally do, whether there will be any more Hapthorn books after Hespira. I thought I'd post my answer here: I don't know yet. The Hapthorn books have sold well enough for Night Shade to make a profit, but not well enough that they're ready to commit to more titles at this stage. We'll have to see what the final sell-through is on both editions of Hespira , meaning no decisions before next year. In the meantime, you could try annoying all your friends and anyone you meet on the internet, telling them they ought to read me. Drop into your local library and, if they don't have me in their catalog, ask them to do so. And perhaps consider giving my books as gifts at Christmas and birthdays. It's all about the numbers in this game.

August 13, 2008

I've sold another novel. Transplant -- that's the working title -- is a medical thriller that I wrote in collaboration with one of the world's top heart transplant surgeons, Dr. John A. Elefteriades, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Yale University. The publisher is Robot Binaries Press, an innovative small press founded by Dr. Howard S. Smith, an engineer whose work in artificial intelligence was the foundation of those self-checkout systems that have begun to appear in supermarkets.

For those of you who have kindly pre-ordered Template, I have had a note from publisher Pete Crowther to let me know that the book is shipping this week. Template is probably the closest I've come to writing an unabashed Jack Vance-style space opera. And as far as I'm concerned, it's the best work I've done.

Normally, when I have a new novel coming out, I put the first chapter up on this site. But Jay Tomio, who runs the Fantasy Book Spot discussion site and who has been a steadfast supporter of my work since Black Brillion , asked me if he could have the first chapter as an exclusive. So here it is.

Template is being published in two limited, signed editions and is not available in stores or even from Amazon. The best place to order it is from PS Publishing in the UK, or from specialist mail-order booksellers in North America.

July 30, 2008

I've made a deal with Pete Crowther of PS Publishing to write three novellas featuring my engaging and portly master criminal, Luff Imbry, over the next three years, each to be issued as a limited edition chapbook. I'll write the first one this fall and it should be out sometime next year.

I'm doing a three-hour writers workshop for the Ripon Branch of the North Yorkshire County Library at 10 a.m., August 18. I'll be talking about elementary story mechanics, i.e., how stories work and how the pieces fit together, and the ins and outs of writing scenes, i.e., the dreaded "show, don't tell." For more information, contact team leader Karen Thornton at 01765 604799. The general email address for the library is: ripon.library@northyorks.gov.uk.

July 28, 2008

One of my stories that I thought would be among the least memorable, "Petri Parousia" ( F&SF , February 08), has generated two requests for reprints in the last week: one from the Romanian magazine Sci-Fi, and the other from an outfit called The Institute for Children's Literature, which wants to use it in an anthology intended to assist young writers who want to learn about the craft and the business. The story is a spoof on the Dan Brown, da Vinci Code concept that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had children whose descendants walk amongst us today. "Petri Parousia" is a shaggy dog story mainly written for the pun inherent in the last line. Maybe the Institute wants to use it as a bad example.

July 27, 2008

I've sold another Luff Imbry novelette, "Enemy of the Good," to Postscripts Magazine. In the same week, I was busily signing 400 front sheets to be bound into Postscripts 15 , which contains another Luff Imbry story, "The Eye of Vann," and which will be on sale in the next few weeks. Each of the authors with a piece in the issue has to sign all the sheets for the limited edition hardcover of the magazine (there's also a paperback edition), so the sheets are mailed from one author to the next. The next person on the list after me was Brian Aldiss, whose far-future novel, Hothouse (also known as The Long Afternoon of Earth), was one of the first sf novels I ever read, more than forty-five years ago. Because of the peculiarities of my upbringing -- don't ask, wait for the autobiography -- I'm largely disconnected from my own past, but every now and then something happens that briefly joins my current compartment to one I long ago left behind; and, for a moment, I can remember being that particular iteration of me. Seeing Brian Aldiss's name just above mine on the Postscripts 15 sig sheet took me back to how I felt reading his book all those years ago. If you can find a copy, I recommend it.

Template, coincidentally also from the same publisher that produces Postscripts , will soon be shipping. I get a few author's copies of the book and I've decided to give away one of the limited slipcovered editions, (which retail for $100 and will likely go up in value), in order to boost my profile. As I mentioned a little while ago, anyone who can send me a receipt of purchase, dated July 15, 2008 or later , for a copy of my short story collection, The Gist Hunter and Other Stories , will be eligible to win the limited edition. I'll also give away signed copies of The Spiral Labyrinth trade paperback and Hespira hardcover to twenty or so runners up. The contest started July 15, and will run until sometime in September, when I will be housesitting back in Canada for a few months and when I receive the various books I'll be giving away. Watch this space in September for where to send your receipt.

July 25, 2008

I've put up the first chapter of Hespira, the third Henghis Hapthorn novel. My thanks to all those kind souls out there who have been posting links to the page.

The folks at SF Signal have this occasional feature where they ask various authors how they go about handling this or that part of the craft. The latest one is on world-building, and it's fascinating to see how different writers do what they do. It's also pretty cool to find myself on a virtual panel with Gene Wolfe, Larry Niven, Jay Lake, Kage Baker and other lumninaries.

July 13, 2008

I've been offline lately, housesitting and touristing in rural Shropshire, Wales and the Lakes District. Along the way, I spent a couple of days in Liverpool and the town of Wallasey across the Mersey River, revisiting some of the sites of my earliest childhood. It was amazing how everything -- houses, streets, the river itself -- had become so much smaller than the images in my memory. I received no epiphanies, but I did come to understand at some deeper level that the past is well and truly gone, and all that lingers is our memories of what passed through our sensoria -- and even those are not to be trusted for detail.

Late next month, I'll be moving to a four-month housesit in western Canada. At about the same time, I will receive forty copies of the trade paperback of The Spiral Labyrinth , the second Hapthorn book. A few weeks later, I'll get forty hardcovers of Hespira. Since I'll be settled for a while, I've decided to do another give-away contest. Watch this space for details, but I can tell you now that anyone who can send me a receipt for a copy of The Gist Hunter and Other Stories , bought new and dated after July 15, 2008, will be in the running for a complete set of the Hapthorn hardcovers, signed by me.

In the next week, I'll put up the first chapter of Hespira for a free read.

June 26, 2008

About a year ago, my fellow Canadian author, Zoe Landale, with whom I was once in a local writer's group, asked me for a piece of nonfiction for an anthology she was putting together. I sent her "Ice and Fire, Mud and Water," a memoir of the time I spent living with Metis people in northern Alberta back in the 1960s. Now the antho has come together and will be published by the Toronto literary house, Wolsack and Wynn, in 2010.

June 25, 2008

Another milestone in my turtle's-pace career. I found this posting on my bbs page over on the Night Shade Books site. It's from a Vancouver-based sf discussion group: "Our next meeting takes place Thursday July 17, 2008 @ 7pm. As always the venue shall be "Our Town" coffee house, located at 245 East Broadway, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This month, we'll be discussing Fools Errant by Matthew Hughes."

June 24, 2008

Hespira, the third Hapthorn novel, is proceeding on course. I've just reviewed Marty Halpern's copyedit notes and the book is ready to go to page proofs. I'll put up a page with the first chapter in the next little while.

A warning to those who take publisher's catalgue descriptions as gospel: Hespira is not quite as advertised. Catalogues get printed months before the books they list are published, and in this case, the blurb copy had to be written before I'd even begun to think seriously about what would happen in the book. All I knew was that the story would involve a mysterious female named Hespira -- as indeed it does. But it's not a Hapthorn-in-love story, which will doubtless come as a relief to some. But I think it's a pretty good mystery and takes HH off to some odd worlds down The Spray.

The ToC for Postscripts 15 , which contains my Luff Imbry story, "The Eye of Vann," is now out. It's the biggest Postscripts ever, with a stellar line-up of contributors.

June 17, 2008

This comes under the category of: what could it hurt to ask?

I came over to Britain seven months ago to try housesitting as a means of reducing my overhead while I continue to write fiction for not very much money. So far, it has been a qualified success. I've been housesitting about two-thirds of the time, which has cut the overhead during the sits, but the savings tend to get eaten up when we have to camp out in temporary accommodations (read, holiday trailer parks), between gigs. Unless I can get more sits, this is not going to work as a long-term strategy.

That will be too bad, because the fiction that I most want to write, now that the third Hapthorn novel, Hespira, and the story for the Jack Vance tribute antho, Songs of the Dying Earth , are done, is a serious historical novel that I've been researching, off and on, for over thirty-five years. If I have a great book in me, this is going to be it. I'm applying for an arts council grant to feed the bulldog while I write it, and I have the interest of a truly major New York agent who will rep it if the draft lives up to the outline. And I'm willing to live hand-to-mouth, as I have for most of my life anyway, to get this one done, and done right.

