Review of Status Quo by Mark Rosendorf

Status Quo by Mark Rosendorf
Published by Penumbra Publishing in 2012
ISBN: 978-1-938758-17-1
Paperback 215 pages
An outer space adventure by a motley crew of mixed ages and a cat, all curious about a hole beyond the moon’s orbit.
Reviewed by Geoff NelderWhen astronomer Gordon Maxwell discovers what appears to be a rift in space that is possibly a wormhole less than half a million miles from Earth, the authorities go to some trouble to deny knowledge of it to the general public and to discredit those people involved. One such is the narrator protagonist, student Alexander Copeland. The scene is set and the existing conflict is added to by the brutish military presence of Sergeant Reynolds, who bullies everyone.
Seven years later, while teaching a class, Alex is summoned to the Principal’s office where Reynolds, now a Colonel, recruits Alex and his cat to go on a mission through the wormhole. Alex reasons that the resurrection of the mission means something dramatic has happened. He’s right. Even though society is not permitted to know anything, a probe sent through the wormhole by Maxwell, has returned intact with a mysterious message. A problem for me is that Maxwell had sent a greeting to possible aliens the other side of the wormhole telling them exactly where Earth is – without consulting us. In my opinion it is pure folly to tell strangers where you live. They might decide you are worth enslaving, plundering and eating. Until we know better, a more cautious approach to contacting aliens is preferable. NASA is culpable in this folly by sending such an invitation to pillage us in 1972 with Pioneer 10 and later with Voyager.
The original astronomer, Maxwell, died a while after his project was cancelled and his daughter incarcerated in what we might call a hospital for the insane. She has been released for this new mission, along with Gilda a teenage brat (with redeeming qualities) and various other misfits the world wouldn’t miss if the mission didn’t return. This includes the cat and the military egoist, Reynolds. Never has such a crew been assembled, who have not received astronaut training and don’t even know how the toilet works or been tested for cat allergies. Poor Alex realizes something is seriously wrong here, and so does the reader. However, we continue because we are drawn into finding out about the wormhole and what’s on the other side, assuming the plucky crew are not disassembled, or if they are that they don’t reconstruct with each other’s body parts.
This story would appeal to teenagers: most of the characters are young, while the elderly (over 21) are quite crazy. There’s love interest, pets, a thirst for enquiry and an urge to prove the authorities wrong.
There are lines I wish I’d written such as: ‘I almost swallowed my Adam’s apple,’ and some that made me think out loud: ‘My tongue jumped to the back of my throat.’
I have to thank the author for making me investigate the true meaning of ‘outer space’. After 60 years of reading science fiction, I’ve always considered that phrase to relate to the volume of the universe beyond our solar system but in Status Quo – an apt title, by the way as the reader will discover although not ultimately – the phrase is used ubiquitously for anywhere above the Earth even before the Moon is reached. I found that the Karman line is 100 km above the Earth’s surface and defines ‘outer space’ such as that used by the 1979 Moon Treaty. I mentioned this in surprise to my wife, who already knew!

I will not spoil the ending, but if you enjoy a space adventure with aliens that are really alien – kudos to Mark Rosendorf for avoiding cliché there – and if you are not too worried about scientific accuracy, topped off with a satisfying finale, then this is the book for you.

Amazon Paperback Kindle

Nelder news
The third edition of my humorous thriller, Escaping Reality is launched today from Adventure Books of Seattle. The story is inspired by the 1960s TV series THE FUGITIVE starring David Janssen only set in Northern England and Amsterdam. It is a humorous thriller as the fugitive often has to rely on his wit and sense of humour to overcome adversity.

Escaping Reality

And in the UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escaping-Reality-ebook/dp/B00CWOU3YK/

THe first volume of my ARIA science fiction trilogy is soon to be joined by its sequel. The first is ARIA: Left Luggage. Blurb:
Today, Jack caught a bug at work. He catches a bus home. By the time he disembarks in the desert town of Rosamond, all the other passengers and the driver have fuzzy heads. Jack had caught an amnesia bug, and it’s infectious. Imagine the ramifications: The passengers arrive home infecting family; some shop en route infecting everyone they meet. The bus driver receives more passengers giving them change for last week’s prices and today’s amnesia. Some passengers just started work at the power plant, the water treatment works, the hospital, fire station. All to shut in weeks. Ryder, in the UK, realizes what’s going on but can he persuade friends to barricade themselves in a secluded valley, hiding from the amnesia bug?

