Let
me spin thee a tale. A tale of a group of fierce web-warriors with
names like Anna and Vik who, long ago, ran a small forum dedicated to
BROKEN SKY. Yea, long did it survive against mighty odds, in the wintry
cold of cyberspace, but eventually they ran out of questions about the
Dominions to which even I didn't know the answer, and what became of
that forum, I know not.

Yet now a new seed hath been sown. A new
generation hath gathered. There is now a place where thou mayest slag
me the hell off to thy heart's content. At present, 'tis small, likely
because thou can'tst find it unless thou knowest where to look. So
hearken thee, and hie to The Crooked Lanes! *waves at Maliris*

((end cod-medieval accent))

Right,
seriously, there's a forum over there. I have lurked and observed with
Cthulu-like interest for a while now, but the time has come to try and
direct a bit of traffic their way. Anything you wanna say, or if you
just want to meet a bunch of people with a common interest in faintly
nihilistic books about things that keep trying to eat your face, head
over. I can't promise I'll be posting on it much, since I'm never on
the Net (well, I am, but then I'm working, and I am IMMUNE TO TEH
DISTRAKSHUNS), but I'll do what I can.

There was a time in the
past when I was quite active on the net. Then lots of psychos started
mailing me. So please, if you're a psycho, don't bother, ok?

In
other news, I've started writing MALICE, about which I am tres excited.
And I'm also writing a movie called BEHIND YOU, which is the project I
hinted at last post (but now I've, like, got the job and stuff, so I
can talk about it a bit). It's a horror movie, with a raaather unusual
twist which I of course shan't tell you. Heheh. I also still want to do
another pass over THE FADE before I'm done, but it's really getting
into shape now. All this over the next six months, and that's not
mentioning various other film/tv type projects that are slinking about.
I'm not gonna be short of work this Spring, THAT'S for sure.

posted by Chris at 5:01 PM

Hola,
que tal, como estas, yadda yadda. So here I am in Madrid and it rocks.
I get to loaf in cafes and bars looking thoughtful with a notepad and a
laptop, pretending to be Hemingway (who as we all know was a BIG fan of
laptops) but coming off more like the fat guy from Cheers. My crap
Spanish is steadily improving and I'm still in that wonderful stage
where I spend all my time marvelling at how cheap everything is
compared to London. London can be likened to an enormous greasy leech
that attaches itself to your wallet and causes you to haemorrhage
currency in a shiny trail behind you wherever you go. As you can
probably tell, I miss it terribly.

Right, so what've I been
doing? Well, Halflight finally got the name revamp I was going for. Now
it's called THE FADE. Am still editing it (I know, but I only really
got onto it recently, cos of other stuff I was working on) but it's all
going very well and is still very much on track for Oct '07. Man,
that's a year away. Depressing...

Malice has already been bought
up in the US so hopefully we will get a simultaneous US/UK release for
that puppy. Planned for Autumn/Fall '08 with the next one in the
sequence (yes, it will be a sequence) the following year. Still waiting
for final contract guff to get done but it's all pretty much in the bag
now so I'll get on that next.

Have finished my near-fi SF movie,
delivered it into the jaws of the industry, so we'll see. There's a
bunch of movie and TV stuff afoot, but as I've said a bazillion times
there's no point talking about it until it's all firmed up and
contracts have been signed, so will keep you advised when something
solid is set down. Which should be very soon, at least for one of the
projects...

Also, Storm Thief came out last month in the US, and
just about to be released in the UK is the THE BRAIDED PATH
anthology... all three books in the trilogy combined in a deliciously
sensual trade paperback edition, heavy enough to crush small children
with. In fact, the liner notes encourage it. So if you haven't got them
already, now's the time!

posted by Chris at 12:26 PM

Hey. Still here. Halflight
has been delivered and is undergoing the cruel scrutiny of my editors
now. I'll be changing the name, though I can't think of what I'll
change it to yet. Pandemonium
has been received with delirious praise from my editors in the US,
which is nice, as it means you can pretty much expect more graphic
novel action from me in the future. Aaand... well, that's about it,
really. All of July has really been spent sitting in various parks and
working out what I want to do next. Usually I just jump from one
project straight into another but this time I decided to allow myself a
bit of breathing space before I get going. It'll probably do me good.

Oh,
in very good news, Scholastic are at last re-releasing Broken Sky in
the nice 3-volume format I've been hounding them about. So finally
y'all will get to see Broken Sky in its orignially-intended format, and
a whole new generation of kiddies who never got to read it first time
around will be able to get their mitts on it. Yay! First one comes out
Sept 2007-ish, with the other two to follow in 2008, and my newie
probably arriving end of 2008.

So, I'm writing away at a film at
the moment, and also at a little project for New Line and a couple of
other filmy things. Trouble is, film projects have a huge kill ratio so
most of them will never see the light of day, but still, it's fun.
After that, depending on how things pan out, I'll be doing the next in
the Pandemonium sequence or my next YA book. We'll see...

Oh, right, the website. Having some techno troubles with the updates at the moment, which is why you still don't see Storm Thief there. Will have it fixed up eventually!

posted by Chris at 8:13 AM