It would really help, though, if someone out there among my small but dedicated fan base just happened to have an empty in-law suite or untenanted guest house where I could move in and work for a year or so. In return, I can promise that hypothetical angel that the resulting book will be dedicated to no one else. And, if that person should also have ambitions to write fiction, I would be happy to provide one-on-one tutoring in the craft and the business. People do say I am a gifted teacher, by the way.

So there it is, a seed cast in the hope of fertile ground. If you've got the room, send me an e-mail.

Speaking of Songs of the Dying Earth , I see from co-editor George R.R. Martin's blog that the super-fancy lettered limited edition from Subterranean Press has already sold out, and the other limited is going fast on pre-order. This book is going to be a landmark.

June 10, 2008

"The Helper and His Hero," the two-part Guth Bandar serial that ran in the February and March 2007 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , has been nominated for a British Fantasy Society Award in the novella category. It was previously shortlisted for the Nebula. The novella was also a large part of the fix-up novel, The Commons , published last fall by Robert J. Sawyer Books, an imprint of Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

For anyone who hasn't yet encountered Guth Bandar, fearless explorer of the collective unconscious, click on the link "A Little Learning" above.

June 9, 2008

There's an interesting review of the July Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction over at The Fix, an online site for short fiction reviews. Commenting on my Henghis Hapthorn novelette, "Fullbrim's Finding," Damien G. Walter says, "The thing to love about the [Hapthorn] stories is how they capitalise on science fiction's right to make sweeping philosophical statements about the universe with no basis in fact but simply for the hell of making them. That's a refreshing ambition in the face of so many timid, domestic stories coming out of the genre at the moment."

June 7, 2008

Yesterday, I turned in a story entitled "Grolion of Almery" to Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin, the co-editors of the Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth. This morning I received e-mails from both editors saying the story had been accepted.

Tor will publish the US trade hardcover, while HarperCollins Voyager will handle the UK edition. Six months before that, Subterranean Press will bring out two deluxe, illustrated, limited editions, one of them signed by all the contributors, including Jack, himself.

The cover painting (and individual illos for each story in the limited editions), will be by World Fantasy Award-winning artist Tom Kidd, who has done the covers for five of my books. A not-quite-completed version of the cover painting is on Subterranean's site.

Last I heard, the following authors had turned in their stories: Robert Silverberg, Terry Dowling, Glen Cook, Tanith Lee, Liz Williams, Kage Baker, and Elizabeth Moon. Still to come were stories from Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, Elizabeth Hand, Mike Resnick, Phyllis Eisenstein, Paula Volsky, Howard Waldrop, Tad Williams, Walter Jon Williams, John C. Wright, and Lucius Shepard.

I have trouble finding the words to express my happiness at being included among such a cast in such a production. I'll offer a mental image: yours truly, executing handsprings and backflips, wearing an ear-to-ear grin.

June 4, 2008

My Luff Imbry novelette "Passion Ploy," which has so far seen the light of day only in the DAW anthology Forbidden Planets , edited by Pete Crowther, is now available for a free listen. It's this week's offering on the Starship Sofa site as an MP3. The podcast is a magazine format, but if you just want to hear my piece, it begins about fourteen minutes in.

June 2, 2008

Normally, I put up a chapter of each of my novels on my web page. But Jay Tomio, who runs the Fantasy Book Spot site, asked me if he could have an exclusive. Jay has been a strong supporter of my work, and I was happy to say yes. So the first chapter of Template is now up on Jay's site.

June 1, 2008

John Berlyne gives Template a strongly positive review in the June SF Revu. He says, "It's clear to me, having read Hughes's fine short novel Template, brought to us by the ever-forward looking PS Publishing and the first of Hughes's novel length works to be published in these shores, that we've been missing out -- big time!"

In the same issue, Sam Tomaino gives a "very good" rating to "Fullbrim's Finding," a Henghis Hapthorn novelette that opens the July edition of the The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

May 31, 2008

Publisher Jeremy Lassen tells me that the trade paperback of The Spiral Labyrinth is on schedule for release in about six weeks at $14.95(US). At the moment there are no plans for mass-market editions, so if you've been putting off the experience of Henghis Hapthorn trapped in a world where magic actually works, put off no more but wander over to the Night Shade site and pre-order a copy.

The trade hardcover and signed limited editions of Hespira are also on track for August/September release. Right now, I don't know if there will be more Hapthorn novels; it depends on how the first three do. There will be a decision in the spring of 2009.

If anyone's in the area and interested, I'll be doing a reading and giving a talk on what life is like for a struggling-but-cheerful sf author. The event is at the Harrogate branch of the North Yorkshire County Library, on Victoria Avenue in Harrogate, on Thursday, June 12, from 7:30 p.m. The English being a civilized race, there will also be light refreshments and a complementary glass of wine. Tickets cost two pounds. For more information, phone 0845 0349520.

May 23, 2008

Robert Runte has given Majestrum and The Spiral Labyrinth a warm review in Neo-Opsis Magazine. He says: "Conceited, self-satisfied, preening gasbag though he might be, Henghis Hapthorn is nevertheless oddly loveable and often rises to the occasion, demonstrating considerable genius and even heroism. And just underneath the irony lies a whole other layer of philosophical debate that underpins much of Matthew Hughes writing." He also says that if they ever make a Hapthorn movie, the title role should go to Kelsey Grammer, tv's Frasier. I agree.

May 19, 2008

I have received and accepted an offer from Editions L'Atalante to publish Majestrum in French early next year. I am delighted that my good friend Patrick Dusoulier, who translated Le Brillion Noir and is one of the foremost translators of Jack Vance's works into French, will handle the traduction.

May 16, 2008

I see that Night Shade Books is clearing space in the warehouse to make room for new titles. From now until May 25, they're offering 50 per cent off on all in-stock and forthcoming titles, with a minimum purchase of four books. So, if you've been thinking how much you'd like to get The Gist Hunter and Other Stories (before it goes out of print), and all three Hapthorn books, now's your chance.

May 15, 2008

I've been of two minds all day about whether or not to write what I'm about to write. Obviously, I've come down on the side of going ahead. I'm doing so because I have often taught struggling writers, and I occasionally get emailed questions from them, especially when they've had comments from friends or fellow internet-denizens on drafts of stories they're working on. One person will say, "I really liked x about your story but not y," while someone else will have exactly the opposite reaction. Struggling writers, often struggling with their own insecurities, can feel as if they're navigating a mine field, when every step can get them blown up.

I raise the issue after looking at responses to Template after James Nicoll and John Joseph Adams kindly promoted my free-read offer for bloggers (which is still open, btw). I've seen about a dozen now and -- no surprise -- some have loved the worldbuilding, while others thought it far too sketchy; some have loved the old-fashioned prose, while at least one reviewer found it "clunky."

The thing is, writers have to make choices. I've chosen not to write travelogues of the future; I write stories from the viewpoints of characters who happen to live there, and for whom aircars and integrators are a part of everyday life, as are the strange (to us) ways their minds and societies are organized. But the story is what counts for me. So I give the reader a passing visit to that "other country" that is the future, and a sketchy sense of what things are like there. But the characters are too busy with their own problems to stop and explain any more than the most basic realities. They've got problems to solve.

Some people just love that kind of writing. I always have when I've encountered it in the works of Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe. Some people just hate it. That's life. The only conclusion to be drawn is, as the old song says: "you can't please everybody, so you just got to please yourself." Here endeth the lesson.

May 13, 2008

Earler this year, I did an email interview with David Fuller, a writer for Prairie Books Now , who wanted to know about Guth Bandar and The Commons. The result has now appeared in the magazine's spring edition.

I've now seen a total of ten reviews of Template linked through James Nicoll's LiveJournal blog, all of them positive.

May 11, 2008

Reviews of Template are starting to appear in response to my free-read offer. James Nicoll, to whom I am most grateful for organizing a reviewathon, is posting links to them as he notices their appearance. So far they've been pretty encouraging.

The free-read offer remains open for the foreseeable future. If you want to read the book and will commit to blog or post about it, I'll send you an rtf file of the manuscript. Just send me an email at "himself(you know what symbol goes in here)archonate.com".

For those of you who have pre-ordered the book from PS, I now hear that it may not be back from the printers before July. Or that may apply only to the slip-covered limited editions, which naturally take longer to manufacture.

May 6, 2008

Another free read! Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , is offering to give away a free copy of the July issue to the first fifty people who commit to blog about it. The issue contains my Henghis Hapthorn story, "Fullbrim's Finding."

Paul Raven, the new publicity maven for PS Publishing, has posted the cover art for Template. I like it; it's simple, but carries an impact.

Further to yesterday's cool-things-about-the-internet item: because of the help I've been getting from good people like James Nicoll and John Joseph Adams, my free-read offer has come to the attention of Takashi Ogawa, a prominent translator and reviewer of English-language sf into Japanese. He's going to review the book for Hayakawa's SF Magazine , which means that thousands of Japanese sf fans will get an exposure to my work. We all get by with a little help from our friends.

