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I know, I know.  It's been a bit quiet around here lately.  The quiet rasp of e-crickets, the odd tumbleweed blowing across this section of the information superhighway.  No word for over two months.  Almost as if I've gone, as if I'm…….not there.

And to some extent that's true.  I'm not there, I'm here:

Which, in turn, is roughly here

Well, my son does need an introduction to his mother's culture.  And more Vitamin D than it's easy to get hold of under Glasgow skies in winter.

That's my excuse, anyway.

And I would have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!

More specifically, I would have got away with it, if it hadn't been for one Andrew Carter of Salisbury – hi there, Andrew! – a fully-paid-up Subterranean-Press-edition-owning fan of my books whom I ran into completely randomly at my local bar/restaurant in a tiny mountain hamlet out in (to quote a northern friend of mine) the back arse of nowhere.  Mutual incognition on my and Andrew's part – we were in conversation for a good twenty minutes before either of us made the connection.

So that's a first for me – I've never just stumbled on a fan like that before.  And after almost a decade of being published in the UK, I had to come all the way out to southern Spain to do it.  Weird.

Anyway, since my cover is now blown, here's a brief update of what's been going on recently in my writerly life:

- 21st of this month, Electronic Arts and Starbreeze release Syndicate, the FPS re-boot of the classic nineties game of the same name.   Multi-platform launch, and Yours Truly as lead writer.  Prepare yourselves for amoral corporate mayhem, viscerally brutal anti-heroes, and a headlong SF narrative plunge.

- also this month, look out for an official announcement and status update on the Altered Carbon film deal – some very  impressive names attached (none of which I'm at liberty to divulge right now, but watch this space….)

- meanwhile, Market Forces is in informal development with Forward Films – of recent Grabbers fame – in London.  Forward's Kate Myers has been a friend of my work for nearly a decade now; it was she who first mooted the idea of an Altered Carbon movie, back before anyone in Hollywood had had it brought to their attention, back before the book had even hit the shelves, in fact.  Now, she's bringing the same vision to bear on the wolf-eat-hyena world of future corporate finance and one Chris Faulkner's blood-stained rise to power.  So keep your fingers crossed.

- The Dark Defiles is up and running, with a surly, downbeat opening to match.  Oh, a Questing we Shall Go, a Questing we Shall Go….. Sort of.  I'll be posting the first excerpts later in the year.

- another reason for being out here in southern Spain is to scratch a long-standing creative itch I've had since at least the late nineties; a vaguely Urban, vaguely Heroic Fantasy narrative set right here in Andalucia.  Research is on-going (in-between nappy changes) and I'm now starting to see the shape this could take.  Not sure yet if it might not work better as a comic-book sequence rather than a prose novel, actually.  Hmm.

Right, that's all for now, folks.  Got to get back now to the education of my son as a future Go master: