Where I'm At

It's now six months since my third novel, Ghost Portrait, was published. The paperback edition will - with any luck - be in the shops in January. Sceptre has decided against the 'period' look, so the cover has a model, pouting prettily, to lure the browsing shopper. Whether this will improve on the hardback's fortunes remains to be seen. The Guardian was the only newspaper to print a review in May.

Getting reviews for fiction is becoming increasingly difficult. Newspapers, particularly the weekend editions, seem to be growing by the week yet there's less and less room, between the travel section and features on how to spoil your garden with decking, for reviews of any kind. Things are no better for distribution: the market dominance of a few, highly centralised, book chains means that diversity is constantly being squeezed. Publishers must pay to get their titles on the 3-for-2 tables; the rest go, literally, to the wall, where only the shopper with intent will find them. Now that Ottakars (which, in Scotland at least, still caters to regional tastes) is about to be snapped up by Waterstone's, the troubles faced by lesser known authors can only be expected to increase.

While waiting for the paperback of Ghost Portrait, I am starting work on a fourth novel. To be precise, I'm starting work again on a fourth novel, having decided to abandon a work in progress - a satire of university life in the American Midwest - which was lacklustre and directionless. A year of writing, then, with only a short story salvaged from the wreckage. Failure, though it doesn't pay the bills, can be an effective tutor. I've learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Whether I can put those lessons to good use remains to be seen.

Since returning from the tropics (the subject of a future post) I have written a number of short stories. The struggle now is to get them published. Increasingly, short stories are where my enthusiasm lies, both as reader and writer. Kipling did his best work in the form; so did Chekhov and Pritchett. It ought to be the form of choice for our rushed and spasmodic age; yet in Britain there is simply no market for short stories. Magazines like Prospect do their valiant best but the general situation is not a friendly one.

Still, moaning, we plug on...

Current books

I've spent much time recently in Edinburgh - where, in that insalubrious area known by locals as the Pubic Triangle, there are not only lap-dancing clubs but also fabulous second-hand bookstores. I have, needless to clarify, been frequenting the latter. Amongst the goodies recently hauled back to Hampshire, I recommend Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray, Ethel and Ernest by Raymond Briggs, and the essays of R.L.Stevenson. Of these last, 'Pulvis et Umbra' and 'A Christmas Sermon' are perfect examples of bravura miserabilism.

On a similarly grim note, I've been reading with great admiration and some wincing Jim Crace's Being Dead. Crace, if you'll pardon a rhyme, writes with astonishing grace about murder, love and decomposition. It's a bracing read, like tackling Beckett, where the only consolation is in the creative act itself. Crace could write about a paper bag and make it interesting. Consider, for instance, this description of waves breaking on the shore, their crest curls wrapped round tubes of air, like brandy snaps. Crace is an atheist (writing his masterly novel, Quarantine, saw to that) and he writes the truth movingly. Should we expect their spirits (of the murdered couple) to depart, some hellish cart and its pale horse to come and take their falling souls away to its hot mines, some godly, decorated messenger, too simple-minded for its golden wings, to fly them to repose, reunion, eternity? Might we demand some ghosts, at least? Or fanfares, gardens and high gates? Or some dramatic skyline, steep with clouds? The plain and unforgiving facts were these. Celice and Joseph were soft fruit. They lived in tender bodies. They were vulnerable. They did not have the power not to die. The whole novel is suffused with writing as feeling yet unflinching as this. My book, then, of the week.

Salutations

At long last, vanity has got the better of me. I've created a blog - working on the assumption that everyone is entitled to my opinions. Not that I really expect anyone to read them. One day there may be as many blogs as people.

Still, Infinite Space will be a home for my unpublished or unpublishable musings; a place to rant (with, I hope, a modicum of wit) against the manifold lunacies of our age; and a place to air my enthusiasms for books, people, and clever technologies that might save the planet.

Welcome, then, to what I will almost certainly fail to keep up. I hope you enjoy your visit.