And on the Webomator blog, an endorsement of the Luff Imbry stories now available (at 59p or $0.80 apiece) from the Angry Robot eBook store: "They're fine stories, and wonderfully well told, and you just ought to go and read them if you haven’t."

January 14, 2012

Synchronicity, you gotta love it. Just days after The Other is shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award, seven short stories about protagonist Luff Imbry -- the corpulent master thief, forger and con man of the Archonate era -- have become available at the Angry Robot eBook store.

The stories were previously published in Postscripts, F&SF and the tribute anthology Forbidden Planets. They're available in various e-formats for a mere 59p each (less than $1). If you take all seven you can add three more from other authors and have your own mini anthology for three-and-a-half pounds, which is less than five bucks.

January 12, 2012

My agent, John Berlyne, of the Zeno Agency, has been named one of the judges for this year's World Fantasy Awards.

Now that The Other is drawing some attention because of the PKD Award nomination, I thought I'd repost a link to an interview (pdf) about Luff Imbry and the genesis of the book and character that Underland Press ran a couple of months ago.

January 10, 2012

The Other is one of seven nominees for the 2011 Philip K. Dick Award. For a guy like me, who used to read Dick back in the sixties, this is one cool day.

January 9, 2012

Stephen Theaker, of the British Fantasy Society, is now posting his reviews of the Hapthorn novels, as available on Kindle. Here's his take on The Spiral Labyrinth. He says, ". . . having read a page I refused to stop until I’d read the whole book."

January 2, 2012

More advice to writers on my blog. This entry is about creating characters.

December 31, 2011

This morning brought a flood of good reviews. First, Andrew Wheeler, former editor of The Science Fiction Book Club, blogged a review of The Other, calling it "a sparkling, wonderfully amusing novel, full of great dialogue, odd situations, and quirky characters; it's a lovely, masterful souffle of a book, and I can think of no reason why any reader wouldn't love it."

Then something I've been awaiting with great anticipation: Stephen Theaker, doyen of the British Fantasy Society, interviewed me a while back for his Theaker's Quarterly Fiction and Paperbacks. Now the magazine is out (meaning it's available free in pdf, Kindle, Epub, and Feedbooks formats, or as a $3.87 paperback from Lulu). Just follow the link to Stephen's blog and scroll down.

In the same issue, Stephen also reviews the three Henghis Hapthorn novels -- Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira -- and says, "Reading all three together like this was one of the most pleasurable reading experiences of my life."

If you've been thinking about reading the Hapthorns, a reminder that they're now available as ebooks wherever ebooks are sold.

December 29, 2011

Back in the spring, I started a blog to give advice to writers. Lengthy interruptions of internet connectivity caused the effort to dwindle. But now that I seem to be permanently back in touch with the world, I've decided to revive it, starting with some thoughts on outlining.

December 26, 2011

Eric Searlman runs a webpage named Superhero Novels. In looking back on the best of 2011, he names The Damned Busters as one of the year's best: ". . .a devilish superhero yarn about God and Satan and insurance company hubris. The end of the world was never so funny."

A little internet bird tells me that the Kindle edition of The Damned Busters has been price-slashed to $2.99. Checking Amazon.com, though, I find two listings. This one says the price is $3.90; This one says "Pricing information is not available."

December 22, 2011

Here's a blogger's review of The Damned Busters: "The book is an insane adventure that messes with your mind and its perceived notions of the world around us. It feels like watching the Matrix when you learn not everything is as it seems. The writing is smart, never once assuming that the reader is an idiot, and the dialogue is brilliant and witty . . . should not be missed by fans of superheroes, the matrix and modern fantasy enthusiasts."

December 16, 2011

Years ago, my official first fan, Mike Berro of Los Angeles, set up a discussion board as a meeting place for people who have read me and want to talk about the experience. It never attracted a crowd, but it's still there. And, lately, Mike has been posting bits of news and links to reviews in an attempt to revive it. So, if you've got a comment or question, that's the place to raise it. I'll start dropping by again to answer any posts.

The Yellow Cabochon, a Luff Imbry novella, is now available for pre-order from PS Publishing. You can read the first 5,000 words here.

December 15, 2011

The Yellow Cabochon, the second of three Luff Imbry novellas from PS Publishing, is now available for pre-order. Here is where to find it on the PS site. I'll put up a sampler of the first few thousand words in the next day or so.

December 11, 2011

People keep telling me I need a wider web presence, so I've set up a Facebook author's page. I'm going to be posting there what I post here, but readers and fans are encouraged to come on by and do whatever they feel like.

December 2, 2011

I've proofed the typescript of the next Luff Imbry novella from PS Publishing, The Yellow Cabochon, and sent it back to my esteemed editor, Nick Gevers. Glad to see him feeling better. It shouldn't be too long before it appears now, unless Christmas gets in the way.

The Other has made the latest of Locus Magazine's "new and notable books" list.

I'm about to finish the last draft of One More Kill, my bid to relaunch myself as a non-sf crime writer. I'll hand it to my agent, John Berlyne, and by February we'll probably know whether it clicks with any of the big publishers.

Once I get the crime novel off my mind, I'm going to deliver all of my Luff Imbry short stories to Angry Robot's e-store, where they will sell for 59p (about one dollar) each. Then I'll follow with some of my other shorts over the next few weeks.

November 26, 2011

Costume Not Included, the second in the To Hell and Back series from Angry Robot Books, will be out in paperback on March 23 in the US and Canada, and April 5 in the UK. The ebook will be available from the same date as the North American release. Here's the publisher's page. Again, the artwork is by British cartoonist Tom Gauld -- may his tribe increase, because I'm sure his cover for The Damned Busters caused many a bookstore browser to give the book a once-over.

November 18, 2011

Since the release of The Other, I've been getting quite a few emails from people who've enjoyed the book and want more Luff Imbry. Sometime in the next few months, I'm going to assemble all the Imbry stories and put them into an ebook.

If you're wondering whether this author likes to receive fan mail, the answer is yes.

November 3, 2011

At SF Revu, Sam Tomaino reviews Quartet and Triptych, the Luff Imbry novella reprinted in the current edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction:

"Everything about this story is absolutely perfect. As I write this review, this is the first story in this issue that I've read, so I don't know anything about the rest of the issue. That makes no difference. This story is worth the price of the issue alone. . . It is a perfect introduction to the genius of Matthew Hughes' fiction."

When you start out in the fiction-writing game, the process has two steps: (a) write a story; (b) try to sell the story. Once you get a couple of rungs up the ladder, and become known for a certain kind of story, a new process can open its doors: (a) an editor asks for a story; (b) you write the story, and if it's what the editor wants, it's already pre-sold.

In the past few years, that second process has been starting to happen for me. I've been asked to write stories for themed anthologies, most notably (and enjoyably, for me) George R.R. Martin's and Gardner Dozois's Jack Vance tribute antho, Songs of the Dying Earth.

And now it's happening again. I've just had an email from Gardner to say that he and George are editing another big, invitation-only antho with the working title Rogues, which will be a cross-genre compendium of "scoundrels, con men, swashbucklers, pirates, thieves, scalawags, scoundrels, cheats, rascals, swindlers, seducers, deceivers, flim-flam men, imposters, frauds, fakes, liars, cads, tricksters, and their ilk."

