Acknowledgements for ARIA

ARIA is the new name for my science fiction trilogy of which the first is called Left Luggage. ARIA is an acronym of a amnesia-creating virus released from a case left on the struts of the International Space Station. The book is being published in 2012 by LL-Publications and I thought carefully over the last few days to write a page of acknowledgements. That page is in its first draft but I will post it here because it astonished me how many writers, some famous, have been involved. There have been other folk who I have not named, and who have encouraged me over the years though they have not actually read the manuscript. In particular Gladys Hobson and Brian Withecombe. Like me they had a literary agent, Christopher Hill, who was a sham. He reported to me with detailed progress reports of how Left Luggage attracted interest at HarperCollins and Crown publishers. I was offered a five-figure advance, as were many of his other clients. Sadly, it was all in Hill’s demented mind. He’d not sent our books anywhere and he’d sat in his Edinburgh home in a kind of Walter Mitty stew. I’d even met him over dinner at an Edinburgh hotel and he was smartly dressed, spoke eloquently, and seemed well-educated – all the attributes of what I imagined a literary agent should be. Except he wasn’t as over 60 of his “clients” found out. Many of us belong to a Beyond Hill yahoo group and have had our successes in spite of or maybe because of that weird experience.

So here is the first draft of my acknowledgements page. Feel free to shout if I have missed you or erred.

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This novel would not have been possible without Daisy. Her twenty-four gears allowed my legs to rotate up the Welsh slope of Horseshoe Pass near Llangollen making my heart thump so fast my brain – freshly oxygenated – buzzed with an original idea. It was such a novel concept I dismounted at the summit, rushed into the Ponderosa Café and demanded a scrap of paper and a pencil. Thus ARIA was born.

I have trawled files to trigger my memory of all those editors, friends and critiquers who sculpted then polished ARIA to the diamond it now is. Any flaws are not their fault but mine.

The first real editor to lacerate my script and teach me about Point of View and strong characters is Doug Watts from the Jacqui Bennet Writing Bureau. My Hollywood-based pal, Jessie Lilley-Campbell helped me with Americanisms and pushed Left Luggage under the nose of Brad Linaweaver ¹, (Battlestar Gallactica co-writer) who endorsed it. Each chapter cranked their way through the tough critique group of the British Science Fiction Association’s Orbiters including Terry Jackman, Mark Iles, James Bloomer and Ian Clark. Encouragement came from award-winning SF writer Jon Courtenay Grimwood², and Stargate novel writer, Sonny Whitelaw. Urging me on were publisher Neil Marr of BeWrite Books, friend and guru Les Floyd, American writing tutor and award-winning writer, M. Kenyon Charboneaux³, and my American literary agent and friend, Rebecca Pratt. A wonderful writer in her own right, Bec Zugor, advised me on the Italian language uttered by mad Doctor Antonio Menzies. Louise Bolotin of the editing services, Plain Text, helped me with early chapters and query letters.

After all that help, and from too-many-to-mention-others, surely the manuscript would be perfect? Ha ha, but then I sent it to friend, hard-nosed crime writer, and agent, Allan Guthrie. Whoa! Advice from the world expert on pleonasms and tight narrative meant that I started over again.

During this time other novels and over fifty short stories had fled my fingers onto the world, so my style evolved, and is still developing. Perhaps it is in the bronze age now. In the last minutes Zetta Brown and Billye Johnson tweaked and poked ARIA further. Thanks to them and everyone.

None of this would have been possible if my wife had insisted I went out and found a proper job after I left teaching, so ultimate thanks to Gaynor and to my ever-tolerant grown-up kids, Eleanor and Rob. Above all they understand that when I am staring out of the window, I am really working.

NB the image is my sketch potential cover art.

¹ “In Left Luggage Geoff Nelder asks the most important questions of life.”

² “Geoff Nelder wears science fiction like other people wear clothes.”

³ “Memento meets the Twilight Zone.”

