Anyway, it won’t blow your mind, but a pleasant enough romp.

We begin with twelve contenders, which I’m going to pair up like against like according to origin and style.  That’ll give us six thrilling matches and six worthy winners, and I’m then going to let through my two favourite losers to give a field of eight.  Quarter finals, probably with some seeding, semi-finals, final, and there can be only one winner.  Like in that Highlander – except the contestants will actually be Scottish.  Thirteen matches all told, the broken bodies of eleven whiskies left scattered on sand soaked with … well, whisky, I guess, one standing over all, victorious, shaking weapons daubed with the whiskey of fallen adversaries at the lowering skies.  Oooh, the excitement!

‘But!’  I hear you cry, ‘whiskies are inanimate, and therefore cannot actually fight each other!’  Of course, you are right.  They shall wage war within the metaphorical Thunderdome of my face.  I shall assess them on LOOK – of the whisky, packaging, and marketing blurb, though I’m not going to be placing too much weight here, SMELL – the effect it has on my nose holes, and TASTE – what is it like in my mouth?  Since my palate is risible this will all be highly unspecific and will dwell on strange metaphors and unquantifiable emotional responses.  I shall then issue a CONCLUSION – giving a smart-arse summing up.  Other critics might suggest a suitable food, cigar, or time of day to pair with a whisky, I am going to suggest one of my point-of-view characters with whose chapters a given whisky might be aptly enjoyed.  Finally I shall don my black cap, sit in terrible judgement, and issue the RESULT of my deliberations, heaping glory upon one whisky and consigning the other to the flames of Mount Doom.  Or, more likely, drinking it later.  I mean, why throw good whisky down a volcano?

So, our six first round Deathmatches will be:

Lowland: Bladnoch 20 vs Auchentoshan 3 Wood

Speyside (Sherried): Glenfarclas 21 vs Aberlour 18

Island: Talisker 18 vs Highland Park 18

Speyside (Bourboned): AnCnoc 16 vs Longmorn 16

Islay: Bruichladdich Infinity vs Ardbeg Corryvreckan

Others: Dalmore 15 vs Balvenie Single Barrel

I’ve given all of them a thorough sampling and some favourites are already emerging, but I must say my opinion on a couple has shifted quite radically even over a few tastes.  When the brutal work of direct comparison begins, who knows what will be the outcome?  There’s everything to play for.  Or, since this is a Deathmatch – to kill for.

Is your mouth watering already?  I know mine is…

At that point I’d normally turn my attention to more detailed character and setting type stuff but this time around the process is having to shift about due to the availability of the copy editor, who needs to start in early June, which means my editor is already  marking up the manuscript as it stands and I’m going to be responding to her input first.  Probably no bad thing as I’m getting a little jaded and could do with an outside kick in the pants.  I want to do a re-read of all my other books while it’s away with the copy editor, soak up anything necessary for returning characters, and then do a character pass trying to get all the secondary characters as differentiated and vibrant as possible – replacing bland dialogue with more personalised, bland description with more specific, and so on.  Then after the copy edit comes back and I respond, there’ll probably be a setting pass where I try and get a bit more pop into the descriptive sections, an eye on the weather and the feel of the surroundings.  Which means hopefully towards the end of July I’ll be doing my final run-through trying to get the detail of the language as good as wot I is able to do.  Then proof read.

The UK cover is developing apace – map is done and roughs for the weapons are in, design work already underway.  So should be something to see there within the next few weeks.

In awards news, I note that The Heroes had been shortlisted for this year’s renewed and reconstituted British Fantasy Award which is now operating in a similar way to the original Gemmell notion I was espousing a few posts back, funnily enough, with an academy picking a shortlist and a jury picking a winner – or actually two winners in this case, one for horror and one for fantasy.  Interesting…  I also said I’d notify folks when the voting on the Legend Award opened, so with the greatest of fake reluctance I will link to the relevant voting page.  Fly, my flying monkeys, fly!

A WAY more thrilling contest comes upon us, though, and one EVEN MORE likely to get me drunk – Whisky Deathmatch.  A summary of the rules soon to come, followed by our first bout, Bladnoch 20 vs Auchentoshan 3 Wood in a Lowland BATTLE to the DOOM.

So a good deal smaller than the trade paperback, as one might expect, and though it has 611 pages rather than 502, about the same thickness.  Also a little bit paler, pretty much exactly the same colour as the Best Served Cold cover, in fact, for those afficionados of parchment tones among you (no need to be embarrassed about it).  Some tinkering on the blood spatter, a change to the design of the title (more commercial, was how it was explained to me).  And, of course, the addition of the little Sunday Times Bestselling Author thingy, because, I don’t know whether I mentioned this at all, The Heroes hit the Sunday Times Hardcover Bestseller List when it came out last January.  No.3, not sure whether I mentioned that.  On the bestseller list.  No.3.  Between 2 and 4.  Just sayin’.  Oh, that round white thing is a sticker with a quote from George RR Martin.  I hear he’s quite significant in the field of gritty fantasy at the moment…

Amazon says they’re available from 10th May, so I daresay you’ll see them turning up in your local bricks and mortar around that time as well.