The book won't be out for a couple of years, but I can already feel Luff Imbry stirring in the basement of my mind.

November 2, 2011

My first review from Kirkus Reviews. Actually, its the SF Signal's reviewer, John DeNardo, contributing to a Kirkus blog on "10 Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror Books to Look For in November." He singles out The Other and says, "Matthew Hughes is one of those writers whose witty, wry writing style is as enjoyable as the story he's writing about. His Archonate universe is a wonderfully compelling far future that mixes fantasy and science fiction."

October 31, 2011

For the twenty-first century crowd, the three Henghis Hapthorn novels, Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira are now available in e-versions. They're at the Kindle stores of Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and in Nook format on the Barnes and Noble site in the US.

October 29, 2011

The first review of The Other is already up on Amazon.com, which is a surprise because I thought Amazon wouldn't allow a review to be posted until after a book's publication date, which is not for another three days.

The review (five stars) is from self-described devoted fan, David Studhalter, who has my thanks. The occasion also allows me an opportunity to remind those of you who like my work that posting a positive review on Amazon helps sales, because people who haven't read me are influenced by all those stars.

October 24, 2011

A few months ago, I did an interview with the marketing people at Underland Press to help promote the release of The Other.

October 23, 2011

Here's the first review of The Other, the first Luff Imbry novel. Reviewer George Kelley, a self-admitted fan of my work, says: "As with most of Matthew Hughes' work, I read The Other in one sitting. Hughes leaves the door open for sequels. I, for one, would welcome them!"

In February, Paizo will release Song of the Serpent, a picaresque, rogue's-adventure novel featuring a Cugelesque thief who calls himself Krunzle the Quick (others have coined different soubriquets for him). The book, written under my tie-in penname, Hugh Matthews, is now available for preorder from Paizo's own store as well as from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.ca. Normally, I'd put up the first chapter as a sample, but Paizo has asked me to write a preface in the form of an 8000-word short story about Krunzle, set in the Pathfinder role-playing game world just before the action of the book. I believe they will publish it a thousand words or so at a time on their web site. I'm going to start the story this week and the installments should start apearing in December.

October 18, 2011

I'm crossing my fingers that, after two months, I've finally got an internet connection I can rely on.

You may remember that over the summer I was writing a thriller that's intended to relaunch me as a crime writer. In the next week or so, I will have it polished to a high gloss (it's actually gone through four drafts, which is two more than I usually do) and my agent, John Berlyne, will take it out to see how it does next month.

The November/December issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction contains my Luff Imbry novella, Quartet and Triptych, previously published as a chapbook by PS Publishing. There's already a review on Tangent Online, where reviewer Richard D. Jones says: "Scattering the decaying bones of lost technology throughout the story, Hughes does a passable impression of [Jack] Vance. Although that impression is not all Hughes brings to the table. He gives us a nice, tight plot with engaging characters and fills it out with a breathtaking background. All in all, this is a nice piece."

All three Henghis Hapthorn novels -- Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira -- will soon be available as ebooks. A little farther down the road, I'm also planning to release the two Filidor books, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice in eversions.

October 5, 2011

The Other, the first novel about my corpulent master thief and forger of Old Earth's penultimate age, will soon be released by Underland Press. The first chapter is here.

October 4, 2011

I've had no internet connection since August 17, meaning I have to drive into Vieste to an internet cafe to update this page. And with the town jammed with (mostly German) tourists, I've been waiting for things to quiet down. Now that they have, here's all the latest news:

You may remember that I committed to write three novellas -- one per year -- for PS Publishing, featuring Luff Imbry, my corpulent master art thief and forger of Old Earth in its penultimate age. The first, Quartet & Triptych, appeared last year in the usual PS limited editions. Now it will find a wider audience in the November/December issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

The second in the series, The Yellow Cabochon, will be published in limited editions in November.

Continuing with the Luff Imbry theme, I've now turned in the ms of the third novella, Of Whimsies and Noubles, to PS. It will be out next year.

And with yet more Luff Imbry news, the first Imbry novel, The Other, will be released by Underland Press next month. You can preorder it from Amazon.

Finally, a non-Imbry item: I flew up to Britain last weekend to attend the annual Fantasycon of the British Fantasy Society in Brighton. I met some interesting people, including Graham Joyce, one of my favorite authors (if you haven't read him, I recommend you do). I was also delighted to meet Brian Aldiss, whom I first read more than forty years ago, and Chris Priest, whose The Inverted World is a tour de force of the thinking person's science fiction. I bought a copy of his classic The Affirmation, and am looking forward to reading it.

A reminder to those of you out there who are writing as well as reading genre fiction: I do paid critiques and evaluations of manuscripts. I'll even take on book-doctoring assignments, but that's hard work and I'm not cheap.

I've also lately taken on the tedious but oddly rewarding work of copyediting. If you're planning on e-publishing something -- as so many are these days -- paying for a professional copyedit is not a bad idea. For a lot of readers, a slew of typos and an author's inability to differentiate between who and whom, lay or lie, lose and loose, can blight the reading experience. Those readers don't come back for more and don't recommend you to their friends. All work is done on a flat-fee basis, agreed upon in advance. Send me an email for a quote.

August 20, 2011

Here's a nice review of The Damned Busters in the New York Journal of Books. Reviewer Carma Spence says, "The Damned Busters takes you on an imaginative, funny ride through corporate and supernatural politics, with occasional stops in the outer ring of Hell, as Chesney learns the intricacies of super hero crime fighting, the unpredictable twists and turns of feminine psychology, and the best ways to work with and motivate a demon sidekick. (Turns out rum and cigars are good motivators.)"

August 17, 2011

Another scheduling change: the second Luff Imbry novella, The Yellow Cabochon, from PS Publishing, will not be out until November. The copy editor became ill and the publisher had to find someone else to take on the project.

August 16, 2011

Another good review of The Damned Busters. David Marshall says, "Taken as a whole, I found The Damned Busters one of the best fantasy books of the year so far. Matthew Hughes has fun in chasing down all the wrinkles in the plot and then ironing them into creases we can all appreciate for their neatness."

August 11, 2011

Not much opportunity to update this page lately. The internet here in the hills inland from Vieste, Italy, has either been nonexistent or slow as cooled lava. But here are a couple of news items:

Advanced reading copies of my Luff Imbry novel, The Other, are going out from Underland Press. The book itself will be out in November. If you're an established reviewer/blogger and want to review the book, send me an email and I'll pass it on to the publisher.

Here's the cover of my slightly Cugelesque, and definitely picaresque, rogue's tale, Song of the Serpent, written under my tie-in pseudonym, Hugh Matthews.

And here's the blurb: "To an experienced thief like Krunzle the Quick, the merchant nation of Druma is full of treasures just waiting to be liberated. Yet when the fast-talking scoundrel gets caught stealing from one of the most powerful prophets of Kalistrade, the only option is to undertake a dangerous mission to recover the merchantlord's runaway daughter�and the magical artifact she took with her. Armed with an arsenal of decidedly unhelpful magical items and chaperoned by an intelligent snake necklace happy to choke him into submission, Krunzle must venture far from the cities of the merchant utopia and into a series of adventures that will make him a rich man�or a corpse."

The book is available for pre-order from Paizo Publishing. It will be out in February.

