It could sound like an exaggeration, but in this case it isn't: I have been looking forward to this book for years.

Now, this isn't a book review. I haven't got my copy yet, but I can't wait until I do.

You see, back in 2007 I think it was I was at Wiscon, the science fiction and fantasy convention, and everyone seemed to be talking about this astonishing book, Flora Segunda. Being a tad contrary and far more grumpy than my age justifies, I humphed and didn't take much notice, proving not for the first time that I am my own worst enemy.

Anyway, not so long after, my wife, Stephanie Burgis, pressed a copy of Flora Segunda into my hands, and I actually read it, and I realized that everyone had been right. It really was an astonishing book.

Here's the goodreads description of Flora Segunda:

Flora knows better than to take shortcuts in her family home, Crackpot Hall--the house has eleven thousand rooms, and ever since her mother banished the magickal butler, those rooms move around at random. But Flora is late for school, so she takes the unpredictable elevator anyway. Huge mistake. Lost in her own house, she stumbles upon the long-banished butler--and into a mind-blowing muddle of intrigue and betrayal that changes her world forever.

Full of wildly clever plot twists, this extraordinary first novel establishes Ysabeau Wilce as a compelling new voice in teen fantasy.

But it really doesn't do justice to the fantastic, alternate-world version of California that Wilce created, nor the incredible adventures that engulf Flora.

The second book, Flora's Dare, came out in 2008, and it was just as good. And then ...

Well, publishing has its own reality, and it's not for the likes of you or me to explain or even understand them, and for some reason, the publisher then sat on the final book in the trilogy. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, the final Flora book was released. Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Importance of Packing Light is now out.

You can find out more about the book, and the other two books in the series, at Ysabeau's website, www.yswilce.com.

I will declare an interest here (other than the fact that I am an enormous fan of Ysabeau's work). A few days ago, Ysabeau contacted me because she needed her old website updating. Unfortunately, the website is old and cranky, and we've decided that it really needs an overhaul from scratch. So, I've put up a new, temporary homepage with links to where you can buy the book and where you can find out more about Ysabeau and her books.

Hopefully, over the next few days we'll have more stuff up there (including, with permission of her publisher, the opening of the novel). But, in the meantime, here's a screengrab of the temporary front page I've put up.

Enough of that. Now go and buy this awesome book! You won't regret it.

Back, oh, all the way in 2001, I was living near Bristol in the U.K., and I was training to be a science teacher. I'd just quit a job as a publisher/editor of scientific journals, and I'd taught abroad before, so I figured I'd give it a go.

The truth is, I would have been a terrible teacher. I'm a bit of a control freak, and really, that's not exactly a great qualification for dealing with a room of 30 bored teenagers. Oh yeah. Believe me.

Anyway, I was bored and I was flailing around for something more meaningful in my life. And, completely by accident, I found it. I'd finally got back to writing after many years (the benefits of a profoundly tedious job...), and I was spending a fairly high proportion of my 'work' day on Critters, the online writing workshop, critiquing other people's work and having mine torn to bits in return.

Sometime in that period, I heard of Clarion West, the actual, real, live, in-person, face-to-face, six-week, bootcamp of a writer's workshop which was held in Seattle each year. I didn't have much expectation of success, but I fired off an application anyway, and pretty much forgot about it.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, I got a phone call from one of the administrators of the workshop saying that I'd been accepted. Wow. I don't think I came off very well in that phone call. When I'm surprised or shocked I tend to revert to a very neutral, calm, unemotional facade. Here I was, getting incredible, exciting news, and I reacted like I was being told I was due a eye appointment.

I'd wanted to be a writer since I was 14 years old. At 14, I'd been absolutely sure I would sell and publish a novel by the time I was 18 (ha!). Every day after school I scribbled away in pencil in my notebook, blatantly ripping off Terry Pratchett and thinking how awesome I was. Then I went to university, and other things took over, but I never stopped wanting to be a writer. Now, here was my chance.

