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

The day has arrived.

That reminds me of a delighful quote:

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.

“Today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favourite day,” said Pooh.

One of my favourite days happened like this. As I puffed, riding my bicycle up a steep Welsh hill 5 years ago I had an original idea. WHat if amnesia was infectious? Then what if no one was immune. I researched like crazy for 4 months to discover a) there was no known medical event of infectious amnesia, and b) that the concept – especially with retrograde amnesia (lose say a year’s worth per day backwards) – hadn’t been used in published stories, nor on TV or film. It took a year to create the first 100k draft. I showed and discussed it with SF luminaries such as Jon C Grimwood, Charles Stross and US writer, Brad Linaweaver, who all endorsed it. Also to pal, Allan Guthrie, who is an agent, editor and author of hard-nosed crime. He wanted me to rewrite and tighten like crazy. So I joined the BSFA Orbiters and it went through SF members that way – very useful. An agent took it on. The 10th one I approached after many rejections on the grounds they liked the premise but it was me who they’d have trouble marketing because I’m not famous. After my second SF novel sold to Double Dragon Publishing, they would take ARIA but there are a few issues and I had hoped for a UK publisher. LL-Publications snapped at it last autumn and ARIA has its release tomorrow – August 1st 2012 – yeay. Signings and official launch yet to happen – probably in September. When LL-Publications sent ARIA to their editors, it went through its 5th revision. A week ago while reading the proof reviewer’s copy, I found a handful more typos! Hopefully it is good to go now. The second volume has gone through BSFA Orbiters and volume three is going through as we speak.

Title: ARIA: Left Luggage 
Author: Geoff Nelder
ISBN: 978-1-905091-95-9
Genre: Science Fiction
Publication Date: August 2012
Price: paperback  $14.99 (£9.99) e-book $5.99
Publisher: LL-Publications

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 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!

There will be signings, yet to be finalised. Watch this space.

Also watch that cover art – brilliantly conceived and executed by award-winning artist, Andy Bigwood.

Celebratory tea tonight!

Here’s the video trailer to beat all trailers Please watch it and tell me what you think?
http://youtu.be/oh0AAXIe8VU

Feel the angst of reviewers

David Langford had agreed to accept a copy of ARIA: Left Luggage with a possibility of him reviewing it. He reviews in The Daily Telegraph, Ansible and SFX among others, but warned he might be swamped. I now see his list of books received. here http://ansible.co.uk/books.php  and he has received about 25 science fiction books – all new – just in July! Well, I hope David reads mine and gives the others to other SF lovers, but what’s the chances?

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.

—-

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.”

Left Luggage opening wins award

Left Luggage is the working title of my science fiction trilogy. My agent, Rebecca Pratt, is handling it and has sent it to lucky publishers for appraisal.

While I waited for the months to go by, I sent the opening scene to a
competition called Strong Scenes. The result today is that mine is one awarded an Honorable Mention for May 2010. here
http://www.strongscenecontest.com/ about half way down.

mountain of ideas

Anafon valley from Drum, looking NW towards Anglesey

My feet have been itching to have rough rocks under them for weeks. My brain needed me to return to Anafon and so today I did. I had planned a cycle-camping trip this week but the appalling weather – the remains of Hurricane Bill (named after my dad? – he liked the  raw power of storms) relegated my outing to this one dryish day.

Anafon is a kind of hidden valley in that because it is a dead end, very few bother to walk up it. Nevertheless, it possesses a desolate beauty and suited being the location of a hideaway for the fugitives from an apocalyptic virus in my scifi Left Luggage. (still looking for a wise publisher). My wife was also walking but up in the Lake District with a group from the science conference she’s attending. Funny to think both of us hiking up in the hills a hundred miles apart. I tried  shouting a greeting (no signal on my phone) but I’m hard of hearing so didn’t hear her response.

I’ve done my walk before and so anticipated the vistas and exhiliration with increased pulse. Of course climbing steadily uphill for the first hour from the Aber Falls carpark sent me into near tachycardia. That’s when I saw the signpost leading up to Drum, the summit of which was my destination for lunch. Enroute I met a feral pony on the track. She seemed reluctant to move but we exchanged greetings. Some of my words reflected on how much these wild ponies stink! I know all horses have a strong odour but my, after rain the feral ones, with no grooming, made me run towards fresh air – uphill.