July 22, 2011

Another glowing review of The Damned Busters, this one on the Founding Fields blog. Reviewer "Commissar Ploss" says, "And, if you're picky about originality, I'll say that The Damned Busters is a novel that really is unlike anything I've read before. Indeed, I'm now tempted to pick up the Henghis Hapthorn stories, purely because they're written by Matthew Hughes." What a splendid idea! I recommend you all do the same.

July 19, 2011

More internet outages (or grievous slowages) keep me from updating this page, but while I have at least a window of reasonable access and speed, here is another good review of The Damned Busters that winds up with: "Overall, I thought this book was very interesting and highly entertaining. It was written with a wit that kept me amused and addicted the entire time I was reading it. The 400 pages blew by fast, and when it was over, I immediately checked the Internet to see when the next book would be released. It�s gonna be a long time before April 2012. I highly recommend The Damned Busters."

And the past week or two brought a couple of reviews of "Not a Problem," my story in Gordon Van Gelder's antho, Welcome to the Greenhouse. On the Blatherskite blog , reviewer Geoff Hart says, "Apart from serving as a neat satire of the super-engineer character (often Heinleinian) who can solve any problem through diligent application of science, 'Not a Problem' reminds us that sometimes the solution is worse than the problem, and that it's wiser to avoid the problem in the first place. All told in a delightfully droll manner, cleverly constructed to deliver a concealed and perfectly timed punchline that arrives with maximum effect."

When I saw that the second review was in PeaceNews, I thought my less-than-serious take on the issue of global warming might not be so well received. But reviewer Virginia Moffatt got the joke. She says, "'Not a Problem' by Matthew Hughes is a blackly comic account of a multi-billionaire trying to screw a dying world, which has a very satisfying pay-off if you are not keen on nasty multibillionaires." And who amongst us is?

June 30, 2011

Here's a nice review of The Damned Busters on the Random Noise blog. Blogger David says, ". . . the sequence of events covered by . . . the first 90- or so pages, is nothing short of brilliant. The author makes several religious observations that I have made myself, although his conclusions and resulting story directions are nothing I'd contemplated. I found myself nodding along and laughing as he writes yet another thing that I'd argued myself."

June 28, 2011

I haven't been able to update this page lately, largely because we went through a period of not-so-much internet, which is one of the perils of living in rural southern Italy. But not much has been happening. other than a few new reviews of The Damned Busters, most of which were kind. The Drying Ink blog has followed up with an interview with me, which some might find interesting.

In other news, I've bought a membership for Fantasycon in Brighton at the end of September. I look forward to meeting some of the new fans that Chesney Arnstruther's adventures are bringing me.

I've written about 13,000 words of a new Luff Imbry novella, as yet untitled, which will be out from PS Publishing next year. I mean to finish it in the next couple of weeks, then perhaps write a couple of short stories for magazines. In the fall, I'll start the third To Hell and Back book.

I finished a third draft of the on-spec thriller, One More Kill, with the invaluable assistance of notes from my agent, John Berlyne, who helped me bring the central character into better focus. The ms is now being submitted here and there. Fingers are crossed.

And I received a few pages of notes from James Sutter, my editor at Paizo, for whom I've written a rogues' adventure tale set in Golarion, the Pathfinder role-playing-game world. The notes helped me avoid any clashes between what I'd written and the complex reality that Golarion has developed into over years and years of gaming-scenario evolution. The book has now acquired a title -- Song of the Serpent -- and should be out later this year. When I get a firm date, I'll post it here, along with the first chapter.

June 7, 2011

My SF Canada colleague, Lorina Stephens, a publisher in her own right, has penned a glowing review of The Damned Busters on the Examiner.com site. She says, "Hughes's delivery is dry, unexpected, often with a remarkable turn of phrase. At first I thought I�d be reading a more accessible variation on Rushdie's theme in The Satanic Verses. And while there are similarities by way of the timeless opposition of the divine and profane, Hughes's story is utterly unpretentious, and consistently, deliciously, irreverent."

June 1, 2011

Former Science Fiction Book Club editor Andy Wheeler -- who, bless him, picked three of my titles to be club selections years ago -- has reviewed The Damned Busters on his blog. Though he would have preferred another Archonate episode, he calls it, "a book that, I sincerely hope, fans of superheroes, and of fantasy novels set in the modern world will find and enjoy and recommend to all of their friends. If any of that describes you, please do give Damned Busters a look." I'll return the favor: if you want informed and well considered advice on what to read next, Andy's blog is a place to visit.

A novelist and blogger named Keith Harvey has written the most insightful review yet on The Damned Busters, in which he deconstructs the story and identifies some of the deep influences -- like Fearless Fosdick and John Milton (their first-ever collaboration, I'll bet) -- that colored my thinking when I was writing it. Summing up, he says, "In conclusion, The Damned Busters is a very clever book (and fast read), exactly the type of work that Angry Robot Books is noted for: it is a smooth melange of genres--comic, noir, humor, fantasy, and metaphysical; ultimately entertaining and damned smart."

I've sold Quartet and Triptych, the first of three Luff Imbry novellas, to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. No idea when it will see print, however. This is my twentieth sale to the magazine I used to read -- in copies bought second-hand from used bookstores -- as a dirt-poor teenager who wanted to be a writer, way back in the sixties. I'm proud as hell to be part of something that's older, by a few months at least, than I am. If you're not subscribing to F&SF, you're missing out on the institution that Stephen King describes as "still the gold standard for short fiction in America."

May 29, 2011

Another review from an SF Canada colleague. Cat MacLeod writes, "Along with being a really fine writer, Matt Hughes has a wicked and ready sense of humour, and can crack you up even as you ponder the meaning of life and our place in the universe. But he's given those some thought, too, and it shows."

May 28, 2011

A thoughtful review of The Damned Busters from the Kaleighbug Books blog. It says, "If you feel like a light, enjoyable read, grab The Damned Busters for its fun, its comedy, its adventure and its action. If you want something deeper, ponder the points it raises and notice the homage it pays to the various genres it satirizes. I'm looking forward to Book 2 - Hughes is a top-notch author who has crafted a satisfying first novel for this new series."

Another good review of The Damned Busters at the Falcata Times blog. It says the book, "is not only chock full of humour but a title that has an unlikely hero, a devilishly intriguing sidekick and above all else a plot that moves along at its own pace keeping the humour very much in the fore. It makes no bones about what it is, it has some novel solutions and it was a title that gave me a lot of fun with my reading time, so much so that I really couldn't wait to get back to it. All in the prose is decent, the characters outstanding and the overall arc very pleasing to the reader. Great stuff."

And an "I thought it was good, if not great" comment from Nathan Shumate, who gives it three-and-a-half stars out of five. Sort of the way Chesney found the world when Hell was on strike. Just meh.

May 27, 2011

The place where I'm housesitting is a hundred-acre olive and fruit farm with a beautifully restored villa built over a medieval farmhouse. The scenery is gorgeous, the weather wonderful, and the local food and wine are nothing short of exceptional, even for Italy, where dining is an art form.

The place is owned by a nice young British couple who are living their dream. They're off to Britain for several months, to grow their olive oil and antipasti business, and the ground and main floors of the villa will be rented out, week by week, to tourists. I've offered to be an added attraction, in case any visitors would like to hang around with a slightly raffish genre-fiction author, and maybe get some tips on the craft and the business.

