My friend, Lynn, in Lewisburg, PA, sends me short stories, as do several others. This is the first, and maybe the only one I’ll post since it isn’t written by me, and the author is some clever sod called A. Nonymous. The story has a familiar ring to it but I didn’t guess the gratifying twist at the end – will you?

   A man who had just died was delivered to the mortuary wearing an expensive, expertly tailored black suit. The mortician asks the deceased’s wife how she would like the body dressed.He points out that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing.The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit. She gives the mortician a blank check and says, “I don’t care what it costs, please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing.”

The woman returns the next day for the wake. To her delight, she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly.

She says to the mortician, “Whatever this cost, I’m very satisfied.  You did a  excellent job and I’m very grateful. How much did you spend?”

To her astonishment, the mortician presents her with the blank check.” 
There’s no charge,” he says.

“No, really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue suit.”

“Honestly, ma’am,” the mortician says, “It cost nothing. You see, a deceased gentleman of about your husband’s size was brought in shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive blue suit. I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit instead, and she said it made no difference as long as he looked nice.  So I switched the heads.”

My wife laughed her head off. Does anyone have needle and thread?

Waiting in the queue in Currys electrical warehouse – I had to return a TV / PC Monitor – I had another idea of how my Auditory Crecendo story might pan out, including a full-flavoured satisfying ending. I thought I was being clever, you see. The 5-years old RM computer up in the spare room, which I mainly use for archiving and sometimes to get away from the Internet to write & edit stories, has no monitor. This makes it difficult to use, as you can imagine. A friend from my junior school days gave me the idea to scan a class photo, so we can both poke fun at comrades and reminisce (is that the right spelling? There is a spell checker in here somewhere but it threw a wobbler and digested all my words last time I used it). I noticed that some LCD TVs could also be used with an HDMI or VGA port to a PC. Mine is tooooooo old to know what a HDMI connection is but has VGA. So clever me bought the TV so I can watch go-go dancers on pop channels whilst fiddling on the computer (Just working, Dear! – I’d shout down the stairs). But my RM simulated epilepsy at the new monitor / TV, hence my visit to Currys today.

The idea for my story? Not telling. Some emails said I’ve said too much already and Stephen King or JKR will have had it published and the film made before I finish the first page. Um, doubtful, but at least you’ll have to read the whole thing to find out what happens to Abner’s hearing.

I have new digital hearing aids. They are not cochlea implants, nor the miniature (cost = a small car) jobs, but National Health ones that cost them £1000 (2000USD) each, but nothing to me as a UK resident. They take some getting used to. Yes, sounds are louder and mostly clearer, although the two aspects don’t always go together. The left one enables me to detect my heart beat after an hour.  Maybe it tunes into a pulse in my ear. Some sounds I never heard before are now intrusive, such as clocks and the click this keyboard makes. I didn’t know the centre wheel of the mouse made clicking noises! Ditto for the indicators on the car. However, I still don’t hear some high frequency sounds. Many mobile phones are lost to me and when folk speak I still need to look at their lips to help understand any consonants they utter.

So, yesterday while walking to town and hearing goldfinches do their unique twittering I thought  of a horror story I could scribble about hearing aids. Suppose someone had a new type of cochlea implant, surgically inserted and switched on. For the first week, like me he can hear much better and he notices that noises are getting louder. It is possible to use the external connection behind the ear to adjust volume – no problem. Oh yes there is. The noises get louder still, so much he can’t stand it. Clocks ticking approach 100 decibels, and whispering people seem to be bellowing! So he goes back to hospital but they say they can’t remove them yet. He’d got them  cheaper, subsided by an unknown party he suspects might be the military. He has bought earplugs, something he never needed before. Even so, his hearing aid is increasingly sensitive. In an otherwise silent apartment with no clocks and all external noises off – like fridges, computers and goldfish, he finds he can hear his neighbours speech, lovemaking, their bloody clocks! He moves to an isolated run-down house in the countryside. It takes a few days before his hearing starts to detect the village sounds four miles distant. But then his hearing changes. He starts hearing sounds humans, and maybe dogs and other animals cannot hear. Electricity? Then he hears murmurs in his empty house. Spirits, ghosts or other entities? Work in progress, but how do you like it so far? Just as a short story.

Working title is Auditory Crescendo. I once used the word crescendo in a story and a critiquer told me off because they thought I’d made it up! I can’t be the only fiction writer who can read music!

