IRON ANGEL Launch, The Gadgey, and Touching Charles Stross's Short and Curlies.

Lots of news.

A short story of mine called The Gadgey is up on the Strange Horizons website. This was something I wrote a while back, after SCAR NIGHT, but before that book was published. And with all the strange twists of life surrounding my first book sale, I forgot about the story for a long time before looking for a home for it. Anyhoo, I'm really pleased Strange Horizons decided to publish it, as it's a deeply serious work. Much like this blog post.

Iron Angel has also been released in the USA and Germany. To celebrate this, we had the launch as close to midway between those two countries as is possible -- without travelling very far from my home. The venue turned out to be Waterstones bookshop on Princes Street in Edinburgh.

My agent Simon Kavanagh and my editor Peter Lavery arrived by train from London. My mobile rang. "How far is the hotel from the station?" Simon said.

"Erm. Half an hour's walk?" I replied, not really knowing the answer.

"Sod that. I'm getting a taxi."

Peter's dulcet tones sounded in the background. "No, I don't think it's that far. Ten or fifteen minutes."

He was right. I agreed. But the damage had already been done. Simon hailed a cab, while Peter set off on foot.

Fifteen minutes later, Peter arrived at the hotel first.

Simon answered my call. "God, he's not there already, is he? I'll never hear the end of it."

"Where are you?"

He didn't know. "There's a semi-circle of grass, with benches, some trees. Is that near the hotel?"

"Do you see a Boots?"

"No."

"Do you see a spire?"

"Yes."

And so it went. Two people standing a hundred yards apart on the same street, yet unable to locate each other without mobile phones.
Friends, family, and some new faces showed up to join us at the bookshop. I tend to fret at these things. My feelings about public speaking have now lessened from sheer terror to bone-deep fear. I was the boy who went through five years of high school without putting his hand up once. So I tried to keep things brief. I did not expect so many people to buy books. That was a genuine surprise.

Thank you, sincerely.

And a big slàintemhath to the Waterstones staff, who were great. Seats, podium, wine, an impressive wall of Iron Angel copies. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't expected that either. I arrived, slightly confounded by it all, and without a pen.

We moved en masse to the Traverse Theatre Bar for a drink, before heading out in groups for a curry with Iain Banks and Adele, Ken Macleod, Hal Duncan, and Andrew Wilson. Caragh's dad arrived with a huge rubber Doctor Who alien mask he'd bought at the bookshop. We talked about books, publishing, poker, pool and drugs, the usual things writers talk about with publishers and agents. Sadly, the logistics of moving 16 people onwards to another venue proved too much and, after the meal, I missed some friends who had to leave the Traverse to catch trains home.

My memory becomes slightly hazy from here, but I do remember standing outside the Traverse with Simon and Euan, and we were all chatting to Charlie Stross and then stroking his beard. I don't remember why, except that the discussion had turned to the similarities between beards and pubes.

Poor Andrew was looking a bit wobbly by now, yet still managed to negotiate the steps down to the bar with a kind of woozy grace, after which he moved on to glasses of water. Hal disappeared off to catch his train, got lost, and then reappeared a while later, having missed the last train back to Glasgow.

Next day, we explored Edinburgh with Hal and Caragh. Hal and me signed some books in the Transreal Fiction bookshop in the Grassmarket. Cool place. Caragh bought a SEE YOU JIMMY hat, which we all wore. At first I did post the pics here, but certain people (I'm not naming names, Simon) were too embarrassed to be seen cavorting in a daft bunnet with orange hair, and so I removed them.

But I can show these mysterious strangers, who might be anybody.




Someone (I'm not naming names, Simon) thinks that they "look a bit like a superhero." You can even see the cheeky grin under that tartan.

In the Evening we joined a ghost tour. The City of the Dead Tour took us into the Covenanters Prison and Black Mausoleum in Greyfriars kirkyard, the haunt of the famous Mackenzie Poltergeist. My friend Beck, who is a guide on one of these tours tells me that 2 or 3 unlucky tourists are attacked by this unseen entity each month. Usually they're burned or bitten. People often faint. Unfortunately we didn't see any ghostly goings on. I'd have been quite happy to have been attacked by a ghost, since any sort of evidence of consciousness existing after death would be worth the discomfort. Sadly I didn't get as much as a scratch.