It occurred to me that some of the people who stop by this page, and who are looking for a different vacation choice, might be interested. If so, take a look at the web page. It's not cheap, but it's worth every euro.

May 24, 2011

I'm 10,000 words into a new Luff Imbry novella, the third of three that PS Publishing has been issuing on an annual basis. The first Quartet and Triptych is still available at the PS store. The second, The Yellow Cabochon, should be out in two limited editions next month (I'll put up the first few thousand words once it's available for pre-order).

More reviews for The Damned Busters: my SF Canada colleague, Colleen Anderson, offers a long and detailed review, and sums it up with, "A Hell of a good read"; and The Mad Hatter covers the novel in his reading log (scroll down to number 41), and says, "Recommended, especially for Tom Holt fans."

May 20, 2011

Two more blogged reviews of The Damned Busters. Stephen Theaker's says., "The idea of a superhero whose powers have contractual limits is, I think, a fairly novel one, and the book explores it well, with a good deal of charm; imagine a Robert Sheckley take on decompressed superheroics."

May 18, 2011

Another blogged review of The Damned Busters. Reeden Wright says, "This is a very funny urban fantasy story, with more plot turns than you can shake a fire-burning stick at. Hughes brings in big business and corruption, heaven and hell, police and criminals, morality and lack of, and, of course, true love."

And here's a lengthy appreciation on the Little Red Reviewer blog. She says, "A little bit of Terry Pratchett, a little bit of Mystery Men, a whole lotta hilarious punny word-play alongside some meta bookishness and probably some misdirection, The Damned Busters is a damn good book. As funny and light-hearted as it is thought provoking and belief challenging, I�¯�¿�½ve never read anything quite like it."

May 17, 2011

The second weekend in November, I'll be joining Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, Elizabeth Hand, Brian Evenson, Scott Allie -- all hugely talented and well experienced in the genre fiction and comix fields -- as a well as the always impressive Victoria Blake (publisher, Underland Press), in a writers conference in Portland, Oregon. Details here. It's not cheap, but there are two packages to choose from, and a $50 discount if you buy in before July 1.

May 13, 2011

Reviews of The Damned Busters by bloggers who received a free copy are starting to appear. this one says, "Anyway, based on my impressions so far, if I were to condense my forthcoming review of this book into one of those, 'If you like X, you�¯�¿�½ll love Y,' statements, I'd put it this way: If you liked Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, you'll probably enjoy The Damned Busters."

And this one, by Sharon the Librarian, says, "There are also several levels of story in Damned Busters. There is Chesney and his interactions with others, people just trying to get through the day, the powerful people looking to gain more power, and the balance between good and evil as well as the very nature of the world we live in. The larger questions about the nature of the world, and the relationship between author and the story, would make the story well worth reading even without the wit and intelligence that fill the book."

May 7, 2011

The Damned Busters is reviewed in The Guardian. Keith Brooke says, "This is a funny and surprisingly endearing book with some interesting discussions about the role of sin and our reactions to it."

This is the first time one of my books has been reviewed in a national (hell, international!) newspaper. It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, it has.

May 1, 2011

I've finished the first draft, at 82,000 words, of the thriller I've been writing on spec. I'm going to take a few days out to do some paid critiquing work, then I'll polish it up and hand it over to my agent, John Berlyne. I'm going to give it the working title of One More Kill, which was the name of the short story from which it's extrapolated. The short version won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis award for best story of the year, an amazingly long time ago.

A little advice for those of you who write as well as read: any kind of writing is a case of pitching and catching. The pitching is when you put the words on a page; the catching is when somebody reads them. And, in between, things can happen.

When you put the words down, you do so with a certain context in mind. When the reader picks them up, a whole different context comes into play. So what you said may not be what the reader reads.

This observation stems from a blogged review of The Damned Busters. The blogger read a couple of chapters then decided she (the blogger's gender is an assumption-from-context on my part) knew where it was going and didn't bother to read the rest, but skipped forward to find a few words that confirmed her prejudices.

What can you do when someone trashes your book without reading it? Nothing. And it's not just unprofessional bloggers who do this sort of thing. My second novel was professionally reviewed (and positively) in the Toronto Globe and Mail by a critic who obviously read the first chapter and the last few pages.

Again, what can an author do? Nothing, except keep on pitching.

April 25, 2011

Another day, another positive review of The Damned Busters. George Wilhite says, "The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes is a hilarious and imaginative novel speculating on what might happen if Hell went on strike...highly recommended for all who like some humor mixed with their horror."

April 22, 2011

I've given away all of my twenty-five author's copies of The Damned Busters to people who promised to blog about the book, but you can read the first 10,000 words here.

Here's a very glowing review of the book by Robert Thompson on the Fantasy Book Critic blog. He says, "Overall, To Hell and Back: The Damned Busters is a damn good book. Chesney Arnstruther is a uniquely charming protagonist; the plot is immensely entertaining, full of wit, humor and heart; the ideas presented are original and thought-provoking; and Matthew Hughes' writing is skillful and engaging. Best of all, The Damned Busters is a blast to read and not quite like any book I've ever tried before, instantly making the sequel one of my most anticipated releases of 2012."

April 21, 2011

Here's another nice little blogged review of The Damned Busters. Reviewer Shlok Vaidya says, "The book is delivered with elegant wit, punctuated by humorous passages, and is flat out funny."

April 18, 2011

Angry Robot Books has made a deal with Brilliance Audio to produce audio versions of its titles, so there will be an audio book of The Damned Busters somewhere down the road. Here's the AR press release.

I'm more or less settled in at the Italian villa, and back to work on the killer thriller spec book. I should pass the 75,000-word mark today and expect to complete the first draft over the weekend. Then I'll polish and amplify -- I tend to write lean first drafts -- and hand it to my agent, John Berlyne of Zeno, and see where we go with it.

April 14, 2011

Quartet and Triptych, my 2010 Luff Imbry novella from PS Publishing, has made the British Fantasy Awards longlist. If you're a member of the British Fantasy Society, please consider voting me onto the final ballot. If you're interested in reading the piece, here are the first 10,000 words.

The second Imbry novella, The Yellow Cabochon should be out in June. PS's Nicky Crowther says the project is at the cover-design stage.

April 9, 2011

I'm now at a villa on an olive farm (fattoria di oliva) outside the town of Vieste, on the Gargano Peninsula in the Puglia region of southern Italy. We're scheduled to housesit here for the next year. It will be interesting, to say the least, because most of the people speak no English and I speak about three words of Italian. Still, I expect to learn, since the alternative is to starve to death.

It was a grueling trip to get here: a thirteen-hour flight from Auckland to Hong Kong, followed by a fourteen-hour flight to Rome. We slept off some of the jet lag, then began a train and bus adventure that landed us in a parking lot in central Vieste at 11:30 at night. Italian rural cell phone service can be spotty, so our hosts received none of the messages we'd left, and were not there to meet us. We ended up walking through the empty streets until we came to a hotel where the night clerk gave us a room. He spoke no English, but we managed to communicate in rudimentary French.

In the morning, the English-speaking manager of the hotel helped us connect by internet with our hosts, and we were collected and brought to the farm. In gratitude to our rescuer, I'd like to recommend to anyone thinking of a visit to the Italian Adriatic coast -- which is stunningly beautiful -- to pitch up at the Hotel Falcone. We paid only 65 euros for a well-appointed room and as much Italian breakfast as we could eat.

