A Comet of Ideas Looking for a Planet

Over the last fifteen years or so I have written a number of short stories that have sat in a drawer (well, a digital drawer). I had put a few of them on my website when it was it its previous incarnation but now I feel I have enough stories to merit a collection. Here's a sneak peek of the cover and the blurb. And watch out for the collection soon, exclusive to Kindle.

From the frozen tundra of Jupiter's moon Europa, to a rainy night on Dartmoor. From an evening rush hour train bound for King's Cross, to the first manned trip to Mars. From the hot city of Khartoum, to an interstellar data router that has started to malfunction. From the Falkland Islands, to a nightclub in the Kuiper Belt. Huw Langridge brings you A Comet of Ideas Looking for a Planet. 14 short science fiction stories to make you think about where we came from, where we're going, and who else might be with us.

The Spinequake Register

Just a quick post to let you know that my flash fiction story "The Spinequake Register" is today's publication on www.365tomorrows.com. Why not go and have a read?

Two free books from me this weekend

Just a very quick post to let you know that my books Schaefer's Integrity and The Train Set will both be free on Kindle from this Friday and all weekend.

These books are definitely worth a lot more than the paper they are not printed on.

Here's my author page on Amazon, where you'll be able to get them from Friday to Sunday for nothing.

Life in the Kuiper Belt - Free today and tomorrow

My science-fiction adventure novel Schaefer's Integrity is free today and tomorrow on Kindle. That's Friday 30th November and Saturday 1st December.

Set at the edge of our solar system, amongst the many spinning stations and stones that make up the Kuiper Belt mining colony, Duncan Schaefer, a lowly chef, becomes infected with a virus that brings into question a number of beliefs held by the scientific community. The virus has a mind of its own and soon Duncan is on a quest to Earth to discover the truth about the strange mutations in his body, and his bizarre dreams of an inverted pyramid structure in distant space...something called the Extraction Point.

Below is a snippet from Schaefer's Integrity. Get the novel free here.

After the meeting with Carl I returned to my cabin, put on Kuiper Limit’s latest album and prepared for the launch.  Halfway into the first piece of music we took off.  Amidst a stomach-churning rumble of the high-pressure pumps firing steam into the propulsion chambers, we undocked from the Construction Station on what was to be – for me – the first of only three voyages as an employee on the Josiah.  I sat glued to the monitor in my cabin throughout the launch.  I watched as we lifted clear of the docking platform and cast away the last of the tethers.  Then, with a burst of the pressure jets, Josiah eased forward and away to the left, slowly at first but picking up speed quite quickly.  Down on the docking platform I could see a couple of servicemen waving goodbye before turning and walking off towards the lifts.  Within three minutes the ship reached the main entrance to the dock and we slid out into the vast expanse of space.

I was instantly blessed with a stunning panoramic vista as the camera revealed the familiar and beautiful cluster of stars at the centre of our galaxy.  The clarity and depth of what I could see filled me with a new sense of awe; an enriched sense of distance and perspective.

Back on Josiah once again, space felt different.  There was something about being on a small ship – rather than a huge space station – that enhanced the sense of oneness with the endless ether.

What must life have been like for my ancestors? Back in mankind’s childhood, trapped on Earth, they never knew a life in space.

Kuiper Limit was playing loud in my ear.  Yet again they had scored the scene perfectly.  This was the beginning of my new life, and I could feel my throat tighten with emotion as I saw the Construction Station getting smaller and smaller in the distance behind us.

Soon after, I caught sight of my old home - the Entertainment Station - spinning away like a loose wheel in the distance as it emerged from behind the Construction Station.  It too got smaller and smaller through my view-port as Josiah pulled me away, pulling me on to a new life.

The station itself was a big, grey and drab spinning disc.  No artist would ever feel compelled to paint a likeness of its structure.  All an artist would ever do is wish for it to be adorned with brighter colours.  But survival in space was not about aesthetics, cosmetics and beauty; it was about functionality, safety and - above all - the integrity of the hull, which kept the murderous vacuum at bay.

The Train Now Departing

A hearty thanks to everyone who downloaded my short story collection The Train Set over the weekend. I shifted 181 copies and made it to #6 in the Amazon short stories chart in the UK!

If you have read the collection, or even only part of it, I would be hugely grateful if you could write a short review on Amazon. Every review helps sell more copies and I really would like this collection to be a success.

Sometime between now and Christmas I will be promoting one other book in a free 2-day extravaganza, Schaefer's Integrity, so keep an eye out for that, and I will obviously be making it known here, and on Twitter and Facebook, when that happens.

In the meantime please look at my other works which (due to various copyright issues) will probably not be going for free on Kindle in the foreseeable future. Those are The Axiom Few, Spireclaw and The Daedalus Transfer (the latter two of which can be read right now on this website).

Thanks again everyone!

The Train Set - Free Today and Tomorrow

Just a quick post to let you Kindle readers know that my short story collection "The Train Set" is available on Amazon for free today and tomorrow (Nov 23rd and 24th). I would love it if you downloaded and had a read of one or two stories within it, (or all of them if you like). Then tell your friends!

You can get it here.

Here's a snippet from one of the stories... "At Steepdean Halt"

I was twelve that year when we had our last family picnic at Steepdean. The field where we had come for years was just as beautiful as ever, and in the heat of June 1976 it possessed a summery beauty that seemed to contrast so plainly against the tragedy that happened here; a tragedy that protracted an idyllic day in the countryside into a sad and mournful autumn.

