1. Complete enough material for a second short story collection
2. Complete at least the first two chapters of each of the three novels I currently have outlines for
3. Research and compile a viable proposal for the non-fiction book I want to write

I’m already nearly halfway towards achieving the first item on the list, and the other two are within reach, if I can find the necessary time and discipline over the next twelve months…

In addition, I:

• Had a story reprinted in Concept SciFi
• Was interviewed by Concept SciFi
• Sold a third story to Interzone (Memory Dust, coming Jan 2009)
• Sold a story to the Future Bristol anthology edited by Colin Harvey (What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done? coming April 2009)
• Co-wrote a short story with Aliette de Bodard (The Church of Accelerated Redemption, finishing touches currently being applied)
• Co-wrote a short story with Rob Starr (The Winding Curve, which appeared in Rob’s collection Sophistry by Degrees, Jan 2008)
• Was interviewed by SF Crowsnest
• Garnered excellent reviews for The Last Reef & Other Stories from The Fix, SF Crowsnest, Morpheus Tales, Interzone, etc
• Wrote another short story, Laptop Jack, that’s ready to go out to market…

I’ve increasingly found Elastic is becoming a burden rather than a pleasure. I’ve run it mostly in my spare time over the past six years (and occasionally part-time and full-time), and I’ve decided that I now want to focus on my own writing and spend more time with my family. Not only that, but I feel I’ve taken Elastic as far as it can go. We’ve had some great successes – in terms of reviews, awards, and sales – with, perhaps ironically, 2008 being the best year to date; however I feel I’ve hit a wall in my ability to expand the press further and my enthusiasm is starting to wane. Rather than wait until such time that I start to do a disservice to the authors, it seems better to quit whilst I’m ahead.

I’m personally sad about this for two reasons: 1) Elastic published my short story collection The Last Reef & Other Stories, and I was hoping they’d also publish the sequel, and 2) this drastically cuts down the available markets for short story writers, as so few of the larger publishers are interested in producing short story collections.

http://transmissionsfrombeyond.com/2008/12/transmission13/

1. Roswell
2. Carnival
3. Natalie
4. Mid Life Crisis
5. Fresh Meat
6. God’s Gift
7. Hot Rats
8. Life Goes Wrong
9. Chip Heads
10. Jetsam

JETSAM
By Gareth L Powell

Toby Milan thought he’d drowned. When Odette and Safak pulled him from the sea, his lungs were full of water and he was unconscious and bleeding from a knife wound to the thigh. They pulled him into Safak’s old twin engine Grumman sea plane and flew him to Barcelona, where he spent the next three days on a hotel bed in the Gothic Quarter, his leg wrapped in bandages.

On the fourth day, Odette brought him some crutches and took him out for dinner. It was raining. They ate in a restaurant on the twenty-seventh floor of a downtown hotel. She ordered squid with fried potatoes. She had a bag by her feet. As they waited for the food, she nudged it over to him. “Some new clothes and a passport,” she said.

Toby reached down and pulled a Russian hat from the bag. It was khaki with fur ear flaps. “Thank you,” he said.

The waiter came over with a bottle of red wine and Toby lifted his glass. “This is the second time you’ve saved me.”

Odette shrugged. She looked out at the yellow city lights and said: “I’m leaving.”

Toby lowered his drink. In the distance, lightning flashed silently over the flooded Mediterranean. He dropped the hat back into the bag.

“It’s Safak, he’s asked me to marry him.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

The squid arrived and they ate in silence. After the meal, she kissed him on the cheek and left him standing on the hotel’s slippery steps. He watched her climb into a cab in the rain. Then her turned his collar up and limped across the road to the bus station, where he bought a ticket to the container port. There were too many flooded reactors in Europe and he wanted to get out. He was hoping to find a ship that would take him East to India or China, or West to whatever remained of the United States.

…there’s more imagination crammed into these pages than you’ll find in an average sci-fi novel from a mainstream publisher. And it’s not just his imagination either. Powell is a bloody good writer. His prose is lyrical and drips with vivid description, slipped into the text so it never feels like the rhythm of the writing is bogged down. It does mean that prose is economical but evokes more in one sentence of description than I’ve seen in a paragraph from more seasoned writers.

Read the full review here: http://macmillannewwriterpart2.blogspot.com

I’m pleased to announce that my short story Memory Dust will be published in January in issue 220 of Interzone. This is the third of my stories to appear in the magazine.

220 promises to be an excellent issue, as it also features stories by fellow writers Rudy Rucker, Jason Stoddard, Neil Williamson, Leah Bobet, and Eugie Foster.

Full details here: http://ttapress.com/575/interzone-220-goes-to-press/