The farm is called Vallecoppa (because it's in a cup-shaped valley). Parts of the villa are rented out to tourists during the season. if anyone is looking for a different kind of vacation. It produces the best olive oil I've ever tasted -- the lemon-flavored variety is apparently Prince Charles's favorite.

The main building was built in the thirties by an Italian-American millionaire, over the core of a centuries-old farm house. Benito Mussolini used to stay here when he came to the surrounding Foresta Umbra to shoot wild boar and deer. The two palm trees that flank the entrance to the yard are said to have been a gift from il Duce.

An amazing coincidence: the young British couple who own the fattoria, Joanne and Oliver Driscoll, picked us out of the various prospects on a housesitting site, housecarers.com, where we've gotten most of our sits. It was only after we were corresponding with Jo to arrange terms and logistics that Ollie discovered that he had had one of my books on his shelves for fifteen years. It was a copy of my short-lived thriller, Downshift, that he'd picked up while backpacking around Vancouver Island during those few brief months in 1997 when it was actually for sale. Considering that there are, at the most, 750 copies of the book in existence, and most of them in Canadian libraries, the coincidence is astounding.

April 5, 2011

So it's up, up and away to Italy in the morning. Before I leave New Zealand, I'd like to encourage anyone who's thinking of an overseas vacation to consider this antipodeal realm as a prime place to visit. It is astoundingly beautiful, with a very low cost of living, and full of friendly, laid-back people -- three months here and I didn't meet a single grump or crank. And I'll recommend the Auckland City Hotel as a low-cost place to start from: right downtown and about US$75 a night for a no-frills but perfectly comfortable room. And, no, they're not paying me to say that.

April 1, 2011

Here's a thoughtful and comprehensive review of Songs of the Dying Earth, the Jack Vance tribute anthology. Reviewer David Marshall says of my story, "Grolion of Almery" (after calling Bob Silverberg's entry "slightly po-faced"): "This lack of wit is remedied in 'Grolion of Almery' by Matthew Hughes who has been writing in the style of Vance for years and has grown particularly good at it."

March 31, 2011

My Luff Imbry novel, The Other, will be released by Underland Press on October 17. It's already listed for pre-order on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.ca.

More advice for aspiring writers posted on my blog. This one's about writing scenes, the essential building blocks of genre fiction.

March 29, 2011

Small coincidence: I'm writing a spec thriller that's based on my suspense story, "One More Kill," which won the Arthur Ellis Award (the "Canadian Edgar") back in 2000. Today, the Quebec publisher Alire asked for one-time rights to include the story in an anthology of Ellis winners, translated into French.

March 22, 2011

Another advance review of The Damned Busters. Blogger Gill Polack says, "It's very much in the Tom Holt model, humorous fantasy that riffs on matters religious and mythical. Even the underlying themes are similar. This is not a negative comment, by any means. There can never be too many deft and quirky fantasy novels. Reading for wet days. Reading for bad weeks. Reading for messy journeys."

Tomorrow I'll pass the 60,000-word mark on the killer thriller. I generally find that that's the point where I've successfully navigated the muddle of the middle and now the story comes around the last curve and begins to pick up speed for the crash-through-the-tape ending. And I've thought up a nice plot twist to drive the last third of the book. I don't know yet exactly how it ends, but now I know what the choices are going to be.

Advance notice: I'm going to give away my author's copies of The Damned Busters, or at least most of them, to people who promise to blog about it. Watch this space for the actual announcement.

March 16, 2011

I haven't been posting much lately because I'm trying to get as much done as possible on the spec thriller I'm writing, before I have to up-stakes and relocate from New Zealand (beautiful place) to Italy (just as beautiful, but of course different). I've got 50,000 words in the can and the central character, an ex-soldier dying of leukemia who kills people who really deserve it, is evolving nicely.

Here's a recent blogger's review of Majestrum: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn. The reviewer says, "The idea that you will, in time, be subsumed by something that is you and yet your opposite is profoundly unsettling, and Hapthorn's attempts to soldier on, to make allowances, and yet maintain the upper hand are mesmerizing." It's a welcome comment, because it goes to the core of what the Hapthorn books are really about. They are a study of a proud (hell, hubristic) man having to come to terms with his own inevitable diminishment, as indeed we all do when we come to realize what age will eventually do to us.

Gordon Van Gelder, editor of Welcome to the Greenhouse, the climate change anthology, has done an interesting radio interview on the book. My name comes up midway through.

March 6, 2011

A pleasant surprise: here's the first review of The Damned Busters, appearing well before the book's release in May. Celebrity Cafe's reviewer Eric Gordon gives it five stars and says it's "a supernatural adventure that blends a rich and unpredictable story, with a tone and wit that provides plenty of laughs along the way. A great balance of action and comedic situations with some romance thrown in for good measure, albeit an awkward romance, this is a great read."

For those who missed the original short story, "Hell of a Fix," in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, I've put up the first 10,000 words.

February 26, 2011

I read the other day that people are giving up blogging in favor of tweeting. Sounds like the perfect time for me to start a blog. Here's the first post.

Here's a recently blogged review of Template. And here's a magazine review (scroll down) of "Fullbrim's Finding," a Henghis Hapthorn story that appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that I never saw because I don't subscribe to the mag that ran the review back in 2008.

February 17, 2011

SFF Portal has a very thoughtful review of Welcome to the Greenhouse, the climate change antho edited by Gordon Van Gelder. About my not-terribly-serious contribution, "Not a Problem," reviewer Anil Menon says, "It's the kind of story that's enormous fun to write and enormous fun to read." Which is perfectly true.

February 13, 2011

I've now finished and turned in Out of the Blue, a media tie-in novel (meaning it will be published under the name of Hugh Matthews) for Paizo Publishing. It's a rogue's adventure set in the Pathfinder gaming world that I gather is an extension of the original Dungeons and Dragons concept. It has a troll and dwarves and a half-orc and other good things. It should be out in December.

I'm now going to turn my attention to a spec book -- a suspense novel based on my story "One More Kill," which won the Arthur Ellis Award (the "Canadian Edgar") back in 2000.

February 8, 2011

I've finished and turned in Costume Not Included, the second in the Hell and Back series, which will be out in April of next year. Now I'm going to polish Out of the Blue (working title), the media tie-in novel for Pathfinder Games that should be out in time for Christmas. Busy, busy.

The February Locus contains Gardner Dozois's review of Quartet and Triptych, my first Luff Imbry novella from PS Publishing. He says it's "great fun, a satisfyingly robust and colorful tale, much as Vance himself might have written it." You can read the opening of the story here.

February 4, 2011

Hard on the heels of the Locus recommended reading list, comes the magazine's annual poll. You don't have to be a subscriber to vote, so any of you who incline toward this sort of thing are welcome to go here and mark your ballots.

February 3, 2011

Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn has made the Locus recommended reading list. So did Is Anybody Out There?, the Fermi paradox anthology edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, in which I had a story.

February 2, 2011

Here's the first review of Welcome to the Greenhouse, the climate change antho edited by Gordon Van Gelder. SF Revu's Sam Tomaino declares my story, "Not a Problem," to be "a hoot."

For those of you who are unlikely to see a copy of one of my books in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore -- and that's just about all of you -- I keep hearing that The Book Depository is an attractive option. They sell at reasonable prices and ship worldwide for free.