Jon Courtenay Grimwood – “Geoff Nelder inhabits Science Fiction the way other people inhabit their clothes.”
Robert J Sawyer calls ARIA a “fascinating project”.
“Geoff Nelder’s ARIA has the right stuff. He makes us ask the most important question in science fiction–the one about the true limits of personal responsibility.” – Brad Linaweaver.
“ARIA has an intriguing premise, and is written in a very accessible style.” – Mike Resnick.

Kindle – Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/
Paperback Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Volume-1/dp/1905091958/

Kindle – UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/
Paperback UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Geoff-Nelder/dp/1905091958/
Publisher’s website with more details and formats. http://www.ll-publications.com/leftluggage.html

Buy it quick before you run out of memory!

Whitstable by Stephen Volk

WHITSTABLE by Stephen Volk

 

A Spectral Press: Spectral Visions III publication

Publication date: May 26^th 2013

 

A review by Geoff Nelder

I have not reviewed a novella quite like this. The protagonist is a real person. Yes, I’ve reviewed fictional biographies but they’ve been of people in the distant past – eg The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, not of someone I could have met and who, via the film media, we all have an intimate connection. It is kind of a fan fiction then, but far superior to most.

Peter Cushing was born on May 26^th 1913. Exactly a century later this novella will be released as a homage to the legendary actor, who lived with his wife in Whitstable.

 

Stephen Volk clearly researched Cushing’s life in great detail but this is not a biography. It is fiction and yet, as a film goer and Doctor Who watcher, I fell under the spell of Volk’s narrative and can say my disbelief was suspended in its reading. A reader should be forgiven if he or she believed this story was based on a real event.

 

The story is set in Whitstable in Kent in 1971 shortly after Peter Cushing’s wife died. He’s fraught with grief, feeling more like an old man than the young fifty-seven-year-old he really is. Morbidly insular he leaves his house to keep away from prying visitors but encounters a young boy who thinks the actor is Doctor Van Helsing, Cushing’s vampire hunting character in the Hammer films. The boy seeks help to vanquish his mother’s boyfriend, who is a vampire, or some other form of evil.

 

Although the story is woven around the boy’s concerns, transferred to Cushing, who takes on the vampire-hunt challenge for real as a welcome distraction from his grief, we experience much more than the plot. Between the bread of the main story is whole-fruit cinema jam, enough to make any horror fan salivate. Volk makes Cushing relate everything to something filmed by him or his contemporaries in a smorgasbord of cinema delight. Accordingly, the action in the novella reads as if a camera follows Cushing. For example he sees a boy about ten years old standing at an inquisitive distance, head tilted to one side with slats of cloud behind him and a substantial book under his arm.’ And in his conversation we have the boy picking at flaking paint on a signpost.

Resonance for me exist in little asides. Cushing is deluged with unopened manuscripts teetering in piles in his house. I had a literary agent in Stirling who vanished. When one of her clients persuaded the police to force her door there were heaps of unopened manuscripts, mostly in brown paper parcels tied with string, all the way up her stairs. She’s still missing but that’s another story.

There are aspects of the narrative that don’t ring quite true for me as a teacher and recipient of childspeak for decades. I don’t think a ten-year-old boy would make such long speeches so coherently from such an inarticulate family background and use words like ‘determined’, ‘crumbled’; although as a horror film enthusiast he might well say ‘vanquished’.  Would an English junior schoolboy say ‘Movies’? Perhaps he would as he is surrounded by movie books and films, but it jarred a little. Not so much jarred as shocked when I found Volk had named the boy as Carl Drinkwater. Grief, I taught him at a school in Chester!

Volk certainly grabs other characteristics of children. ‘“No,” the boy said, sounding supremely affronted, as if he was dealing with an idiot.’ Haha my grandson does that to me and he’s only four. As do my granddaughters though by then I’m thinking it’s more about me.

A fascinating dialogue occurs between Cushing and Carl’s mother. She accuses horror films of being a bad influence on children. Interestingly this debate is in my family too. Batman’s activities create nightmares in my grandson. (though it could be a scam by him to have extra hugs in bed with mum). Cushing’s response, which I rather like, is that he doesn’t make horror films so much as enable an experience of fantasy , an escapism from the humdrum but one in which Good prevails over Evil.

