First up, the forth part of the Steel Man is live, hidden away once more for your maddening pleasure... now, instead of talking about me, I want to talk about another writer for a moment.

Every once in a while a book comes along that defies all of the usual boundaries of genre fiction, taking you on a wild and heady ride through something entirely new. It's a wonderful feeling that first moment when you discover it, quite like falling in love for the first time. You pick up the book, crack open the spine and lose yourself to the moment. I had the pleasure of reading Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madman a few years ago, and from the first line of Dradin in Love, VanderMeer won me over. It's a book so rich in creativity, so beautifully told that it demands reading and reading and reading.

He's a hell of a talent, to my mind the very best of us new and emerging writers and the success that is coming his way now is highly deserved. Talent will out, they say. In Jeff VanderMeer's case it not only steps out of the shade and into the light it positively burns. I remember reading several years ago that there, ones who envied Charles Beaumont his talent, and ones who were in awe of Charles Beaumont's talent. I'd quite happily substitute VanderMeer's name in that equation - but I wouldn't want to tell you which side of it I fell.

Do yourself a favour, if you haven't already discovered Ambergris, go out now and do just that - it's breathtaking and brilliant and everything a writer could dream of creating.