I'm going to do a meet and greet and give a talk about what it's like to be a modern midlist author -- oh, the horror! -- at Whangarei's Market Books on February 12.

January 31, 2011

In the latest Asimov's, Paul Di Filippo reviews Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn. He says" "Hughes has effectively captured Vance's colorfully ironic way of portraying an exotic society and its inhabitants in a few strokes, as in the elaborate dress code on one of the worlds Hapthorn visits. He also has much of Vance's touch with witty yet highly stylized dialogue. But perhaps the most Vanceian aspect of this series is Hapthorn himself, who may share professions with Sherlock Holmes, but whose overblown ego is more reminiscent of Cugel the Clever, one of Vance's most memorable protagonists."

January 28, 2011

I've finished the first draft of Costume Not Included, which has come in at 90,000 words. Over the next week, I'll polish it up and turn it in. Then I'll do the same for the draft of Out of the Blue (working title), the tie-in novel I wrote in the fall for Paizo Publishing. Then I'm going to take a deep breath and plunge into a non-sf suspense novel. In fact, with a third Hell and Back novel due in to Angry Robot Books by December and a request from another publisher for another Archonate novel (deal not made yet), plus another Luff Imbry novella for PS Publishing, it's already a full-schedule year.

Speaking of Angry Robot, I've now got release dates for the three novels already contracted for. They are: appearing in the UK on May 5, and in the US on May 31; Costume Not Included will come out on April 5, 2012 worldwide; and Hell To Pay will be released on March 7, 2013 worldwide. Originally, the books were to have appeared every six months, but that schedule went out the window when Angry Robot became an indy publisher whose books are distributed by Random House.

I'm quite happy with the once-a-year release schedule. I'm planning to be in Birmingham in April for UK sf fandom's Eastercon celebration to do something to promote the release of The Damned Busters. More info as plans firm up.

January 22, 2011

Here's a trailer for Welcome to the Greenhouse, an anthology of climate change stories edited by Gordon Van Gelder, in which I have a little, not-too-serious piece. Extra geek points for recognizing where some of the images originate.

January 19, 2011

I've been beavering away at Costume Not Included, and am now at 82,000 words and closing in on the ending.

This evening, the proofed text of the Luff Imbry novel, The Other, appeared in my email inbox. There were very few changes, so I turned it around pronto and sent it back to Underland Press. That prompted me to go over to the Underland site, where I found the book listed and the cover art (which I'm not too fond of) posted. I don't see any way for people to order it yet, but we seem to be on track for a release before Christmas. Reading parts of it over again, I was pleased with it.

January 10, 2011

I'm now in a new housesit near Matarau, on the North Island of New Zealand. Beautiful place, out in the country, very quiet. I expect to get a lot of writing done here. Today I'll get back to work on the second in the Hell and Back series, Costume Not Included, which I left off at about 68,000 words. I mean to turn it in by the end of the month, if possible.

I've decided to do more paid evaluations of emerging writers' novels this year. If you've got a manuscript that could use a professional's looking-over, please get in touch. It's not a cheap service, however; I charge at least $1,000.

January 4, 2011

One of the people I have great regard for is Andy Wheeler, former editor of the Science Fiction Book Club (they were insane to let him go). And one of the reasons I hold Andy in such high esteem is that he selected three of my books, Black Brillion, Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice, to be SFBC featured selections (the latter two as an omnibus volume entitled Gullible's Travels. Now Andy has blogged about his favorite books of 2010, choosing one per month, and his favorite for March was Hespira, the third (and probably last) Henghis Hapthorn novel. I'm very pleased to have pleased Andy

I've spent the past week and more editing a book (somebody else's) for a small press. It was a great deal of work and didn't leave much time for updating here. And now I'm in a hotel room in transit between a housesit in Australia and another in New Zealand, where I will have to finish two novels in the next month or so. But, somewhere along the line, I am resolved (though the impulse predates New Years), to begin a blog.

December 13, 2010

The editing work is done on The Other, the first (of many, I hope) Luff Imbry novels from Underland Press. I've seen a draft of the cover art, which once again made me wonder if artists ever read the books they illustrate. Luff looked like a Barbary pirate, instead of my mental image of him, which I once described as "a Karl Rove who's really let himself go." Oh, well, the book's now scheduled to be out in about a year.

I don't really really use this page as a blog, but I've come across another instance of an admittedly small thing that nonetheless always ticks me off when it happens. Margaret Atwood, grand dame of Canadian literature (i.e., the "important kind of fiction"), has once again tied herself in knots trying to make a distinction between science fiction (filthy genre stuff which her readership would disdain) and speculative fiction (the important stuff she writes).

Here's her definition of the two, as revealed in an interview with The Progressive:

The distinction has to do with lineages. It has to do with ancestries, and what family books belong to because books do belong in families. The ancestor of science fiction is H. G. Wells with books like The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Those books involved things that are very unlikely to happen or are actually impossible, but they are ways of exploring possibilities and human nature and the way people react to certain things. And if you go to another planet, you get to build the whole society and you can draw blueprints and have fun with talking vegetation and other such things.

The lineage of speculative fiction traces back to Jules Verne, who wrote about things that he could see coming to pass that were possible on the Earth������¯������¿������½this wasn������¯������¿������½t about outer space or space invasions������¯������¿������½but things that we could actually do.

She must mean things like actually going down inside a volcano and finding a hollow Earth with dinosaurs and the ruins of Atlantis, as in Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Obviously, when she prattles on in this vein, she's counting on her readers' having vaguely heard of Wells and Verne but being unfamiliar with what they actually wrote.

I can't conceive of a more closeted science fiction writer than Peg Atwood, practitioner of the genre that dare not speak its name.

December 9, 2010

By the end of the week I'll pass the 60,000-word mark on Costume Not Included, the second Hell and Back novel. The plot is a little loosey-goosey, as first draft plots often are, but it has some pretty good scenes. For those of you writing your own works of fiction, good scenes are the basic building blocks.

Somewhere down in the previous posts, I list the different specimens of Australian wildlife I've encountered during my antipodal sojourn. I mention a cockroach (Ozzies call them "cockies") longer than the top joint of my thumb. Well, last night I met its big brother, which was longer than my whole damn thumb -- and it flew!. Here's a picture I found on the web. But, in a swings-and-roundabouts effect, the mosquitoes ("mozzies") are pretty puny.

December 6, 2010

A long time ago, when my first novel, Fools Errant pecked its way hopefully out of the egg, the first review I saw was by Harriet Klausner on Amazon. Harriet was, and presumably still is, a speed-reader with a connection to a bookstore somewhere in the US. She reads and reviews several books a day and posts her thoughts on Amazon, which makes her, by far and away, their number-one reviewer. As you would expect, her reviews are not deep and insightful, but I believe they are largely accurate summaries and honest personal reactions. Now, with the Tor hardcover of the Jack Vance tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth only a day away from release, I see that Ms Klausner has reviewed it. My story, "Grolion of Almery," she says is "especially entertaining," and refers to me as "like a Vance clone." High praise indeed, and I'll take it.

November 30, 2010

John DeNardo at SF Signal reviews Is Anybody Out There?, the Fermi Paradox anthology edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern. DeNardo thinks my contribution to the antho, "Timmy Come Home," is one of the best of the bunch.