I had inherited an old bottle of Macallan from my grandad (1960 vintage), and thought it would be kind of worthless.  Imagine my surprise when I was able to trade it for a dozen serious bottles of scotch and still have some change left over!  So, from Islay – Ardbeg Corryvreckan, Bruichladdich Infinity.  From the Highlands, just a Dalmore 15.  From the Islands, a Talisker 18 and a Highland Park 18, from the Lowlands, a Bladnoch 20 and an Auchentoshan 3 Wood.  From Speyside, an AnCnoc 16, Longmorn 16, Balvenie Single Barrel, Aberlour 18, and a Glenfarclas 21.

The differences in packaging and presentation always amuse me, I must say.  Look at the Bruichladdich (second from the left) in a can and with information technology type jargon on it – they so modern!  Look at the mid-80s gentleman’s club styling of the Glenfarclas (third from right) – they so traditional!  The plucky folks at Bladnoch couldn’t afford a marketing consultant so they just used an old milk-bottle and stuck the label on with spit.  The Longmorn on the far right has had a fancy relaunch and hence sports some truly ludicrous packaging, with articulated magnetic box and leather footed bottle.  Really.  Cos I often find when I put the bottle down the jarring impact is most upsetting and I think to myself – I don’t care what it tastes like, what I really want is a whisky whose bottle-bottom is somehow softened for my added convenience.  THEN I’ll feel like I’ve arrived.

If anyone’s interested in hearing more about this self-indulgent voyage into my own navel, let me know.  I’m not really a tasting notes kind of guy, but I may well pair them up and compare them in a grudge match styley, a blood-sport tournament of whiskies in which there can be only one winner…

Or, if no one’s interested (and I wouldn’t blame you), maybe I’ll just drink ‘em in contemplative silence.

The cover art for the limited edition of Best Served Cold from the ever wonderful Subterranean Press.  I’ve been a big admirer of Swanland for some time, but he’s gone for a slightly less fantastical, more realistic style than usual with this and I think it suits the book rather nicely.  Both numbered (limited to 500) and lettered (limited to 26) copies will include five black and white interior illustrations by the aforementioned Mr. Swanland, and from what I’ve seen of the roughs those will kick quite a sizeable quantity of ass as well.  Order early to avoid disappointment…

When I first started writing I did it in extreme secrecy, scared to lay bare my sensitive innermost ramblings to the world.  But after maybe six months working on the loose collection of drivel that would later become sharpened into the modern masterpiece that is The Blade Itself, I felt the need to consult some kind of outside authority, to get some guidance as to whether what I was doing was utterly worthless or not quite utterly worthless.  My mother worked as an English teacher, an educational publisher, is widely read and possessed of razor-edged critical faculties, particularly where her own children are concerned.  My father was an academic and university administrator, also widely read though in somewhat different areas, perhaps.  My brother is like an older, less handsome version of me, also widely read and with a more than passing familiarity with genre.  I knew they’d tell it to me straight.  And they have, ever since.  I can’t articulate how vital discussing my writing with them has been, especially in those early days before landing a deal.  They helped me work out where I was going right and wrong, both at the micro and macro levels, and in giving me the confidence to continue, as well as just convincing me that there was actually something there worth working on.  Hey, even if I never got published, it was a fun point of conversation within the family.  Mum tended to look at the detail of the way I was writing, Dad tended to look more at the plotting and development, Brother gave a less detailed summing up.  Usually I’d write blocks of four or five chapters, revise them carefully to my own satisfaction, present, discuss, revise.

Over time they’ve had less to say, as I’ve started to get a better grip on the basics and my editor has naturally become the more important influence on what I’m doing, but they still read each part as I finish it and make suggestions and observations.  They tend to be relatively general things these days – I’m worried about where you’re going with this plotline, I thought this sequence was flabby, I thought the pacing was off here, I thought this character wasn’t working that well.  Generally I don’t act immediately on anything they tell me, but make notes and try to bear it in mind going forward and when I come back to revise.  Sometimes I’ll disagree with them.  Sometimes they’ll disagree with each other.  But I’d certainly consider carefully when they did agree with each other.  I think the most important function these days is the simple affirmation that what you’re doing is moving in the right direction, is basically good (whatever definition of good you choose to use).  Confidence can be a pretty plastic thing, and especially at the start of a project I find I’m prone to be very worried about whether what I’m doing is going to turn out right.  A set of reliable readers are invaluable in getting you over that hump…

