Escape Veloctiy 2 escapes!

The next (second)  issue of our science fact and fiction magazine, Escape Velocity, is released ahead of schedule and can be seen here http://www.escapevelocitymagazine.com/

It has exciting stories by Sheila Crosby, Dan Kopcow, Duane Byers, Victor Kuprin, Gustavo Bondoni, Henry Tjernland, Adam Colston, Michael Anderson, Shaun A. Saunders, Nick Wood, Derek Rutherford, and Paul Freeman. A poem by Magdalena Ball, photographs, articles, cartoons and a puzzle. Cheaper than the last one, so why not give it a shot?

You never know who is reading your blog until someone contacts you out of the grey (raining again here). There’s an  arts festival event coming up in Melbourne, Australia, called New Wave and the theme is ‘Closer Together’. You might remember that on March 25 2007 while on a bicycle ride, I encountered the tragic yet amusing sight of a car stuck in the middle of a hedge. It looked as if the hedge roots got fed up with hawthorn and decided to sprout the metal box. Funnier were the two bemused owners, who lost control of the car en route to work, and who were less afraid of the police or farmer’s wrath than that of their mother! That Lache Lane must be really slippery for cars because three more vehicles have leapt off the road since. The Australians want to use my photo of the car. I’m honoured but a little puzzled why a picture of a car in a hedge shows a coming together unless in a surreal way!

The link to that old post (scroll down to find it) is http://geoffnelder.wordpress.com/page/11/

For my WIP I needed some quotes from the French classic poet Baudelaire – his ‘Flowers of Evil’. I bought it dead cheap in Waterstones and was dipping into it on the bus home when a strange woman (ugly, but maybe beautiful inside) sat next to me, even though there were plenty of vacant seats. She immediately quoted verses in French! No idea if they were correct ie from Baudelaire, but she didn’t stop… When I disembarked I wasn’t sure if I’d been in the presence of a cultural beacon or a mad woman!

 Far be it for me to blow my own trumpet, but I was flattered today by comments from the editor at DDP who is working on my Exit, Pursued by a Bee scifi novel and who read my Abandoned short story about a tower crane driver deserted by his wife on the ground and by his workmates in the air.  I’ll let you read what he kindly said:

Hello, Geoff, I thought I’d pass this along for your interest and edification.  I have been doing this sort of work (writing, editing, proofreading and copywriting) for fifty-two years plus a couple of months and I have seldom encountered cleaner manuscripts than yours.  So far I have found a few typos, fewer words out of place.  …   Your plots are taut as a bowstring and quite close to flawless.  Same holds true for the material you submitted for TWISTED TAILS.  The only other author I can say this for is Raspal Chima, also in the UK. ..  may the force be with you…  J.

Should we be worried about this artificial life development reported in the journal Science recently? A US science institute has created artificial life. It’s only a chromosome but has the potential to become cellular life. Mycoplasma genitalium, has the smallest known genome of any truly living organism, with 485 working genes.

the team at the non-profit J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland has been working for years to try to build M. genitalium from scratch.

Ventor has noble aims: to make synthetic microorganisms that could be used for producing biofuels, cleaning up toxic waste or pulling excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The problem lies with the knowledge that once released life has a habit of doing its own thing. It mutates under natural radiation from the sun and rocks and so become less harmless than intended. There are some nasty people and governments around who might think ill-advisedly that their aims may be furthered by employing artificial microbes to reverse pollution clean ups. Maybe to add poisons into the atmosphere and oceans. You might think that there are already plenty of natural nasties out there, and you’d be right. It’s always amused me that food companies like to add the word ‘Natural’ to packaging as if everything in Nature is good for us. Have they heard of Poison Ivy, Deadly Nightshade, Manure? Would you want to eat those in your next snack bar because its labelled as Natural? Nor me!

So maybe a few more tiny organisms in the environment won’t matter, especially if they really do help clean up after us. On the other hand there have been plenty of science fiction stories where such artificial nanotechniks have gone berserk and ate the hands that made them. It could be that homo sapiens end up being replaced by Mycoplasma genitalium or their cousins in the future. I wonder if they’ll read science fiction?

