alex davis | It Doesn't Have To Be Right...

October 5, 2015
by iansales Leave a comment

Space Trekkin’

I know, I know, this blog is turning into one long series of posts promoting my books and stories, or posts about the DVDs I’ve watched. I need to write more about actual literature (genre or otherwise), about writing, about the stuff that interests me, and not just the cheap content I’m throwing up to prevent mildew from over-running everything… All of which is a somewhat roundabout way of saying – sorry! – that here comes Yet Another Promotional Post. YAPP. That’s what we’re going to call it round here from now on. Hey you, shut your YAPPing! It has a nice ring to it. Anyway, onward…

Tickety Boo Press, purveyors of the finest space opera known to humanity, have chosen to make their excellent wares yet more affordable, and have released a bundle of… not one! (obviously it wouldn’t be a “bundle” if it had only one book in it…), not two!, not even three! but four! count them, four! books in Space Trek! Technically speaking, it’s closer to 3.5, as it’s three novels and one novella. But no matter. The contents include Abendau’s Heir by Jo Zebedee, The Last War by Alex Davis, A Prospect of War by myself, and ‘Monochrome’ by Stephen Palmer. A veritable shit-ton of words for only £5.99, and excellent reading each and every one of them. Get it now while it’s hot! No, seriously, every copy has been heated to approximately 451° Fahrenheit… so it’s a good job this is one of those electronic book thingummies.

Anyway… BUY IT. NOW.

The omnibus – cunningly subtitled “volume one”, I see, promising yet more goodies to come – is available on Kindle from Amazon UK and Amazon US (and every other national instantiation of the Huge South American River, of course).

Normal services will be resumed soonish. I have several projects on the go at the moment, so my creative energies have been, and will be, directed at them, rather than at the latest person who is wrong on the internet. But who knows what strange written artefacts will appear here over the next few months. Not me, that’s for sure.

August 5, 2015
by iansales Leave a comment

Books do furnish a room

I may be putting up these book haul posts less frequently, but the book collection seems to grow at its usual pace. I take care to purchase fewer books each month than I read, so the TBR is being slowly whittled down. But the book-shelves are still double-stacked, and the spare room has books piled all over the floor. I’ve dumped lots of books I knew I’d never get around to reading at the charity shop; and I’ve foisted off quite a few genre books at the York and Sheffield socials, but I still need to have a big clear-out… Anyway, here are the latest additions.

Some new science fiction. Children of Time and The Last War I bought at Edge-Lit 4, where, of course, A Prospect of War made its first appearance in hardback. Aurora was purchased from a certain online retailer. I’ve already read Children of Time and Aurora, and they’ll both appear in my next Reading diary post.

Some mainstream(-ish) paperbacks. The War of the End of the World was a book I’d planned to read for a fiction-in-translation reading challenge back in 2012. The challenge foundered about halfway through the year, but some of the books I’d picked I still fancied trying. It’s taken me until now to buy a copy of this one. The Bone Clocks and Kolymsky Heights I bought in Harrogate, using a book voucher given to me by my employer, while in the town to hear Val McDermid interview Sara Paretsky at the Crime Festival. The Davidson was recommended by a number of people a couple of months ago, and though I kept an eye open no copies had appeared in my local charity shops. Collected Stories I bought after reading Jonathan McCalmont’s reviews of Salter’s short fiction on his blog, Ruthless Culture.

This was my prize from the Edge-Lit 4 raffle: six HP Lovecraft books in flash new hardback editions from PS Publishing. Given some of the other prizes, I think I did exceedingly well.

A pair of deep sea books. Ocean Outpost, a study of undersea habitats, was cheap on eBay. Discovering the Deep, a glossy coffee-table book thick with science, is a new publication.

Some genre paperbacks: Skin is an ARC, I’m reviewing it for Interzone; Wolves was on a couple of award shortlists last year; I’ve been a fan of Hanan al-Shaykh’s writing for several years, so I’m looking forward to reading her spin on One Thousand and One Nights; and The Saga of Eric Brighteyes is the second book in NewCastle Forgotten Fantasy series, which I bought because of course I really need to start collecting another series of books… Actually, it was cheap on eBay, so it’s not like I went out of my way for it.

A new Lawrence Durrell book. From the Elephant’s Back is a collection of previously-unpublished essays and letters was published by the University of Alberta. The Silkworm is the second pseudonymous crime novel by JK Rowling. I thought the first a bit meh, but my mother found this copy in a charity shop and after she’d read it she passed it on to me.