But for now, phew, feels good to sweat out those excess pounds…

The second interesting thing was that I watched a panel called, ‘A Clarke for Fantasy’.  For those of you unaware the Clarke is a British award for the best sci-fi book of the year.  It considers the full range of the genre, from chunky space-opera to hard sf of ideas to literary fiction with a scientific twist and frequently causes interesting arguments over definition or quality of one kind or another.  It’s decided by a jury of writers, professionals and critics selected afresh every year.  There’s some effort afoot to do something similar for fantasy, and this panel attempted to take a stab at how that might work by assembling a shortlist of six books from the full breadth of fantasy published this year (From The Heroes to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake) and giving a panel of five an hour in front of an audience to argue out a winner.  Judges were given the option to nominate books for exclusion then, if others objected, which they frequently did, to champion ones they thought should remain, a series of tough votes eventually narrowed the field down to four, then two, and finally to a (by no means uncontested) winner.  Which was, incidentally, The Heroes, imagine that.  The prize money?  £0.  But it was a fascinating process to watch.

The jurors were highly critical, which is to say they started from the viewpoint that these were a worthwhile shortlist and then were tough in their analysis.  There was little gushing.  There was at least as much discussion of weaknesses as strengths.  Above all there was a wide-ranging and rigorous effort to compare.  Which were more ambitious in their goals?  Which were more successful in achieving them?  Which were original?  Which were better in terms of characterisation, prose, evocation of setting?  Which were tight and which meandered?  At least three books (including The Heroes) were challenged by various jurors on whether they really constituted fantasy.  There was no clear consensus, there was sometimes quite impassioned argument on behalf of one book or another which sometimes swayed a juror one way or the other.  The Heroes was the favourite of only one judge, and that very narrowly, but was the least favourite of none, and won in the end through relatively broad support and a sequence of 3 against 2 votes.

It was the rigour, analysis, and application of the same standards to all, that put me more than ever in favour of this type of method for judging an award, as opposed to an academy or public vote.  Individual juries will always have their wrinkles, and I’m sure there will always be issues that can be taken with any result, but at least they’ve all read the books on the shortlist, considered them, compared them, argued over them, and made an informed group decision as to which one is the best, however they choose to define it.

I’m a big believer in the Gemmell award, I like that there should be something specifically for the heroic/epic, and it’s entirely fitting that it should commemorate David Gemmell, an important and much-loved champion of that form.  I think the organisers have done great things at a very difficult task in getting something going, I certainly don’t mean to criticise them.  But I’m getting increasingly worried about the voting process, which is purely by internet poll.  Or in fact by two – one to establish a shortlist, another to decide the winner.

I feel that with the Gemmell there’s a statement of – ‘here’s an important and popular slice of our genre that isn’t taken particularly seriously, and it deserves to be taken seriously, discussed and examined because it’s not just popular it’s also good’ – a statement with which I would largely agree – but then in the selection process, ‘goodness’ by any definition is entirely ignored in favour of popularity.  In fact not even popularity (since if it was based purely on popularity, GRRM, selling 40,000 books a week, would be the clear winner this year, and surprisingly he hasn’t even made the shortlist) but on which book or writer has the most committed fanbase and the degree to which they become mobilised to vote.  There is no discussion or examination, necessarily.  It seems deeply unlikely most voters will have read much of the extended longlist, or even the whole shortlist.  It seems perfectly possible many voters will only have read the book they vote for.  There’s the risk it becomes a campaigning contest in which even committed readers of epic fantasy, let alone more general readers, aren’t particularly interested.

I’ve said several times that I liked the original concept for the Gemmell Award – a public vote to produce a shortlist of five – followed by a jury to pick a winner from those five.  It seemed to give a good mixture of popular input and critical comparison.  I’m now feeling that more than ever.  I can see that a jury is a tough thing to organise every year.  But for the world fantasy award, for example, a juror might need to read literally hundreds of books.  For the Gemmell as originally conceived only 5.  Maybe 10 if you wanted to jury a newcomer’s award as well.  That doesn’t seem unmanageable.  And I think that system would produce an award that was taken more seriously and stimulated a great deal more debate than is currently the case.

And I will, of course, link you to the relevant page when the shortlists go up, so that you can, without consideration or criticism, VOTE FOR ME.

I’ve been up at Eastercon since Thursday night, and hence totally failed to co-ordinate my posting.  Designer Lauren Panepinto already put it up a couple of days ago.

But, nonetheless, let fly the legions of strange and wonderful comments I have come to expect whenever I present a cover.

Also, you can catch a little teaser over here…