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Not my title, but Lucy Barrett’s, in today’s Guardian Media Supplement. It’s an interesting piece: UK-oriented, but thought-provoking. I’m not sure it’s entirely right, though. Barrett says:

A few years ago there was a lot of hype surrounding The Da Vinci Code. Although I had read nothing else by Dan Brown, I too felt compelled to buy it. And I read it avidly. Five years on, I could not tell you much about the plot, but I always thought that if a moment in time like that could be bottled, then publishers all over the world would buy it in crateloads and books could become real brands.

But books are not brands. Or are they? Penguin certainly believes that they could be.

Last year, Penguin signed a new author, Charles Elton. Because it was so excited about Elton, the publisher wanted to do something a little different to the usual press releases and distribution and pricing deals. Because of the nature of the book, a poster campaign would have not been the right solution. So it drafted in BBH – the ad agency behind Persil and Audi – for a project to launch Elton’s novel, Mr Toppit. The agency’s head of engagement planning, Jason Gonsalves – a man well known in the industry to think outside the usual confines of marketing – took on the challenge. The aim was to take a different approach from the usual run-of-the-mill press and poster ads and instead to create what he refers to as “heat” ahead of the launch.

Elton’s novel is about a fictional book called The Hayseed Chronicles. If you read the Times two weeks ago then you might have spotted a full-page ad in the form of an announcement from a fake organisation called The Hayseed Foundation, which complained about the use of the family’s name and other aspects of Mr Toppit. It also directed people to a website for a full statement on the matter. If you clicked on it you discovered that www.hayseedfoundation.com had ‘crashed’, and were redirected to a website dedicated to the book.

‘OK,’ Barrett concedes, ‘so it’s not the most amazing marketing idea ever, but it created an unusual buzz around the launch of a book.’ I must have missed that particular buzz. Actually, I’d suggest that publishers’ PR are continually thinking of ideas like this (better than, often) without needing to pay Advertising Agencies wallopping great fees to think on their behalf. The internet, as Barrett’s piece goes on to say, has opened up a lot of low-cost options.

But there’s a misthink in the process, I’d say. Citing the Da Vinci Code (a left-field success) isn’t the best place to start. Because if we ignore black swans like that title, it’s not books that are brands; it is authors. People’s reading tastes cluster. If a reader chances upon a title they like they’ll mine out the whole seam. This might mean reading all the other titles by that author; or it might be finding as many similar titles as possible. Gollancz have done a good job of plugging into this latter phenomenon with a set of well-chosen ‘masterworks’ series (they’ve a very nicely designed Space Opera series coming soon, which even includes a title by yours truly).

One significant SF buzz at the moment is the imminent release of the new China Miéville. The book is called The City and the City, and it looks very interesting; but my point right here is that people are more likely to think of it as ‘the new China Miéville’, and less likely to think of it as ‘The City and the City’. That’s how we conceptualise the field.

This doesn’t mean publishers should be putting money into marketing their authors as people, of course. Authors as people are, more often than not, mild-mannered desk jockeys. I feel I can speak for pretty much all my fellow word-extruders when I say this. Authors are capable of almost heroic powers of underwhelmability when put on a public platform. But this doesn’t matter, because it’s not the author as a person readers are interested in (even if they think they are). It’s the author’s style; the distinctive quality that links an author’s books. Bottle that, and market that as a brand, and you’d really be getting somewhere.

Inspired by SF-author and all round excellent person Paul Cornell, who posts images of his creative working space here, I’ve decided to take the plunge and make public a photo of the room in which most of my stuff gets written:

This, as the sharper-eyed amongst you will see, is the inside of a Costa Coffee Shop. It’s the Staines Two Rivers branch, to be precise, because that’s where I work, mostly (sometimes, for the sake of variety, I sit in other coffee shops in the Staines area). I install myself at a table, shortly after dropping my kids at school, and arm myself with: a large black coffee; my iRiver plugged into my ears; and a laptop that is very specifically not connected to the internet (or I’d spend my time surfing, not writing). The fact of the matter is I find writing at home in my study less productive, because there are simply too many distractions there. The key to getting the writing done is minimising the distractions.

