Back from Holidays

Back home after two weeks away in the Caravan (http://travellinginabox.blogspot.com) and I'm all full of vigour and new enthusiasm. My notebook is bulging with a crop of new ideas – after a visit to the Bakelite Museum, in Somerset, I'm thinking about how Bakelite Punk might be an interesting place to go. Hmm.

I also had a musical awakening. I've found it very hard, recently, to like any of the music I've been hearing. Everything seems derivative. There's nothing new out there. I've been thinking that maybe the twelve notes have, after all, been used up in all the possible combinations and that there really might be nothing new under the sun. Then, yesterday, we were strolling around Bath, enjoying the sunshine and the wonderful buildings and in the square a solo guitar player was just starting up. From the first notes we were hooked. This was something special. We stayed for the whole set, couldn't tear ourselves away. He was selling CDs. I bought one. Had to. I'm listening to it now and it is fabulous. His name is Ben Powell. Remember that: Ben Powell, and you can hear him on www.benpowellguitar.com or even buy his CD, called Preliminaries, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

What else? Oh yes, they're selling the new 3G Kindle in the UK from 27^th August. A week before my birthday. Well, that does it, doesn't it. Can't help myself.

When the Idea Takes Hold

I'm thinking I might have to break the rules. To be specific, one rule. Heinlein's second rule. I don't like to do this. I've always been loyal to Heinlein's five rules (or six if you include the extra one that Robert J Sawyer added, which I do) and they have each served me well. But sometimes... well.

Heinlein's second rule: You must finish what you write.

It's a good one. It stops you flitting about all over the place and ending up with a half-dozen fragments of novels/stories. But you see, I've got this idea. My CERN story. It has an ending and has taken wing. But I'm part way through another that's going stale on me and, well, do I ditch the stagnant story and dive into the CERN story? Or do I act all professional and craft some life into the stale story?

(OR do I procrastinate and spend an afternoon blogging and twittering and thus break every rule, Heinlein's and everyone else's)

The CERN story came to me about six months ago. Just a thread – a concept. So I went to CERN in June and had a look around. How cool does that sound? Real research, hey? Actually, the truth is, we went to Geneva for a weekend break on a cheap Easyjet, and while we were there I persuaded Sarah that an afternoon at the LHC would be solid entertainment, which it turned out to be, for both of us in fact.

Here's me outside building 33, reception, trying to look like some kind of cool particle physicist who knows what the hell's going on in there.

So, having seen CERN I have setting. But the story then evaporated, because our guide told us stuff and the disillusionment monkeys came swinging in, the basic core concept of the story was rubbish.

Then we went to the Wrexham Science Festival and attended a lecture by Prof. Jeff Forshaw, loosely based on the book he's written with Brian Cox called why does E=MC2. Really good stuff. CERN got a mention, as it does every time you go to any lecture on any scientific subject these days, if its only when they're talking about the size of science budgets. But nothing to do with my CERN story, which was, at that point, cold and dead and lying on the mortician's slab.

Then next morning I took a shower. Nothing strange in that. Basic hygiene. But the shower is my idea factory. I have a direct line to the idea reservoir plumbed into the house via copper pipe and the ideas come squirting out of the shower head each morning. (This is, I think, because the shower is the one place on earth where I cannot take my notebook.) So after jotting down the idea on my whiteboard while naked and dripping on the carpet (Sarah is used to this, it happens a lot. She's very patient) the CERN idea took hold, almost fully formed.

And I'm excited. It is a project that I want to start working on right away. I think this is The One. (Actually I think most of my story ideas are The One. This is a feeling that usually persists right up until the third or fourth rejection slip.)

My current project isn't The One. I can grind out a workmanlike effort, but I don't want to grind I want to fly. So, Heinlein #2, I'm sorry, you are a rule I'm about to break. But not forever. I will finish the current project. I will turn back to grinding-out and professionalism and craft.

Soon.

Honest.

Geneva Airport

Ahh, the logistics of air travel. The hire car had to be back by 5pm. Being of a nervous disposition I had it back by 4:15pm. Our flight home is 21:50. So five and a half hours to kill. Can't even go for a walk. Airports are not laid out for it, unless dodging across motorways with loaded suitcases is what you do for laughs.

No worries, I have this nice sofa and a free hour of internet courtesy of Swiss Air - Just so long as the laptop batteries hang in there. I brought dozens of cables for charging mobiles and laptops and satnavs... but I didn't bring the adapter plug. I thought about it. Then I forgot about it. So I have been rationing my ampage in a way that is reminiscent of Apollo 13.

It has been a good weekend. I've already blogged about CERN. Yesterday we went to Chamonix to walk in the Alps. Didn't walk much because it rained and the cloud ceiling was just above the rooftops of the houses, but it was nice to reminisce about the last time we were there, and we did get a bit of a wet walk, even though we'd only brought summer clothes.

Today we did the Jardin Botanique - mainly for Sarah, but I always enjoy a garden visit, too - and then we took a walk along the south bank of the lake. Very windy. Quite cold. A phone call home to wish our Dads a happy father's day revealed that in the far northern climes of frigid England the sun is cracking the flags and hitting 80F. C'est la vie.

You like the French? I've been determined to speak French this weekend. I so want to be able to converse. I thought I was doing okay last night in the Tutti Spaghetti at Archamps until my request for the bill brought a second cup of tea. Nice guy, though. Seemed thrilled to be able to practice some of his English on us. We were very polite, we smiled and nodded, but we couldn't tell which bits were French and which were English. I'm certain he had the same problems with our attempts in his language.