I add a photo of the Anafon valley. You can see Anglesey in the distance beyond, and the Irish Sea. With binoculars and the ability to see around the Earth’s curvature I could have seen my wife on her walk.

Signpost to the mountain of Drum

feral pony on my track - or I am on its

From the slopes of Drum looking NW towards Anglesey. Anafon valley on the left

finding inspiration in Welsh mountains

Yesterday the weather looked promising, and my absence from hiking hills needed replenishing. I caught a train to Llanfairfechan and hiked up and over the peaks of three mountains that surround Lake Anafon, the setting for my Left Luggage sci fi book that is still with an agent looking for a wise publisher in the US. I knew a crashed WW2 airplane is on one of the mountains and I spent ages and more miles criss-crossing it being determined to find it this time .Eventually I decided it had either being completely scavenged, the vegetation had buried it or the sheep and wild ponies that live up there have now a liking for rust and aluminium. About to give up and deciding which down route to take I spotted a fridge-sized lump of metal. Then for the next mile I found much more! I had a marvelous day though it took so long. I walked from 10:30 to 7pm solid mostly on steep inclines (and declines). My feet ached when I reached the bus stop a village away from my train. I had scractches, bites, a blister on my big toe and my left knee throbbed – marvelous. Without such minor injuries, the walk would lack the exuberance from completing it! Then a notice on the bus stop informed me that it was temporarily closed for buses. So off I set for the last 3 miles back to Llanfairechan to catch the train home. Funny how the last few miles are the longest. I missed my return train by 3 minutes and the next left 2 hours later! So I hiked back up the steep road to the town to the cafe in Llanfairfechan – closed. Then the newsagent for an icelolly – by this time I was responsible for 55% of global warming – but the shop was closed – the time was about 7:30pm. Luckily a Co-op shop forget to close so I bought an orange icelolly that tasted better than anything for weeks. Yum. I wanted to buy a cup of tea on the train but sadly there were too few passengers to justify opening the buffet car. Nevermind, I extracted the pages of my book to be edited and settled down with a red pen.

A few pictures including info about the crashed bomber is at

http://www.geoffnelder.com/junehike/index.html

 Apart from the sore feet it will give you a feeling for my walk!

 

I forgot to take a book to the hospital today. I didn’t need one after all even though I waited for an hour in the audiology department for my replacement hearing aids. The Countess of Chester Hospital, like many,  has a nightmare parking problem. Of course the shunting and swearing is all amusement to me because I’m a cyclist – hah. The audiology department has no magazines or newspapers for the forgetful to read, but it has windows all along one wall overlooking a hospital carpark. Today, the carpark was full by 9:30 AM. So I was sitting with my cycle helmet under my chair watching, with a growing smirk, the carpark rage. To park at the hospital you have to buy parking tokens in order to get out again through unmanned barriers. Your car has to queue and wait behind an entry barrier before a computer decides there is a space for you – when a car leaves. So us deaf ones were watching an elderly chap – lets call him Victor Meldrew, after the TV grumpy but comical character. His car was in front of the queue waiting for a car to exit. He tried to cheat by exiting his car and waving at sensors, and he seemed to be putting a token – or bottle top – into the exit machine no doubt hoping for his entry barrier to then rise. Where he thought he could then park when all the places are full? His ruse didn’t work so he did a rage jig waving his arms. If only he could have heard the sniggering in the audiology department. Actually most of us couldn’t either and we were IN there! Ah, eventually a car decides to leave its parking space and head for the exit barrier. So Victor leaps into his car just as his barrier lifts and the electonic FULL sign flickers off.  Sadly, for him, the barrier waits only 2 seconds before it descends. Poor Victor had no chance. So he storms out of his car and does another jig, yelling something. We shouldn’t laugh really, but the compelling chuckle muscles out number the empathy sighs. The nearly deaf woman beside me can lip read but wouldn’t repeat the profanities. I can see what happened. Somehow an extra car must have tailgated another and snuck in an hour or so before but with no where legal to park has stopped on some pretty yellow painted criss-cross lines. So the computer believes the carpark is still full.

Victor has had enough and has either missed his appointment now, or prefers being ill. His reverse lights illuminate the front of the next car in the queue. No chance. There’s at least six cars and they cannot easily all reverse. But another parked car is leaving.. Hooray, but no. The man opposite me in the waiting room stands and excitedly points at another illegally parked car in the carpark. Nevertheless, Victor has put his car back into neutral and smoke comes out of his exhaust as it seems hes’ going for the greatest accelerated carpark entry in history.