But there was one problem. The workshop began two weeks before the end of the teacher training course I was doing, and there was absolutely no way they were going to let me leave early. (I still have issues with this: I had finished and passed all the assignments and the teaching practice, and the last two weeks had no formal classes; I'm sure we could have figured something out to make up the attendance requirements. Still.)

I decided to Clarion West anyway, and screw the teaching qualification. So I did.

It really was the best decision I ever made. Not only did I meet my future wife, Stephanie Burgis, there, but I learned more about being a writer than I did in all the years before or since. And two of the stories I wrote in those six weeks were subsequently published. I loved it there. I loved the writing and critiquing late into the night. I loved hanging out in people's rooms chatting and laughing and throwing ideas back and forth. I loved wandering Seattle.

I even loved the class's trip to see AI, possibly the worst SF movie I've ever seen.

Most of all, I loved my classmates and our instructors. In our very first week, we were taught by the great Octavia Butler (and she even like my story!) Yeah, we had our tensions and our bust-ups. We ripped into each other's stories, and gritted our teeth when others ripped into ours. But despite it, we stayed friends. We went through that fire together.

Almost eleven years later, most of us are still in touch.

And today, we are launching an anthology of stories from eleven of the participants in Clarion West 2001. Best of all, right now it's free to download from Amazon!

Here's the table of contents:

Under the Needle's Eye

The Worry Doctor by Linda DeMeulemeester
Angelfall (novel excerpt from Book 1) by Susan Ee
Selling Short by Raymund Eich
Everyone Gets Scared Sometimes by Ari Goelman
Ruined Spa Day by Samantha Ling
Coyote Discovers Mars by Emily Mah
The Guy Who Worked for Money by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Everybody Stops at Boston's by Allan Rousselle
Rosamojo by Kiini Ibura Salaam
Lavender's Blue, Lavender's Green by Patrick Samphire
The Fire in Your Sky by Ibi Zoboi

The anthology was organized by the enormously energetic Emily Mah with Raymund Eich (equally energetic, no doubt, but in a much more manly way). My story is a reprint of a story that I published in Realms of Fantasy in 2005.

Download Under the Needle's Eye from Amazon.com
Download Under the Needle's Eye from Amazon.co.uk

Under the Needle's Eye is free for just two days, so go get it! Even though it's from Amazon, you don't actually need a Kindle to read it; there are free Kindle apps for computers, tablets, etc.

Here's the book trailer, again made by the I-don't-know-where-she-gets-the-energy-from Emily Mah (who also publishes as E M Tippetts; check out her books). It's pretty awesome.



The anthology cover is a joint effort by Raymund Eich and Emily Mah.



Go get it while it's free!

Okay, ebook news:

I've finally uploaded a bunch of my previously-published short stories to Amazon as ebooks. Six individual short stories and a collection of nine stories.

Full details, including links to the stories, here.

If anyone is willing to spread the news, I would be enormously grateful.

All's been quiet on the blogging front for a while (I've been busy, okay! Jeez :D ), but over on the other blog, I've finally blogged about designing ebook covers:

Seven Tips for Designing an Ebook Cover

Despite the apparent clue in the title, the blog post contains eight tips. So there.

Over on t'other journal, I am blogging in irritated response to random trolls and snobs on the internet, on the subject of children's books.

Yes, you might have thought I would have learned my lesson by now, but...

I am very proud of my son.

All of this, by the way, he did with no prompting or intervention by me.

The other day, he settled down with his wooden blocks and built a very impressive wooden bridge (multiple arches, river underneath it). Then he got one of his lego figures and put it underneath. 

"This one is the troll, Daddy," he said.

Then he got another figure and said, "This one is the little girl."

He walked the little girl across the bridge to the halfway point. Then he brought the troll out to face the girl.

At which point, the troll turned on its heels and fled, screaming.

We are definitely doing something right. :)

Over on the other blog, I have written an article on "10 Things Every Author's Website Should Include".

I have also proved, once and for all, that my ten goes all the way up to eleven.

Over on t'other blog, I am asking for recommendations on techniques (or books about techniques) for outlining stories (novels or screenplays; I'm not fussy!)

Recommend to me, oh friendly friends!