May 5, 2008

One of the cool things about the internet, at least for authors, is that it provides venues for book reviews of titles that came out ages ago. Back in the days of dead-tree publications, if a book didn't get reviewed in the first few weeks or couple of months after release, it probably never would; too many new titles would be clogging the intake hopper. Hence my pleasure at finding this positive SF Signal review of Majestrum by John Denardo.

May 4, 2008

A few people who are considering participating in the Template reviewathon (see the April 28 entry below), have wondered if positive reviews are a requirement of the exercise. The answer is: no. Good reviews are welcome. Critical reviews are also welcome. As a struggling sf author, I need to have my work surrounded by noise; whether it comes in the form of purrs or snarls is, at best, a secondary consideration. As Sam Goldwyn once apocryphally said, "Publicity is good. Good publicity is better." Or, to reach for the Oscar Wilde, "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

Nor is the May 11 deadline an issue. Anyone who wants to blog or post or otherwise bandy about my name is welcome to do so in all seasons.

May 2, 2008

We're housesitting again, this time in a big old place on nine acres of beautiful South Oxfordshire countryside. We should be here until the second week in June, then it's on to an 1850s vintage millworker's house in Keighley (pronounced Keethley) in West Yorkshire, near where the Brontes wrote their Victorian novels. The present sit comes with a mellow old baby grand piano; the next one involves three feisty young dogs, two cats and a rabbit. And I'm told my next door neighbor for the next five weeks is the lead singer from the old disco group Boney M. Somewhere in this experience is the wherewithal for an article for Writers Digest.

Between Turkey and this sit, we stayed for a week in a lovely little spot just on the southern edge of York: York Lakeside Lodges are a group of little cabins around a man-made (I assume) lake. It's a family-friendly place, though I think some people come there mainly to fish, because they sit by the shore in little tents with racks holding three or four rods; the day before we left I saw a man having his photograph taken holding a serious fish -- maybe twenty pounds of carp -- that he then let go back into the lake. If you're planning to visit York, I recommend it as a nice place to stay.

April 28, 2008

It's not every day one gets called "a towering talent" by one of science fiction's mega-authors. But that's part of the blurb Robert J. Sawyer has given Template. For which I am most grateful. It's the second big favor Rob has done me; the first was to publish my Guth Bandar novel, The Commons , under his imprint at Fitzhenry & Whiteside. The man's a mensch.

James Nicoll, a gentleman and sf fan extraordinaire, has taken the Template free-read offer an extra mile: via his LiveJournal blog, he is organizing a mass read and review of the novel. The tentative date for the reviews to appear is May 11.

My Luff Imbry story, "The Eye of Vann," will appear in the fifteenth edition of Postscripts later this year. Editor Pete Crowther promises it will be the magazine's biggest-ever issue, with stories by Brian Aldiss, Terry Bisson, Ray Bradbury, Ian McDonald, Michael Moorcock, Robert Reed, Chris Roberson, Brian Stableford and Steven Utley, among others. There's also an editorial by the late Arthur C. Clarke.

I now have almost enough Imbry stories for a collection. I should probably ask around and see if anyone's interested in publishing them.

April 27, 2008

While I was away, Peter Heck reviewed The Spiral Labyrinth in Asimov's. He says, "Hughes somehow catches the trick of combining dry understatement with a colorful, almost baroque, vocabulary that characterizes much of Jack Vance's best writing. If you enjoy the latter as much as I do, this series by Hughes may well be just your cup of tea."

To my complete and utter lack of astonishment, I did not win a Nebula last night.

I had a wonderful time in southwestern Turkey, at a small resort town named Icmeler (ISH-meller) that was just getting ready for the opening of tourism season (which was why I could afford to go there for two weeks). The scenery was quietly beautiful, the Mediterranean Sea an amazing aquamarine. The weather was warm but not yet hot, the air was clean and full of the scent of orange trees and spices that grow wild, and the people were warm and welcoming. I would happily live there. And I got to walk through the ancient city of Ephesus.

April 11, 2008

We're still between housesits and it turns out to be not much more expensive to spend two weeks at a resort in Turkey than to camp out in Yorkshire, so we're off to the south. I'm leaving my laptop behind so there probably will be no updates here until I'm back in England on April 26.

The 2007 Locus Award is based on votes from anyone who cares to participate (i.e., you don't have to be a Locus Magazine subscriber to vote), and you can do it online. The poll and voting form are here and the deadline for voting is April 15.

April 10, 2008

The WordStar conversion problem (see post below) has been solved, thanks to the ingenuity and perseverance of Marty Halpern, editor and hero, who has copyedited all three of my Night Shade books and will do the same for Hespira. He came up with the brilliant solution of converting the WordStar into HTML, then converting the HTML into a Word-compatible file.

Here's a special free-read offer for reviewers, bloggers, newsgroup posters and people who just like to talk about books in public: next month, PS Publishing will release Template , a stand-alone Archonate novel that I consider to be my best work yet (even though it was written in 2003). I will send an rtf file of the book to anyone who commits to review, blog, post or otherwise harass the world about it. Just send me an e-mail at "himself(you know what symbol goes in here)archonate.com" and I'll shoot you a copy.

April 8, 2008

I've finished the second draft of Hespira and find myself with a problem. I still write in the old DOS-based (actually, it was CPM-based when I started) WordStar word processing program. I've got a converter that converts the files to rtf format so I can transmit them to people who live in the twenty-first century. But for some reason, the converter is turning out rtf versions of the book that my Open Office word processor can't open. And Open Office can't convert WordStar files on its own -- it used to be able to but somebody removed the converter from its filter pack. I'll have to solve this before I can send the ms to Night Shade.

April 1, 2008

I'm about halfway through the revisions on Hespira , and it's coming along fine. These days, my memory seems to be all short-term; I have only a vague sense of what I wrote two or three months ago, so I keep coming across little bits of business in the ms that I've forgotten about. Keeps the work interesting.

Yesterday, I picked up the mail that had been accumulating at my mailing address in Harrogate and found that it included my Nebula Awards ballot. I was of two minds about whether or not it was ethical to vote for myself. But today I sat down and looked at the voting rules and discovered that yesterday was the last day. So I was spared a moral dilemma, which is how I generally prefer it.

I'd forgotten that I'd written the first draft of "Enemy of the Good," a 12,000-word Luff Imbry novelette back in December. I've polished it up and will send it off to F&SF in the near future.

March 27, 2008

The first draft of Hespira , the third Hapthorn novel, has topped out at better than 93,500 words. But people are always saying my books are too short. Now to polish it up and send it in to Night Shade.

March 20, 2008

Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , tells me that my Henghis Hapthorn story, "Fullbrim's Finding," will run in the July edition of the magazine. It has previously appeared as the "extra" in the limited edition of The Spiral Labyrinth.

I'm at 81,000 words in the first draft of Hespira , and will have it finished by Monday at the latest. Then I'll tidy it up and send it off to Night Shade so that it can be out in September.

After that, I'm going to write a 10,000-word story for Songs of the Dying Earth , the Jack Vance tribute anthology being put together by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin.

March 16, 2008

So Ted Chiang knocked me out of the second round (see below). Fair enough. He is a worthy opponent.

March 12, 2008

Further to yesterday's post, I have survived the first round of the Fantasy Book Spot "best of 2007" tournament. But now, in the second round, I'm up against Ted Chiang's The Alchemist and the Merchant's Gate , and Ted is no slouch at the storymaking. I've met him a couple of times and read his collection Stories of Your Life , which is very good, so a novel by him will be hard to beat. Oh, well, it's a tough biz, this taleslinging.

March 11, 2008

Over at Fantasy Book Spot, they're holding a "best of 2007" tournament. In the first round, The Spiral Labyrinth is paired against The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Far be it from me to seek to influence the voting...

I'm past 70,000 words on Hespira , the third Hapthorn novel, and starting to think seriously about the ending. I may leave it up to the reader to decide what Hapthorn did in the end.

February 29, 2008

Sometimes, when I check my web stats, I see that some people have been googling "Bearing Up," a non-sf story I wrote a dozen years or so ago for a Thistledown Press anthology. It was later picked up by an Ontario textbook publisher for inclusion in a Grade 10 English course. And whenever I see someone has been googling it, I know that a teacher has assigned a class to read it and write something up -- and the googler is trying to dodge the work. So let me say to anyone who has arrived at this paragraph by that route: I put in the time and effort to write the damn thing, so you put in the t and e to read it and think about it. It's not such a hard story to figure out.

But if you really can't be bothered to do your own work, I'll tell you this: it's about a kid who loves his stuffed Pooh bear so much that when his dad throws the ratty old thing out, he runs off and joins a circus where they have real dancing bears. And one of them eats him, which makes his folks really sorry, but it's too late.