Bonus: check out this excellent navigable e-verson of Roald Dahl’s writing hut. Now that’s a fine, basic, distraction-free zone.

As a reader and a writer, I have several obsessions, ideas and themes I return to again and again. Multiple realities and alternate histories. Masked avengers and heroic legacies. Immortal swordsmen and gaslit detectives. But one of my obsessions as a reader has been little exercised as a writer, until now.

I’ve always had a fondness for what I like to call “Secret Services,” clandestine government agencies tasked with investigating and policing the supernatural. Last fall, after rereading all of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and its related series with its BPRD, and watching with my daughter the first episodes of Jay Stephens’s sublime Secret Saturdays (which ironically doesn’t make my list, as the Saturdays don’t appear to have any connection with the government, clandestine or otherwise), I got a wild hair. I would track down all of the examples of Secret Services I could find on my shelves, and profile each of them on my blog, Roberson’s Interminable Ramble.

I figured that it would probably take me a few weeks to get through them all. Ha. Ha ha. Ha.

Now, months later, I’ve finally reached the end of my completely arbitrary analysis of Secret Services, ending with my own contribution to the list, MI8 as seen in my new novel End of the Century. And here they all are, for your delectation and diversion.

• Introduction
• The Guardians
• Department 7
• Bureau 13
• Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense
• Vector 13
• The Diogenes Club
• Delta Green
• The Hellsing Organization
• CIB
• Section Zero
• Q
• The Laundry
• Department Q
• Bureau of Extra-Dimensional Liabilities and Management
• Torchwood
• MI-13
• The Lodge
• Occult Crimes Taskforce
• MI8

There are a number of other examples that were suggested to me as I went along, which ultimately didn’t make the cut–usually because the agencies in question weren’t “clandestine” but instead operated in worlds that knew all about them and the existence of the supernatural, or because they were clandestine but didn’t have ties to any government. I am positive, though, that there are examples that I’ve missed, in which case I can only humbly point to that word “arbitrary” above.

If like me you’re a fan of this kind of thing, I’d recommend checking out End of the Century, in stores now. And if you prefer immortal swordsmen, gaslit detectives, heroic legacies, multiple realties and the like–well, you might want to check out End of the Century, too, because there’s loads of that kind of stuff in there, as well.

The second part of a two-part interview with me is up today on Newsarama. In this part, I got to talk some about Midwinter, and here’s what I had to say about it:

I always use the catchphrase, “It’s the Dirty Dozen with elves.” It’s story about how every 100 years, there’s a winter that comes to the land of Faery. It’s the land of summer twilight, where the weather never changes. What makes winter come is a big part of what the story is. We have our main character, Mauritaine, who was a one-time captain of the queen’s royal guard. He’s been imprisoned as a traitor but now has a chance to clear his name. In order to do that, he’s going on a mission where his survival is not a requirement — only the success of his mission. He and the people he chooses from among the other prisoners to help fulfill his mission cross the country, and we get to see what this place is like and who inhabits it. While all this is happening, there’s a war brewing. And all of this sort of comes to a head at the same time.

There’s a lot of people hitting each other with swords. There’s a lot of wizards on battlefields hurling magical things at each other. There’s a romance. And some humor as well.

I was just reading the latest in the AV Club’s excellent reviews of Star Trek: The Series Without a Subtitle, and something occurred to me: old TV shows had a tremendous advantage over modern ones in casting aliens. One of the episodes under review is “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” in which the great Ted (“Lurch”) Cassidy plays, not just an alien, not just an android, not just an alien android, but a murderous alien android with an Oedipal complex. He gets lots of good moments in the episode (maybe the best being one in which he demolishes Asimov’s Three Laws in about three terrifying seconds). I don’t agree with Zack Handlen (the AV Club reviewer) about Cassidy’s costume in this episode: one wouldn’t expect an ancient android built by nonhumans to be running around in blue jeans or a tuxedo. Another culture’s clothes ought to look odd to us: if it were right, it’d be wrong.

But, really, the point I set out to make is: Cassidy makes this role work because he doesn’t look or sound like anyone else on the set. (He’s the tall guy in this old photo. Anyone who’s heard his deep resonant voice isn’t likely to forget it–see/hear a multitude of examples at YouTube.) His special effect was who he was.