Two hours to go. Getting jumpy, now. There seem to be a lot of Easyjet cancellations on the PA. Not ours, though. Not yet. Don't want another night like Trevisio, although I've found myself spying out the best floor spot for a night on the lino. There's a nice corner behind Starbucks with radiators to keep us warm.

Okay. Two hours. Batteries fading fast. Time to join the shuffling masses into departures. Won't be any sofas there, I guess. Or free internet.

Geneva: The LHC in The City in the City

I've just been reading China Mieville's The City in the City. What a stunning book it is. The concept is so simple and believable and yet so strange all at the same time.

Right now I'm in Geneva, just outside the city on the French side, and I'm struck by the similarities between this city and that in Mieville's book. I'm a Brit driving a Swiss car staying in France. Every day we pass across the border only ten minutes from the hotel. Yesterday I paid for a car park in Euro's and the machine gave me change in Swiss Francs. For the locals it is all so normal, so... business-as-usual. The border crossing is the real deal where you can be stopped and grilled and searched, and there's one particular car lane that is so narrow and twisting you have to creep along in first gear, threading between vicious cones that look like they could do serious bodily harm to your shiny hire car, for which you have a scary 1500 euro damage excess because you are a cheapskate.

Don't want to sound negative, though, because I love Geneva. It is a real cosmopolitan city and it feels so comfortable. Yesterday we did the tourist stuff, you know, walking out to as near to the Jet d'Eau as possible without getting totally soaked, then the wind changes and you get totally soaked, and it's fun until you have to walk around town in wet clothes. It was sunny though, and I dried quickly enough.

In the afternoon, the real highlight for me: a tour of CERN. When I booked this, a month or so ago, I knew only that it was a tour, in English. No other details. What we got (for free) was a film show, a fascinating guided tour of Atlas (one of the four detectors on the Large Hadron Collider) and a 3D film presentation about the building of the LHC. Our tour guide was one of the physicists whose day job involves working with Atlas. He was knowledgeable (as you'd guess) and full of infectious enthusiasm for the project. The highlight, for me, was seeing the Atlas control room. Okay, it was a quiet day, there were no collisions scheduled, but two beams of protons were being circulated around the LHC to test the systems, (over 10,000 laps per second). Every now and again the detectors would pick up something that looked like a collision but was, in fact, just stray cosmic rays zapping through the detectors, but hey, it was exciting seeing all the displays light up every time it happened. CERN is impressive. Way impressive. There are statistics, numbers, bandied around during the presentation and they make the mind boggle.

I came to CERN with the mind-set that this was research; that a story would come. A story didn't come (not yet). Instead I spent the day in slack-jawed awe of the place. I bought a CERN T-shirt. The note book never came out of my bag. I was a tourist. Loved it.

Hay Festival

Back in Hay for the Literary Festival. Left just after lunch and had a trouble free journey down. It takes about three hours when we're towing the caravan. It's been sunny all the way, despite gloomy Met office predictions, but we've hedged – we've packed everything: wellies, sun-block, woolly jumpers, shorts and T-shirts. This year we will not be caught out, the weather can do what it likes.

We've already had our first talk, all about the rise of Islamic calligraphy, by Alain George. It sounds heavy but was actually very interesting and there are a lot of things in there that I might be able to use in future stories. This is what Hay is all about – learning about strange esoteric stuff and never knowing when something might just come along and poke you in the eye and get the ideas juices flowing.

StarShipSofa

What a fine weekend, Tranmere Rovers avoided relegation, an excellent gig with the Big Band on Saturday, and then Monday... well...

Monday night is band night, always has been, and so I give myself a night off from writing. In compensation, though, I’m in the habit of getting my weekly fix of StarShipSofa while driving out to the club were we play. So on this week’s Aural Delights, what do we have? Woo Hoo! Tony has served up my Writers of the Future story, Risqueman. It’s done as a head-to-head, new vs old, Mike Wood vs Frederic Brown. Hmm, time to acquire a thick skin, methinks I might be about to get my ass kicked. The Frederic Brown story is really spot-on, tight, concise, and a time-travel story that hasn’t dated one jot.

If you don’t know about StarshipSofa (www.starshipsofa.com) then you should pop over and have a listen. StarshipSofa is the first ever podcast to be nominated for a Hugo, and deservedly so. Each week her brave Captain, Tony C Smith, serves up an entertaining brew of fact articles, SciFi news and classy fiction. I’ve been hooked for a long time, at least a couple of years. Last summer I was honoured to be teleported all the way from Hollywood to the bridge of the good Starship, along with Sean Williams and CL Holland, for a chat. (And come on, how often do you get the chance to blog a line like that?)

Worldcon 2011

Just signed up for Worldcon 2011 in Reno. Woohoo! I sneaked in just before the cost went up on 30 April. All I have to do now is figure out how we're going to afford it. Shouldn't be too bad, inflatable raft across the Atlantic then hitch all the way across the US, sleeping rough beside the road. There again, Sarah might insist we fly and, you know, stay in hotels and stuff. So I'd better start saving and maybe staying clear of bookshops. (Dang! Too late. Just been in a good one in Llangollen. And the Hay festival is coming up at the end of the month.)

For more on Llangollen you might like to take a look at the sister blog at http://travellinginabox.blogspot.com which I'm trying out at the moment. It's an experiment to keep my SF and writing stuff at arm's length from the Sofatravel. Writers and SF fans probably don't want to read about 'the science of emptying chemical toilets' is my guess.

Right now the SF world is quite slow. Lot of character-building rejections coming in. Lot of stuff going out. I've been working through the backlog of short-story ideas that have accumulated in my little black book, but maybe it's time to start on the next novel, because it's certainly cheaper in postage, at least in the short term.

And I really do need to save for Reno.