Posted
2:19 pm
by Ken
Looking back, looking ahead
Happy New Year!
For me 2025 has been mostly a year of spending time with family and with getting on with stuff, and with letting some stuff pile up while working on my next novel, provisionally titled
Empire Time. Progress has been slower than I’d hoped, but my agent and my editor have been very understanding. It’s now close to the end of the first draft, but I have a major plot thread to untangle and tie off, so that’s my writing priority for now (immediately after sorting out some of the other stuff I had let pile up, mostly urgent admin and, well,
literal stuff piling up).
Things I didn’t write about but probably should have: I had a good time at
Reconnect and at the first
Pictcon, a one-day convention which was successful in every way and is scheduled for a return this year.
Some of the literal stuff piling up has been recent issues of
New Scientist which I've yet to read, but the good people who work there weren’t to know that when they asked me to be
interviewed for their Book Club about Iain M. Banks and his novel
The Player of Games, which I re-read with much enjoyment and talked about with enthusiasm, as you can see.
Alison Flood was an excellent interviewer, and made it a relaxed conversation. My office as you see it in the video is
after I had tidied it.
Looking ahead: I’m
reading and being interviewed as part of the
Beacon Book Festival in Greenock in February.
For local writers and readers I’m giving a talk on writing science fiction to the
Greenock Writers’ Club on 4 March. For members only, but new members are always welcome!
Looking back
and ahead: in late 2024 my brother James came to Greenock to visit me and to give a talk, illustrated with slides and statistics, which went down very well with a large local audience. The topic of religious imagery on Scottish war memorials may seem narrow, even niche, but the way Professor James MacLeod handles it, I can assure you it’s not. Now, everyone in the world who wants to and can spare £5 has a chance to see it online, live on 15 January. Tickets
here.