Something said to me in passing recently makes me want to clarify one point regarding my relationship with British SF.

By 1999 I’d published three mass-market SF novels in the US and sales weren’t great. My US agent told me, ‘The SF part of your career is over’ in pretty much those exact words. I was advised to move into fantasy and YA. I tried to do this but couldn’t make it work.

In the UK, my agent at the time (Mic Cheetham) managed to get me two more two-book contracts to write SF for Orbit UK. Only one of those books (Maul) sold in the US, to a small imprint. Mic encouraged me to write SF. She encouraged me to persist. My books sold badly, but I built a name here.

I am only writing SF right now because of the UK scene. If I lived in the US I’d be doing something else.

That is all.