Double Whammy in May – in a good way

The sequel in the ARIA trilogy has May 31st 2013 as the release date! ARIA: Returning Left Luggage is in the final stages of proofing, the art has been painted by Award-winning Andy Bigwood, and the promo engine is cranking up. By sheer coincidence May 31st is the day a while ago that my wife, Gaynor, was born. Luckily, she smiled when I mentioned her birthday is on the same day as the release of ARIA 2. Not so much, as poet, artist and writer Catherine Edmunds comments, a competing celebration – more using my book release as part of Gaynor’s birthday celebration. Yeay!

ARIA: Returning Left Luggage cover art by Andy Bigwood

Of course reading the sequel would make more sense if you read the first book in the series – ARIA: Left Luggage – links at the bottom of this page. Not unique but unusual for a science fiction trilogy is that the first volume has NO aliens, no battles in space, no Earth people going on interstellar travels. I believe it helped making the book more enjoyable as a medical mystery with the infectious amnesia for non-SF readers, although such plot aspects weren’t needed for book one either.

LL-Publications have asked me for a 800-word excerpt to hook readers and media into book 2. It was easy to do this for Left Luggage because the beginning was just right. The prologue told of Jack, who caught the infectious amnesia (ARIA) at work then spread it on the bus home. It was unique – and amazingly the idea of infectious amnesia still is unique in the fiction (and non-fiction) world. A reader tells me she lost some memory and other brain problems when she contracted meningitis so that is a kind of amnesia that is infectious but not retrograde, nor with everyone catching it within a few yards. Any day I am expecting an experienced science fiction reader to say, hey I read about infectious amnesia in this book in the 1950/60/70s by Niven/Heinlein/Asimov but they haven’t yet… Would it matter if they did? No, because it isn’t possible to have original ideas in absolutely every story – tens of thousands come out each year. Each story is unique because of the blend of characters, sub-plots, settings, writing style and factor X. Even so, it is rather cool to have an original idea and to have it published. Come on film makers, contact LL-Publications and buy the movie rights!

The 800-word excerpts for Returning Left Luggage is proving harder to pick. There are many many scenes that I like very much and whittled them down to five. One is of an ARIA victim trying to find his wife in an abandoned port in the South Pacific. It illustrates much of the dystopian problems and scenery created by ARIA. Butbutbut it involves shooting dogs. They are feral and maddened by starvation but even so, it might alienate [sic] dog-loving readers so while it remains part of the whole book it will not appear on the press releases! The others are too long so whichever I choose will involve even more lacerating than in the proofreading. I have enlisted the help of the Orbiter critique group, who helped me edit ARIA and still do so for volume three. So I’ve sent three possible excerpts to Mark Iles, James Odell, Chris Riley and James Steel for a poll on the one they think is best for a hook. Thanks – I’ll let you know the outcome. Daughter voted for a scene where Manuel seeks food in an abandoned shop and is caught – maybe.

I am slowly building up a twitter following at http://twitter.com/geoffnelder but I notice that some people have over 100,000 followers yet only follow a few hundred. Then I discovered that you can BUY thousands of fake twitter friends, youtube likes, and other social media connections. Such falsehood is probably excused by some a marketing ploy but it’s not one with which I would feel comfortable. It’s not much different to those authors who have fake identities to create their own ‘brilliant’ reviews on Amazon and fake blogs. I don’t have many followers on twitter – around 800 – the number goes up and down daily – but at least they are real. I think!

Wigan ate my sweets

A warm feeling enveloped me at the Leigh & Wigan Words Festival yesterday as a small flash mob gathered around me in a corner of Wigan library to meet me. Mob might be an exaggeration of the quantity and an abuse of their good nature in the quality of their overt friendship. I’d come to talk about and sell copies of ARIA: Left Luggage but I wasn’t quite sure whether this was to be a simple sign and sell; move on to the next, or a reading, or a chat. No one seemed to know. Being a relatively small crowd we pulled their chairs into a semicircle with me, my box of sweets and books, facing them. I only knew one of them, Mike Hunt – the chair of the Festival committee and my friend from BeWrite Books days (RIP one of the most ethical publishing concerns). I’d met Joan on facebook but knew none of the others.

The group engaged me in interactive dialogue when I told them how I got the ideas behind ARIA with its unique concept of infectious amnesia, me being the first fiction writer to have received help from an astronaut in orbit, why science fiction allows me and readers to escape the limitations of setting our imagination on just one planet. The two hours flashed by and with great bonhomie they ate my chocs and bought my books.

A reporter and photographer from the Observer were there to quiz me for 20 minutes. Andrew Nowell was a cultured young man who recognised which Shakespearean reference is allured to in the title of my 2008 SF mystery – Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Clever chap. I look forward to reading his interview in me. All of you can when you buy the next copy of the Wigan Observer.

My nerves rattled in me for days in advance making me useless for fresh ideas and writing as well as domestic duties, but I need not have worried. Wigan Library is a fine new venue and the people are friendly – I didn’t even have to wear a rugby shirt.

