News from the North

This here looks suspiciously like a cover: I think I really like it. I also think I like that it's coming out in hardcover. (I was expecting paperback.) But I do not like their innovative spelling of my name . Sigh. Ah well. At least they got it right on the actual cover, and they do generally (though not always) fix this sort of thing before the actual publication date. eta: aha, it's on Amazon.com as well as those .ca sites above. Go forth and pre-order your little hearts out! Meanwhile, I intend to commence the rewrite-to-editorial-order of Beasts of New York next week. (Reductive surgery, but otherwise no major changes.) Oh, and Invisible Armies hardcovers are on sale from Amazon.com, for a presumably limited time, for the bargain price of $4.46 . ( etaa: said price has now skyrocketed back to $19.96. If you snoozed, you losed!)

I am pleased to announce that Beasts of New York , my epic Homeric-quest fantasy novel about a squirrel in Central Park, which I released online under a Creative Commons license a couple of years ago, will be published onpaper next year by The Porcupine's Quill , a very cool Canadian literary press whose founders were recently awarded the Order of Canada for their "important and enduring contribution to Canadian literature." BoNY has been doing well online, too; it's been downloaded a respectable 6,000 times from Feedbooks and Manybooks (with no publicity whatsoever save for word-of-mouth - it wasn't even me who put it up on either site) and has, to my surprise, become my most-popular and highest-rated book on Goodreads .

I've been doing some writing: my rather contentious latest Maisonneuve column, What's Wrong With Africa , and my debut Wired UK blog post, From Dragons To Smartphones . I've been doing some programming, and the BBC (among others) has a nice writeup of the project I'm working on . I've also been doing some travelling, in Iceland, which is a good place to contemplate the infernal: See, they even provide a bench. Mine very own Icelandic saga: Two days ago I travelled through flickers of sunlight to the site of the world's oldest parliament as told in the sagas. (The history/folk tales that all Icelanders know. Their language has changed so little that they can still read the sagas in the original. I haven't read any, myself - though I am eyeing the collected English-language version sold in all the bookstores here - but I get the distinct impression from my Lonely Planet that the Iceland of the sagas was an extremely bloody place, and that appearing in one pr...

Below is a travel piece I wrote after my trek to Ciudad Perdida last year. The Washington Post initially offered to publish it, but then stopped responding to my emails - I think they laid off their travel editor or something. I forgot all about it until it popped up in an unrelated mail search. So here ya go: In Search of the Lost City I blame Steven Spielberg. When I arrived on Colombia's Caribbean coast and learned that the remains of an ancient city lay hidden deep in the nearby jungle, visions of Indiana Jones began to dance in my head. A few days later I found myself trekking for six days along steep, muddy, snake- and insect-infested trails, fording whitewater rivers and crossing countless stepping-stone bridges, drinking the river water and sleeping in hammocks, all just to reach and return from the thousand-year-old ruins known as Ciudad Perdida. The lost city languished untouched for centuries until 1973, when it was rediscovered by treasure hunters. Two years later, af...

I have brooded, of late. I have lain awake and pondered. I have constructed lists of pros and cons. I have considered my past and my future. I have wondered what I stand for, what I believe, what it all means . And I have come to a momentous decision. The same decision that many of my friends have made, over the years. Again and again I chose not to follow them: but it seems clear to me now that the long-dreaded time has finally come. Some may see my choice as elitist, a clear signal that I am no longer one with the people 1 . Some may even take it as a personal betrayal. But that's a chance I have to take. I would like it to be known that I will understand if you choose to turn away from me in response to what I now must do. No hard feelings. I won't judge. Indeed, part of me will even sympathize. Some may wonder what I will do with my right middle finger, and the outer edge of my right thumb. I must admit that it is this which weighs most heavily on my mind. Once, when I foll...

Meanwhile, I've been noodling around with my Flickr account, and created a new and highly idiosyncratic Top 10 set. ('Cause really, I can't expect anyone to go through my 76 supercool shots, much less the 300+ prettycool ones.) Said ten being these (click to see larger versions):