Mark
asked
Charles Stross:
Hi Charles, could you give us an update on Ghost Engine and any comments you might have, unless it induces a massive migraine? The only info I've located says to be published 2023. This was prompted by your earlier comments on Iain Banks and the Culture. I confess my own regard for his body of works as utterly unique and unequalled, no slights intended!
Charles Stross
Short answer: it's running very late, but is slowly progressing.
Long answer: I shelved it in 2017 due to family medical stuff. (Nothing sours you on a creative project quite like associating a book with family members dying. NB: both death certificates said "old age". It comes to us all eventually.)
In the meantime, Ghost Engine got sidelined by a new toy—the New Management books, which really wanted to be written right now. But once they were done I got back to work on GE last year ... only to be interrupted by editorial requests relating to yet another project, in this case a novella I began writing in 2009. (Hopefully it comes out next year. You might be seeing a pattern here?)
I hope to get back to work on Ghost Engine—again—next week. I'm currently halfway through the second draft: it'll take at least one more pass after that, then maybe, if nothing else interrupts me, it might make it onto bookshelves in 2024/25, in time for its tenth birthday!
Long answer: I shelved it in 2017 due to family medical stuff. (Nothing sours you on a creative project quite like associating a book with family members dying. NB: both death certificates said "old age". It comes to us all eventually.)
In the meantime, Ghost Engine got sidelined by a new toy—the New Management books, which really wanted to be written right now. But once they were done I got back to work on GE last year ... only to be interrupted by editorial requests relating to yet another project, in this case a novella I began writing in 2009. (Hopefully it comes out next year. You might be seeing a pattern here?)
I hope to get back to work on Ghost Engine—again—next week. I'm currently halfway through the second draft: it'll take at least one more pass after that, then maybe, if nothing else interrupts me, it might make it onto bookshelves in 2024/25, in time for its tenth birthday!
More Answered Questions
Pep
asked
Charles Stross:
I just watched the early House MD episode where the critical plot point depended on an incompetent pharmacist not knowing the difference between gout medicine and cough medicine. "The Concrete Jungle" was published six months before the episode "Occam's Razor" aired though, so there is unlikely to be a link. Or is there something you are not telling us?
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