February 19, 2008

After three very pleasant months, the housesit I've been doing in historic Knaresborough, Yorkshire, has suddenly wound up, the new owners wanting to take possession of the place tomorrow instead of at the end of the month. So it's off to a bed and breakfast while we see what else crops up.

Mr. Google tells me that noted Jack Vance scholar David Mead (author of The Jack Vance Encyclopedia), has reviewed The Spiral Labyrinth for the March issue of David G. Hartwell's New York Review of Science Fiction. Prof. Mead kindly sent me a copy of the review, in which he says the book is a "a witty, clever and pleasant fantasy adventure...fun to read," and likely to appeal to readers of Vance and Gene Wolfe.

February 16, 2008

Back when I started with Night Shade Books, Jeremy Lassen kindly opened up a page for me on their discussion board, for people who might want to discuss my work or post a note for me to respond to. The site has been down for a couple of months while NS rebuilt its boards, but now it's back up and I thought I'd direct people that way. I think I'm getting to the point where there may be enough people who've read me to make a discussion page work. I'll try to respond to any questions or comments in a reasonable time. Here's a link.

February 13, 2008

Speaking of awards, we're now in the nominating period (ends March 17), for the Aurora Awards, Canada's answer to the Hugos. I have works that are eligible in the Best Long Form (English) and Best Short Form (English) categories -- though somehow The Spiral Labyrinth has missed the cut.

Any Canadian can nominate a work for inclusion on the final ballot and the nominations can be made online or by snail-mailing in a form. For more information, look here. And that's all I'm going to say about it. In other words, no campaigning.

February 6, 2008

I've checked the nomination tallies on the members-only portion of the SFWA site, and the latest tally shows my Guth Bandar novella, "The Helper and His Hero," has received twelve nominations from fellow SFWAns. That means it has qualified for the preliminary ballot for the Nebula awards. When the ballot was first compiled, the novella had only six noms, and was included in the prelim because no work had actually met the requirement of ten nominations.

The other names on the ballot are stellar: Gene Wolfe, Nancy Kress, Bruce Sterling and Lucius Shepard, so I'm not preparing an acceptance speech. But I guess I can now call myself a "Nebula-nominated" author.

Last week, J.P. Frantz of SF Signal sent me a note asking me to respond to a question they were putting to a bunch of sf authors: "Science fiction has been called "the literature of ideas." Focusing on the 'ideas' part, what science fictional idea do you wish you had written first?" Kage Baker, Paolo Bacigalupi and Mike Resnick were among the responders. Our answers are here.

February 4, 2008

The Commons gets a nuanced review from Ron Bierman on the Rambles site.

February 3, 2008

The Spiral Labyrinth has made the Locus 2007 recommended reading list. If you'd like to read the first chapter, click on the link above.

And over at SFRevu, short fiction reviewer Sam Tomaino thinks that "The Helper and His Hero" and "Sweet Trap" ought to be thought of for Hugo nominations in the novella and short story categories.

February 2, 2008

An outfit called StarShipSofa is doing podcasts of classic and modern sf stories as well as interviews with authors. They've asked me for a couple of stories and I've sent them two Luff Imbry tales, which ought to be available for listening in a month or so. When they're up, I'll post a note.

February 1, 2008

Further to yesterday's post, I have had a gracious e-mail from Roland C. Wagner, apologizing for the over-enthusiasm of some of his fans. I can only wish I had readers that dedicated, though perhaps not quite so ready to bare the teeth at hapless bystanders.

January 31, 2008

I see that I have unknowingly abraded the sensitive pride of French science fiction aficionados by the release of Le Brillion Noir ( Black Brillion in a French translation). Actually, it's not the book they're upset about but the fact that an early reader had the temerity to post a review on Amazon.fr calling my notion of an "applied science" of the collective unconscious an original idea in science fiction. It turns out that a great French sf author, Roland C. Wagner, has been working with much the same idea for the past twenty-five years. The result has been a storm of one-star reviews on the Amazon.fr listing of the book.

While I can sympathize with the debaters, I think it's a little unfair for people to assign single stars to Le Brillion Noir when they haven't read the book. But what irks me is that one of the posters has described me as an American author. Really, one doesn't say that about a Canadian, eh?

January 29, 2008

The Spiral Labyrinth gets a nod from Jeff VanderMeer in his round up of the best of the year for Locus.

January 28, 2008

After all these years, I've just seen a new review of Black Brillion by fellow sf writer Jerry Oltion. Like a number of people who've read the book, he finds that the ending feels "tacked on." That's probably because it was: I was going to end the book with Baro, having saved the collective unconscious, about to be swallowed by the Worm, sinking down into the darkness and saying to himself, "Now what?" But my editor convinced me that readers would throw the book across the room unless I tidied things up.

I'm more than 40,000 words into Hespira , the third Hapthorn novel, and enjoying the work. Readers who come across the Night Shade Books catalogue blurb, however, should not put too much reliance on it. I had to provide copy for the catalogue before I'd actually begun to think about what would happen in the book, and my novels tend to evolve as I'm writing them -- so any connection between the book and blurb will be only tangential. But it is turning into a rattling good read.

January 25, 2008

There are days in this writing business... I was checking Amazon.com to see how my books are selling (every striving author does it), and I came across this : if you didn't follow the link, it's a book by that UFC fighter who happens to have the same name as me (written with the help of a ghostwriter). It's been out since New Year's Day and, when I looked, it was ranked in the mid-5,000s of Amazon's sales stats. Meanwhile, my latest is bouncing around between 70,000 on a good day, and the mid-300,000s most of the time. Ah well, on the good side of the ledger, nobody's trying to rearrange the inside of my head for me.

And then there are other days... Le Brillion Noir, the French version of Black Brillion translated by the inestimable traducteur of Jack Vance into French, Patrick Dusoulier, is out from Editions L'Atalante, and Patrick tells me it looks just fine.

January 18, 2008

Now that I have a reliable internet connection, here's a brief report on what I've been doing since World Fantasy Convention in early November.

I went to England to be a housesitter while I write Hespira , the third Hapthorn novel which is due out this fall. The service I'm working for has put me into a cottage (formerly a stable) at the rear of an eighteenth-century manor house in Knaresborough, a medieval market town in Yorkshire. Knaresborough's claims to fame include:

* Oliver Cromwell slept here after the Civil War, apparently while he was arranging for the castle to be pulled down (it had been a royalist stronghold) ;

*the castle once belonged to a knight named Hugh de Morville who was the ringleader of the four stout fellows who overheard Henry II wishing someone would rid him of "this turbulent priest" and promptly went down to Canterbury and murdered the archbishop, Thomas Beckett;

*King John used to come up and visit for the hunting and the wine-drinking, and passed through here while he was excommunicated;

*the original ninety-foot-high railway viaduct over the river fell down during construction, which was better than if it had survived long wnough for the opening-day train full of dignitaries to give it a try;

*there's an eighteenth-century apothecary's shop that was once the oldest such establishment in continuous operation, but which is now a candy store.

There's plenty of local color, interesting accents, a wide selection of excellent ales and a good fish and chip shop. Pizza, however, is unrecognizable and inedible: they put corn on it, which doesn't help.

Here's a link for a look-see.

Looks as if I'll be in the same location until March, which is an unusually long sit. But, all in all, it seems that housesitting is not a bad gig for a writer. At least so far. Of course, if it doesn't work out, I'm homeless.

My first two weeks in Yorkshire, I stayed at a very nice little bed-and-breakfast in Harrogate, a lovely little Victoria town built around some ancient sulphur springs. The B&B is called Dragon House and the owner, Marie Monaghan, could not have been kinder. I promised her I would recommend her establishment and I hereby do so unreservedly. Click here for a web visit.

January 15, 2008

I've finally got a decent wireless broadband connection and my son has worked out certain issues regarding the mail server that hosts my permanent e-mail address, himself ((at)) archonate.com, so I'm back in contact with the world. Anyone who's tried to reach me since early November, when I fell through a hole and out of the internet, is invited to try again.

I've come across a review of The Commons in the Canadian book publishing trade mag Quill & Quire. Reviewer Alex Good calls it "a rollicking fun ride."

January 7, 2008

Of course, I'm up against Gene Wolfe, Nancy Kress, Bruce Sterling and Lucius Shepard, so I'm not rushing to book a flight to Austin for the Nebs. Still, it's nice to be on the ballot.

My stand-alone Archonate novel, Template , from Pete Crowther's PS Publishing, will now not be out until May. The book's designer, Chris Erkmann, has been recovering from injuries sustained in a bad car accident a couple of months back.

January 6, 2008

I've had a note from Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , to let me know that my Guth Bandar novella, "The Helper and His Hero," has made the preliminary ballot for the Nebula Awards. Gordon is going to post the novella on-line for anyone who'd like to read it. The 40,000-word novella ran in two parts in the February and March 2007 issues of F&SF , and is the last half of the fix-up novel, The Commons , which collects all the Bandar stories in one narrative.

Over on the SF Revu site, Terry Weyna has filed a review of The Spiral Labyrinth in which he finds she likes the story, but wishes it weren't told in Hapthorn's voice. Which goes to show that you can't please everyone.

December 28, 2007

Patrick Dusoulier, translator of Black Brillion into French has posted the cover art for the Editions l'Atalante edition, due out soon. I like it.

December 18, 2007

Still no e-mail or browser access where I'm housesitting, but I get out to the public library and check on my googlemail account. If anyone wants to reach me, and doesn't mind waiting for an answer, the account name is "archonate" plus the googlemail.com server.

John Denardo of the SF Signal site has taken a strong liking to my work. He has now reviewed The Gist Hunter and Other Stories , revealing himself to be a Hapthorn enthusiast.

December 11, 2007

The saga of my non-connection to the internet continues, the laptop my wife having brought me being unaccompanied by an AC adapter -- which can't be bought in the little place where I'm housesitting, and costs about $100 to order in. And so we struggle on.

On the positive side, I've written the first chapter of Hespira , the third Henghis Hapthorn novel. Having few distractions makes it easier to work, as I'd hoped would be the case. I've also written a 12,000-word Luff Imbry novelette, "Enemy of the Good," which I had intended to send to Polyphony. But today, on one of my infrequent public-library-based forays into the internet, I discover that the antho's upper limit is 10,000 words. I'll have to see what I can do.

November 28, 2007

Still out of touch, so I'm updating my page from the library in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. But the problem should be solved when my wife arrives from Canada on December 7, with a new laptop that will reconnect me to the world again. Meanwhile, I see that The Commons has engendered some comment on SF Signal and from John Clute in his "Excessive Candour" column at SciFi.com.

November 23, 2007

I've been off-line this past week, housesitting in a place that has no internet access. My apologies to anyone who's been trying to reach me. I hope to be more available soon.

While I was at World Fantasy Convention, Polyphony editor Deborah Layne asked me to try her with a story for the next edition of the justly well regarded antho. So I'm working up a new Luff Imbry story.

November 16, 2007

Sherwood Smith has given The Spiral Labyrinth a positive review on The Sf Site. She says, "Hughes writes with wit and panache, his imagination is delightfully vivid as well as weird, and his stories never predictable. This one goes on the reread shelf."

November 9, 2007

The Spiral Labyrinth has received a good review from Fred Cleaver of The Denver Post (scroll down). He says, "Hughes's delightful language and humorous details echo fantasy and detective traditions while becoming wholly his own."

November 8, 2007

I'm in Britain now, getting the housesitting career organized. My first sit will be in a cottage (read, three-bedroom house), on an estate in Yorkshire. The eighteenth-century manor house apparently comes complete with a ghost.

I may be out of touch for a while. The laptop my eldest son put together for me just before I left seems to lack some firmware that would let me find and connect to ambient wireless networks. So my new e-mail doesn't work and my old one has now lapsed. My apologies to anyone who's been trying to reach me, but it should get sorted out soon.

World Fantasy Convention was great fun, and my book launch was well attended. I had the pleasure (courtesy of Gordon Van Gelder), of sitting next to fellow F&SF regular Mary Rickert at the World Fantasy Awards banquet just in time to see her win two of them. Besides reconnecting with a lot of people I know and like -- including Jay Lake, GVG, Robert J. Sawyer, Jeremy Lassen and Lou Anders -- I got to make several new friends, like Chris Roberson and Charlie Finlay, as well as putting faces to names that hitherto I have only known as internet denizens: F&SF 's John Joseph Adams, Asimov's book reviewer Peter Heck, SFWA's Jane Jewell, Locus founder Charles Brown, short story wonderment Ted Chiang, editor Ellen Datlow and Asimov's Sheila Williams. And I had the great honor of meeting Gene Wolfe.

Tom Kidd's cover painting for all three of the Hapthorn novels won a special judge's award at the convention art show.

My thanks to Derryl Murphy and Bill Shunn for putting me up on a cot in their hotel room. The town was otherwise full.

October 31, 2007

The give-away contest is over and I've ended up with twenty-seven champions (Bob from Medford MA, got in just under -- well, over -- the wire). Thank you to everyone who helped, and your books are in the mail. That's surface mail, so it may take a while.

I'm leaving in the morning for World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York. I'll be there Saturday and most of Sunday, then it's off to England to take up housesitting and write another Hapthorn novel for Night Shade. I may not post any news here for a while, at least not until I get my feet under me. I hope it's going to be a grand adventure, but I am not unacquainted with disaster and am prepared for whatever eventualities present themselves (see, I'm already slipping into the Hapthorn character).

October 29, 2007

I'm going to wind up the contest tomorrow so I'll have time to mail off all the books before I leave for England on Thursday (via World Fantasy Convention), to start housesitting. The old e- mail address on my bio page will cease to work then, but I've posted the new one that will reach me once I'm settled.

Robert J. Sawyer is hosting a book launch for The Commons Saturday night at WFC, but I don't know what room of the convention hotel it's in. If you're attending and want to come, there will probably be notices up in the hotel. Or you just could stop me or Rob and ask us.

October 27, 2007

Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , tells me that my non-Archonate story, "Petri Parousia," is scheduled for the February, 2008 edition. Speaking of F&SF , in a recent interview on US public radio, Stephen King called F&SF the "gold standard" of American short story writing these days. Notwithstanding the fact that I've now sold seventeen stories to that venerable periodical, I agree with King and wish more people would drop in and give the mag a looking over and maybe a subscription.

October 26, 2007

The grand 53-book giveaway contest will be winding up in the next few days, since I will be busy getting ready to move to Britain. I have not yet reached the total of fifty-three champions, so there are still books to be given away. Act now.

Roger Redmond has given The Spiral Labyrinth a good review on the Alternative Realities Web Zine. He makes an interesting comment: "There seems little room for doubt that Hughes would consider the logic-driven era of rationality to be superior to the will-driven era of magic." I don't know if that's true. It would certainly be Henghis Hapthorn's view, but characters and their creators don't always share the same standards. I wouldn't mind a little magic in my life from time to time. Still, the important thing is that the reviewer enjoyed the book.

October 23, 2007

The things you learn while googling yourself. John Scalzi, one of the deservedly rising stars of the odd corner of the literary firmament that we call speculative fiction, recently declared himself, on his "Whatever" blog, a fan of my work. I'm honored.

I've now booked myself a flight to World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York. Derryl Murphy, Canadian SFWA rep, is kindly allowing me to share a room. And when the fun's over at Saratoga, I fly to England to begin the housesitting phase of my career. These are interesting times.

October 22, 2007

I had a fine time as Canvention Guest of Honour (Canadian spelling) at VCon 32. With his customary panache, Rob Sawyer emceed my launch of The Commons , published under his imprint (Robert J. Sawyer Books), at Fitzhenry & Whiteside. To mark the occasion I read the naughty bits from the chapter of the book excerpted on this site, which contains several different circumlocutions for "giant, vibrating phallus," to the apparent approval of the assembled crowd. My speech at the Prix Aurora Awards banquet, though lacking in phallic references, was also kindly received.

I was delighted to meet, and to sit on a panel with, the justly renowned fantasy author and convention GoH, Peter S. Beagle, whose work I devoured decades ago. With us was the excellent illustrator and cover artist, Martin Springett (the convention's artist GoH), who has produced a wonderful kids' alphabet book: Jousting with Jesters.

And a personal note. I have just had a long telephone conversation with a woman who was the baby I unknowingly fathered almost forty years ago and about whose life I have always wondered. She is bright, strong, funny, musical and doing all right in the world. How wonderful to have met her at last.

October 19, 2007

I'm off to Richmond this evening to do VCon, which includes Canvention, at which the Auroras are presented and at which I'm giving the guest of honor speech.

I still have plenty of books to give away -- copies of The Commons should arrive next week -- so if you thought it was too late to enter the 53 Champions contest, you've still got time. See the main page for the rules. BTW, traffic to this site has more than doubled since I started the contest, so I think it's doing some good. My thanks to everyone who has participated so far.

Two weeks from now I'll be at World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York, where Gordon Van Gelder has kindly offered me a seat at the F&SF table for the awards banquet. From there it's off to England to take up housesitting.

October 16, 2007

I had an e-mail late last night from the Speculative Literature Foundation to let me know that I've been awarded their annual Gulliver Travel grant. This will allow me to travel to research a historical novel I intend to start writing as soon as I've finished the third Hapthorn novel, Hespira. I am grateful to the Foundation for their help.