4…3…2…1…

A kind of poetic justice occurred today in my meandering writing progress. At the wonderful Cafe Doom horror critique group I entered a short story for the others to vote on. It was the 3rd Anniversary Comp and took place around Halloween in 2007. After I’d given my last handful of sweets to the trick or tweaters (I know, I know) I thought suppose an astronaut was locked out of his Mars orbiting station? How would he argue his way back in? Since he had only 4 minutes of air left, I entitled it 4…3…2…1

It attracted Nil points at the competition. So did a couple of other stories but it did shock me. Had I become complacent and sloppy in my writing style? I revised it a couple of times and had another critique group lacerate it. 

Someone told me to sub 4321 to Steel Moon. They accepted it and it is epubished here

http://www.steelmoonpublishing.us/4321.html

It felt good to know that a story that attracted no votes in a competition finally made it to a site where the editor rejected others to accept mine.

Geriatric time wisdom

I cheated today and caught the bus home from the city. I’d walked in but wetstuff cascaded from the stratocumulus and so I joined a queue at stand E. This is the stand from which brave bus drivers steer their reinforced steel vehicles through a large housing estate with, let’s say, an interesting mix of people. I stood in the queue and a little white-haired elderly woman stood next to me and then pulled at my elbow. “Does the Lache bus stop ‘ere?”

“Yes, I believe it does,” I said wondering if she was a great great (to the power of three) grandmother of a pupil I’d taught at the school down the road.

“Only I can’t see the E.”

“I’ll let you know when the Lache Bus comes along,” I say hoping she was hearing better than me. Her hearing aids were several generations earlier than mine.

“Ta, love. Only I’ve had to wait for ages lately. They should be every ten minutes.”

Stupid pedantic editorial me then said: “Eleven minutes not ten. It’s that extra minute that’s been fooling you.” I grinned at her, but of course she’d not understand.

“Do you mean like in that space-time continuum? Has the Lache moved to the event horizon and so time is attenuated?” She tapped her nose and winked at me.

My mouth dropped. Was this a Time Lord in disguise? A Time Mistress?

Never assume…

My breathing is under control, slowly. It has to be, because it appears a respected literary agent in the US likes my Left Luggage sci fi trilogy and wants to represent it. He asked me two questions.

 1) why did I want a US agent rather than a UK one?

So, I explained: I’ve been represented by three UK agents over the last 6 years. One was frankly useless, I should have checked him out first. The second disappeared. When I contacted her home, the current householder told me that when he moved in there were over 200 parcels, probably manuscripts, all the way up the stairs. She (where are you Elizabeth Jones, formerly of Kinross?) remains missing but she probably returned to Spain where she previously was a publisher’s editor. The third was Christopher Hill. If you google him you’ll see that his agency collapsed when it was discovered he concocted publishers’ reports for his clients. In fact I ‘look after’ 46 of his former clients: I run a support and advice Yahoo group for them, and through editing advice and through network contacts have helped some to be published. Of course some of them easily ‘look after’ themselves. Hello Gladys, Brian and Gary, Silky, Barbara, Sheila – hey they can ALL look after themselves! Probably better than I look after me. With three UK agents letting me down and under advisement from friends, I’ve aimed for a US agent. This is reinforced by the knowledge that there is more lively science fiction and fantasy readership and publication base in the US than in the UK. There are US main characters in Left Luggage and some of the action takes place there. Lastly, I’ve had a positive experience working as co-editor with US Robert Blevins, owner of small press Adventure Books of Seattle

2) was I prepared to work hard on the manuscript?

I recall showing my synopsis and chapter one to the Scottish sci fi writer, Charles Stross. He said have you written book two of Left Luggage? I confirmed I had and that it was being critiqued by the Orbiters group at the British Science Fiction Association. Charlie sucked in – the air whistling through his teeth. ‘Never write the second book of a trilogy until the first one is sold.’ Oh well, at least I haven’t written the third one! Of course having an agent is only one hurdle. The agency still has to persuade publishers how wise they would be to take out a contract on Left Luggage.

Meanwhile, Double Dragon Publishing have appointed an editor for my Exit, Pursued by a Bee, and I continue to work on Xaghra’s Revenge.  My thriller, Hot Air, is being published by Wuacademia in the Netherlands this year. It all sounds so busy and yet I make more money – and yet not much at that – from editing other folk’s novels than my own. Such is a writer’s life.

