I just did an interview with rob mclennan for his great 12 or 20 Questions series. Here’s a sample:

6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

It depends on the book. With Please, I was trying to write about the experiences of my generation — I should have subtitled it “Generation Temp.” But I also wound up writing a bit of a historical book in a sense, in that the characters are often longing for something from the past — a lost love, that suburban neighbourhood, the decision they failed to make — and they inhabit the ruins of the past. They live in their own memories, and in social memories, with suburbs and churches and OJ Simpson car chases and such.

The Warhol Gang is a little more sci-fi in nature, in that like all good science fiction its project is extrapolation. I took a bunch of trends I was starting to see emerging — neuromarketing, holograms, the viral video— and tried to normalize them. That is, I tried to imagine a society where they were the cultural norm. In some ways, I think I failed, because society has already become stranger than I imagined — anime news videos depicting Charlie Sheen rants? Twitter-fuelled revolutions in the Middle East? But we live in an age where the future is happening faster than we can keep up.

In my new book, I’m exploring the idea of the post-future. The characters inhabit a world where they’ve given up trying to keep pace with the future and turn to the past for meaning instead, searching for artifacts and memories that will save them. But that doesn’t stop the future from happening to them. I’m not sure how to discuss it conceptually, because we’re all still struggling to grasp the violent change we’re going through right now, and I think we’re largely unsuccessful at it.

One of my favourite blogs, BLDGBLOG, interviews China Mieville. Put your thinking caps on.

Canadian SF writer Peter Watts recently survived a bout of flesh-eating disease. Now he’s documenting the aftermath in photos on his blog. Not for the squeamish. We are nothing but meatbots.

There are a fair number of holograms in The Warhol Gang, but they’re all fairly contained. I wanted the book to feel slightly futuristic, but I didn’t want it to feel like full-blown sci-fi, so I restricted the fantastic things to holograms in the neuromarketing pod and hologram theme park disasters, so people could relive the World Trade Center attacks and things like that. I worried if there were too many holograms and other technological delights in the story, people wouldn’t believe it. Of course, shortly after The Warhol Gang came out, real life has turned it into a historical fantasy….

I was doing an interview tonight and I described my first book, Please, as historical fiction and my second book, The Warhol Gang, as sci-fi. When I was writing them, I thought of them both as contemporary. Hmm.

I’ve been getting into The Office lately, thanks to the baby finally sleeping through the night. Most nights. I like that the Michael Scott character isn’t just the asshole, clueless boss, but in fact has a bit of the tragic in him. He reminds me a little of Hank Kingsley from the Larry Sanders Show. I’m not sure what the show will do without him — I’d recommend something dramatic, like outsourcing to a prison or something. Either reinvent the show or watch it die in a season or two.

Anyway, Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly Kapoor on the show and writes some of the episodes, is tweeting about some of the Michael Scott stories that didn’t make it to filming.

Suddenly, the media everywhere are talking about the self-publishing craze that’s sweeping the States and starting to trend in other countries, such as Canada. You can attribute it to whatever you like — the rise of the Kindle and ebooks in general, the death of bookstores, the ability of writers to leverage social media relationships into book sales. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a fad — it’s the new Gutenberg revolution. Some writers and publishers will figure out a way to make it work for them. Others won’t. And some people will treat it like they treat blogs now: a creative venture they do in their spare time that may make them a little money, but not much. But it’s not money they’re after.

One of the stars of the self-pub movement is Amanda Hocking, who writes paranormals. She’s getting tons of press and making tons of money. As is the case with traditional publishing, self-published writers benefit greatly from media attention. There’s a lively Metafilter thread about her and she’s often mentioned at Kindleboards, where she sometimes posts.

If you’re interested in learning more about the brave new world of self-publishing, check out Joe Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. It’s got a mystery fiction bent, but it’s not exclusive that way. And Konrath’s focus is talking about the business side of self-publishing, with plenty of guest posts. Follow the links from there.

In my own self-pubbing adventure with Please, I’ve got a nod over at Spalding’s Racket, and I’ll have some more news soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Just hit the 200 page mark in the new book, The Apocalypse Corpse. That’s around 55,000 words in Pages, the word processor I’m using. I estimate it to be around the two-thirds mark, as I think the book will come in somewhere between 250-300 pages.

So I’ve been averaging a little more than 100 pages a month, which is like warp speed for me. And I’ve only skipped one minor scene so far, which I’ll fill in later.

I am now officially exhausted.

I’ve got family visiting for the next week, so I probably won’t do much more until March. But who knows — maybe I’ll have a rough draft done by April rather than June, as I was originally predicting.

Oh yes, the body count continues to climb.

Just discovered the work of Nele Azevedo. Stunning stuff. If you like this, you may also like the art of Jason de Caires Taylor.

Today while I was working on the new book, Alden toddled into my office, grabbed a Mark Leyner book from the shelf, and then toddled off down the hall again. Later he came back and pulled some more books off the shelf to read. I guess I can’t complain. Now if I only knew where he’d put that Leyner book….