Please allow me to clear up a misunderstanding.

A couple of weeks ago, a letter appeared in The Guardian accusing their reviewer Eric Brown of bias, for reviewing too many books from genre publisher Solaris. The letter was signed by “Gareth Powell, Bristol”.

As several people in the SF field have already assumed that I wrote this letter, I’d like to make it clear that I did not. I have no beef with either Eric, who gave my own novel a decent enough review in April, or Solaris, who recently published the Shine anthology, which featured one of my stories.

I’ve already contacted both Eric and Solaris to set the record straight, and they have both been most understanding. I have also spoken to the Letters Editor at The Guardian. As the letter was signed “Gareth Powell”, without use of the middle initial, it seems unlikely it was a deliberate attempt to impersonate me, and so I’ll have to write it off as an unfortunate coincidence, and be grateful that it didn’t lead to greater misunderstandings.

The fourth podcast from Abaddon & Solaris Books features an interview that I took part in at Eastercon in April. Here’s the blurb:

“Jenni Hill catches up with Jetse de Vries and Gareth L. Powell – respectively the anthologist of and one of the contributors to the upcoming Shine anthology – at EasterCon, and talks about the anthology and the convention. A good time was had by all.”

To download the podcast, click here.

Issue #228 of Interzone includes Andy Hedgecock’s review of the Shine anthology (Solaris 2010).

“Gareth L. Powell and Aliette de Bodard have been consistently impressive Interzone contributors in recent years so it is no surprise their collaboration on ‘The Church of Accelerated Redemption’ yields rich and original insights into the lonely and disaffected life of a computer engineer. The tension arises when unexpected events offer the chance of change. A neatly crafted story of AI and human possibility.”

“The Church of the Accelerated Redemption” gives those concerned with their effect on the environment the chance to earn back some karma via the use of ‘Artificial Intercessors’ — sub-singularity AIs that pray on behalf of the Church’s sponsors. Both Gareth L Powell and Aliette de Bodard who wrote the story, have earned considerable reputations in their own right; in collaboration de Bodard brings scientific weight to the story, while Powell’s innate romanticism makes it soar. An outstanding early contender for Year’s Best lists.

SF Signal has published an interview where Aliette de Bodard and I talk about the story we co-wrote for the Shine anthology.

Read the interview here: click for link.

Liz de Jager reviews the Shine anthology on SFRevu:

I looked first at The Church of Accelerated Redemption a collaboration between Gareth L Powell and Aliette de Bodard and found myself immediately sucked into their wonderfully intimate story of a computer engineer’s struggle with loneliness and discontent. I like Aliette’s writing having read parts of her novel Servant of the Underworld, yet in this story I found something altogether different – a main character whose search for meaning in a dead end job unexpectedly takes a turn she could not have predicted. Wonderful and full of promise, I liked her attitude and the fact that although she was pretty scared, she wasn’t too scared to grab a new future for herself.

Read the full review here.

Happy New Year to you all.

2010 looks to be another busy year. First off, my debut novel Silversands will be launched by Pendragon in April, at the annual convention of the British Science Fiction Association. Hopefully the event will also see the launch of two anthologies, each containing a new short story of mine: The Shine anthology from Solaris, which features “The Church of Accelerated Redemption”, a story I co-wrote with Aliette de Bodard; and Conflicts, an anthology from NewCon press, featuring a short story I wrote called “Fallout”.

In addition to the above, I’m making good progress with my second novel, and writing further short stories, which I hope will one day comprise a second short story collection, following on from 2008′s The Last Reef and Other Stories.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to co-write a 10,000 word novelette with the popular Interzone and Angry Robot author, Aliette de Bodard.

The story we wrote is called “The Church Of Accelerated Redemption” and I’m pleased to  announce that it will be appearing in Shine, an anthology of near-future, optimistic science fiction edited by Jetse de Vries.

The book is due from Solaris Books in April 2010, and there will probably be a Shine launch party at Odyssey, the 2010 British EasterCon, which is being held in Heathrow in April.

In the meantime, the anthology is already available to pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

From Monday 30 November, Jetse will be running a competition on the book’s website. He will be posting an excerpt from each of the sixteen stories in the anthology and challenging readers to guess which of four alternative endings to each story is the correct one, and which authors wrote which excerpt.