Edinburgh and beyond

I have just slept for three and a half days. This may be an exaggeration but it certainly feels like it. Having had a delayed flight back from Sweden, I got two hours' sleep before flying to Edinburgh for the book festival. After four events in three days there, I then came home to organize a small but fun film festival in the village where I live.






















All good fun, and three successful things; words written in Sweden, events went well in Edinburgh, with Mal Peet, Ian Beck and Philip Reeve, and a small but satisfied crowd for each of the two nights of our film festival.

On the first night we showed the wonderful A Matter of Life and Death, which was timely because it's providing inspiration for the screenplay my brother and I are writing just now. This is another project which is going well at the moment, and brings me to my next trip: we're off to NYC on Saturday to scout some locations for some scenes of the film.

Including this one, the only active cemetery left in Manhattan.


















New York is one of those cities that cemeteries don't seem to belong in to me. I know this is illogical but maybe it's because it's just so full of life...

New York, that is, not the cemetery.

Swedish Haiku - #2

Ägget

Jag simmade i

ett ägg. I Hagabadet

hittade jag mig.

Swedish Haiku - #1

Värk

Vinden viskar i

björkarna. Jag är hemma, men

jag har forsvunnit.

My Swordhand is Singing in Swedish

Not much to say about this apart from the fact I think it must be at least the twelfth foreign edition* of My Swordhand is Singing, and one with a special place in my heart.

It's not out till next year, but the cover seems to be fixed on, or rather the title, since the cover is the wonderful UK one.

The titles translates as 'Those who walk again.'

Heh heh heh...


*I've checked with people who know; it's actually the thirteenth :-)

White Crow: enhanced e-reader

I'm really excited to say that White Crow is now available as an enhanced e-reader. Not only that, but it has the honour of being the very first enhanced e-reader that Orion have published. For a pound more than the physical book, punters can buy it for iPad, Kindle and Sony e-reader, and get a bunch of extra material, for example, a photo gallery, which not only contains photos of the village of Dunwich which inspired the book, but also things like pages from my notebook, an example of which is shown here.

The main reason for buying it I suppose, would be the addition of a short story, called Dreams of the White Crow, which gives a little vignette into Ferelith's world...

Being Orion's first, it was a steep learning curve for everyone, including me, but I'm pleased with the results, and impressed with the speed with which the project came about.

And this morning it enabled me to do the slightly perverse thing of buying my own book online, just for the fun of doing so. Not the best idea financially perhaps, but, yes, fun, nevertheless.