It seems that the shuttle, Endeavor, is leaving the International Space Station a day early because Hurricane Dean might affect Houston Mission Contol. Eh? When you think of all the milliions of dollars spent on sending them up there, and fighting the weather windows to find time slots, and they are bringing them back early!! Surely a bit of a wind shouldn’t be that influential. Come on NASA, find another spot for Mission Control away from hurricane tracks!

 Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astrobiologist at Cardiff University has calculated that life probably started in the squidgy clay substrates inside comets rather than in a mucky pool on Earth. The comet then landed and the bacteria said: Hello, lets party here. I like this idea. Not that it is the first notion along these lines. I have a book by Fred Hoyle written decades ago postulating the same idea. More so, he reckons many of our disease viruses come drifting through our atmosphere having travelled here on comets. Having been born in Hannover, Germany and brought up in Britain, I was always happy to be considered European rather than English. Then I joined the youth branch of the United Nations Association and considered myself a Earthman rather than attached to any one nation. Now what? My great great (great)^n granddad arrived in a comet’s tail. I knew it. We are ALL immigrants. ALL aliens! Hah.

Hilarious – Stephen King popped into a bookstore in Alice Springs, down under, and started signing copies of his books. Apparently, some famous authors wander the world incognito, finding copies of their books. A shop assistant spotted this chap defacing the books and so with reinforcements from the manager and other staff, surrounded the vandal. They didn’t recognise the miscreant as Stephen King, and ordered him to leave, even though one of the customers did realise the truth and was as delighted as a Koala finding a eucalyptus leaf pie. Once comparison of siggies occured the manager rushed out of the shop, caught up with King in a supermarket and begged forgiveness, telling him that if they’d known he was in town they’d have “baked him a cake.”

Baked a cake? Is that the limits of Oz hospitality to one of the world’s greatest horror writers?  I wonder if Stephen does what I do in bookshops and move my books from the back of others on the floor, to eye-level, front facing? Sadly, the only independent bookshop in Chester has closed. Shame because they sold my Escaping Reality and Dimensions (written with Robert Blevins) whereas my local Waterstones won’t. Maybe, once my more recent sci fi are mainstream published they’ll change their minds. I have to think positively!

Meanwhile I continue to smile with Stephen King – great one, your majesty!

A friend, John M, mentioned an apect of blogging that I had thought about but not seriously. If I add words here every few days, but then nip off on a jolly cycle ride or holiday, unless I continue blogging, surfing burglars might think my house is empty. They’d be right in some ways. The most valuable items in my house are two laptops, which go with us on holiday and a heavy upright piano. The burglar would need a strong bike and back to run off with that! Seriously though. Our house is alarmed, not just by electronic devices, but by two Akita Shepherds who live in the open drive next door. Also nosy neighbours can be very useful!

Speaking of my neighbours – and truthfully, I am very lucky in that they are all good friendly folk. As far as I know none of them read this blog either so I’ve no need to be kinder than the truth. Where was I? Ah, I popped along to one of them who volunteered to run a charity bring and buy event for Arthritis Research. So I took along a bagful of my books – Escaping Reality, Dimensions and Northern Lights (short story sequel to ER in there). It’s amazing what a fan club writers can instantly generate when their books are sold for whatever price the purchasers feels they are worth! Anything from a pound to a fiver, it seems as long as they were signed. I felt all aglow as my new fans and friends chatted about writing, UFOs, hearing aids, and writing, science fiction ideas, writing and reading.

At last I’ve started writing Xaghra’s Revenge. I’ve done mucho research into the culture and behaviour of corsairs and janissaries of mostly Turkish origin in the 16th century. I don’t want the story to indulge in stereotypical Barbary pirates. I know that Rais Dragut and Pasha were very well educated, and that sadism came with the job in those days – sadly today too it seems.

Back in April I’d put the final touches to my short story, Gravity’s Tears. It is about a summer meteor shower that instead of being confined to dust particles burning up in the upper atmosphere, they come through like bullets smashing into cars and people. The story follows the drama as experienced by a couple driving along a highway in Canada – they have their own drama too, and an explanation is offered for the unusual meteor shower. Why do I remind you? Because tonight and the next three nights, the Perseids should be in the sky! And they are the meteorites I use in the story. For observational details for the real showers go here. To read my story, let’s all hope Sheila at Asimov magazine likes it enough to publish it!

