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Post by marianne on Jan 26, 2007 22:44:08 GMT
To continue the line up of exceptional authors, Jon will be a guest here following Rachel Caine. Stay tuned for dates. www.j-cg.co.uk/
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Post by Chirugal on Jan 26, 2007 23:27:04 GMT
Ooh, yay, more guest authors!
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Post by Sheyana on Feb 5, 2007 0:12:54 GMT
Sounds good! Now I've got more books to read if I can find them anywhere.
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Post by marianne on Feb 5, 2007 4:44:44 GMT
Shey, start with the Ashraf Bey books. M
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Post by marianne on Jul 26, 2007 23:46:22 GMT
Am delighted to say that Jon will be here as a guest on the 16th, 17th and 18th of August (Australian Time).
Please drop in and chat.
MDP
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Post by JonCG on Aug 14, 2007 13:53:06 GMT
Okay, just getting myself logged in so I'm ready for the off! Torrential rain this end, guess you've got better at your end. all the best jon
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Post by marianne on Aug 15, 2007 10:11:36 GMT
Hi Jon, welcome to PP. We will begin the frivolities tomorrow! Marianne
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Post by trentj on Aug 15, 2007 11:35:17 GMT
Hi Jon,
I'm new to your work, but having just finished reading Felaheen, I'm hooked. Ashraf Bey is such a cool character, contained within such a wonderful milieu. It's a terrible question but where did he spring from? Did you get the alternate world setting first or the character?
Trent
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Post by Chirugal on Aug 15, 2007 18:58:48 GMT
Hi Jon, I won't be around for the rest of the time that you're here, but I thought I'd drop you a couple of questions to help kick things off. 1) How did you get into writing, and what about it do you particularly enjoy? 2) How do you manage to keep yourself motivated? Have fun at the Patch, thanks for coming on! Amy
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Post by marianne on Aug 16, 2007 9:20:34 GMT
Hi Jon,
thank you for coming on the board.
My question is about the future. What would you like to have written in the next five years?
best MDP
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Post by JonCG on Aug 16, 2007 11:48:31 GMT
Trent: Okay, this is going to sound weird. I was walking through Muswell Hill, which is a leafy part of north London, and I passed a cafe with turquoise blue walls and fancy cakes, etc... And into my head came a picture of a man with dreadlocks sitting at a table outside the cafe drinking coffee with a fox. The man turned into Ashraf Bey, the fox became invisible, and the cafe turned into Cafe Trianon in El Iskandryia. The world just happened. Although once I knew what it was, I went away and did masses of research on the old Ottoman empire. Right down to finding old photographs and maps.
Chirugal/Amy: Wrote my first book when I was seven. Being fairly dyslexic I finished the first page or so and decided to draw the rest because it was easier. I was about a monkey that stole a NASA spaceship and went to the moon. Years later, I threw in my first job (in my early 20s) and went to Spain to write an equally bad novel. After that I went through assorted publishing jobs and ended up writing for papers and magazines. The books followed, and by then I'd actually learned how to write, or at least bluff it... As for motivation, deadlines and bills help enormously!
Marianne: Thanks for inviting me on here. I'm in the middle of the first volume of a three part crime novel set in heaven, hell and mexico city. I'd really like to have finished all three volumes by the time five years have gone... Guess you have the same problem, too much you want to write and not enough time to get it all down.
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Post by trentj on Aug 16, 2007 12:14:51 GMT
Hi Jon,
Doesn't sound weird at all, considering it's Raf, it's very appropriate. Any plans to revisit the character (and Hani and Zara)? From the sound of things you're going to be busy for a while in mexico city.
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Post by BrisVegasGrrl on Aug 16, 2007 12:37:11 GMT
G'day Jon, lovely to speak with you again. (We met very briefly at Worldcon 2005) I'm intigrued by the alternate future premise of many of your books. So a couple of questions...
- how do you pick the point of history where the timeline diverges? - can we assume, therefore, you're a history buff? - Your latest novels have contemporary settings. What prompted the change?
Best wishes, Kate Eltham
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Post by BrisVegasGrrl on Aug 16, 2007 12:39:35 GMT
Oh, and for some time now, ever since I first read your intriguing bio, I've wanted to know why your family moved around so much when you were a child! Were your parents in the military?
Kate.
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Post by JonCG on Aug 16, 2007 15:51:55 GMT
Trent: Yep, desperate to write another three Raf books and have the first one in my head already. It opens with a murder on an airship from Istanbul to New York and Hani's five years older and Raf's her bodyguard, pretty much... Zara's being Zara and Raf's still broke and trying to work out what he's meant to be doing next. It's just finding the time to write them!
Kate: Good to hear from you. My mob were services and nato and stuff like that so we never lived anywhere longer than two years and could only own as many things as we could get into a cardboard box. Problem is I've had itchy feet every since (spending time in Mexico and New York at the moment, with a side swerve to Tokyo at the end of this month.)
History matters to me, because I think it's how we make sense of the present and maybe make a little less mess of the future than we'd otherwise do. My novels tend to take a turning point and then shift forward - so the turning point is almost unremarked rather than being central to the story. Stamping Butterflies is about alternate futures, 9tail Fox is pretty much now, and End of the World Blues is about twenty years from now, slightly skewed, with the flashbacks to now and then all the far future stuff. I don't really set out to write alternate worlds they mostly just happen.
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