Whitstable offers us insights into the acting profession. Love such quotes that I assume are either legitimate, or should be, such as the one from Olivier to Cushing: “Be sincere, dear boy, always be sincere—and when you’ve faked that, you’ve cracked it.” Note the ironic humour, and there are other lighter moments in what otherwise could have been too gloomy in its poignancy particularly the unwritten point that Cushing’s heavy smoking was probably a factor in his wife’s fatal emphysema. I admit to amusing myself, as Cushing does, in this clip:

“You’re Christopher Lee aren’t you?”

He corrected her with consummate politeness, tugging on his white cotton glove.

“No, I’m the other one.”

“Vincent Price?”

He kept his smile to himself. “That’s right.”

I also like his conversations with his deceased wife – consoling and urging him to have faith in himself. And as a reflection of his view that fantasy represents his work more than horror, he says: “Concentration camp: that’s true horror.” I say the same to my wife when she says something a tad awkward is a nightmare. No, a giant slimey monster eating you from your toes up is a nightmare!

There’s so much more in this novella, which has the depth and characterization of a novel. As a story it really finishes before the end, but aficionados of Cushing’s films, including Stephen Volk, and I, clearly didn’t want to stop.

The Afterword by Mark Morris is homage in action, a declaration of love and appreciation of the genre as portrayed by Peter Cushing and of the man himself.

—

A Spectral Press: Spectral Visions III publication

Publication date: May 26^th 2013

Available in Ltd Hardback and unlimited Paperback

Retail: £17.50 (UK) / 24€ (EU) / $30.00 USA / $30.00 RoW

Available from the publishers: Spectral Press, 5 Serjeants Green, Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK14 6HA, United Kingdom.

Pre-orders:  http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/whitstable-news-and-pre-orders/

Web: http://spectralpress.wordpress.com  | Email: spectralpress@gmail.com 

 

Nelder News:

Sales of How to Win Short Story Competitions are steady. Get yours here.

Exit, Pursued by a Bee is at http://geoffnelder.com/exitbee.htm Several readers have pointed out recently that a principle notion in that book is being proved true. Ie that the universe might be chaotic but that the Earth is in a kind of bubble of stability. In Exit that stability is shaken when alien artifacts leave. Just shows that fiction might not be so unbelievable after all.

ARIA: Left Luggage continues to sell copies to wise readers. Links are

Kindle – Amazon.com  http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/

Paperback Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Volume-1/dp/1905091958/

Kindle – UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/

Paperback UK  http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Geoff-Nelder/dp/1905091958/

Publisher’s website with more details and formats. http://www.ll-publications.com/leftluggage.html

Buy it quick before you run out of memory!

You tube video trailer  http://youtu.be/oh0AAXIe8VU

Join me on twitter at http://twitter.com/geoffnelder

I am mystery jam

A short science fiction story of mine called Colloidal Suspension was accepted for an anthology last year but only now have I permssion to brag about it. Colloidal Suspension is about a man and woman, former lovers (plus wishful thinking on the man’s part) who crashland on a liquid planet. I love survival scenarios in what appears to be impossible situations like this. They argue, plan for rescue, and head for what they hope is the only bit of land. Luckily the sea is as nourishing as a thick pea soup. Do they make it? Yes and no. You’ll have to wait… Press release from the editor:

EXTREME PLANETS

A Science Fiction Anthology of Alien Worlds

Extreme Planet cover art

Introduced by Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author David Brin

Featuring stories from David Brin and Gregory Benford, Brian Stableford, Peter Watts, G. David Nordley, Jay Caselberg and many more

“A stellar line-up of writers presenting the most exotic worlds imaginable—prepare to have your mind blown!” — Sean Williams, Author of Saturn Returns and Twinmaker

Two decades ago astronomers confirmed the existence of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Today more than 800 such worlds have been identified, and scientists now estimate that at least 160 billion star-bound planets are to be found in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. But more surprising is just how diverse and bizarre those worlds are.

Extreme Planets is a science fiction anthology of stories set on alien worlds that push the limits of what we once believed possible in a planetary environment. Visit the bizarre moons, dwarf planets and asteroids of our own Solar Systems, and in the deeper reaches of space encounter super-Earths with extreme gravity fields, carbon planets featuring mountain ranges of pure diamond, and ocean worlds shrouded by seas hundreds of kilometres thick. The challenges these environments present to the humans that explore and colonise them are many, and are the subject matter of these tales.

