Hot on the heels of the 2020 Visions announcement, comes confirmation that I’ve sold a story called ENTROPIC ANGEL to an anthology with the title of Dark Spires. This anthology is a sequel-of-sorts to last year’s Future Bristol, only this time the scope has widened to include the whole of the West Country.

The TOC for the 2020 VISIONS anthology has been announced:

1. Mary Robinette Kowal – Birthright
2. Shiela Finch – The Persistence of Butterflies
3. Randy Henderson – A Shelter for Living Things
4. Jason S. Ridler – Showing Light
5. Ernest Hogan – Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs
6. David Lee Summers – The Revelation of Thought
7. Jeff Spock – Teh Afterl1fe
8. Emily Devenport – If the Sun’s at Five O’Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies
9. Cat Rambo – Therapy Buddha
10. Jack Mangan – Dead Rookies
11. David Boop – Organ Cloning While You Wait
12. Spencer Ellsworth – The Black Plague of Our Generation
13. Gareth L. Powell – The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns
14. Alethea Kontis – Pocket Full of Posey
15. Alex Wilson – Nervewrecking
16. David Gerrold – Time Capsule 2120: Actual Comments from Lunar Tourists

Following on from yesterday’s post, I can now reveal that I have sold my short story “The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns” to 2020 VISIONS, a near-future science fiction  anthology published through Christopher Fletcher’s M-Brane SF imprint and edited by Rick Novy.

Yesterday, I received word that I’d sold not one but two short stories, to different anthologies on the same day. I can’t tell you yet which anthologies they are, but I can tell you a little something about the stories:

1. ‘Entropic Angel’ is a quasi-supernatural Western set in Somerset in the near future, featuring angels, wind farms, crossbows and hair scrunchies – sort of like Pale Rider meets The Wicker Man.

2. ‘The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns’ is probably best described as a fantasy love story with an Elvis soundtrack. The day after I wrote it, I read the first draft aloud to a room full of students at Bath Spa University, as part of a lecture on creative writing. It  charts the course of the doomed affair between a disillusioned London photographer named Ed and Natalie, the smalltown diner waitress he meets on his way to visit a UFO crash site near the Welsh border.

Futher details of the books will follow as soon as the publishers give me the all-clear to announce them.

I’m delighted to tell you that I’ve just signed a novel contract with Solaris books, for a book due to be published in September 2011.

Here’s the official announcement from editor-in-chief, Jon Oliver:

I’m pleased to be able to announce that I have just commissioned a new SF novel from author Gareth L. Powell called The Recollection, due for release in September 2011 in the UK and US. Gareth is a brilliant new writer and I know that you’re going to blown away by his mix of SF, Space-Opera and contemporary fiction. This is a writer worth watching and we’re very proud to welcome him to the Solaris fold. Once we have a cover for Gareth’s title, we will of course let you all have a look.

I’m currently working on three books – two futher novels and a second short story collection.

Here are the blurbs:

Novel #2:

In modern-day London a small-time criminal falls in love with his brother’s wife. When a mysterious portal opens on a London Underground escalator, he finds he has to put aside his personal feelings in order to rescue the one man standing in the way of his happiness.

Meanwhile, four hundred years in the future, a disgraced daughter has one last chance to redeem herself in the eyes of her family. She must to travel to a remote planet and secure a cargo of precious pharmaceuticals — and the only thing standing in her way is her former lover, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm.

Novel #3:

In a world where nuclear-powered Zeppelins encircle the globe and electronic ghosts stalk the living, a King lies dying and a half-brained stick fighter struggles to solve a deadly riddle in order to regain her stolen soul.

Short story collection #2:

From the radioactive wastes of Southern England to the vampire-haunted streets of Amsterdam; from the malls of West London to the blasted desolation of a ruined alien city; from a street protest in Paris to the final moments of the human race – these tales put a wicked spin on the world we think we know.

To find out more about any of these books, drop me a line.

This an excerpt from my short story ‘Fallout’, published in the NewCon Press anthology Conflicts.

FALLOUT (Excerpt)
By Gareth L Powell

Despite what was to come, the day started well. An hour before sunrise they landed the rented jet at a decommissioned RAF base in Wiltshire, near Swindon. It was a cold morning and frost glittered on the grass at the edge of the runway.

Leaving the pilot and cabin crew to look after the plane, they pulled four motorbikes from its hold and clipped dosimeters to their lapels. Then they donned helmets and drove their bikes downhill, through dark and empty villages, to the army check point at the M4 motorway junction. Rusty, concrete-filled oil drums blocked the westbound slip road and a tired sergeant blew into his hands. He wore a long coat and a fur hat with khaki earflaps. The men behind him cradled standard-issue SA80 assault rifles.

Continue reading “Fallout Excerpt”

The July issue of Acoustic Magazine contains an interview I did with Nils Lofgren, guitarist with Neil Young and long-serving member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

Acoustic Magazine is the UK’s number one monthly magazine for acoustic music, and I’ve been writing interviews and CD reviews for it since last June.

Last night, I dreamed an entire short story, from beginning to end. When one of my daughters woke me at 7am, I took my notebook to the kitchen overlooking the sea, and made as many notes as possible.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been thus inspired. Many of my short stories owe their genesis to ideas or images salvaged from dreams.

My three-quarter page, 1600 word article “The Future Is Now” appears in the arts section of today’s Irish Times, arguing that fans of smart contemporary literature should be reading British and Irish science fiction.

Here are the two main quotes:

“While there are still those who patrol and defend both sides of the divide between genre fiction and the mainstream, taking pot shots at anyone daring to cross over, the signs are that the boundaries are becoming increasingly porous, and that smart, critically-acclaimed contemporary genre fiction is being produced by a new generation of unapologetically science fictional writers.”

And;

“If you refuse to read a book simply on the grounds that it might contain some speculative or fantastical elements, you could find yourself missing out on some of our most inventive and excitingly contemporary literature.”

This is my first professional article in a national newspaper, and goes some way towards realising my teenage ambition to be a journalist.

You can read the full article in today’s edition of the paper, or on its website here: The Future Is Now