A note to successive governments:

If you insist on giving knighthoods and lordships to people solely on the basis that they've gathered for themselves astonishing amounts of cash, it is going to come back and bite you, because there's at least an even chance that those people are sleazy and obnoxious, and sometimes corrupt.

I suggest that knighthoods (etc.) should be reserved for:

a) people who have achieved something exceptional in their lives (e.g., sports, arts, science, whatever), where that thing is not making and hoarding piles of money; or, 

b) are willing to ride into battle in a suit of armour, armed only with a sword and lance.

That should cut down on the problems.

Today I am ranting about attitudes to popular fiction over at blogger: http://patricksamphire.blogspot.com/2012/02/popular-fiction.html

Feel free to rant also. :)

I've posted a new entry over on my blogspot about some of lessons fiction writers can learn from screenwriters.

I've blogged over on blogger again, this time about admitting that I'm a writer.

You've all been in this situation before. You meet someone for the first time, in a casual acquaintance type of way. It might be at a party or it might be meeting another parent when you’re picking your kid up from school. Whatever. And they ask you what you do.

Here’s the thing. When people ask me, I never say I’m a writer. Not ever.

Yeah, this one is all about my paranoia and lack of confidence.

Read the blog entry.

There's a livejournal feed of that blog, but it seems to take forever for it to update: psamphireblog.

And another new blog entry over on blogger:

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working (on and off) on a couple of short stories, one of which was a kind of YA fantasy (with relatively little fantasy content) and the other of which was (I thought) an adult fantasy with much more fantasy content.

They were pretty different stories, and the only thing they really had in common was that I didn't quite know where either of them were going, and I was kind of stumped.

Read this blog entry.

That's the last blog entry for today, I promise...

This year I declare a record: I have broken my single new year's resolution earlier than ever before.

My resolution for this year was to do something creative every day. I went for "being creative" rather than writing, because some days I just know I'm not going to manage to write anything.

Well, I managed two days. Sadly, on 3rd January I did absolutely nothing creative at all. Not a thing. 

I surfed a bit. I watched a bunch of DVDs. I read a bit. I looked after MrD. And that was it.

To be fair, I was coming down with a rotten cold, but still...

Maybe next year I can manage to fail by day 2.

Today's blog entry is a book review of Ben Aaronvitch's Rivers of London, over on my blogger blog.

Read the review.

Today's blog entry is over on my blogger blog (there has to be a better way of saying that…):

Back in … oh, quite a long time ago now; let's say about 2002 … I read Stephen King's fantastic On Writing. If you haven't read it, you certainly should.

One particular piece of advice stuck with me, but for completely the wrong reason. In fact, I'm kind of embarrassed to say it here, because just about everyone will probably look at me and say, "Duh. We could have told you that."

Read the entry.

There's a livejournal feed of the blog, too, if you're interested: psamphireblog.

I don't know if this is just Britain, but right now I'm seeing a whole of miserable, cynical grumpiness about Christmas. Newspapers are full of features about miserable Christmases and awful experiences. Certain people seem to delight in being as grim and unhappy about it as possible.

Yes, I know it's cool to be cynical and miserable, but I'm not having it.

I love Christmas. I love being with my family. I love the Christmas tree and the decorations, and carols, and the food. I love the presents! I love the lights. I refuse to feel guilty about it.

So, if you celebrate Christmas, I want to wish you a wonderful, happy, warm, non-cynical time. If you celebrate another festival at this time, I wish you a wonderful day or days. And if you don't celebrate any festival at all at this time of year, I hope you have a great holiday.

Today's blog entry is over on my blogspot blog:

I want to read ebooks. I really do. Every surface in my house is covered in books. The garage is completely full of boxes of them, and I can never find the one I want.

But here's my real problem:

I don't know how to choose ebooks. I don't know how to find good ebooks in the vast and deepening electronic sea.

If blogspot isn't your thing, there is also a livejournal feed of it at psamphireblog.

Today is one of those days that I wish I'd had a camera with me (and some decent photography skills).