October 15, 2007

Been laid up lately with a flu virus that does a perfect imitation of a heavy cold, but I managed to get down to the post office and bring back a box full of The Spiral Labyrinth hardcovers, including some of the limited edition, and another box of Majestrum trade paperbacks. So the prizes for my 53 champions are now in hand.

I stil don't have a full complement of fifty-three, so if you've been thinking you might like to have a free signed copy of one of my books, the game is still the same: blog or post something about my work, then send me an e-mail with the URL of the posting and a North American mailing address. And I'll send you a signed book. For examples of how some folks have already won, see here.

October 9, 2007

In News From The Agony Column , Rick Kleffel says pretty nice things about "The Farouche Assemblage" chapbook. He says, "Hughes is a fascinating writer who seems to have found a bottomless vein from which he mines stories that combine science fiction settings, the feel of fantasy epics and the silly sort of shenanigans one might encounter on an average evening with Jeeves and Bertie Wooster."

John Joseph Adams has given The Spiral Labyrinth a write-up on SCIFI Wire.

October 8, 2007

A blogger named Chris McLaren is very pleased with his recently received copy of "The Farouche Assemblage" chapbook. And that's before he's even read it.

October 7, 2007

Andy Wheeler, former editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, has penned a few encouraging thoughts about The Spiral Labyrinth and my career in general on his always insightful and entertaining blog. He says, "Hughes rightly should be rich and famous for writing books as entertaining as these." From Andy's lips to ten thousand readers' ears.

For those who require visual cues, I've put a recent photo of myself on my bio page.

October 2, 2007

As an unexpected side effect of my grand give-away of signed books, I've had an e-mail from a US-based associate of China's Science Fiction World, a publication with some 300,000 circulation, asking me to send them a story. I've sent them "Mastermindless," the first Henghis Hapthorn tale that was my first submission to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Who knows? Maybe lightning will strike twice.

Sometime in the next few days, I have to sit down and write a Guest of Honor speech for Canvention, the annual gathering of the Canadian sf community which coincides with VCon and the Prix Aurora Awards ceremony. I've just checked the VCon page and found that they have me listed as an "author and raconteur." I guess that means I have to write a good one.

September 29, 2007

The great 53-book give-away contest is on! See the default opening page of this website for details.

September 27, 2007

I've received my author's copies of the Payseur & Schmidt chapbook of my Luff Imbry novelette "The Farouche Assemblage," with artwork by Jason Van Hollander. It's my first chapbook and I'm quite impressed. There were only 125 copies printed, at $15 each. I'm going to give away a dozen of them as part of my contest -- rules announced on Saturday, at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

September 26, 2007

Booklist , the review publication of the American Library Association, has given The Spiral Labyrinth a strong review, reproduced on the Amazon listing. Reviewer Carl Hays says, "Hughes's masterfully eloquent style and clever plot twisting provide Hapthorn with an investigative panache rivaling those of the leading sleuths of mainstream detective fiction."

September 24, 2007

Paul Di Filippo gives The Spiral Labyrinth a very warm (A-minus) review in SciFi Weekly. He says: "Hughes's ripe, flexible, rococo prose is as seductively easy on the mind as ever, capable of conveying events vividly and tickling the mental palate. Anyone who enjoys not only Vance's language and humor but also that of S.J. Perelman and P.G. Wodehouse will find Hughes a fit companion. Hapthorn's dire but lighthearted scrapes and dangers go down easy."

September 23, 2007

I've just come across a review of Majestrum in the blog of Fantasy Magazine. The reviewer says, "Hughes's Vance-derived prose is always enjoyable -- he is not quite Jack Vance, but he does well enough as a substitute. Hapthorn and his sidekicks are good company. A fine entertainment." I don't know who actually wrote the review, although an editor's note says, "Fantasy Magazine book reviewers include Stefan Dziemianowicz, Paula Guran, Rich Horton, Stuart Jaffee, and Victoria Strauss."

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed on CBC radio. Here's the audio file. It's about 6 megs and it starts with an inexplicable five seconds of silence, but then I blather on for about twelve minutes. They had me do it at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, when I'm usually unconscious, so I ended up saying a few things I probably shouldn't have.

September 22, 2007

In case you came directly to this news page without going through the site's default opening, here's what you missed: in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to receive dozens of copies of The Spiral Labyrinth hardcover, the Majestrum trade paperback, and a Payseur & Schmidt limited edition chapbook of my Luff Imbry novelette, "The Farouche Assemblage."

And I'm going to give away fifty of them, in a contest.

Three lucky people will also receive one of the limited editions of my three Night Shade books, The Gist Hunter and Other Stories, Majestrum or The Spiral Labyrinth.

How do you win? I will post the rules of the contest -- don't worry, it will be easy -- On the default opening page (that's www.archonate.com) at 6 p.m., Eastern Time, Saturday, September 29.

One thing I can tell you now: you'll need a North American mailing address. I can't afford to ship books overseas. Shipping fifty-three books on the same continent will be costly enough.

See you on the 29th.

September 21, 2007

My publisher tells me that the hardcover of Majestrum has sold out and that there are probably not more than a handful of the 125-copy signed limited edition available. But the trade paperbacks are in stores now, just as the hardcover edition of The Spiral Labyrinth is shipping from the printers.

September 19, 2007

Gordon Van Gelder has bought another Henghis Hapthorn novellete from me for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. "Fullbrim's Finding" was written to be the bonus story in the limited edition of The Spiral Labyrinth. But it is not the start of the next Hapthorn novel, Hespira , which I propose to start writing as soon as I've made the transition to housesitting in England.

I've just gone and counted, and "Fullbrim's Finding" is the seventeenth story I've sold to F&SF. I'm very grateful to GVG for giving me all this exposure over the past three years. In fact, if he hadn't bought my first submission, "Mastermindless," there might well have been no subsequent series of Henghis Hapthorn stories, leading to a three-novel deal with Night Shade Books.

September 14, 2007

PS Publishing, the UK small press renowned for its high-quality limited editions that is bringing out my stand-alone Archonate novel, Template , in the next few months, is having a sale on pre-orders. Order and pay by September 31st (apparently September has an extra day in Britain -- probably something to do with the strengthening pound), and PS will absorb the postage costs -- which, for a slipcased hardcover crossing the Atlantic can be not inconsequential.

September 13, 2007

Some more information on SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH:

The project is now definitely a go. There will be several editions, with Tor doing the North American trades, HarperCollins Voyager handling the UK, and Subterranean Press bringing out two deluxe, illustrated, limited editions of 500 copies each, one of them signed by all the contributors, including Jack.

Here's the list of contributors:

Glen Cook, Michael Shea, Terry Dowling, Robert Silverberg, Phyllis Eisenstein, Dan Simmons, Ray Feist, Jeff Vandermeer, Neil Gaiman, Paula Volsky, Elizabeth Hand, Howard Waldrop, Liz Williams, Tanith Lee, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Moorcock, John C. Wright, Mike Resnick.

George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois are asking for stories in the 10,000-word length, so they will all be substantial works, and the book itself will be hefty.

The contributors are authorized to use not only Vance's settings, but his characters, so there will surely be some Cugel stories.

And they will be stories in the spirit of Jack Vance's work, and inspired by it. As George R.R. Martin's e-mail says: "We're interested in celebrating the Dying Earth, not deconstructing it, so please, no postmodernism, no satire, no metafiction." Amen to that.

Each contributor will be asked to contribute a brief personal afterword about Jack Vance, the Dying Earth, and their influence on your own work, on fantasy in general, etc.

Deadline for getting the stories in to the editors is the middle of next July, so given Tor's production lead-time, my guess is that we'll be seeing at a late 2009 release.

I am so looking forward to being part of this. In the vernacular of my youth, I'm dead chuffed.

September 9, 2007

The folks at Payseur & Schmidt tell me that the pre-orders for my Luff Imbry novelette, "The Farouche Assemblage," will finally ship this week. This is a limited edition (125 copies), signed chapbook with fabulous production values and artwork by World Fantasy Award-winner Jason Van Hollander. To all of you who have been waiting for it to come through the production process, my gratitude for your patience. But I think you'll like what you see. I'm looking forward to seeing it myself.

September 6, 2007

My friend Patrick Dusoulier, who is translating Black Brillion into French, tells me that the publisher, Editions-L'Atalante, has moved up publication of the book to January, 2008.

September 2, 2007

My review of Graham Joyce's YA novel TWOC is up on the SF Site.

August 27, 2007

The news seems to be leaking out now that Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin are putting together a tribute anthology to SF grandmaster Jack Vance. Called Songs of the Dying Earth , it will consist of stories by a stellar array of sf writers, all set in Vance's Dying Earth milieu. A UK publisher has already bought into the concept and now the editors are looking to place it with a US house.

