The hit courses into Lydia’s veins, the reward greater for having resisted for so long as if she were finally having an orgasm after hours of foreplay.  Fireworks sparkle and explode inside her head and suddenly the room is falling away, tumbling off into a purple-darkness.  There’s a tremendous rushing sound, like a jet engine.  Warmth floods through her.

Dalle’s arm falls away, blood spilling from Lydia’s lips and crashing to the floor, crystalline.  It shatters there.  Her head swims.  She leans in and kisses Dalle, blood still smearing her lips, pressing it into the other woman, her tongue dipping into Dalle’s mouth, then her neck.  Her skin is wet, sweaty, sticky.  Tastes like apple sauce.  She lets herself roll across Dalle’s torso, tugging at her t-shirt, pushing it away to expose more flesh, blending into Dalle, peering through the woman’s pale skin at her heart beating, beating, beating…”

Ed was kind enough to give me 500 words to talk about how I came to write the book, my reasons and method, so if you are interested check it out at:

http://newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-books-katja-from-punk-band-by-simon.html

Chuck took the time not only to ask me questions but to then follow up with additional questions based on my responses so head on over to his site if you want to hear my answers to questions such as:

• Your work and writing philosophies seem to embody a punk aesthetic.  How can writers embrace that, and why should they?
• Do you believe that writing is more of a work of art than a work of craft?
• Favourite word?  Favourite curse word?

Be sure to post comments to let Chuck know you’ve read it and you love me

I’d sent Len Wanner, editor of The Crime Of It All blog, a review copy of the book a month or two ago and received an initial response from him that he read and enjoyed it.  However, since his site is a collaboration, he passed the book on to another reviewer whom he thought would get a better handle on it.  Turns out that handle was more of a choke-hold. 

Len kindly warned me before I read it that it wasn’t good, that it was, in fact “about as brutal as I have read”, so I knew not to expect anything glowing.  As it turned out the review was along the lines of me being torn a new one and then fucked in it.  Sorry, screwed in it.

Some choice moments:

“Katja stupidly carries her guitar with her everywhere, whether running, jumping, shooting or hiding. This isn’t kooky or endearing. It’s dumb. It’s unbelievably stupid and annoying. Nikolai is utterly devoted to the distinctly unenigmatic Katja and all that springs to mind is “why?”. She’s capricious and boring, leading one to the conclusion that Simon Logan has an unrequited passion for dismissive punk girls. Surely there’s some better way of dealing with it than inflicting a bad novel on innocent readers….”

And

“Ham-fisted and irritating, this should never have gone further than an internet blog. Annoying annoying annoying. Really, I’m appalled. This man stole perhaps eight hours from me and I want them back. Ultimately, I’m not sure what Simon Logan is trying to do here, but it’s annoying and cheap. Modern cheap sci-fi pap, like a 9th rate William Gibson meets 2000AD. With the visuals and atmosphere left to a solid artist, perhaps Simon Logan could be a competent short-run comics writer. But he’s no novelist. Not at this stage….”

So more of an all-out assault than a review (though in the end there’s no reason it can’t be both…)

Check out the full review at http://thecrimeofitall.com/2011/08/18/simon-logans-katja-from-the-punk-band-reviewed-by-cormac-osiochain/ and, to those who have floated the idea, no I didn’t fuck screw his wife.

I’m not as picky when it comes to movies but that is partly down to the fact it takes only a couple of hours to watch a movie but it’ll take me several weeks to get through a book and probably a year to write one so in both of those cases I’m more fussy.  I tend to need some sort of fantasy element in things I read, be it slightly scifi, slightly horror or whatever. Books which are explicitly set in the real world often don’t hold my interest for long enough, or at least which are set in my real world.

The Dark Fields is a good example of what I go for as although it is set in modern-day New York there is a slight sci-fi/genre edge to it with the whole central concept of the MDT drug – my personal preference would have been for it to go further but there was enough there to interest me.  I don’t know what it is in me that requires this fantasy element but, to re-iterate my central point that I’m a fussy bastard, I’m also as adverse to things which are VERY fantasy.  Hard sci-fi and high fantasy have never really interested me – they often seem too far removed from relevance or spend so much time world-building that there isn’t enough meat on the bones of the story at their hearts.  (I’m sure there are exceptions and I’m a fan of Phillip K Dick but on the whole this is the case). 

This is true of my writing too, I prefer to write something which is neither explicitly set in the real world OR clearly set in a fantasy world.  I like to create settings which could well be the real world but about which there is something just slightly off or different – just enough to make people think twice.  It’s why I don’t like to name the settings too much – to refer to a real place would ground it in “our” world but to give it a made-up name would maybe clearly show it as being scifi.  I don’t know why but for whatever reason I don’t like being made to choose.

I’ve got Tim Maughn’s apparently excellent Paintwork ordered up now that it’s available in print but that won’t be here for another six weeks.  I may well order up my friend Wayne Simmons’ zombie thriller Drop Dead Gorgeous, depending on price and time scales for arrival, still to decide.

Let me know what your preferences are when it comes to the fantasy elements in what you read/write and of course any recommendations for what I could read next are welcome.

So head on over there now to find out how I went about writing Katja, how music inspires and affects my writing and what my idea writing space is amongst other things!

The first was from Luca Veste over at the Guilty Conscience blog, who felt strongly enough about it that he posted the review immediately after finishing it on Friday:

“The narrative flows through each chapter, seamlessly drifting between different characters as the story unfolds. This is a testament to the skill of writer Simon Logan, that he never lets the plot spiral out of control, letting the story and characters tell the tale and revealing information effortlessly. Logan quite plainly knew how he wanted to tell this story…”

You can read the full review at http://guiltyconscienceblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/katja-from-punk-band-simon-logan.html?spref=tw.

This was closely followed by another positive review, this time from Naomi Johnson at The Drowning Machine:

“Logan has constructed his novel so that you’ll never be confused about who’s doing what and why … and yet the infrastructure of this novel is anything but simple. Sliding time-shifts, back and forward; alternating points of view; and an alt-world brushed in the broadest of strokes. The alt-world could be now, could have been the 80s, could be in the future, could be on another planet. Doesn’t matter when or where, only the moment matters in this book. Logan makes it all work.

Read the full review at http://drowningmachine.blogspot.com/2011/07/katja-from-punk-band-by-simon-logan.html

Thanks to both of the reviewers for their time and kind words.  Hopefully more to come shortly!

So I am.

In total: 8 months. 115 chapters. 68,000 words.

(Yeah that’s right, 115 chapters but only 68,000 words which makes it an average of 600 words a chapter!)

It’s taken me far longer than I would have liked to get to this stage considering that I was trying to rush to get it done for one outlet in particular (who might or might not still be interested), however the practicalities of work and family life meant that this was about as fast as I could have been without it been shite.  I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out so will await the feedback on it.

For any of you who are interested I’ve created a new page for it with a blurb and some other details and will be updating it as necessary as and when any developments arise.