Holes keep emerging!

Holes appear in the ground scaring the living daylights out of citizens nearby. Is this happening in my SF mystery – Exit, Pursued by a Bee – or for real? Both! In Exit, Pursued by a Bee alien spherical artefacts emerge from the Earth’s crust leaving bottomless circular vents, and reality now seems to prove the fiction. See a recent article (April 2011)

http://bit.ly/eZvrNG

But, hey, this has happened before! See my blog pages from last June. Remember the perfectly circular holes in Guatemala? http://bit.ly/lTPoWe

Read the truth – kind of – as interpreted in my Double Dragon Publishing novel at

http://geoffnelder.com/exitbee.htm

Whenever I make time to peep at my blog statistics I am struck by the higher number of hits for Tryfan than for any of my desperate attempts to point people at my books. Tryfan is a fine mountain in Snowdonia and I scaled its summit with the help of John last year. North face, too, with a mighty scramble just to reach the first stile out of the carpark! I often wonder whether all those thousands of mountain climbers seeking expert help and information about Tryfan, find my blog and think what on Earth have we here? Books, who wants science fiction books when they could be reading about mountains?

Even odder are the large hit rates I get for car in hedge. Yes, I encountered a car parked at right angles to the road and neatly into a hedge, but I can’t find it on google any more. Yet plenty of folks somehow hit my blog because I plonked it in here.and now I’ve done it again. More hits. Maybe a car in hedge afficianado will also want to buy my Exit, Pursued by a Bee book or at least glance at the fantastic video trailer for it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnr-135u84c

I still look at it, even though my clicks on it don’t add to the score there. It’s the clip of the animated spheres in orbit that grab me. So uncannily like the ones in my book. They do exactly as in the clip. Anyway they are so hypnotic, dreamy…

A marvelous endorsement to Exit arrived today from a writer who inhabits several forums. Her avatar is ~bintarab. Note the tilde ~ what a lovely name to call a scriggly line. She found a few typos in an early version of Exit and at my request was good enough to read it through again to note exactly where they were. She says this: “Since I read through it a second time to make my list, I pulled out the quotes that interested me enough that I might mention one or two of them in a book review; turns out they’re the witty quips and turns of phrase that were poetic descriptions to me. But for all that lovely humor, I did it again: I nibbled my fingernails from about page 197 on. How stupid — I knew exactly what was going to happen, there’s no justification for nail-biting, no suspense, no tension — but there was! It’s proof to me of how good your story is, Geoff, that you enraptured me even the second time around as I was looking for errors! Makes no sense, but kudos to you for it! Best sci-fi book I’ve read in a loooong while.”

Wow. I want to marry you! I’d have to ask my wife first, just to check she’s OK for multiple wife arrangements.

I am rewriting Exit as an audio script – Double Dragon Publishing is going into audio books and I want Exit to be in there. I know I could read the whole of the book myself and use Audacity to record it with a microphone, but my voice is slow Gloucestershire, and the main voice in the book is Phoenix American young woman! Anyway I bet it will be another work of art when finished. There are still some ebooks left if you want to spend that change from the bus – here

I have a short horror story, Abandoned, in an anthology published by Double Dragon Publishing Inc – Twisted Tails III: Pure Fear. link to it here.

A Youtube short film was created by one of the authors along with creepy music and it is really good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfUlRaxsPJA

Watch out for my story link – Abandoned, set in London’s Canary Wharf – near the end.

Exit, Pursued by a Bee

It’s been released!

Thanks to J Richard Jacobs, as patient editor, and Deron Douglas for cover art and publisher, my sci fi novel, Exit, Pursued by a Bee is now ready here

http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-577-0

What is it?
Suppose the smooth passing of time on Earth is chaotic in the rest of the Universe. Perhaps Earth time is kept continuous by something that absorbs time decoherences -  not for much longer. The Earth orbits the sun at 18 miles per second. If the mountain in front of you is thrown back a second, it slips 18 miles. Imagine such time-quakes happening all over the world.

As time-quakes cause chaos, a Mars mission is diverted to chase the departing time absorbing spheres. Arguing against hawkish military generals on Earth, the man and woman crew discover a means to communicate with the spheres, but will they listen and return to Earth?

Every purchase is rewarded by a virtual hug

Geoff

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.

The first issue of the Escape Velocity magazine that Robert Blevins in Seattle and I, in the UK, edited is proving popular with the readers and writers. So much so we at Adventure Books of Seattle are putting together the next issue as we speak. (I’m using my left hand to type this as my right is working on the mag, and my other hand grasps a peanut butter sandwich).  So we have enough sparkling stories for issue #2 so come on writers, add your words for the next volume! Check here for both readers and writers! And the price has gone down again! Check too for the competition. If you don’t feel like writing a whole story we are happy to publish your letters. Any aspect of science fiction and aspects of science will be considered.