When Gardner emailed me a few months ago to ask if I would like to send him a story for the antho, my response was, "Try and stop me!" This will be one of the sf publishing events of the year. Any US publisher that has a chance to land this project should jump at it.

August 16, 2007

Violet Kane has posted a review of Majestrum on the Alternate Reality Web Zine , where I'm doing a Q&A until Saturday. She says, "Hughes is one of those new and innovative SFF writers who is simply not getting the attention he deserves, and it quite frankly surprises me. His deftness in combining genres into a truly integrated and fun story should be attracting audiences of science fiction, fantasy, humor and mystery. Well, certainly he is attracting these audiences, but I would expect he should be doing so in greater numbers." Let's hope her expectations are soon rewarded.

August 13, 2007

All this week, I'll be doing a Q&A on a forum that's part of the Alternate Reality Web Zine. Feel free to stop by and ask a question. To post on ARWZ requires you to register, but it's quick and painless.

August 9, 2007

The cover art for The Spiral Labyrinth, by WFA-winning artist Tom Kidd, is now up on the page that has the novel's first chapter. I'm told that the illos for this book, Majestrum, and the as-yet-unstarted third volume in the series are all part of one rather wide painting. It will be interesting to see the final, complete image.

I've sold a new Luff Imbry story, "The Eye of Vann," to the British sf magazine, Postscripts. It won't appear until sometime next year at the earliest.

August 8, 2007

Another day, another good review. Editor and critic Nick Gevers has sent me an advance copy of his review of The Spiral Labyrinth that will run in the September Locus magazine. He says: "[the] climactic battle of wizards and monsters [is] possibly the best, and funniest, set-piece Hughes has written so far. Deliriously bizarre exoticism, in colourful, elegant language: the textures of *The Spiral Labyrinth* are something to savor."

It appears that people are finding The Spiral Labyrinth a better book than Majestrum , which is good to hear. I was concerned about the publishing industry rule-of-thumb that holds that the second of a three-book series tends to be a trough between two peaks. Of course, now I have to make the third book, Hespira , due out a year from now, a tour de force. I'd better start thinking up a serious villain and the outlines of a plot. Fortunately, if you can come up with the former, the latter usually comes right behind.

August 6, 2007

Here's what Publishers Weekly has to say about The Spiral Labyrinth :

"The superior melding of fantasy, humor and detection seen in Majestrum (2006) is displayed to even better advantage in Hughes's second chronicle of Henghis Hapthorn, a "discriminator" (or consulting detective) on an alternate Earth. Aided by his "intuitive inner self," Osk Rievor, and his faithful grinnet, an AI housed in an ape-cat body, Hapthorn accepts a request from wealthy socialite Effrayne Choweri to find her legendarily devoted and romantic husband, Chup, who vanished after looking into the purchase of a small spaceship. When the sleuth finds that several others who had considered buying the vessel also disappeared, he poses as a prospective buyer, only to be captured by a super-intelligent fungus seeking to expand its experience of reality by leeching the thoughts and knowledge of others. Hapthorn's wry first-person narration recalls Bertie Wooster, and Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable. News that a third adventure is in the works will surely please fans of many genres."

July 23, 2007

A Romanian newspaper editor who will be heading up a bi-weekly, and as yet nameless, science fiction magazine that his employer is about to launch has acquired "Mastermindless," the first story I ever sold to F&SF. That makes the fifth foreign language I've been translated into so far. It's an odd experience to see your own words rendered unreadable.

July 20, 2007

PS Publishing, the highly regarded British small press that is bring out my stand-alone Archonate novel Template in February, has launched a new weblog to showcase news of current and upcoming releases, and items of interest concerning PS authors. Worth a visit.

And now I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think Template is my best book so far. I'm going to be very interested to see what kind of review reception it gets.

July 17, 2007

I've wound up the auction and will e-mail the high bidders. The results were quite satisfactory, so watch for another one soon. My thanks to all who participated, including the many friends who spread the word.

Night Shade Books is holding a half-price sale (on a four-book minimum purchase) on all in-stock or forthcoming titles, from now until midnight on July 29. If you've been thinking of getting one of my limited editions, now would be a good time (although I'm told the limited of The Gist Hunter and Other Stories is sold out and that the Majestrum limited is almost gone).

July 13, 2007

I'm going to keep my little auction going until Monday, but if there are no more bids by then, I'll wrap it up and start a new one.

July 12, 2007

I don't get Locus Magazine any more, so I didn't see the full results of the annual readers' poll that determines who gets the Locus Awards. But my official First Fan, Mike Berro, reports that " Majestrum came in 20th for the best fantasy novel of 2006. Ten people rated it #1." My sincere thanks to those ten stout-hearted fans. And may we soon have ten thousand more.

July 9, 2007

I'll put up the first chapter of The Spiral Labyrinth in the next few days -- i.e., as soon as I can get my webmaster/eldest son to make me a page for it.

July 5, 2007

The Payseur & Schmidt chapbook of my Luff Imbry novelette, "The Farouche Assemblage," is all printed and bound -- and that's a problem, because all 125 copies of the little book are on one side of the US-Canada border, and I'm on the other. Sending them to me so that I can sign the cover pages (usually the pages are signed before the books are bound), would require me to pay some $300 in sales taxes, which may or may not be refunded. So P&S are whiffling up some snazzy bookplates that I can sign. That means further delay for a book that was expected out months ago. If it's any consolation, some of that time has been spent in making it an even more beautiful work of the bookwright's art.

Rick Kleffel is the first to weigh in with a word about The Spiral Labyrinth , the second Henghis Hapthorn novel due out in a couple of months. On his Agony Column blog he says, "...if you like say, Philip K. Dick, or wish that P. G. Wodehouse were still alive and writing surreal science fiction, then you need to hitch a ride with the gorgeous prose in The Spiral Labyrinth."

Rick's also got a pic of the Tom Kidd cover art, lifted from the ARC, which I haven't seen from Night Shade yet. When I get it, I'll put it up on the front page, and link to the first chapter of the book.

July 4, 2007

For the early risers in British Columbia: I will be interviewed on CBC radio's North by Northwest program, this Sunday, between 7 and 7:30 a.m.

If you haven't checked the main page before checking this news section, I'm offering to auction off various signed copies of my works, to raise money to get myself over to Britain so I can start housesitting.

June 21, 2007

Happy Solstice to all those who mark such events

Black Brillion is now being translated into French by the esteemed Patrick Dusoulier, who has also translated several of Jack Vance's works for French publishers. Over on the excellent Jack Vance bbs, he recently discussed a problem he had with the name of the key character, Guth Bandar:

"In The Black Brillion... 'Bandar' will never do. The verb 'bander' means to have a hard-on, and 'bandar' evokes "bandard" (the final 'd' is not pronounced) a guy having more or less a permanent erection."

We have settled on "Guth Bendor" as a substitute. Although, considering what happens to Guth in the story "A Little Learning," to be found elsewhere on this site, the French connotation is eerily coincidental.

June 20, 2007

Rob Sawyer tells me that the Barnes & Noble pre-order for the trade paperback edition of The Commons , my Guth Bandar novel, is the largest B&N has yet made for a title from the Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint. I'm taking that as a hopeful sign.

I've sold a non-Archonate story to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. "Petri Parousia" is a little tongue-in-cheek meditation on where genetic engineering may someday take us. F&SF , by the way, just won the Locus readers poll award for best magazine.

If you've been looking at the hardcover of Majestrum and thinking, "I can't afford that," the trade paperback will be out in less than two months. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

June 3, 2007

I've accepted an invitation to be the Guest of Honour at Canvention 27, the annual, and moveable, gathering of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy's great and good. The core of the event is a banquet at which the Prix Aurora Awards are tendered. As always, Canvention will be embedded into one of Canadian sf's regional gatherings, in this case V-Con 32 in Richmond, B, October 19 through 21.

I'm expected to give a speech, which the Canvention page is already describing as "enchanting." I shall endeavour to live up to the advance billing.

By the way, any of my works published in 2006, such as Majestrum , are eligible to be nominated for the Auroras The full list includes "Shadow Man," F&SF , January 2006; "A Herd of Opportunity," F&SF , May 2006; "The Farouche Assemblage," Postscripts #6 ; "The Meaning of Luff," FSF , July 2006; "Nature Tale," Postscripts #8 ; and "Bye the Rules," F&SF , December, 2006. Any Canadian can nominate a work (nominations close June 15), and any Canadian can vote by mail once the works on the ballot have been announced. Follow the link above to the Aurora site for more info.

May 30, 2007

My hardboiled story, "One More Kill," is now available as a podcast on the Well Told Tales website.

May 25, 2007

Shades of my hardboiled crime-writing days: I've licensed my first podcast, a reading of my award-winning story, "One More Kill" (it won the Canadian equivalent of an Edgar), to a website run by Well Told Tales, which features free podcasts of sf and crime stories. I don't know when it will run, but the site is worth a visit anytime to sample the wares. I may try to interest them in some of my sf, but most of my stuff goes past their 5,000-word limit.

