Richard [K] Morgan's News and Views

Good cause first, obviously. Would you like one of these?

More importantly, would you like to contribute some dollars to an undiluted good cause, to wit, the protection of children from exploitation and abuse. The guys at Ten Angry Pitbulls have come up with a cool way to raise funds for this advocacy group, and they've managed to sign up a number of authors to the gig, among them such luminaries as Andrew Vachss, Dennis Lehane and Nick Hornby - and me. Quite how I end up in such august and best-selling company, I'm not entirely sure, but if it's good enough for Vachss, it's sure as shit good enough for me. They don't make moral integrity meters high enough to measure that guy.

Plus - it's a cool shirt, right? Big fuck-off sword, splattered gore and all.

Anyway, check out the site, check the links, make sure you're cool with it all. Gonna be the indispensable fashion statement of 2010!

Plus - I'm sticking my nose out of the winter snow early this year. February 5th to 7th, I'll be a guest of honour at this gig in the Kingdom of Daan Saaf. And said gig is the occasion of the long drive I mentioned above. Turns out plane and train connections from Glasgow down to Camber Sands are a bit complicated, so I'm cutting that particular Gordian Knot by piling in the car and driving down, all 490 miles. Should be fun, in a Mad Max, white-line nightmare sort of way.....

Okay, so for all you North Americans 490 miles doesn't sound like a lot - I was once humbled at a book signing in Cincinnati (or was it Madison?) to find that two fans had driven about that far for the day just to meet me and get my scrawl - but take it from me, for a Brit, that's a long drive, not least because it involves trying to find a decent detour around the sprawl of our beloved capital. Which reminds me - if anyone down in that part of the world knows a route that doesn't involve parking on the M25 for two or three hours, and would like to share it, you will have my undying gratitude for that charitable act.

Maybe see you down there.

Well, it took quite a while for this to happen, but here we are. I pop open my mails yesterday, and find the following. Quote:

Mr. Morgan,
It is unfortunate that you have decided to become an agent of subversion for the homosexual lobby. I quite liked your books until now.
Seeing as you did not bother to offer (me the reader) the courtesy of indicating the abnormal political/sexual sub-plot of your book on it’s dust jacket, I choose to reciprocate by not offering you the courtesy of perusing any of your future titles.
With Regards,
Anthony Diener

Eek.

Reminds me a bit of Agent Smith's spiel to Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. That scary-polite government psycho thing before he glues Neo's mouth shut and dumps a cyber-worm in his belly-button. "Tell me, Mister Anderson, of what use is a word processor if you're unable to....sell your books?" Or maybe: "From this day forth, Mister Morgan, either you choose to write red-blooded, violent and manly science fiction - or you choose to seek your readership elsewhere." It's that strained politeness, so squee-gee-and-soap-on-thin-glass, so nails-on-a-chalkboard screechy and brittle, that you'd almost rather you'd reeled in a roaring, foaming-at-the-mouth, Klan-robed ultra-thug - mainly because you know that really that's what's lurking just under that patina of psuedo-civilised disdain.

Homosexual lobby, fer fucksake???

Oh yes. "They are believed by some, Mister Anderson, to be the most dangerous lobby alive."

To be honest, I had expected something like this much sooner. But my inherent lack of faith in human nature was confounded, and a remarkably cool attitude to The Steel Remains has prevailed up until now. Oh, there were a few adverse amazon rants, but I've grown accustomed to those (and seem to garner them anyway, whatever I write about). And we had some rather queasy talk about gratuitous sex scenes in a few web reviews and on some messageboards. But there was no actual nut mail before now.

But now, I'm left with this rather creepy image of a shadowy bookcase somewhere out in the mid-west, where my novels are shelved alongside Atlas Shrugged, the Sarah Palin autobiography, and the collected works of Ann Coulter.

Shudder.