In our issue #1 I’d written an article about the thoughts offered to me on a writers’ course from sci fi writer, Jon Courtenay Grimwood. In a private session he’d looked at some of my science fiction stories and after I’d sent him Exit, Pursued by a Bee, now going to be published by Dragon Dreams Publishing, Jon sent me a quote I can use on jacket covers:

“Geoff Nelder inhabits science fiction the way other people inhabit their clothes.”

Thanks Jon. That’s a compliment I can throw on my shoulders!

As the solstice approaches the days are too short to mount long cycle rides or hikes, which is a shame since I have several in mind. The odd thing is that the temperature today in Chester hovered around freezing all day with freezing mist adding to the discomfort. Yet last Tuesday I was in colder temperatures on top of Foel Fras and Llywtmor and feeling cosy! A combination of dry air, blue sky and the heat generated by the exertion kept me warm for 24 hours.

I collected my new bike today. A Dawes Super Galaxy and it looks great. I eagerly wheeled it out of the shop and realized the saddle was so low I’d knock myself out if I rode it home, so I wheeled it back in. Moments later I had it outside again, threw my leg (just the one) over the saddle and along the very wide pavement, with no pedestrians in sight, I started pedalling. Two revolutions later I dismounted and wheeled it back in the shop. They’d fitted the panniers too close to the pedals so my shoes were hitting them. The new panniers had a locking device I wasn’t familiar with so I couldn’t adjust them. Minutes later I was outside again and this time travelled 100 metres before turning to re-enter the shop. I’d never seen gear levers like them! Marvelous isn’t it? Buy a new car and you get a handbook of instructions, tools and friendly advice on how to get in and drive.  Spend a thousand pounds on a new bike and you get no instructions, no tools, no drinks bottles (although the shop did give me those after all), no lights, but you do get a bell that makes less noise than my creaking knees! Nevertheless, I’ll enjoy riding it, once I’ve adjusted the seat, handlebars, pedals…

Hooray, the rain slowed today sufficient for me to leap on my bicycle for a between the showers ride to fetch a morning paper. Because of a dislocated finger last month and the rain, gales and busybusy life, I’ve not had a chance to do any long hilly rides, so I rode slowly. I’d forgotten how exhilirating it is to cycle through the countryside, challenge and beat the hills and freewheel down them. I think it was President Clinton who once remarked that cycling was one of the few simple pleasures everyone should experience regularly.

I’ve also been busy writing and editing. Also I’ve had the pleasure of critiquing several short stories at Cafe Doom a great crit site mainly for horror writers. Many of us there write in other genre too but generally in a noir fashion. One aspect of the stories I critiqued intrigued me as it is true of many of the submissions I’d read for the Escape Velocity magazine. Many writers are great at describing what they see, and often have good characterization and dialogue but forget to engage all the readers’ senses. I recently read two 10,000 word stories neither of which had any smells or tactile experiences to offer. Along with taste, odours and feel are part of the way we use SHOW instead of TELL. Allan Guthrie of Hardluck Stories, once showed me that where I’d written about a man sat next to a rancid tramp on a train, I could convert it to real show by adding – as if a pint of sour milk had been poured over him. Excellent. Doesn’t your nose wrinkle now? Hah.

I’ve been having fun revisiting an old favourite article of mine lately. I’ve been asked by Marilyn Peake to contribute a couple of articles for a print version of a newsletter she is publishing in 2008 on writing issues. In 2004 I was commissioned to research and write an article on why dogs bark at and chase bicycles. I used Yahoo and other forum groups to ask basic and then more specific questions to groups of dog owners, cyclists and sound engineers. I’d received over 2000 responses along with long correspondance with ethologists. I’ve always intended to write an article on how I did that research including some amusing aspects and so the draft is done.  I’ll read it again in the next few days and send it off. Peter N. Davidson took some great photographs for me and I’m hoping one or two will be used again. Here is his gallery.

Good news from our forum members of survivors from Christopher Hill’s crashed Literary Agency. As time heals our wounds, more of us are writing again and gaining recognition. Gladys Hobson wrote a romance novel, Awakening Love, which has won a highly commended award at the London Book Festival this week. Well done that lady! A link to her books is here.  Others in the group have made progress too, including Lanaia Lee where her ‘Of Atlantis’ has released a YouTube video here. Another member, Brian Withecombe has his The Seagull & Le Corsair book published here
http://tinyurl.com/276fup
Other members are singing like Elvis! Well done, Bob Taylor >>> http://www.myspace.com/tuesdaynightatthebootandshoe

It really is worth listening to. Congratulations Bob.

My contract for my sf novel Exit, Pursued by a Bee is with Double Dragon Publishing in Canada now, so I look forward to working with J. Richard Jacobs my editor.