The anthology features 15 tales from leading science fiction authors and rising stars in the genre:

·        “Banner of the Angels” by David Brin and Gregory Benford

·        “Brood” by Stephen Gaskell

·        “Haumea” by G. David Nordley

·        “A Perfect Day off the Farm” by Patty Jansen

·        “Daybreak” by Jeff Hecht

·        “Giants” by Peter Watts

·        “Maelstrom” by Kevin Ikenberry

·        “Murder on Centauri” by Robert J. Mendenhall

·        “The Flight of the Salamander” by Violet Addison and David Smith

·        “Petrochemical Skies” by David Conyers and David Kernot

·        “The Hyphal Layer” by Meryl Ferguson

·        “Colloidal Suspension” by Geoff Nelder

·        “Super-Earth Mother” by Guy Immega

·        “Lightime” by Jay Caselberg

·        “The Seventh Generation” by Brian Stableford 

Extreme Planets is scheduled for release in late 2013 in both trade paperback and online e-reader formats. Edited by David Conyers, David Kernot and Jeff Harris with cover illustration by Paul Drummond.

—

The story Colloidal Suspension was critiqued at the BSFA Orbiter crit group and at Cafe Doom. And a colloidal chemist, John Rennie, in the Chester SF book group read through the story for me and gave me encouragement and tips – including the immortal line: This thing you have as colloidal suspension, Geoff, isn’t really colloidal.” Haha. Thanks guys and gals for your input.

I am a guest with the supernatural

Actually, Christina St. Clair is a delectable author of the supernatural and much more as you can see on her website after reading my As to her Qs here.

She sent me ten questions from informative to cheeky to elucidate my character and spread more the word on ARIA. Thanks, Christina!

 

Breaking news. ARIA: Left Luggage is holding up well in the Preditors & Editors poll but still requires votes if you have a moment. Please visit

http://critters.org/predpoll/novelsf.shtml

and click on ARIA: Left Luggage a little down the page.

Hugs galore – and that goes for Christina too.

BTW there now is a wikipedia page on ARIA created by Jolie du Pre at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARIA_(novel)

Horror! Yet good.

Yes, The Horror Zine, edited by the delicious Jeani Rector has published a review of ARIA: Left Luggage. The review is wrtten by Dr Kevin Hillman and is here on The Horror Zine’s blog

http://www.thehorrorzine.com/ReviewFolder/AriaLeftLuggage/Luggage.html

Great that Kevin sees the subtleties in the story lines as well as the characterisation.

 

I popped into the Bluecoat Bookshop at 1, City Walls, Chester today and they’d sold a copy of ARIA this week. I have given them a few on sale or return. They are the only bricks and mortar shop to have all my fiction books on their shelves – even the now out of print Escaping Reality humorous thriller. I took my pay from them in children’s books to read to my grandchildren.

A strange experience on route home. The torrential rain obliged me to catch a bus home instead of walking. A potentially awkward bus ride lay ahead as it coincides with schools releasing the hordes. Sure enough th 16 to Saltney was packed with excited ‘it’s Friday’ pupils from Queen’s Park High School, Chester. I taught Geography and ICT there for 26 years, but left in 2002. As I scanned the faces of children filling up the seats and the laps of friends on seats, I found that although none of them knew me, I recognized at least a third of them! I could have nudged the girl sitting next to me and assuredly inform her of her surname and that I’d taught her older sister. Or… it could have been her mother – aaargh. Anyway, I am pleased to report that they were well behaved. Whoever it was that emptied the tray of Metro newspapers onto the floor near the door must have been from a different school. All that teaching of responsibility and behaviour to the previous generation obviously had a lasting legacy  – except for those Metros. I felt warmly pleased.

