I can’t get enough…

Valetta, Malta

…of being in Malta. From May 2 to 9th my wife and I holidayed at the Preluna Hotel, Sliema for the third – possibly fourth time. It’s on a magnicently paved shoreline and while we stroll along it, the locals are jogging, speed-walking or walking like us. I am thinking of plot lines while my wife talks to me. I nod but, honestly I am really listening too. She made me leave the laptop behind in Chester for the first time. That’s okay, it’s only a week and I had books to read such as Alastair Reynold’s Space Revelation, Vernor Vinge’s Fire Upon The Deep and Michael Summers’ The is Shop – more on those later. In spite of the reading I did get writerly withdraw symptoms after three days and so we took the ferry to the island of Gozo. It’s so laid back, picturesque and deeply moving with its awful history. In 1551 pirates in the pay of the Ottoman empire abducted the entire population of Gozo and took them to Tripoli and Constantinople slave markets, except for those to infirm for the journey. Surely their spirits cry out for revenge and that’s where my magic realism fantasy novel, Xaghra’s Revenge comes in. I take two of the abducted and two contemporary people and play around with their histories and emotions. The reader experiences the slave trade of those days and the frisson when past and present collide. If you are a publisher and are interested then go speak to my agent Rebecca Pratt for a taster.

While in Malta I met author, John Bonello. He writes fantasies, among other genres, in Maltese and is enjoying success with his local publisher, Merlin.

There’s a second-hand bookshop in Chester on the City Walls – website is http://citywallsbooksandmusic.webs.com/ Michael Summers works there and has written a delightful and thought-provoking anthology of science fiction called The Is Shop. Only £4.50 plus p&p – contact him at the shop or via the website. The emphasis of the stories is on science so these are truly science fiction but with humour and characters to enjoy. The first story I admire a lot – The Is Shop in which a young recruit to the shop is mystified by the lack of stock and so much wordplay and intrigue. It’s a shop story like no other.

I have chosen Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge as my choice book for the Chester Library SF book group for later this year, so I had to read it! I chose it because I like the concept of the Technological Singularity coined by Vinge – ie that one day the artificial intelligence machines on Earth will be sufficiently savvy to take over and humans will be redundant. I asked another SF group which of Vinge’s ficiton does this well and they said Fire Upon the Deep although ironically it was published after his paper on the TS. Very intelligently written with two children as main characters – a nice touch for what are adult concepts. Group mentalities in aliens is something I have written too in various stories.

Revelation Space is also interesting but rather cliched and with contrived resolutions in my opinion. I’m glad I read it.

Saint Margaret’s Bastion in Malta and my wife

1)      NEWS in 2013: Voted best SF of 2012 at P&E Readers Poll. 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 the few who escaped. Click on this link to Geoff’s blog, which has details including Amazon e-book and paperback http://bit.ly/10VIRKY

ARIA is endorsed by luminaries such as Mike Resnick and Jon C Grimwood.

2)      5 * reviews for 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/

Like ARIA at http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy

http://twitter.com/geoffnelder

Cycling and writing

Sunday and we have torrential rain here in Cheshire. Okay, not the real downpours poor Queensland, Brazil and in other places in the southern hemisphere, but heavy for around here. On Australia and Brazil I am reminded of when I used to teach the Geography of Natural Disasters. We’d debate the issue of whether the regular monsoonal Bangladeshi floods were a Natural phenomenon or an avoidable human issue. It is mainly the latter, and the same goes in Queensland and Brazil. How many times do ecologists and hydrologist have to say to town planners: Don’t tear down forests on valley slopes, don’t build airfields or other large open tarmac areas on hills and don’t build homes in flood plains? Ignore these obvious simple rules and after torrential rain you will get mudslides and rivers in flood. QED. I feel pangs of sorrow for people caught up in the disasters but anger at the mindless authorities allowing people to live in the wrong places.
So, today I set out on my Sunday bike ride in pouring rain. I cut it short to only a two hours 25-miler up into Wales, Hope Mountain, buy a paper at Higher Kinnerton and back again. I felt warm with the temperature being 10C and stopped halfway to strip a layer and swap full gloves for mitts. Rain doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, or should, since August. I’d returned from a South Wales writing week, taking 2 and half days to do the hilly 150 miles in a deluge. The main problems are: drivers can’t see me so well, I can’t enjoy admiring views, and my brakes don’t work when wet. Otherwise, I enjoy the leg rotation and while cycling solo can allow my imagination to think through plot problems and nightmare up new characters. I saw the aftermath of an accident this morning. A flashing Ambiwlans (ambulance for those who find the translation difficult!) already had the injured man while his motorbike lay on the grass verge on the Old Mountain Road at the junction with the A5104 at Penymyndd. My velocity was already low on account of the gradient – steep for the previous 3 miles – and the fact that I’d forgotten to empty my panniers, before I left, of shopping during the week: cans of kidney beans, packet of soya flour, a now stale packet of scones and miscellanea. Even so, I slowed more thinking that could be me in the ambiwlans having been hit by that blue car, who’d probably not seen the motor bike coming up the hill from Broughton, Chester. On the hand, motor bikes go much faster and have so little time to brake and take avoiding action as push bikes. I felt a bit safer after that and continued to fill my panniers more at the Higher Kinnerton convenience store.
My urban fantasy / historical novel, Xaghra’s Revenge is now being considered by a publisher on the island of Malta. It would be marvellous if it was published in the islands the action is based on. This is thanks to a fellow player on the web-based itsyourturn.com, who lives on Malta, and has a friend, who is a published novelist, John Bonello, see his books published by Merlin Library. John is recommended Xaghra’s Revenge to Allied Publishing, who publish The Times of Malta. Fingers and eyes crossed!