I was driving MrD to meithrin (nursery). Out the windscreen, I was looking at an incredibly bright rainbow against black clouds, when a great flock of white doves flew right in front of the rainbow, catching the sunlight. They were only there for a few seconds, and then they were gone, and so was the rainbow.

I have always maintained (he said, despite all evidence to the contrary), that if you are totally failing to blog regularly, the solution is to create a second blog, so you have two to maintain.

This is why I now have a second blog over at blogger. Actually, I do have a rationale (he said...). 

I've figured out that my LiveJournal feed consists predominantly of friends. Maybe that's just because I've been on here for a long time and I've gotten to know a lot of you, met you at cons, and so on. On the other hand, I read a bunch of 'professional' blogs over on Blogger, things like agents and editors blogs, writers who I read because they have interesting things to say about books or publishing, but not so much people I know in person or online.

So, I figured I'd split my blogging. Over here, this is going to be my personal blog, where I'll talk about whatever comes into my head (I'm selling this to you, aren't I...?). Over on Blogger, I'll blog about things more related to my professional life. Things like tips on author websites, my opinions on publishing, occasional book reviews. That kind of stuff.

If you're on Blogger, drop over and say hi.

My first blog entry over there is "Five Reasons Every Author Should Have a Website".

Updated: There is now a livejournal feed of my new blog: psamphireblog

Anyone who has listened to me rant about web design (sorry, Steph...) will no doubt have heard me go on about those kind of websites that have a beautiful, graphical header or background image but are which, nonetheless, shit. (The same rant is true for print design, but that’s not my main field, so it gets rather less of my goat.)
 
But why should a website that looks beautiful be shit? I mean, everyone wants a great looking website, right?
 
Here’s the thing: a website exists to meet some particular end or ends, whatever those might be. If you’re a writer, the website might be to help sell your books, or to act as an archive of your work, or to entertain your visitors, or just to share your wonderful ideas and wisdom with the rest of the world.
 
The design of the website is there to help you meet those aims. It’s there to serve the content (whatever the content is) and to deliver it in the best possible way to your visitors, in order to meet the ends of the website.
 
Slapping on a beautiful image is decorating the website. It might be pretty to look at, but it isn’t the same as designing a website effectively.
 
Now, that’s not to say that a website shouldn’t look beautiful. You almost never want an ugly website (there may be cases where the aims of the website require it to be ugly, but I can’t think of any offhand). But decorating doesn’t make the website effective by itself.
 
What kind of website is beautifully decorated but badly designed? Well, take a look at a bunch of author websites. How many of them have gorgeous headers but the text is scrunched up and hard to read? How many of them, when you first come across them, make you go ‘Wow!’ at the pretties but don’t immediately and clearly tell you exactly what the website is offering or who it belongs to?
 
Here’s a challenge: find a website (any website) that you haven’t visited before. Open it and look at it for just a second or two. Let your eyes go where they naturally go. Don’t particularly try and read it. Then look away. Ask yourself if you know exactly what the website is promoting or providing. Ask if you know who (or what business) the website is for. And ask if you are really keen to keep on reading it.
 
If you can say yes to the first two questions, and you are keen to go on reading (assuming, of course, that it’s something that you’re actually interested in), then you’re probably looking at a well designed website. If all you remember is that it looked pretty, then you’re looking at a badly designed site. (And if you can’t answer yes and it didn’t look beautiful, well...)
 
Here are a few random websites that (I think) are well designed (and which look good, proving that beauty and good design can go together; your mileage on the aesthetics may vary): http://literacy2030.org/, http://yearinreview.twitter.com/, http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/, and http://www.lakeislepress.com/.
 
There are plenty of other things that make a good design. It should be clear and obvious how to find what you want on the site, for example. You should be able to read the text easily. The design should evoke in you an appropriate emotional response and engage you with the content. And so on. But that initial test can show up a whole load of problems that you might not otherwise notice if you’re too busy admiring just how gorgeous that photo or piece of artwork is.
 
And that ends today’s rant...