Gladys pens a review of Hot Air

Hot on the heels of Bec, comes Gladys Hobson, who writes from an interesting perspective of her listenging to Hot Air

http://gladyshobson.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/1400/

Have my cake and read it

What a shock I had when today I visited my writer friend, Gladys Hobson, in Ulverston. Gladys and husband, Ralph, were hosting a luncheon meeting for writer, Les Floyd, his friend, Louis Willis, and me. It is always a pleasure to natter over publishing and writing with Gladys and Les but it is the first time those two had met each other. You could feel the warmth and mutual admiration in the atmophere. The big surprise for me was when Louise brought in a box. It was my birthday on bonfire night and knowing I’d had a humorous thriller, Escaping Reality, published. Louise had made me a cake in the form of a book!. Look >>>  it tastes as yummy chocolately as it looks. Thanks Louise!

For those who have yet to read Escaping Reality then peep at this link. Of course part of our discussion was on the bubble-wrap sex in the book, also on how the setting for the action is authentic to the geography of the Scottish Borders.

 This must be the first time I’ve taken a bite out of one of my books.

 

Gladys Hobson’s website showcasing her romance books and Northern Lights anthology in which Les Floyd has his famous humorous tale, Barnsely Bear, and I have a short story sequel to Escaping Reality.

Buy Escaping Reality at Amazon.co.uk

Being acknowledged

Only last month I reviewed an anthology of noir stories. Around a Dark Corner is an intriguing collection by Jeani Rector ISBN 978-0956188403 including a short story with the briliant title Horrorscope. It was a pleasant surprise to find my name in the  Acknowledgements. Jeani had read my notes to her on another book, Open Grave and liked my comments on  how you should be able  to distinguish characters by the way they talk and behave without needing to identify them with dialogue tags all the time.

I heard today that a critique buddy at the BSFA Orbiters, Ian Clarke, also has  named me in his acknowledgements. His scifi book, Interspex, follows a father’s trail for justice following his son’s death after marrying  an alien. A brilliant book and you can find out more about it, and make a purchase at http://www.undeadtree.com/ just locate Interspex in the left column.

I’ll be seeing  Ian and collecting a  copy of  Interspex at the British Science  Fiction convention, Eastercon LX.  Hope to see other friends there too on Saturday 11th April in Bradford.

Another recent  book  in which I have the pleasure of being mentioned is Gladys Hobson’s Still Waters Run Deep. I wrote the blurb on the back having contributed my small part by reading and making mostly unnecessary editing points.

Wrinkly sex

Gladys Hobson has a great blog up at http://gladyshobson.wordpress.com/

She argues that the credit crunch obliges folk to seek cheap entertainment. Love-making can be cheap if you don’t count the flowers, theatre, restaurant and wine, and once you have a stable partner, those foreplay add-ins may not be always necessary. I am being careful what I say, as you can tell. Gladys makes an interesting point about the ‘free-love’ generation and where they are / what they are up to now. Her writing on sex for the wrinklys is not limited to her blog. Pop over and see for yourself to see which of her novels might stir you.

Gladys’s books can be found at her store front http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ and a select few at

http://www.agpress.8m.net/

Thanks to everyone who has voted for my Exit, Pursued by a Bee science fiction mystery / thriller / adventure at the P&E poll. There is still time to vote until Wednesday 14th January.  http://www.critters.org/predpoll/novelsf.shtml

My friend,Gladys Hobson, has her marvelous Awakening Love up for vote too at the Romance section http://www.critters.org/predpoll/novelr.shtml

If you find Gladys has two Awakening Love there I voted for the first one but the two sets of votes will probably be combined by Dave Kuzminski, who runs the poll at Another Realms, Preditors and Editors. P&E exist to support all writers and gives warning of scams and sharks in the writing business.