Hey, and thanks Ed Dempster at Cafe Doom  - a great critique and forum place for dark fiction – for reminding me

Now my wife is spending longer online and working on the computer in the evenings, we decided she ought to have a comfortable computer chair. We already have two + computers so there’s no need to fight over the technology. In fact it’s been known for us to send e-mails to each other while in the same room! No, not put the kettle on, but only to send complex hyperlinks to share. Anyway, short of spending £1000 for a chair it was hard finding websites that reviewed office chairs. Finally we gave up and I clenched teeth and buttocks in the realization that a trip to IKEA was necessary. IKEA is the Swedish flatpack furniture chain where hapless customers are forced to trail through warehouses dressed as showrooms. It is a horrendous experience for me. Once through the door you cannot walk straight to the display of office chairs, pick one and leave. You have to follow a complex maze cunningly designed to ensure you pass by every item with no short cuts. The items you want have been telepathically determined en route to the shop and they’ve arranged for it to be at the furthest from the entrance.

There are arrows on the floor – like in hospitals – to lead you towards exits but you never find them on the first circuit. With increasing feeling of panic while passing a children’s furniture section for the second time I spotted a gap in the wall. Escape? I peered through and it seemed it might have been a portal to another universe. Or it might have been to another dimension of this universe. Sadly the people on the other side appeared to be in another IKEA and were as depressed and as desperate as I am.

Luckily we found a chair my wife felt comfortable on. The testing was fun – all that whizzing around on wheels and seeing which hydraulics sent you up and down the fastest, but the exhiliration was tempered by the knowledge we had to find the exit before we were there forever, like other customers.

So now the chair is at home. I’ve yet to build up the courage to open the box. I know it is going to take all day to assemble it. An hour to find the instructions, an hour to read them. An hour to find and then count all the accessories and find the tools. That’s before I attempt to put it all together so that my assemble resembles the chair in the showroom.

Give me a day’s writing any day.

I’ve mentioned PodioBooks.com in this blog in the past because I’ve submitted an audio version of Prime Meridian to them. As a short story in the sci fi collection, Dimensions, I expect it will be on their site any day soon.

 It was no surprise to me that my friend’s book was accepted more quickly. Gary Hicks has worked hard on his Terra Incognita sci fi blockbuster – move over Star Trooper. After spending hundreds of hours writing, editing, re-editing, persuading many voices to help read it, add bells and whistles and other FX it is now on site and free to listen here.

Marvelous just to listen to the sounds and voices, let alone the story and 3d characters. Well done, Gary!

I’ve been away and hence the two-week lapse in this blog. I was tempted to write a statement to that affect before I left but then a million squatters may have invaded my house so…

My parents-in-law used to holiday on the Isle of Man for a week most summers during the 50s and 60s and since this year is their 60th wedding anniversary we decided to treat them to a nostalgic trip back. The IOM has great scenery and luckily my in-laws are still relatively fit for walking. It’s a pity they never developed a habit of walking the countryside with proper walking boots though. Their sandals and shoes are fine for pavements but cuts short potentially longer and more interesting perambulations when the path becomes wet, muddy and rough. Even so, there is a 95 miles circumferential footpath that is mostly possible with ordinary footwear. Naturally, I snuck into Internet access points where possible. There is a free wifi hotspot within the Steam Packet terminal building that proved useful with my Sony Vaio – so every other day I was able to winnow out the penis enlargement and loans adverts from the writing contracts – a ratio of 100:1  hah! OK so I had two rejects – one for a sci fi story, Ubiquitous and an uninterested agent for Left Luggage. But also another sale of Escaping Reality (which reminds me to post a signed copy today) and a publication of my unusual vampire story: Vampire Non Sequitor in the e-zine Tales from the Moonlit Path. The story was suggested by my veggie daughter, Eleanor, who in the BHS cafe in Warrington, said: Dad, what if a vampire bit a vegetarian? See the result here.

In the evenings I was able to finish off a fantasy, Witch’s Alien. I have to print and take another look at it this week before dreaming up a market for it.  Also I managed to write a longish short story, Unrelativity, in which a character working in the Patent Office in Bern, in around 1905, discovers odd things happening to him after testing someone’s patent invention. Fun to write alternative histories when parallel to real life, so the main character is Egbert Pebble (get it? pebble = stone = ein stein?). That one isn’t finished but within a relativity short time and space it will be.

I know, I know. Xaghra’s Revenge was supposed to have been started while on the IOM but I received some thoughtful plot suggestions from Jenny Adams in the BSFA Orbiters group. I have to rethink some aspects now…