“Mr Nelder!” yells a nurse. They all have to yell in here. “It’s your turn!”

“Oh no. Please nurse, let someone else go in my place. I want to see Victor do another rage jig!”

—————-

My agent has asked me for a paragraph to sell my sci fi Left Luggage on the agency website. My problem is that LL has an original premise known only to the few critique readers at the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) and the handful of other agents and publishers who have read it. I have a niggle that if I broadcast the unique storyline that someone famous will scribble it down and I’ll have to remortgage the house to take court action – not that you can copyright ideas…

So here is the blurb I’ve come up with…

Left Luggage is more than a science fiction novel. Aliens are involved but you don’t see them. There is an original premise in this novel and the idea of it will shatter you – simple yet unheard of.M.Kenyon Charboneaux (award winning author and tutor) has this to say:Geoff Nelder has got to be one of the most remarkable and original thinkers in science fiction today. In Left Luggage he toys with yet seriously examines the concept of memory and the part it plays in making us who we are. Without our memories, we are not ourselves, so burdened with a past that affects our future; we are no one at all, in the sense that an infant is not yet an individual. The psychology of this tale is solid, the science is solid, the physics is solid and the story is tightly written and solid in its own right as literature, not just another genre novel. In Left Luggage, Nelder accomplishes the mighty rare and mighty fine feat of transcending genre without sacrificing good story-telling in doing so.

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.

My legs are reluctant to cooperate today on account of me overworking them yesterday with a 15 hilly miles walk.  I’ve been waiting weeks for a clear dry day in order to walk the mountain ridge perimeter of the Anafon valley in North Wales. I use the valley in my Left Luggage sci fi novel and although some of the characters go on patrol up on the ridges I’d not actually been up there to verify what they would see. OK I’ve been up some of it but not all the way around and not Moel Llywtmor,  the summit of which I’ve been keen to see. There is the remains of a second world war bomber up there.

I caught the train from Chester 60 miles away at 0732 only to find it clicketyclacked really slow. The driver announced to frustrated passengers: “We’ve been trying to overtake a slow moving cargo train but we’ll have to wait until we reach Rhyll!” Surely I wasn’t the only one with a smile at the idea of our train nipping out to overtake?

The station at Llanfairfechan (try repeat saying that!) is at sea-level and my first 7 miles was uphill. I wasn’t sure of the path and asked a postman. Instead of the lyrical Welsh accent he was a Cockney and had started there only last week! With friends such as John Marchant I had hiked up to Drum and Foel Fras earlier this year but it was too foggy to risk going further then. Today, there was ice and snow on the summits but clear on top. I had to cross a col between Foel Fras and Llywtmor that I knew was going to be boggy, but luckily it was so cold that most of the boggy bits were frozen – yeay! By the time I was halfway up to the summit of Moel Llwytmor my legs said they didn’t want to go any further knowing, as they did, that we’ll probably have to return the same way with climbing up Foel Fras and Drum again. However, I said: “How hard can mountain walking be? It’s only putting one foot in front of another.” So onwards. I reached the summit.

Photographs of my walk are here. 

I rewarded myself by opening my flask of hot water and making a hot chocolate drink. It was so windy up there that my right hand became covered with hot chocolate, so I licked it off. I poured over my Ordnance Survey map to decide whether to retrace my route, as my legs feared, or to go on. Going on westwards meant all downhill the nearly 900 metres height back to sea level but with no footpath and so possible dodgy steep slopes. I had two hours before the winter sun set. Nevertheless, that’s what I did and all went well until I met the river Afon Goch. A thin footpath seemed to follow my side of the river but only in places. It might have been a sheep track or made by the dozen or so feral ponies that eyed me and kept their distance.  Following the river made sense because they eventually reach the sea. Then I remembered this one becomes the high waterfall, Aber Falls! I found another track but missed its proper route and ended up slipsliding down a gully and crunch sliding down a screeslope. Eventually I made it to a decent path and met a man with a border collie.  I asked if he knew where the local bus stop was to Llanfairfechan so I could catch the train back. He offered me a lift to Conwy instead. Great! Until he was caught in a traffic jam and I saw my train whiz by. Sometimes a stranger kindly performs a favour you’d be better off without! So from Conwy I walked another mile to Llandudno and caught the train home. Phew.