Seven times rule

At a book signing in Carlisle, UK I was told by an advertising executive that not only should I be thrusting my books in the faces of customers, and for Pete’s sake not have my books in neat piles (customers don’t like disturbing such perfection) but everyone has to have a new product told to them at least 7 times before they take notice. Hence we are here on forums, blogs, social networks and emails making a nuisance of ourselves so many times. Then yesterday a writer pal says she bought my book. She knew it was out in the summer but just needed to watch its trailer one week, read the excerpt another, catch up on a blog tour of it then be nudged again and voila. So perhaps the 7 times rule does work! So here goes 1) NEW in 2012: Suppose amnesia was infectious? Thank goodness it isn’t but imagine the ramifications if it was. ARIA: LEFT LUGGAGE is the personal story of people, the breakdown of society and yet hope for some who coped. Click on this link to Geoff’s blog, which has details including Amazon e-book and paperback.http://bit.ly/OvYGQv ARIA is endorsed by luminaries such as Mike Resnick and Jon C Grimwood.   2) Also out in 2012 is the ebook HOW TO WIN SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS. Co-authored by two experienced judges in a dialogue form and has great reviews (not written by us or our friends!) at http://www.ideas4writers.co.uk/books/storycomps.php   3) For something completely different try HOT AIR, an award-winning thriller based in England and the Mediterranean. A feisty woman witnesses a heinous crime from a hot air balloon. She’s abducted and kept in a watchtower on Mallorca until she escapes. A page turner on your Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Air-ebook/dp/B0084OZL9E/ 4) SF mystery Exit, Pursued by a Bee is exciting interest. Several unique concepts written in an accessible style with a feisty woman main character and with a beginning and end on Glastonbury Tor – festival and all. Paperback and now Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/Exit-Pursued-Bee-ebook/dp/B001CQC9LY

be my twitter pal http://twitter.com/geoffnelder

Blogging the blog fantastic

How often should you blog to keep readers interested and the search engines buzzing? I’ve been reading advice on this from the LL-Publication blog here and I should be posting new pages twice or three times a week. Once a week is usually all I can manage because I am a writer, grandpappy, hiker, cyclist, and house-husband. I don’t want to scribble blogs for their one sake. This month is exciting blogwise, because I am traveling on a blog tour for my ARIA: Left Luggage book.

At the beginning of the month I was on the delectable Suzanne McLeod’s blog here, with a piece on coincidences. I note she has around 2 or 3 blog posts per week. This week should have been the turn of Les Floyd on his Lesism blog. Sadly, Les is ill in hospital after a spontaneous pneumothorax resulting in a collapsed lung. Hope you are getting better, Les. He said he’ll post my blog piece when he gets out and finds it in his three million or so emails!

Meanwhile the superb award-winning writer, Jonathan Pinnock hosts a blog piece of mine at http://www.jonathanpinnock.com/ later today. BTW Jonathan has been shortlisted AGAIN for the prestigious Bridport Prize for short stories. Congrats, Jon. I like that he says he doesn’t quite understand his stoy (if I understood it correctly). Haha, how many of my critiquers at the BSFA Orbiters complain that I haven’t explained everything? Well, not many but yahoo anyway. Ah, now I can tag the words Bridport Prize and attract thousands of hits to this blog, although it’s Jonathan’s blog that is more deserving. Haha.

My piece on Jonathan’s blog is The Lure of Bridges. I have a cartoon there of wind blowing me around on top of the Grosvenor Bridge in Chester. Last night that bridge was closed because an attempted suicide chap was being talked down. By chance I’d forgotten my blog piece was about bridges when I posted about Grosvenor Bridge this morning on facebook. Lo and behold there is my cartoon! To think my blog piece for Suzanne McLeod was on Coincidences! You can’t make it up.

I went for a cycle ride this morning and didn’t like it – shock! The sun was out – hooray, but too low and in my eyes – boo. My prescription sunshades from Optilabs (come on send me a free pair for the plug) are great, filtering out the harsh glare but I worried about drivers coming up behind me. Are they wearing shades? Can they see me? It reminded me why I like booking a week in the Mediterranean for a cycling hol as I did last autumn. I was wondering whether to celebrate my upcoming birthday on Guy Fawkes, cycling the TT race circuit on the Isle of Man, but it would either be raining or the sun would be low. Grrr. Also I can’t find an IOM cycle dealer who can rent me a carbon fibre road bike. I could take my own Dawes Super Galaxy but it takes away some of the pleasure of riding a superlight bike for a few days. An alternative celebration is do something related to my other interest of hiking AND ARIA: Left Luggage. Much of the book is set in the Anafon valley in North Wales. I have a yearning to catch a train to Llanfairfechan (love saying that to the ticket office) and walk, via Anafon and a Roman road, back home to Chester. 60+ miles over hilly terrain. About four days at my pace, especially if I took tent, sleeping bag and food. I might cheat and use guest houses – there’s only one youth hostel en route. Here’s a pic of that Anafon valley. Read ARIA: Left Luggage if you want to see how I use that valley! You’ve not seen this photo of this ‘hidden’ valley before. It’s taken by me from near the summit of Drum. To the right – East- is the Roman road, Anglesey is in the distance. Anafon lake is visible only visited by me and a few fishermen … until they had amnesia and forgot it…

Promo ups and downs

The brilliant news is I am today’s featured author at Ether Books. See

http://theetherblog.posterous.com/writer-wednesday-geoff-nelder

Also that this week has been uplifting with my granddaughter and step-granddaughter staying with us with son, Rob and his heavily pregnant wife, Tracey.

