Planting Flags

I’ve just added a page for my articles and interviews. All two of them.

Firstly, there is my anti-manifesto manifesto, No More New World Orders:

It is understandable that Harrison can be a touch fractious on the subject. A writer of any skill strives to escape such chains and it must be galling to see each free generation approaching, desperate to slap on the irons. More galling still to see some writers rushing to embrace their jailers. The history of people like Harrison and Sterling suggests that there is very little point in manifesto building apart from at best, a critical propaganda organ, and at worst, a platform for posturing. Of course, neither of these have anything to do with producing fiction. With this in mind the Young Turks would do well to burn their manifestos, throw away their flags, cast off their hair shirts and get on with the business of producing art. That’s the hard part: leave the petty squabbling to the critics.

Then there is my interview with Richard Morgan :

Market Forces the screenplay – written long before the novel, yes, bulked up from an original short story I’d failed to find a publisher for – was a miserable experience for me. In the end, it felt like being stuck in that garbage compressor in Star Wars. Struggling to keep your head above water, flailing about looking for something to brace against an ever-tightening sense of constriction as control of the project slips from your grasp. That wasn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just the nature of the beast. A movie script is never a finished product, at best it’s only ever a working template, and you never really own it the way you do a book. Screen-writing requires you to be pragmatic, amenable to compromise, endlessly sociable and a good team player. I score very low on all of those, which is why I write novels.

One day I might get round to doing some more.