In spite of almost continual rain this winter, I did try out my new Dawes Super Galaxy bicycle even if only on local roads. On Wednesday on my return home, I saw a white lorry leaving my drive. It had a stack of fridges, washing machines, freezers on board and YES, my dishwasher! It was an old broken one I had at the top of the drive waiting for me to order a skip to throw in other rubbish. If the driver had stopped, I would have said: Cheeky but thanks. My neighbours saw him and said he’d knocked on the door. They assumed I’d arranged the collection. Suppose my old dishwasher was to be repaired by a friend or I wanted to spray it silver and enter it for an art competition? The man was a thief, though I’m grateful.

A funny thing happened at a funeral today.  Sadly my friend and neighbour died recently and suddenly. He and I often joked about who would go first and so I won. No second goes. We both had medical problems. Mine is a non-life-threatening hearing deficiency, his was more serious and his heart needed to rest permanently.

At the church, St Marks in Saltney, Chester, as I sat in a pew observing those in black around me, I noticed two things. One was I wore non-black, Two was a wire above me in a circuit leading to the microphone in the pulpit. My friend used to rib me about my bicycle riding and once observed (wrongly in my view) that I was nearly taken out by a 4×4. We agreed that if my funeral arrived first, he’d wear a colourful cycling outfit to my funeral and reciprocally I’d wear ditto to his. I chickened out on the full lycra shorts and bright red jersey, but wore a blue cardigan and my green Royal Meteorological Society tie. As for the latter: in the days when I wore ties to work he was the only one who’d ever pointed at the logo on my tie and ask what it was. It’s the ancient Tower of the Winds in Athens.

Back to the church and that wire. My new digital hearing aids have a setting for a loop system. This is a cunning closed broadcast device that transmits from a microphone along the wire. A hearing aid switched to loop can pick up the sounds really clearly as long as they are close to the wire. So sitting in the pew and not hearing the lovely lady minister all that well on normal hearing aid settings, I switched to loop. Nope – even worse. But later we had to stand for the prayer and hymns. Bingo! My ears were now sufficiently close to the overhead wire to hear her! Alas she instructed us to sit again for the eulogy and other stuff (sorry religious folks, but it’s mumbo jumbo to me – even with good hearing – but I know it was meant with the intention of helping mourners feel better. On the other hand, assume there’s no one up there and live a good life to your best because there’s no second chance). 

So I could hear standing up but not when sitting down. My neighbour would have laughed the coffin lid into the air if he knew.

I am really touched by my e-friends this week. I’d disappeared off the Internet radar while New Year visiting relatives in far flung Gloucestershire and notices were posted at the Cafe Doom and ItsYour Turn, and other websites asking if folk had seen me!  I’d taken wise advice from security-conscious friends to keep my being away from home a secret. It makes sense not to tell all the burglars that no one is at home. Having said that, there is always the chance my kids would be at home even when I’m not. Also our burglar alarm is reinforced by two Akita Shepherd dogs next door who bark at butterflies. Hopefully, they’d scare the pants of housebreakers too.

The weather in the UK over Christmas and New Year was pale compared to the heavy snowstorms in Canada and northern USA, but miserable enough to keep me from long walks and bike rides. However, I’ve been busy promoting Escape Velocity magazine issue #1 and reading / editing more science fiction stories for the next issue.

My Xaghra’s Revenge fantasy novel has made slow progress this winter solstice. One reason in the Double Dragon Publishing competition / anthology in the next Twisted Tales collection based on pure fear. It occured to me that a most fearful place would be to be abandoned on top of a very tall tower crane when a) a storm brews, b) the area around the base floods, and c) your wife leaves you for the site foreman, who is climbing the crane to put you out of your misery! I enjoyed the research – did you know that they still have men in cabs over 450 feet in the air? They deserve medals for bravery along with their huge pay packets. Naturally, I’ve thrown in a few spanners but I decided to slow the pace to the M R James style I’ve been told I can do well. Whether DDP accepts it depends on whether I’ve pitched it right, and so I’ve submitted it to two critique groups: the BSFA Orbiters group and Cafe Doom. Come on fellow writers, do your worst!

Gary Hicks sent me this wish so I’ll it on – apologies to friends who’ve seen it:

My Wish for you in 2008

May peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your
debts. May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet of  £20 notes.

 May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your
lips!  May your clothes smell of success like smoking tyres and may
happiness slap you across the face and may your tears be that of joy.
May the problems you had forget your home address! In simple words
…..

May 2008 be the best year of your life!