May 23, 2007

Robert J. Sawyer, who is publishing my Guth Bandar novel, The Commons, later this year, has blogged some interesting comments on the problem of insularity in latter-day sf. He also provides a case study in how to go about getting Publishers Weekly 's attention. Check it out here.

May 22, 2007

I've been busy doing free-lance work and writing a Hapthorn short story, "Fullbrim's Finding," to be the bonus item for the limited edition of The Spiral Labyrinth, due out in September. I'll also try to sell the story to F&SF for later publication.

Also, I've tidied up my bibliography to reflect changes in publication dates of my upcoming releases.

May 1, 2007

My review of Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Sidon is up on the SF Site.

April 30, 2007

I've had a nice little write-up in the May edition of Quill & Quire , the Canadian publishing industry's trade magazine. The piece was part of a round-up of Canadian sf writers like Cory Doctorow, Karl Schroeder and Peter Watts who are names to conjure with in the US publishing community, but virtually unheard-of north of the border, where only the deeply "literary" writers can expect to be reviewed.

Danny Adams says nice things about my Henghis Hapthorn story, "Sweet Trap," in his Tangent Online review of the June F&SF.

That story was the last of mine in F&SF 's inventory, or anybody else's for that matter. Since turning in The Spiral Labyrinth , I've been thinking I ought to write some more shorts, but when I sit down at the keyboard I find I'm somewhat lacking in verve. The fact is, I've written eight books (plus one rewritten for someone else) in less than five years, along with several short stories, and I'm finding that I'm rather tired. So I believe, if I may be forgiven the mixing of metaphors, that I'll lie fallow for a while, until the reservoir refills.

April 20, 2007

I've just been correcting the page proofs of "The Farouche Assmblage," a Luff Imbry story that is being brought out as a limited edition (125 copies) chapbook by the Seattle small press, Payseur & Schmidt. Artwork is by World Fantasy Award-winning artist Jason Van Hollander, who did the cover and interior art for The Gist Hunter and Other Stories. The chapbook is about three months late, but I gather there has been some experimentation with production methods that has led to a very attractive final product.

I've turned in a polished draft of The Spiral Labyrinth , the second Henghis Hapthorn novel. Meanwhile, the trade paperback of Majestrum is in the production pipe and will be in stores by mid-August.

April 4, 2007

Siobhan Carroll gives Majestrum a generally good review in Strange Horizons. She says, "Hughes's characterization of the detective duo/trio is charming, and his dialogue and ironic turns of phrase skillful; exactly what you want in a series of this kind."

April 2, 2007

I've had word from Robert J. Sawyer that The Commons , the novel that brings together all the Guth Bandar episodes, will be released, simultaneously in hardcover and trade paperback editions, in October.

Sam Tomaino gives a good review to my latest Henghis Hapthorn story, "Sweet Trap," in the upcoming June edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Again, I urge all lovers of short sf to pony up for a subscription to F&SF, Asimov's, or Analog. For decades, these mags have been the mainstay of sf, nurturing scores of authors who went on to become giants of the field. The gradual corporate consolidation of North America's magazine distribution sector has steadily forced these odd-sized magazines off the newstand shelves, so they must rely more and more on subscriptions while they go on providing the sf community with the newest and the best. They are worthy of your support.

March 20, 2007

I'm scheduled to teach a half-day workshop on story mechanics and the "show, don't tell" of scene writing in Penticton, BC, on April 14. Brian Hades, the publisher at Edge, Canada's only "sf-only" publishing house, is the other half of the bill. There's more info here.

March 14, 2007

The first 1,000 words of Wolverine:Lifeblood are up on the Amazon listing.

March 13, 2007

I am delighted to know that Patrick DuSoulier, the premier translator into French of Jack Vance's works, will translate Black Brillion for Editions-L'Atalante. I know he will do a superb job.

I am just finishing the draft of The Spiral Labyrinth , the second Henghis Hapthorn tale, and will have it in to Night Shade this week so that it can be out in September.

Wolverine:Lifeblood is on the bookstands now. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's read it.

February 24, 2007

Amazing but true, Wolverine:Lifeblood was number two on the Amazon "Movers & Shakers" list a few days ago. The list tracks books that show a large jump in relative sales rankings. My X-Man title went from 182,028th to 284th in overall sales ranking, a 63,994 per cent increase. Of course, given Amazon's odd algorithmic methodology of establishing relative rankings, it probably just means that somebody ordered twenty copies all at once. Still, it was a pleasant shock.

For Hapthorn fans, I'm now 75,000 words into the draft of The Spiral Labyrinth , with another five to ten thousand to go. I seem to be wrestling with some low-grade virus, so the work is not coming as quickly as I would like, but I expect to have it in Night Shade's hands by the March 15 deadline. Thus it should be out in hardcover in September.

February 13, 2007

I'm interviewed by Violet Kane on the Alternate Reality Web Zine.

February 11, 2007

Publishing is a mutable business. Originally, my novel Template was scheduled to be published by the UK house, PS Publishing, in June/July 2007. But schedules change, and this past week I learned that the release date had been set back to October/November. That was too close to the release of The Commons and The Spiral Labyrinth , which both look to be coming out in the fall. So Template 's release has now been pushed back to February, 2008.

I'm now 57,000 words into The Spiral Labyrinth , the second Henghis Hapthorn novel, and the ending is shaping up to be interesting. By the way, because I contracted with Night Shade for three Hapthorn books, it is assumed by some that this is a trilogy -- i.e., three volumes telling one story. In fact, the books are simply three novels about the same central character, as he adapts to a changing situation. If the three sell well, there will probably be more to come, each one a complete story in itself, within the evolving framework.

And now for something completely different: Wolverine:Lifeblood , a media tie-in novel from Pocket Books, will be out this month. I wrote it under the pesudonym Hugh Matthews, but there's an "about the author" note in the back pages that identifies me. It will be interesting to see if I get any cross-over readers.

February 2, 2007

A few paras down it used to say that my Guth Bandar novel, The Commons , would be out in June. But I heard from Rob Sawyer today that it's now looking more like September. So I've edited my previous post (authors enjoying the same past-altering privileges as Orwell's Winston Smith).

Rob let me in on one of the realities of Canadian publishing by telling me that the decision on the size of the hardcover print-run will be determined by the size of the pre-order from the market-dominating Chapters bookstore chain. And the size of the pre-order will be determined by how my past titles do at Chapters. So, if you're Canadian and have been thinking of ordering Majestrum , now would be a really good time to visit its Chapters listing.

No pressure, of course. But it is 34 per cent off.

February 1, 2007

Now it can be told. A small but highly regarded French publisher, Editions-L'Atalante, has bought the French language rights to Black Brillion. If the book does well in la belle langue, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice may follow. L'Atalante is a prodigious publisher of sf in translation. Among the authors on its list are Terry Pratchett, Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock.

Majestrum has made the Locus recommended reading list. So did my novelette "Passion Ploy" in the anthology Forbidden Planets , edited by Pete Crowther.

January 31, 2007

Reviewer Danny Adams, whom I haven't encountered before, gives my F&SF novella, "The Helper and His Hero," a glowing review in Tangent Online. He says, "Hughes's writing strikes me as what we might have expected if Joseph Campbell had been a modern science fiction writer." That's a comparison I take to heart, since Campbell pretty much introduced me to the idea of the collective unconscious.

The review also contains a wonderful, no doubt spellchecker-induced typo: it renders "the Nonaut Guth Bandar" into "the Nonfat Guth Bandar." It will probably get corrected -- John Joseph Adams has sent them an e-mail -- but it was there when I checked the site.

Each of the Guth Bandar stories that have appeared in F&SF is an episode of a complete novel, The Commons , that will be published by Robert J. Sawyer Books in September. You can read an excerpt from the book here.

January 20, 2007

Booklist reviewer Carl Hays likes Majestrum. He says, "Hughes artfully blends wit, colorful characterizations, and intriguing plot twists in a compelling yarn that detective-novel readers may like, too." The complete review is available on the Amazon.com listing.

January 17, 2007

Paul Di Filippo gives Majestrum an "A-" review on SciFi.com. He says, "...if droll dialogue, curious customs, exotic scenery, clever plotting and a wry cosmopolitanism are your bag, then Matthew Hughes is your man."

January 4, 2007

"The Helper and His Hero," the two-part Guth Bandar serial running in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction this month and next, gets an "excellent" from Sam Tomaino in the current SF Revu.

I'm thirty thousand words into The Spiral Labyrinth , the next Henghis Hapthorn novel, due out in September.

January 1, 2007

My review of The Jack Vance Treasury , edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan, is the lead item on the SF Site 's January edition.

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