Update: it's been pointed out to me that some of these examples don't display properly on some browsers. Obviously, a good web design needs to display properly (although not identically) on browsers, or it's not a well-built design. I should have checked before linking to these. I viewed them in Chrome, in case you're interested...

I have discovered Pinterest. Steph has been using this for a few weeks, but I didn't pay close enough attention, and I couldn't see what the fuss was. Then I did.

Pinterest is fantastic. It's a pretty simple concept. Whenever you come across a picture you particularly like on the internet, you click onto a 'pin it' button in your browser, and it is saved onto a particular board on your Pinterest account (with a link back to where it came from, of course, because people deserve credit). Then you can look at them whenever you need inspiration, or whatever.

You can organize your boards in any way you want. For example, I have seasonal ones, one for stunning settings and landscapes, and one for pictures to inspire my writing. You can also follow other people's boards, to see what they are pinning.

This is kind of my ideal social network. Beautiful, inspirational, and as low maintenance as you want it to be.

On the downside, the user interface is abominable and a pig to figure out at first (really, did no one think about consulting a UX designer?), and PInterest auto-follows you to a bunch of random people when you first join, which is enormously irritating. But once you're past those, it's great.

I'm here if you're interested in seeing the stuff I've been pinning: http://pinterest.com/patricksamphire/

Which brings me to other social networks. I've joined too many social networks in my time, and here's my current status on each of them, in the very unlikely case that you're interested or following me:

Livejournal - this is the only network where I still read everything. Perhaps the blog format keeps things more manageable and interesting, or perhaps it's just because I've been here a long time and a lot of my friends are on it, but I suspect this is the one I'll always stick with. I don't post often, though.

Facebook - I never look at Facebook. Unknown, random people keep following me there, but I never post and I never look. Really, this is not my kind of thing.

Twitter - I occasionally tweet, and I dip in from time-to-time. I used to read all the tweets, but I had to stop because it was a massive, pointless time-sink.

Google+ - I like this, but I only dip into it. There's a fair amount of duplication from Livejournal, but it's the best of the 'real' social networks.

Goodreads - I read all the reviews from people I follow. I rarely actually review, but I post ratings for the books I really like (I don't  post rating for books I don't like; I take the name at face value, so if I rate a book at all, that means I think it's really good). I like Goodreads because it's a network with a real purpose. Unlike Facebook, for instance.

I struggle to understand the arguments of many people when it comes to the pricing of ebooks. In particular, I struggle to understand the logic of those who argue that ebooks should be 99c or $1.99, or similar.

Firstly, let's dismiss the assumption that the price of anything is related to the cost of producing it. It isn't, except inasmuch as it is reasonably unusual (although not unheard of) to charge a lower price than the cost of producing something.

The price of an iPad, for example, is enormously greater than the cost of producing it. The cost of a Starbucks latte is, likewise, vastly more than its production costs. Companies or individuals choose the price they charge based on a wide variety of factors, including how they want the product to be thought of, how much the market will pay (and "the market" doesn't just mean lowest common denominator consumers; the market is who the company or individual wants to target), and what they consider to be the value of their offering.

Let's take an example. When I'm not writing, I'm a web designer. I make websites for writers and for organizations such as universities, and for commercial businesses. When I build a website for a writer, I charge pretty much the cost to me of building the website. This is because I am a writer, I like writers, I want to promote writers, and I know writers don't, generally, have much money.

If I build a website for a big company or a large university, however, I will charge more, even for a similar website. This is partly because I know they have more money, but it's also because I know that the website will produce more value for them. A writer might only get a thousand visitors a day, and sell very little as a result; a business could get thousands of visitors every day and make tens of thousands of dollars. The product I provide gives more commercial value to the business than to the author, even if the products cost essentially the same to produce.

In other words, cost and price are not the same thing.

So, onto books.

Let's talk about value. When you buy a book, say you buy a hardcover, and the cost is $12.99. Or £12.99. Or whatever. What proportion of that money would you personally say was for the story in it, and what is for the actual printed package in your hand?