Likewise, the original Andorian on Star Trek was played by Reggie Nalder. He’s quite plausible because, even without makeup, he exuded a certain inhuman malignant intelligence.

Character actors of this sort are a dying breed in modern Hollywood (if they aren’t utterly extinct), and there is an oppressive sameness to modern casts. Everyone is about the same height. Everyone is about the same age. Everyone sounds very similar.

The result isn’t necessarily bad casting, but it can easily become boring casting. If I ran the zoo were in charge of rebooting the Star Trek franchise, I’d be trying represent a wider cross-section of humanity… and I’d be trying to find some actors who can maybe project a little alienness even before they go into makeup (or the CGI equivalent).

SF Grandmaster and living legend Michael Moorcock is blowing out the b-day candles today. If you don’t have a copy of his Pyr release THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE, the gift-giving season is a great time to rectify that (gentle holiday nudge…;)). Have a good one, Mike!

It is what it says on the label. Cybermancy Incorporated, the long unavailable novel that introduced the Bonaventure and Carmody families, is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. The list price is $4.99, but at the moment Amazon is offering it for only $3.99.

Readers of my personal blog may recall that this novel was previously made available through Wowio last winter, but the online outlet ran into some money troubles, and was acquired by another outfit, and along the way I removed the title from its offerings. (If you’re at all interested in the inside-baseball of all of this, check out this article on PW’s The Beat and work your way backwards.)

Here’s what I said about Cybermancy Incorporated back in February:

Sooner or later, I’m sure, I’ll succeed in tricking some publisher into reprinting the thing, but even then, it wouldn’t be this same text. The Bonaventure-Carmody characters started out as part of the shared world of San Cibola in the Clockwork Storybook days, but as they made the transition for the webzine to the novels published by Pyr and Solaris, they got tweaked a bit, moving away from the urban fantasy environment of San Cibola and into a more science fictional world (though admittedly a pulpish one). So the version of this novel that eventually gets reprinted will be one that takes place in some other alternate universe out in the Myriad, with revisions and changes here and there. No longer set in San Cibola, but in Recondito, California, most of the plot will be the same, but there’s be some significant differences.

If you’ve got a Kindle, and have ever had any interest in checking out the book, or are curious to find out more about the Carmody and Bonaventure families featured in Here, There & Everywhere, Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, Set the Seas on Fire, and the forthcoming End of the Century, here’s your chance.

Terrific review and breakdown of the recently-released Pyr antho FAST FORWARD 2, over at Little Bits of Everything. Check it out! LBOE’s Final verdict: “This is a fantastic anthology that I look forward to rereading. I sincerely hope that FAST FORWARD becomes an annual anthology; the first two volumes are incredibly strong.”

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about an idea that’s become a standard trope in fiction the last decade or two, the “clandestine government agencies that investigate the occult.” It’s an idea that resonates with me, clearly, as a quick glance over my library of books, comics, and DVDs results in dozens of examples.

A couple of weeks ago, after rereading all of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and related comics, watching the first episodes of the new Fringe series, and enjoying the premier of Cartoon Network’s terrific new series Secret Saturdays (which isn’t quite the same thing, but close enough to push the same buttons), I decided maybe the universe was trying to send me a message. I’ve been tinkering with my own clandestine government agency of occult investigators the last few weeks, Bureau Zero (the American counterpart to the British agency MI8 that is featured in the forthcoming End of the Century), so I figured it might serve to run down the list of preiminent examples and see if I can’t identify some common characteristics.

The result is an irregular series of posts on my personal blog under the heading “Secret Services,” my blanket name for such outfits in fiction. So far I’ve worked my way through a little over a half-dozen examples, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. If this kind of thing interests you, come on over and check it out, won’t you?

io9, one of the coolest, mandatory-read sites in sf, spotlights my work with a cover illustration gallery — and I love that they chose to lead with the art for Pyr’s Robert Silverberg release, SON OF MAN! Big thanks to io9’s Charlie Jane Anders! Great title for the piece — “Revenge of the Giant Space Tentacle”. Awesome!