Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Writing News

Good news on the selling front. Via Jeremy Lassen’s blog (I think) I’ve learnt that Prador Moon is in the trade paperback top five at Borderlands Books and that this is not the first time it has been there. Checking there myself I see that the month before last Brass Man was in the top ten paperbacks too. Shiny.

Also, in a break between books, I decided to sit down and produce some short stories. Maybe because I’m now more used to writing at length, these stories grew in the telling so I ended up with Alien Archaeology at 21,000 words and Owner Space at 18,000 words. I hesitate to call them ‘short’ since the stories I have submitted to magazines have usually fallen between 5,000 and 15,000 words. The good news is that though it’s long, Sheila Williams at Asimov’s has accepted Alien Archaeology.

11 comments:

Chris said...

Neil, if no-one takes "Owner Space" then I'll take a read - it's the perfect length for possible inclusion in a future Triquorum.

I'm nowhere near Asimov's in the pay-league, but I do pay a small amount...

Chris said...

Bollocks... just realised I spelt Neal with an 'i' - sorry, Neal.

Neal Asher said...

Chris, it'll be off to Interzone first, but if they kick it out of the door I'll get in contact.

Colin, it'll be published somewhere. If a magazine won't take it, then I'll sit down and rewrite, then send again. This is my usual approach.

Ed S. said...

Speaking of Prador Moon, is there any likelihood of it coming out in a hardcover edition? I assume this would have to be on the UK side.

Alex Cull said...

Hoping to read all these in due course - hopefully won't be long before they appear as a collection in book form...

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's naive of me to ask this, but is there some way you could sell the story like selling a song on iTunes, so that fans could buy it directly?

Daniel said...

Neal, this may please you.
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/004297.html

A link to the top 20 Sci-Fi threats. And no list is complete without the Jain.

Neal Asher said...

ed. s, I doubt Night Shade Books will be doing a hardcover now, and they're American. As to the UK side, I've retained the British rights so it may come out in a collection from Macmillan. And that's a reply to you as well, Alex.

gla bar-or, yeah, I guess I's like to get into something like that, but I would have to be a lot more computer literate than I am. To be honest, if you look at the post from Chris above, I don't really have the time, since I can't produce enough to keep up with demand from publishers.

Daniel, thanks for that - nice to see I have made a memorable threat!

Bob Lock said...

I think your giant crabs are a scarier threat than the Jain, Neal.

But I suppose since you've been using that new shampoo on your groin they have diminished somewhat... hur hur

Bob :)

Chris said...

Gal, an interesting idea, but I don't think it would be marketable, to pay to download a single short story... perhaps if the download was an mp3 recording of the author reading the story, that maybe that would be worth looking at, with each download costing whatever iTunes ask for.

Anonymous said...

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Sorry for spamming your blog.

RJ