Emily Perkins’ new novel The Forrests made a more noticeable impression on me than any new book I’ve read in 20 years; in fact, by the end of it I was buzzing as though I’d taken a drug. I had to go back over the last 30 pages and immediately reread them because the effect was so powerful. An interview with Perkins has been on the cards (or the books) since The Good Word became required viewing for writers and book lovers, a show that will be sorely missed when the station is closed down in June (boo!). (Photo: Patricia Phelan)

John Sundman is author and publisher of the cyber-nano-biopunk novels Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices, and The Pains. After Sundman blogged about selling his books at the hacker convention DEFCON, science fiction author Bruce Sterling described him as “the future of printed fiction”. Sundman lives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

This began as a post in praise of the Kindle as a reading device. For writers the Kindle is much more than that. KDP transforms the e-reader into a publishing platform, and the most powerful device a writer has at his or her disposal. But don’t be fooled into thinking you necessarily need professional help to format your e-book. While an editor is invariably beneficial, designers and other opportunists are trying to mystify e-book formatting and cover design for profit. The paybacks of the Kindle will be self-explanatory to anyone who’s held one for longer than a minute. Writers who own a Kindle that doesn’t contain their entire body of work are either slow or have never had cause to refer to their own writing. Being able to instantly search text strings while away from your desk, look up words in the dictionary, research online via a wireless connection, highlight sections earmarked for revision and tweet quotes are just some of the more obvious benefits.

The Bridge is one of those books I first read long ago but have no recollection on whose recommendation it was. More unusually, I don’t remember where I was when I read it for the first time. It was published in 1986, when Banks was 32. He apparently told SFX magazine’s Mary Branscombe in 1996 that The Bridge is the intellectual among his bibliography. “It’s the one that went away to university and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books.” As such, he warned against reading it before his other books, which I did.

I love it because it’s a novel in which the writer takes some hair-raising risks.

Das Schicksal (‘Fate’, also known as the ‘Cruel Countess’) is a 1905 sculpture by German artist Hugo Lederer. It stands in the world’s biggest cemetery: the Ohlsdorfer Hauptfriedhof in Hamburg. It’s among the most distressing, unforgettable works of art I’ve seen and my short story germinated when, after stumbling across the statue, I imagined her coming to life. The story first appeared in the UK magazine The Third Alternative (now Black Static), then in Germany’s Heidelberg Review and subsequently in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s annual anthology, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (10th Edition), published by St Martin’s Griffin Press (USA). It’s now available as a Kindle e-book, with a cover designed by Elisa Bowman. Some history and a brief excerpt follow.

Cover photo: Uwe Barghaan © 2006

“Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Image: saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s solos with Weather Report often featured his improvisations on Bob Hope’s signature tune, ‘Thanks for the Memories’)

Including this, I’ve posted 22 responses to the #Trust30 challenge out of a possible 32 (that’s not quite true; the challenge goes on, reinvigorated by the positive feedback received from the participants). I want to quit while I’m ahead, so thanks for the memories.

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience?

Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand.

(Author: Sam Davidson)

“I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think about the type of person you’d NEVER want to be five years from now. Write out your own personal recipe to prevent this from happening and commit to following it. “Thought is the seed of action.” (Author: Harley Schreiber)

“The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if today, right now, no jokes at all, you were actually in charge, the boss, the Head Honcho. Write the “call to arms” note you’re sending to everyone (staff, customers, suppliers, board) charting the path ahead for the next 12 months and the next five years. Now take this manifesto, print it out somewhere you can see, preferably in big letters you can read from your chair.

(Author: Sasha Dichter; image: the board meets in Joel & Ethan Coen’s film The Hudsucker Proxy)

“Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons, false expectations and false investments. What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments? List them.

(Author: Patti Digh; illustration: Gustave Flaubert, by Corbis)