I had ordered a large screen TV to show my short video trailer of ARIA but even a small screen wasn’t available. Shame. The youtube version of it has now reached 500 viewers! Go on, make it 501 now! ARIA video trailer here

Will Self drew a greater crowd and good for him, one day, one day…

A piece of practical advice which I’m told – after the event – by the chairman, is to ensure the blurb for flyers and advertisements emphasise that it isn’t just a signing but a discussion with the actual author. Apparently, more people would have attended if they knew that.

Upcoming4me has an intriguing piece about how I thought of and influences behind ARIA here.

Exit, Pursued by a Bee link is here

The keys to babies’ happiness

Although there are downsides to children using computers, such as spending too long on them, repetitive strain injury, addiction, obesity, learning the wrong things, web abuse, but there are jolly good things too. Supervised, children from one onwards can avoid all the above and be enriched. They can enjoy learning via colours, sounds, and touch by everlasting patient software. They get used to manipulating technology as if it’s an extension of themselves and develop skills in addition to the conventional learning and playing methods. You didn’t have to persuade me. I wrote colour, shape and sound simulation programs for my children’s infant school way back in the 1980s on the BBC Microcomputer. Both our kids grew up being used to computers and Robert makes his living programming them.

Then thirty years later along came our grandchildren. None of my programs work on the new computers. Actually they would by running BBC BASIC or RM BASIC emulators, but they have a tendency to crash the PCs and show their decrepit age compared to today’s software. I searched the web for kid friendly software and found quite a lot. However, one stood out because it disabled normal functions of the keyboard such that the children couldn’t get out of the program and on into other software even accidentally. Giggles Baby did all that and more. Our grandkids, even those under one, really did giggle and shake with excitement when they made sounds and colours and funny creatures dance on screen with each key press.

 

Giggles Baby was installed via CD but the programmer, Tim Leverett, saw his future for the business in making the software run online. He calls it Club Toddler. There is a token cost for the full package but you can use the basics for free by registering at http://www.clubtoddler.com/

 

Now here’s the funny thing. To register, you have to download the ‘engine’ of the suite of programs – fine. Then register with an email address and password. Oops. The software wouldn’t let me enter the @ in my email. I thought maybe it was something I’d done wrong. Tried number lock, caps lock, etc. I rebooted the computer but the problem was stubborn. I tried other keys. Nope. So I emailed Tim Leverett who promptly replied saying only one other person had reported a problem but had been quiet since. He tried fixes. Then Tim mentioned that the @ was above the 2 on his keyboard. It’s above the ‘ on mine with “ above the 2. We knew that continental Europe had Zwerty instead of Qwerty keyboards but didn’t know that US keyboards were subtly different from those in the UK. No problem, he engineered a fix so that UK folk can register Club Toddler. Yeay.

 

It gets better. Tim is an aspiring writer of science fiction. He’d browsed through my website at http://geoffnelder.com and came up with a mutual benefit plan. Would I give him an assessment of a film treatment he’d written for a science fiction story in exchange for me having premium membership of Club Toddler for life? Yes! I can’t wait to both read through Tim’s oeuvre and show his software to my grandkids.

 

Other news

Free giveaway of ARIA and an ARIA T-shirt in an easy competition draw! Just hop along to the front page of http://bibliophilia.org with its link to the video trailer and buying links.

 

I learnt that my short story, Accident Waiting to Happen, was not only accepted by eFantasy magazine but published in their February edition. You can grab a copy from their website here. The story is set in the Madrid National library but the idea came from my wife while we were driving along the M56. She saw a badly listing lorry and said, ‘There’s an accident waiting to happen.’ I said, ‘That’s a good title for a story.’ It turns out to be a romance and a mild horror at the same time. I once needed a large book on the Bindweed plant in Widnes library and another large book teeetered on a top shelf… Such are the musings that result in stories being written. (the Bindweed research comes into ARIA: Returning Left Luggage).

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.

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

 

Voted a winner, now you can win too

The writers website and forum, Bibliophilia is hosting a competition for its members to win a print or e-book copy of ARIA: Left Luggage and a T-shirt! The site’s front page has a link to the video trailer too. See http://www.bibliophilia.org/

The second book in the trilogy has been edited and is undergoing its final proofread as we speak. Hopefully it will be ready for publication this spring. Andy Bigwood has been working on the cover art and I can show you the latest version here.

ARIA: Returning Left Luggage cover art by Andy Bigwood

Infectious Amnesia Wins Award

Yeay – and huge thanks and e-hugs to all my readers and strangers alike who voted for ARIA: Left Luggage to be the best science fiction novel 2012 in the P&E Award.

The fancypants emblem is above. I might have it tattoed on my … erm forehead? Backside? Hey not a bad idea, it would hide my scoliosis.

Now I need to send press releases and trust local and national press will print more than a square inch. The few newspapers for North Wales have already said they are not covering it because I live in Chester and at 40 minutes drive it is too far to count as local. They won’t listen to the fact that half of ARIA: Left Luggage is set in North Wales. Ho hum. Please someone… lean on them!

