Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
2006.04.07 : Reading!
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
   Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
   Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
   Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
                 - Omar Khayyam

"What if we're killed in the next minute? You want The Manuscript to be lost for another hundred and thirty years?"
                 - Shan, THE MANUSCRIPT

And so also the night of the official launch of Macmillan New Writing (and, perforce, of THE MANUSCRIPT), Macmillan and the Pan Bookshop on the Fulham Road graciously hosted another launch party, and reading. (If you want to see the bit I read, complete with interstitial comments as I recall them, here it is. Consider this an online reading, I suppose.) It was very fun and lively, with bottomless glasses of wine, and much snapping of photos. Official TEAM MANUSCRIPT press photographer Sara was of course on the job.

But first a special public announcement
This is to specially publicly announce that my previously somewhat cryptically mentioned freak out over launch week stress and "children-of-divorce" issues was not caused by anything anyone did at all and was totally irrational and totally down to my own personal and totally endogenous neuroses.
I deeply regret – albeit totally understand – that anyone might have thought this an indictment or criticism of anyone. So let me state clearly for the record that absolutely everyone involved in this week – including and very much in particular my father and mother – were completely lovely and totally civil and unbelievably supportive and sweet and the two of them even spent time with Sara and I all together and reminisced about fun old times and we all had a great time. So my brief freak-out was absolutely nothing to do with anything anyone did and I can provide an explanation for anyone so silly as to request or require one. I'm so happy and grateful that both my parents made the huge trip out to share all this.

And okay while I'm thanking lovely people for this week let me go on to thank my lovely aunt Valerie and Uncle Chris for putting up mom and Jesse, and for cooking incessantly, and for providing a base of operations, and for taking tons of time out to come to every single one of the launch events and be incredibly supportive and fun. And Paola, la niña mas dulce, for being the rock by my side and taking care of me and nursing me back to emotional health (and to my own launch party!) and helping me gain some much needed perspective and just being a doll. And not to mention my incomparably lovely and world-beating mates for coming out to, variously, this reading, and the subsequent one (pictures forthcoming), and for putting up with my silly moods, this week as so often. And Sara, who went so far above and beyond the call this week to make everything possible and fantastic and go smoothly that who could begin even to try and thank her. So, needless to say. I think I'll thank more people later but this is starting to sound like the bloody Academy Awards. And you just came here for some pictures. So here they are. Right. Sorry.



All photo credits still 2006 SNAFU Literary Promotion Productions.
Spiffy window display.         (hide)
Mike doing his charming introduction routine again (in front of a now somewhat familiar backdrop).         (hide)
Me doing my faux-charming, faux-self-deprecating intro to my own reading.         (hide)
Me reading.         (hide)
Me reading again.         (hide)
A rare Jacqui sighting! (And an unprecedented sighting of her out of painfully stylish eyeglasses!)         (hide)
Me finally winding up.         (hide)
Not me! Brian! He was a big hit.         (hide)
Pops and Aunt Valerie. Pops discovered wine. (He and Sara closed out the pub next door later on.)         (hide)
A cute girl (albeit, alack, with a cute boy) who might conceivably be buying my book (or someone's).         (hide)
Hot book signing action.         (hide)
No, really. Someone asked me to sign one.         (hide)
Mates! My best mates Ryan and Paul, with Moms and Jesse.         (hide)
Jayne, the Pops, and I.         (hide)
Sweetly proud father.         (hide)
And sis makes three.         (hide)
The all-important trip down the nearby pub: Paul, Son, Yu Kyoung, me, and Charles.         (hide)
Jayne Barnard, Sara, and Mum. (And wine. Lots of free wine.)         (hide)
People. Lots of people. (With free wine all things are possible.)         (hide)
Me and me dear mum. (By the bye, when Son saw my outfit for this event, the first thing she did was resolutely pull my shirt collar outside of my jacket.         (hide)
Me and mum and dear Aunt Valerie.         (hide)

  mom     my books     people     photography     pops     snafu     mates  
about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
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