One Year Since Release Day: My Bookiversary Progress Report

Finalists and their representatives for the Philip K Dick Award, Seattle, April 2014.

It’s my first Bookiversary today! I can’t believe it’s a year since the release of A Calculated Life by 47North. And, since release day, I’ve made a bunch of new friends within the SF community and enjoyed the continuing support of friends who read my novel when it was self-published.

So thanks to everyone! It’s been so exciting to find new readers and receive positive feedback from reviewers. Here’s a review by literary critic Adam Roberts on Sibilant Fricative, which I particularly appreciated. Full review here.

Charnock’s Manchester is quite unlike Blade Runner’s hyperreal city, and her prose creates a much more rounded sense of actual life than the deliberately flattened paranoidal patterns of Phil Dick’s writing. What she shares with Dick is the ability to write unease.

Extract from Sibilant Fricative review.

So what’s been going on since release day? Well… I’ve attended three conventions as a panellist and two awards ceremonies (The Philip K Dick Award in Seattle and The Kitschies in London). Although I didn’t win either award I was Over The Moon to be in the mix. During the past 12 months I’ve also continued to thrash away at my computer keyboard on new writing projects and I’ve made a research trip to China for my next novel. I’m well on the way with this second novel and I’ve also completed a novella. I’ll keep you updated on progress.

So from here until the New Year I’ll be in the writing cave. I’ve set myself some pretty demanding targets; Christmas pudding and custard will taste all the better if I meet them.

Looking ahead to January 2015, I’ll be interviewed at the British Science Fiction Association in London at their regular monthly meeting, which is open to the public. More details will follow.

For the more voracious readers among you it might be worth considering the Kindle Unlimited book subscription service, which launched in the UK today. There’s a 30-day free trial if you’d like to give this service a test run.

Onwards!