For your amusement here is my press release. If you like you can send it to … anywhere!

A British author, Geoff Nelder, won an American award in the world of science fiction this January. His book, ARIA, has won the coveted Readers’ Poll run annually by the Preditors & Editors organisation in the US. The first volume of the trilogy, ARIA: Left Luggage, published by LL-Publications, came first out of 85 novels in the category of science fiction and fantasy. ARIA has caught the imagination of readers worldwide as it is the only book to have used the idea of amnesia being infectious. In the story, no one is immune from the infectious amnesia and people lose memory backwards at an alarming rate forgetting where they live, their jobs and eventually how to write, read and speak. A few isolate themselves in a North Wales valley hoping to survive and fight back at the perpetrators of the virus.

There are some chapters based on the apocalyptic nature of the Alien Retrograde Infectious Amnesia (ARIA) and its effects on social, emotional and other aspects such as what happens when the gorilla’s keeper at Chester Zoo succumbs to the infectious amnesia.

Geoff was a teacher at Queen’s Park High School, Chester for over 20 years and still lives within the school catchment in Westminster Park. He became a writer and editor since leaving the school and now three of his novels have won awards. They, including ARIA, are for sale at the Bluecoat Bookshop 1, City Walls, Northgate as well as on Amazon. 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

—–

I’ve just spotted the final entry in my blog tour is up and running at http://lesism.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/my-friend-mentor-geoff-nelder.html  Thanks Les!!

Imagination Factory

Geoff Nelder’s Imagination Factory is found at the top of my headed note paper. I laugh each time I see it because it is kind of a steampunk image of an engine driving cogs and wheels in my head generating ideas. I think I must have been lucky that I day dreamed throughout much of my school life and so the usual stamping out of creativity didn’t work on me. Perhaps the same happened to other artists and writers too. Naturally, schools have a job to get their young prisoners through external examinations to qualify for their real factory jobs, offices, be killing machines, retail operatives, people-patcher-uppers, and go go getters. My promotion beyond head of department was cooked when the head took VIPs and chair of governors into my surprisingly well-behaved class and saw my copy of Teaching As A Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner on my desk. My main teaching aim was not dissimilar to the crudely-put ‘to teach ‘em to be good crap detectors’ from Ernest Hemmingway. More politely, I wanted my pupils to mature into people who could adapt to changing ideas, rationalise without losing what’s worthy and to use lateral thinking. Not easy to put those on an exam paper. My first year at teaching was exhilirating as it was illuminating at Jordanthorpe Junior School, Sheffield in 1969. The kids were full of ideas for their art and in finding solutions for problems I set them as a student teacher.

Yesterday I was reminded of the creativity of young minds while I was struggling to keep dignity and body together on the top floor of the Trafford Centre soft play centre. You know, those buildings within a building designed for little ones to hurtle through tunnels, up ramps, over obstacles and down spiral slides. Up there with my 3-year-old grandson, Oliver, doing his favourite hide and seeking, he found me and yelled: There’s a fire! I listened but that was a waste of time because with my wonky hearing I’ve not heard an alarm for years. Looked, but no one around mid-afternoon. It could be true then. I said: Where? He turned to run and said: Follow me. So there’s me trying to keep up while crouched to stop further headbanging on the foam-wrapped scaffolding and crossing a rope bridge. He looked back, pointed at my feet and said: Mind the crocodiles!

If only the education system can keep that creativity.

Huge thanks for all those pals and readers who have voted in the Preditors and Editors poll for my ARIA: Left Luggage. As I write my book is in the top three but I’m expecting a big push from the others so I need every weeny vote please. The poll closes on the 15th January. If you have yet to vote and would like to support me please go to

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

scroll down to ARIA: Left Luggage and click the button to its left. Then scroll down and after filling in the antirobot information press the submit vote button. BIG e-hugs to all.

Hey, my short horror story, Her Battle of Trafalgar is Editor’s Pick (editor Jeani Rector) at The Horror Zine just out. This delightful picture is on the front cover but could be the woman in my story. Read my story here.

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

Killed babies? Resurrect them with blogs!

As part of my blog tour arranged by LL-Publications I am this week hosted by writer, Mark Iles at this link. Mark has taken an interest in ARIA: Left Luggage from the beginning when he liked the possibilities presented by the idea of infectious amnesia. An editor of an early draft said I’d given too many examples of the effects of the virus so I had to cut a couple. One was a reversal of the normal day at a US / Mexican border point. In ARIA the infectious amnesia is coming from the north so people are streaming south to Mexico. Ah, but can they? Hence this short scene that Mark includes in his blog. Thanks Mark. you’ve enabled this chapter to be resurrected after all!

Update****

The prestigious SFSignal is carrying on with my blog tour this week with
another missing chapter unearthed from ARIA: Left Luggage. It works fine as
a stand-alone short – in my opinion – and was a favourite of the BSFA
critiquersbefore an editor advised it was an example too far. Read, enjoy.
The bit.y link is to the SFSignal page you may click with safety
http://bit.ly/StiWoc

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…