I've had an email from editor Gordon Van Gelder to say that the global-warming sf anthology, Welcome to the Greenhouse, from O/R Books, will be out in early 2011 -- although they may hold off release until Earth Day (April 22). O/R doesn't sell through Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but just from its own webpage. When the book is listed there, I'll provide a link.

I'll hit 48,000 words on the second Hell and Back novel, Costume Not Included, today; I'm hoping to have a turn-innable draft by New Years. As usual, I'm not working to an outline, but just following a rough concept of what the story's about. Now I've brought in Jesus as a character -- the historical one, not the one who turned out to be God -- and I'm going to set him loose in the twenty-first century. He may even do some crimefighting.

November 24, 2010

Michael Rawdon reviews Template: ". . . one of Hughes's best books, and should appeal to anyone who likes space opera, adventure, or just good old galactic empire science fiction." Although, technically, the Ten Thousand Worlds are not an empire; as far as I can tell, each world is self-governing, but I've only visited a few so far.

November 23, 2010

I'm back to work on Costume Not Included, after taking time out to do some editing on the Luff Imbry novel and to critique a struggling author's espionage thriller. I do the latter occasionally, but only for serious money -- i.e., at least $1,000 -- so if you've got a manuscript that could use a professional's look-see, be prepared to pay. I don't have a day job.

I tried kangaroo for dinner last night. It does not take like chicken. More like tender beef. A very fine grained, dark meat. I liked it. I bet it would go well in a pie. I can add it to the list of unusual meats I've tried: bear, beaver tail, an awful lot of moose, horse, pheasant, crow (not recommended).

Blogger Michael Rawdon continues to work his way through my oeuvre with a comme-ci, comme-ca review of The Commons the Guth Bandar novel that is a companion to Black Brillion.

November 10, 2010

I've been housesitting for three years now, and in the first year it had its ups and downs. But it seems to be working out very well. I'll wind up the second of the Australian sits just after new years, then it's on to a small town on New Zealand's North Island for three months -- and then it's off to southern Italy for a year in a rather nice looking villa.

Blogger Michael Rawdon says he's working his way backwards through my Archonate novels (see the post below). Today he reviews Black Brillion.

November 9, 2010

Here's a nice review of Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, by blogger Michael Rawdon.

Today, I'll pass the 40,000-word mark on the draft of Costume Not Included, the second Hell and Back novel. Then I'll set it aside while I work with an editor on my first Luff Imbry novel, The Other, which is now scheduled for release by Underland Press in late 2011.

November 5, 2010

I've participated in another one of the SF Signal blog's "Mind Meld" exercises, where a variety of sf authors respond to a common question. This time the question was: What fantasy book or series is just as good, if not better, than The Lord of the Rings?

November 2, 2010

Australian wildlife I have encountered so far: kangaroos (of course), though I missed the six-foot tall specimen my wife met the other day while walking the dogs; a wombat; a blue-tongue lizard that lives behind the hen house and eats the chooks' eggs if we don't collect them early enough in the day; kookaburras galore; ibises and egrets; a "cuckoo" that sounds like a rusty wind-up toy monkey bashing its cymbals together; a pelican that dwarfs any flying bird I've ever seen, including eagles; four porpoises that live in the river estuary near where we're housesitting; a couple of arboreal possums that come out at night to raid the wild bird feeder in the back garden; cockroaches longer than the top joint of my thumb; the biggest wolf spider I've even played catch-and-release with.

October 31, 2010

Blogger Paul Weimer has reviewed Template and The Spiral Labyrinth.

He says: "Matthew Hughes is an under-appreciated writer. For years he has been toiling in a mainly Jack Vancean sort of vein, turning out stories and novels set in a world where science is just about to turn over to magic, but not quite yet. Old Earth, with a baroque and dizzying array of ancient cultures, is a rich field for Hughes to explore. On an even larger scale, Old Earth is itself but one planet in "The Spray", Hughes's answer to Jack Vance's Oikumene. A dizzying array of planets of even more diversity than Earth itself, Hughes' fiction allows the reader to experience a full and inexhaustible range of cultures, environments and characters. His prose brings these environments and characters to life, transporting the reader to areas both familiar and absolutely alien for all of their humanity."

As a bonus -- for me, at least -- Paul posted both of his reviews on the Amazon listings of the books. I'm told that Amazon reviews, as much the number of reviews as the number of stars, are an important mind-maker-upper for people browsing for books, especially by authors they haven't read before. I'd be grateful if those of you who have read and liked my works went over to Amazon and posted a review now and then. This is a tough business, and authors like me, who aren't aiming for the middle of the readership bell curve, need all the help we can get.

Progress report on Costume Not Included: I should pass 30,000 words today. It's developing a time travel slant. I've always been a sucker for time travel stories.

October 23, 2010

Here's a nice review of Template by Chris Gerrib, who bought the book after reading my Big Idea piece on John Scalzi's blog.

I'm 21,000 words into the Costume Not Included, the second in the To Hell and Back series I'm writing for Angry Robot Books. The first in the series, The Damned Busters, will be out in May/June 2011.

October 11, 2020

I'm not the only Matt(hew) Hughes in the sf world. Out there in the ether are Matt Hughes the fantasy artist, and Matthew Hughes the trying-to-be-an-sf-author. Occasionally, our planes intersect, as when MH the artist was hired by Gordon Van Gelder to do the artwork to illustrate a cover story of mine in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And now it happens again, with MH the emerging writer posting a review of Template on the blog Adventures in Science Fiction Publishing. He says: "Hughes is rich in description -- from the worlds down to the starships in which the characters travel. He has an excellent way with words that fully immerses the reader into the story and while short (only 192 pages), the story did not leave me wanting. If anything, I wanted to see more of the Spray and how humanity has adapted."

I've finished and turned in the first draft of Out of the Blue (working title), the Pathfinder RPG tie-in novel. I've got some editing work to do (I also edit books for Edge SF Publishing, a good Canadian small press), then I'll return to Costume Not Included, the second in the series To Hell and Back for Angry Robot Books. The first in the series, if I may remind you, is The Damned Busters, which will be out in May/June 2011.

October 6, 2010

Here's a very nice review of my Luff Imbry novella, Quartet & Triptych from Stephen Theaker, editor and publisher and administrator of the British Fantasy Awards. He says: "I loved every word of it, and if this is typical of Hughes's work I expect I'll read every novel he ever writes. It's brimming with lovely ideas and spirited language, and never settles for the obvious when it can offer the superb. Marvellous."

Here's where you can order the novella. And here is where you can read the first five thousand words.

I'm about to finish the Pathfinder tie-in novel, Out of the Blue (working title). I've scotched the villain's dastardly schemes, killing only one sympathetic character along the way. Now I just have to bring on the big showbiz ending, and it's a wrap.

October 5, 2010

I was largely internetless for a few days -- had to walk a mile to the library to get a wi-fi connection -- until I got my change-of-sit access issues sorted out. In the meantime, I've been working away at the Pathfinder tie-in (working title: Out of the Blue). Passed 75,000 words yesterday and should finish the first draft this week. I just have to decide which, if any, of the principal characters to kill off in the climactic scene.

Australia is known for its distinctive (and virulently poisonous) wildlife, a specimen of which was on the wall over the shower this morning. My wife said tarantula, but to me it just looked like a North American wolf spider on steroids. The body was near on to two inches in length, and the legs spanned more than the width of the mouth of the beer glass with which I captured it. Gentle soul that I am -- except when it comes to characters, of course -- I delivered it unharmed to a mouldering woodpile outside.