Is the story only worth $1.99 for you? If so, I've got great news for you. You can probably look around and find a different hardcover for less than $11. Win! You'll have saved money, and really, what you particularly care about is the $11 of printed paper in your hand. The story is only worth $1.99 to you, so you might as well get something cheaper and you'll still be happy, right? Happier than you would have been with that more expensive book.

Hell, if you really look around, you can probably find some remaindered or second hand book for just a couple of dollars. Forget the story, think of the bargain! Unreadable, maybe, but man! How great you'll feel.

Of course, this is ridiculous. Nobody really values the lump of paper in their hand at 5 1/2 times the value of the story printed in it. That would be stupid.

But people arguing that ebooks should be around $1.99, or even less, are arguing that. They are saying that the lump of paper and ink is what is really valuable; the story within it is close to worthless.

Personally, I don't agree. I don't agree that a novel that will keep me entertained for hours, sometimes days, is worth less than a bad cup of tea a railway station, no matter in what medium the story is delivered to me.

Now, admittedly, I do prefer paper to ebooks. That's my personal preference. I personally do think I receive some extra value by buying printed books. Maybe a dollar or a pound extra value. But would I rather have one good ebook than one bad printed book? Yes. To me, the story is what matters most. Your mileage may vary here. You might put the paper value at a couple of dollars. You might prefer the convenience of an ebook, and thus you might value an ebook more than a paper one. You might consider the ability to lend or sell-on a paper book worth the extra price too (although I can't say I've ever met anyone who bought a book with that as a primary consideration; if it was the difference in value to you between $12.99 and $1.99, I would wonder if you had a soul...).

Personally, I rarely buy hardcovers; the extra price is generally too much, and I don't much like the size and weight. But I do buy hardcovers from my favorite authors. I'm willing to pay the extra not because the package is better (for me, it isn't). I'm willing to pay extra to read the story sooner. The story is worth the extra money.

But if value is subjective for the consumer, it is also for the provider (the writer or publisher). I would say, for example, that I consider my novel worth $5.99, at least. I do not consider it worth only 99c. I think it's better than that, and worth more than that. (I don't actually have a novel published, so this is a hypothetical.) You, as a consumer, of course, may choose to differ. You may choose to think that my novel isn't worth that, and so decline to buy it.

That's fine. This is how business is done everywhere. I might go into a Starbucks and tell them that I don't think their latte is worth $4 or whatever they charge (personally I detest coffee, so I've no idea what they charge). I might tell them that I consider it worth only $2. They might not actually lose any money by selling me a latte at that price; after all, the other lattes they are selling anyway will cover all their overheads and so on, and this is money in the bag for them. But they won't sell it to me at that price.

So what am I saying here?

I'm saying that the cost of production and the price charged are only very vaguely linked; the fact that an ebook *may* be cheaper to produce is irrelevant to the price.

I'm saying that the value of a book of whatever type is, or should be, predominantly about the actual story, not the medium of delivery. If George RR Martin put out his next novel tomorrow at a price of £25, I would buy it. Other books, I would hesitate to pay £1 for. Even if they contained the same number of pages and the same heft of cover. Even if they were ebooks.

Some authors or publishers *may* choose to sell a book at 99c or whatever, with the calculation that they will sell so many more copies that they will make more money. That does not and should not mean that that is the value of all books. It's not the value, and it's not the cost. It's simply the price of some.

Sometimes, I can’t help but think scientists are crazy. I read a report about the latest breakthrough, and I think, Are you crazy? Do you never read science fiction? Don’t you know how this is going to turn out? A.I.-controlled robot soldiers? Do you really think that’s a great idea?

But then I read something like this:

Electrically stimulating the brain can help to speed up the process of learning, scientists have shown. [...]

The relative simplicity, low price (around £2,000 per unit), and portability of the technology may mean that, following further research, a device could be designed to be automated for use at home.

Stimulating brain with electricity aids learning speed - BBC News

And I find myself going, Cool. I would totally get one of those. And I realize that I completely get where those scientists are coming from. Steph, in the meantime, is sitting across the room, shouting, “Are you crazy? Have you never read Flowers for Algernon?”

Sigh. Humanity is definitely going to wipe itself out.