In the meantime I have heard that my HOT AIR thrilller is to be published on 7th May in Groningen, Netherlands. Hot Air sprang from the absurdity of me lying on a hill in Somerset and watching a hot air balloon. I thought: “How would you go about shooting one of those things down! The novel won a silver award for the best unpublished novel in 2007 by World and Universal Academia in Groningen, so save your pennies.

frosts and words

Last week I’d originally planned to have a writers away week in a log cabin in Wales. Having discovered that my wordage increases with distance from my house chores, I’d organised the 90 miles trip via my Dawes Super Galaxy touring bike staying at the Ffynion Wen Youth Hostel before dark on the first leg. However, the weather forecast promised deep frost, and snow during the journey and since I’d top 850 metres my cogs would be likely to fall off…

So I travelled with my wife instead. Photos are
http://www.geoffnelder.com/plastalgarth/pt.html
While shivering in the cold Plas Talgarth apartment, I did read a couple of books to review - A comic science fiction novella, Bark! by Darrell Bain – very amusing too – how could it be other with the star being an ADHD minature dachshund that saves Earth from an inadvertent alien invasion. Find Bark! here

I also read an intriguing take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend. Piper is written by established author, Helen McCabe. Helen doesn’t hold back from the dark side in her well-researched interpretation and her skillful writing makes the chilling pied piper character real enough to induce nightmares. I’ll post a link to my review in a later post.

Brian Withecombe At the Eleventh Hour a tale of the end of the First World War, has been published by Chipmunka Publishing and is a fascinating fictional insight into what it must have been like to be a soldier on the front line in the last moments of the first world war. I hadn’t known that fighting continued even after the Armistice was signed, in order to squeeze any land advantage.

Finally I returned home to find a package from Gladys Hobson. I held the honour of doing a minor touch of editing to her anthology of mainly Ulverston stories published as ‘Still Waters Run Deep – Stories of hidden  depths. link here  The blurb, written by me says:

“Don’t be fooled by the writings of Gladys Hobson. She appears like a harmless mature woman and so you settle one afternoon to relax into her stories. Then in goes the hot poker and you find the goings on in Ulverston, ignited passion, and Cumbrian emotions. The wicked are saved by pseudonyms, the innocent by their ignorance. This collection is a jigsaw of zeal and a genuine feel for landscape.” Good job, Gladys.

Incidentally, both Gladys Hobson and Brian Withecombe are with me as former clients of the sham literary agent, Christopher Hill. See how in spite of adversity we triumph!

Happy birthday to Gladys Hobson - the writerly heart of Ulverston. She has a small press of note here.

A great review of my short story, Gravity’s Tears – nearly horror, partly scifi, a story within a story – is up at http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=8321  Gravity’s Tears appeared in Jupiter, an influential scifi magazine produced in the UK by Ian Redman. Gareth D Jones has a story in the same issue and we happen to e-meet regularly on the BSFA writers’ critique group, Orbiters.

Awakening Love

Congratulations to my friend, Gladys Hobson, whose latest romantic fiction is released to the world. Awakening Love is an extraordinary fiction, a literary gem. See it here >>>

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/eBookDetails.asp?BookID=108672

Two men fall for an attractive young woman, but her boss, eager to keep her working skills, finds more than he bargains for.

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Blogged in a blog

Or is that blagged in a blog? It is a funny but pleasant feeling when reading someone’s blog and discovering they’ve written fiction based on a fiction by me! Isn’t that a recursion? In programming a program subroutine that calls itself is recursive. I have a thirst for stories that refer to themselves such that they end up being an integral part of the story. The classic rescursive story travels something like: Man walks into a bar and sees a woman reading a newspaper in which there is a story about a man who walks into a bar. He sees a woman reading a newspaper in which there… you get it. But I seek to write a recursive novella, but that’s another story.

In this case Gladys Hobson, writer and small press publisher, read my Exit, Pursued by a Bee and it must have given her a nightmare! Check her blog here
http://gladyshobson.wordpress.com/
It both tickled me and is flattering. Thanks Gladys!