September 21, 2010

A review blog has posted the cover art for The Damned Busters, the first of a contemporary urban fantasy series called To Hell and Back from Angry Robot Books, due out next May or June, depending on where in the world you are. It's by an up-and-coming British artist named Tom Gauld.

September 19, 2010

After a night train from Wangaratta to Sydney, then buses to Broadmeadow and Tea Gardens, New South Wales, we are now in our new housesit. It's a funky little house, originally built by some guys who used to come up here to fish, so none of the angles are true. It comes with two dogs and three cats, all of them bottomless pits for attention, some bantam chooks and a disconsolate Muscovy drake whose mate, despite having her wings clipped, flew off and left him. He's too portly to get into the air.

It's a beautiful setting -- sea, palm trees, boats, laid-back Ozzies -- and I think it will be a good place to work if I can keep the cats off my lap.

Part of the adventure of itinerant housesitting: on the bus from Sydney to Broadmeadow, a woman went into labor and gave birth on the back seat. It was all over in less than half an hour (the ambulance that came to meet us on the highway was two minutes too late), and the result was a healthy baby girl -- to be named Madelaine, her husband said. The passengers applauded and gave three cheers for Madelaine.

September 15, 2010

In two days, we'll be pulling up stakes in Porepunkah, Victoria, and moving to our new housesit in Tea Gardens, New South Wales -- moving from the mountains to the sea. I'm going to miss the view of Mt. Buffalo that I've been getting every morning. It's always beautiful, and always a different combination of clouds, sun, mist, and a waterfall if it's been raining. I haven't seen much of Australia yet -- just this upland zone and Melbourne -- but I recommend it highly. You couldn't find a friendlier, mellower kind of people outside of, well, Canada.

I'm 60,000 words into the draft of the unnamed Pathfinder RPG tie-in novel. I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends. There'll be some ancient powerful evil seeking to be reborn into the world -- shades of Majestrum: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, I suppose -- but beyond a heroic sacrificial death and some desperate derring-do deep inside a volcano, I haven't seen the shape of it yet.

September 7, 2010

I had a good time at WorldCon in Melbourne. I had the pleasure of meeting John Scalzi, Terry Dowling, Jonathan Strahan, Peter Watts, and K.A. Bedford (whose Aurealis Award-winning novel Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait I edited), and of seeing again Jay Lake, Bob Silverberg, and George R.R. Martin. I also got to spend some time in discussions with my agent, John Berlyne of the Zeno Agency, planning out the next couple of years.

The person putting together the WorldCon programming (who will remain nameless) had never heard of me and removed me from some panels --like one on Jack Vance and the Dying Earth -- so that I arrived to find myself with not a whole lot to do. I chutzpahed myself back onto the Vance panel and onto another that talked about with far-future sf, and I made myself a vocal commentator-from-the-floor at a couple of others. If you travel halfway around the world to be at a con, you can't let an ignorant organizer keep you down.

Getting back from Melbourne was a challenge: the Great Alpine Road between Porepunkah, the mountain hamlet where we're housesitting, and the nearest railroad station at Wangaratta, was washed out by flooding after torrential rains -- which arrived after seven years of drought. We had to find an alternative route which involved going up and down a winding mountain road that had steep drops on one side and no roadside barriers to prevent a tired traveler from plunging into oblivion. All part of the excitement of being an itinerant sf author.

September 2, 2010

Off to WorldCon in Melbourne tomorrow.

Congratulations to the winners of SF Signal's promotional contest for Template. They are: Caitrin C. from NV, who won the PS Publishing slipcased limited edition of the novel, and Jeffrey H. of Florida, Andrew W. of Ontario, and David H. of Washington DC, each of whom won a copy of the Paizo Publishing trade paperback. My thanks to John DeNardo for hosting the contest.

I came across a blogger's recent review of "Grolion of Almery," my story in the Jack Vance tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth. The reviewer, Opally, says, "I found this story poignant and memorable in its unexpected twists."

Songs was released last year in limited editions by Subterranean Press and in a UK trade hardcover by HarperCollins Voyager. A US hardcover will be out in December. Jack Vance fans should take note.

August 26, 2010

My "Big Idea" piece -- i.e., the central conceit within the novel Template -- is now up on John Scalzi's Whatever blog.

John Joseph Adams, formerly assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and therefore the first person ever to read a Henghis Hapthorn story, was asked to participate in one of SF Signal's "Mind Meld" features. The question was to name a favorite sfnal setting. He chose the Archonate, and here's what he had t say about it:

"Archonate: Matthew Hughes's vastly underrated Archonate milieu is something I wish more people knew about. It's really quite a lot of fun, and Hughes has shown that he has a near limitless supply of stories he can tell there. The gist of it is, it's the far future and the physics of the universe is governed by an unending cycle of magic vs. science; when one is in ascendancy, the other wanes, and vice versa. So for protagonist freelance discriminator Henghis Hapthorn, a man of reason and science (think Sherlock Holmes), his world is thrown into disarray as science wanes and magic comes slowly seeps back into the world. The Hapthorn stuff, which deals with the science vs. magic aspect, is great, but Hughes shows that he can also keep strictly to the SF side of things with his Archonate novel Template, which is possibly the best thing he's ever written."

August 22, 2010

To mark the trade paperback release of Template, Canadian sf editor Robert Runte has updated and reposted his review that he first posted with the release of the PS Publishing limited editionsin 2008. He says, "Matthew Hughes is one of this country's ten best SF writers, and if you are not already familiar with his work, you should really make a point of picking up one of his books to see if his brand of droll Edwardian dialog and Jack Vance world-building is not exactly what you've been missing."

Also there will be a review of the three Hapthorn books by Chris Moriarty in the September/October Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as part of a round-up examination of the pros and cons of serials in modern sf. Moriarty says: "Henghis Hapthorn is brain candy for the literati. It's A. J. Raffles meets Jack Vance. It's Sherlock Holmes for the post-rational age. . .with a dash of Bertie Wooster thrown in for comic relief."

August 21, 2010

I'll be doing a half-hour reading and a signing at WorldCon. The reading is on Saturday at 4 pm, in room 215. The signing will be at 5 pm in room 201.

I'll pass the 40,000-word mark on the first draft of the Pathfinder RPG tie-in novel today. Now the dwarves have appeared, and they're none too friendly. A dislike of immigrants, I suppose.

August 12, 2010

I'm going to the Hugo Awards banquet at WorldCon. Not because I'm nominated, but because Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, who is nominated but who isn't going, has asked me to stand in for him.

August 10, 2010

Here's something I haven't seen in a while: a blogger's review of The Commons, my Guth Bandar novel that originally ran as a series of stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The reviewer, S.J. Higbee (that's a name I could use in a story), says: "If you have ever put down an H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, muttering 'They don't write them like that, anymore..." then look out for Matthew Hughes. This author is their worthy successor."

For those of you who have come to my work via Henghis Hapthorn, The Commons is a companion novel to an earlier work, Black Brillion. Both novels tell the same story, but from the points of view of two different characters. The books also introduced Luff Imbry, who has now gone on to star in his own stories, novellas and -- coming next spring -- a novel.

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