Surprise!

Surprises can be fun.

My old copies of Crime Time sometimes surprise me. Although the magazine is still going strong I just don't have enough money to keep buying it so I'm reduced to browsing through my back issues. And although I must have read them a million times I still get surprised.

I'll have forgotten about the comics related stuff such as the features on Garth Ennis, Frank Miller and Paul Grist, and the interview with Alan Moore. I'll also have forgotten about the reviews of novels by John Connolly, Joe Lansdale, Lee Child and Stephen Hunter.

And because my tastes have broadened even the stuff I remember takes on a new relevance -- the reviews of Robert B Parker novels and the interviews with Ed McBain and Lawrence Block.

But recently I picked up anew issue of CT. Well, new to me anyway; a 2003 back issue that I picked up in a charity shop.

A whole issue of CT that I had never read. I rushed home to read it, to savour its myriad new surprises.

Ooo, look, a Lee Child interview! Reviews of books I've read and enjoyed (by Lee Child, Alan Moore, Harlan Coben) and other books I'm hoping to read soon (by Robert Crais and Dashiell Hammett).

But then the really big surprise.

This issue had a feature on The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, an anthology I had a story in. Admittedly I don't get a mention, the feature quite understandably focusing on authors people may actually have heard of such as Philip K Dick and Joe Haldeman, but it was nice to see the book did actually receive some publicity when it came out. The only press exposure I remember seeing at the time was a capsule review in SFX which again focused on the big name authors such as Stephen Baxter and China Mieville.

So, even though the CT feature didn't show my name in GIANT FUCKING LETTERS this was still a nice reminder of one of my more successful stories.

A pleasant surprise.