Not so good is that Waterstones have changed their policy on signings making it much more difficult for lesser-known authors to get past celebrity chefs and Loose Women. Consequently, Liverpool 1 and Chester can’t fit me and ARIA: Left Luggage in until 2013 at the earliest, if ever. Then this morning Book Lovers Inc tell me not to arrange to send them a copy of ARIA for them to review because they are too busy. – not don’t send a book yet, just don’t send one. Now this isn’t just an ordinary SF novel but one with possibly the most original concept for a decade. I think both the Waterstones and Book Lovers Inc are swamped by requests by the huge increase in self-published novels. Not that I am against those who choose to self-publish, it’s just that so many of them have not been edited, or critiqued, not even proofread before being published. Sadly it sours the scene for good self published and small press, who, like LL-Publications who publish my ARIA, go to a lot of trouble with editing and presentation. Ho hum. I should have learnt to cook first, get on the telly and then be a writer.

Never mind, I’m off to a writers’ retreat soon and hopefully get a big chunk of ARIA: volume 3 drafted. Hello what’s sticking in my posterior? Ah, Amy, I’ve found your toy horse!

Summertime?

I know this has been around the internet for years but it still makes me smile:

INSTALLING SUMMER….. ███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 45% DONE. Installation failed. 404 error: Season not valid in UK

It popped up on facebook tonight – I saw it posted by Angela Haigh, who is the first woman to tell me how much she enjoyed Escaping Reality.

Preparations are progressing for me to cycle to Cheltenham later this month. I’m taking it easier this year by stopping in Coalbrookdale the first night, then Worcester. 10 miles south of Worcester is a pub at which I am to meet up with some old school friends from my class at Arle Secondary back in the 1960s. We met up last two years ago so it will be fun to catch up. After a light meal I’ll continue cycling on to Cheltenham to visit my sister and other family members down there.

I’ll be popping into branches of Waterstones en route to arrange book signing of ARIA: Left Luggage – release date August 1st.

Other writing news: I’ve written two short stories going through critique groups. One is Target Practice: an asteroid is deflected from hitting Earth but it redirects itself to keep on coming! The story is therefore grim and yet we have steamy sex – during a fight – in space. Hah. Also Chicken – a horror (again with humour because I can’t help it, and you’re worth it) in which two men agree to commit suicide by a tandem parachute jump. One changes his mind halfway down. Just imagine how that can cause problems!

Hot Air is available on Kindle and so is How to Win short story competitions written with Dave Haslett. Exit, Pursued by a Bee is also on Kindle. All visible via my Amazon author page – for Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.

 

more acks and an email from space

A good way to fill your book’s acknowledgements page is to go through the relevant e-mail folder. The Left Luggage / ARIA folder held over two hundred emails. Many were the to and fro mails from the BSFA Orbiter group. Also from its original literary agent, Christopher Hill, then from various editors, who’d helped me out. I also found one from space. Okay not outer space… that would be weird, but he did e-mail me from the International Space Station! I needed to know what the struts of the ISS were made of. I needed them NOT to be magnetic in the story. I found the technical information for the tendering of the struts but no confirmation of what they were made of in the final construction. So I sent off an email. What I didn’t expect is a reply from Leroy Chiao, while he was still in orbit in early 2005. Wow.

Another expert telephoned me in 2007 while I was researching and writing the second ARIA volume. I had used star chart software to see where the stars and moon were in the sky over the South Pacific at dates in 2016. Trouble is I used two different programs and they gave me different answers so I sent a query to Astronomical societies in Australia and New Zealand. The phone rang one day and it was Professor Alan Gilmore from New Zealand. He is famous for asteroid spotting but took time out to tell me Sirius, the Dog Star, wouldn’t be visible on a particular night. He said he’d buy the book when it is published. Yeay, a guaranteed sale!

There were other experts too but sadly I’ve lost those letters and emails. For example a retired Royal Navy Commodore gave me advice on aspects of sailing across oceans in small boats and a Rarotongean chatted to me and sent me photos of her island. I can’t remember their names. Please forgive my carelessness. Authors, make notes for your ack page!

Here’s another possible cover art although I have a feeling the idea has been used already.