Announcing: the Australian cover!


Looks different, doesn't it!

When I first met Belinda, my lovely editor publisher at Penguin Oz (congrats to Belinda on her promotion!), one of the first things she said to me was, "Of course, we'll have to change the cover." And I asked, "Why?"

Cover change is not only normal, it's expected. The people who understand these things swear that reader cultural response to covers is radically different across countries, even between the English speaking nations. I thought it was an old wive's tale, but when I put my two covers side by side, and showed them to locals, the Australians said they preferred the Oz version. I should imagine most US readers would say the reverse.

The screen image, by the way, does not begin to do justice to the very cool texture of the background.

I'm battling to get an expert on cover design to write about it here, but unfortunately they are all shy!


Gary and the chemical explosives

Some years ago, in 2002 I think it was, I happened to be passing through Los Angeles airport on my way for a flight back home. Airport security was considerably tighter than it used to be, but all those incredibly annoying scanners had yet to be installed.

I was randomly selected for a baggage check. (The fact that not all bags were checked tells you how long ago this was.)

Fine. I handed over my bag.

They opened it up, had a poke around, then swiped the inside with a small piece of material which they popped into a machine.

Red lights flashed! Alarms sounded! Nice men with guns appeared!

"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Sir, please step back behind the red line," said a nice man with a gun.
I stepped back behind the red line.
"What's wrong?" I repeated.
"Sir, your bag has tested positive for chemical explosives."

Well this was going to be fun! I knew I was pure as the driven snow, in this one small respect at least, so I settled in for an interesting experience.

It will come as no surprise that everything came out of the bag. Then they pulled the frame out of the bag. Then they looked inside the frame. Then they looked inside the lining. All clothing was minutely inspected. I had probably 15 or 20 books in that bag, some of them huge technical volumes. They turned every single page.

While this was going on, another nice man took my passport and wandered off with it, no doubt to ask the FBI if I was known to them. He returned while they were still flipping pages and tearing my laptop apart. He gave me a strange look, and didn't return the passport.

That's when I remembered that, not long before, I'd had to get a Federal Police security check.

The check was so I could do some work at Argyle Diamond Mine, which is the largest source of pink diamonds in the world. Once you're inside the compound, the diamonds are just lying on the ground, so they prefer to restrict visitors to honest people and successful thieves who haven't been caught yet. (While walking past swept-up heaps of small black rocks, I'd asked, "Where are the diamonds?").

But the nice men at LAX wouldn't have known that detail. All they would have known was that the Australian Federal Police had queried the FBI for a standard check on me, and the FBI had probably recorded that query. And now here I was, testing positive for chemical explosives.

After they had reduced the bag to its component atoms, they asked, "Have you ever spilled any soap or washing powder in this bag?"

As it happened, my wife and I had used this bag on our honeymoon, and washing powder had indeed been spilled. Fourteen years before.

"That must be it, then. The machine detected the phosphorus."

From fourteen years ago?

They reassembled the bag and repacked. I tried to help several times, but each time was politely but firmly told to get back behind that red line. So I watched them make a complete hash of the repack. Lumps bulged in odd places and the zipper strained. They handed back my passport. I moved to pick up the bag, but was told, "No sir, this man here--" they indicated one of their own, no doubt the most unimportant man present, "--this man will carry your bag until you get on your plane."

My new friend was having none of that. He picked up my bag, brushed past the long queue of people waiting to check in, and stopped at the front desk.

"Check this passenger in at once."

And that's how to get to the head of the queue at LAX. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. We threw away the bag when I got home.

Aunt Agatha's

I had a fantastic time at the author event at Aunt Agatha's, in the lovely university town of Ann Arbor.

Now I pause at this point. If you're my literary agent, would you please avert your eyes. I wouldn't want you to become sad, or use me for chum.

...

Okay, now that The Shark's not reading, I'll admit I probably did everything at the Ann Arbor event that an author's not supposed to do. Which is no surprise, because until Pericles Commission released, I'd never seen one. Yes, the first author event I ever attended was my own. I'm what's called a pantster when it comes to writing and, it seems at events too.

One of the great mysteries of the universe is this: what is an author supposed to talk about at an author event?

In my case, I have a tendency to talk about the innards of my book. On the face of it, this is reasonable, but received wisdom is that readers turn up to book events to learn about the author and his personality. Alas, my personality runs to the uber-geek, so with the best will in the world, I'm usually sucked into talking about the fun history.

To my joy, at Aunt Agatha's I was in a room of like-minded people. I'm pretty sure we spent 3 solid hours talking about ancient Greek history...yes, Janet is wincing...that's probably her head your hear thumping the wall ...but I cannot tell a lie.

It went three hours because these kind people in the picture took me to dinner before the talk, and the moment I sat down, someone asked a history question about the book. It was all downhill from there...when we removed to the store, we kept going, and I'm sure I'd still be there if the lovely proprietess Robin Agnew, standing at the back, hadn't politely suggested it was well past 9pm. (Another blunder on my part; authors are supposed to watch the time.)


So all this proves is I'm an amateur at the book tour biz. That's okay; I'll get more normal with practice.

But the important thing is I had fun, and I know the Ann Arboreans had fun because they hung around and chatted and bought books. (I just made up Ann Arboreans, but it looks right, doesn't it?)

One slightly embarrassing moment: I discovered, to my surprise, that I don't know my own book! I wanted to quote a piece of dialog, but do you think I could find it amongst all those pages? It was up to the kind gentleman on the left in the picture, to save me by flipping through while I chatted away. There was no chance of spoilers: he'd already read the book! He therefore wins the prize as the first Real Person I've ever met who's read my book before they met me.

I had so much fun at that talk, I can't wait to go back and see the nice people at Aunt Agatha's again. (A desire assisted by the fact that Ann Arbor is a gorgeous place with good coffee.)

So I'd be interested to know, if you're at an author event, what do you want to hear? What is the perfect author talk?


Attack of the Giant Rodents

Two days after the author talk at Mysterious Galaxy, I was taken on a tour of the world famous San Diego Zoo, by none other than zoo volunteer and well known giraffe-kisser L.T. Host. (If you've ever seen her avatar, you'll know what I mean.)

LT and friends
Only a couple of weeks before, L.T. had upgraded from giraffes to her very own husband, Scott, who is an incredibly nice guy, and very patient with out-of-towners disrupting his life.

LT and husband Scott. Giraffes now forsaken.
Scott and L.T. introduced me to the native food of San Diego: fish tacos.

I'll ignore every animal in the wildly fantastic zoo except for these:



This is a capybara. It's the largest rodent in the world. It grows to about 1.3 meters in length. That's a bit over 4 feet.


If you found these in your attic, you really would have a serious rodent problem. The pictures don't begin to tell you how big these things are. We keep guinea pigs, which are also rodents, but a guinea pig is tiny in comparison. This is how tiny:

Taken from gianthamster.com
Yes, that's a guinea pig on the capybara's back. This is the most famous capybara in the world. His name is Caplin Rous, and he has more twitter followers than I do.