My younger brother, Samuel, aged eight, hands sticky with dried orangeade, beat me in a running race to the edge of the field where the trees began. He may have been four years younger than me but he was just as tall and his legs were powerful. He’d probably had more sugar than me too. Besides, I was a girl and in my brother's eyes, girls could never be faster than boys.

Though we were both out of breath when we got to the edge of the field we wasted no time in seeking shade from the high sun, which pierced the perfect blue sky but could not penetrate the canopy of leaves.

Samuel was already standing astride on the lowest branch of one of the bigger trees when I caught up, and while I bent over out of breath with the heels of my hands supported on my knees, he was eagerly climbing to the next set of branches.

 ‘Be careful,’ I shouted knowing full well that my pleas would not be heeded. In fact, he was already on the next branch up and could probably see the village from his vantage point if he looked to the south across the cut.

The railway below had been almost invisible to me, and when the sound of a diesel train started to rise in the distance to the east it became obvious just how close to the track we were. Through the trees below us the sun pinched the four rails. The ever louder churning of the oncoming train filled the day and soon the smell of the locomotive was upon us, as was the train itself. A flat fronted, yellow-faced, blue Class 60 with 8 passenger carriages plunged noisily past us. No sooner had it appeared did it disappear to the west, dropping us back into a silence punctuated by nothing but the sound of the church bell in the village tolling two o'clock.

Samuel and I had been silent and unmoving while the train had passed, but this minor interlude, or the apparent danger it presented, did not stop my brother from boldly climbing to a higher part of the tree.

'You should come down from there,' I called, but the grin he returned to me displayed that a common stubbornness had possessed him, the kind of bloody-mindedness that usually ended up with grazed hands and knees, salty tears and ice-cream. As he advanced further along a branch that seemed incapable of holding even his small frame, I thought these actions would end in tears. I had no idea that the tears would belong to my mother, my father and me.

The moment it all started was when Samuel stopped suddenly, looking down and out in front of him as though he was eyeing a place to land from a jump that was both dangerous and stupid.

'Don't jump! It's too far and the ground is sloped!'

He ignored me, but said nothing and for a moment I switched my thoughts to the notion that he might have been planning a leap to the branch of another tree.

Eventually he called down to me, 'Claire. There's a girl on the railway line.'

Sighting FM

...point three. Surrey's favourite destination for talk. That's the weather. It's eleven oh six. Now, before we go to our next caller I have to say. Jane in the booth opposite me who lovingly takes your calls tells me that the switchboard is going absolutely crazy tonight. Apparently people have been ringing in saying there are some mysterious lights in the sky above Dorking. I'm gonna take one of those calls now. Barry, you're up on Box Hill aren't you? What are you doing up there so late, shouldn't you be in bed?

Well Nick there's loads of us up here and we've been watching these three lights going back and forth for the last hour.

Whereabouts are they exactly? I mean, you should have a pretty good view up there right?

Yeah, they're sort of over Leith Hill way.

Isn't that the approach to Gatwick? Are you sure these aren't just planes landing Barry?

Yeah well, they would be if they were moving towards the airport but these lights are just sort of oscillating back and forth.

Really? How many are up there with you watching this?

Hundreds. We're all up on the lookout watching to the south and these lights...

Are the lights together when they move?

Yeah.

I mean, are they in a formation?

Yeah, like it's... like they're attached to one ship.

Ship!

Or craft or what have you.

Thanks Barry. I can hear lots of people in the background. Sounds like there's a crowd up there. I'm gonna try... Jane can you... yep. I want to try and get through to Surrey police to see if they've... Ahh, they're engaged. Ok. Keep trying for me Jane. Put them through when they answer. Right, we have Anne on the line. If anyone knows what this is about then please do call in so we can put our listener's minds to rest. Now Anne you're up on Leith Hill aren't you?

That's right Nick. The lights are directly above us, we can even feel the...

How high above you are they Anne? Can you tell us?

...warmth of the lights. About fifty metres above us. Yeah, fifty to a...

So it's really quite close to you?

...hundred or so...

And how are the lights arranged? Can you...

...like a vertical rod, three lights arranged...

Can you see if it's actually a ship, like our last caller said?

...hovering above us.

I have to say that we've just had a call from the Civil Aviation Authority and they've actually suspended all inbound and out... Anne, what was that noise? Anne?

I'm here. There's a new light. A spotlight shining directly down on our hill and...

Another light? Coming from the shippy crafty thing?

...lighting up everyone on the hill. I didn't realise there were so many people up here and... oh my G...

Anne? Anne are you still there? Anne? Well it looks like we've... we've lost Anne there. Jane can you find out what happened to that line. Let's go to line five in the meantime. We have erm... let's go to Alex who's on Box Hill. Alex what can you see?

There's a like, a light shining down onto Leith Hill but from this far away I can't really work out what's going on.

We were just talking to Anne, who was on Leith Hill but the line went dead. I don't know if there's anyone else up th...

It's shooting up into the sky. The lights are climbing upwards.

Alex, stay... stay on the line, we've got to go to a break...

All my stuff has moved

Now that The Train Set has launched on Kindle (what do you mean you don't have a copy?), I have turned my attention to relocating all the content from my website into this blog site. I was getting tired of updating multiple locations with new information, and also becoming less of a fan of Moonfruit due to my website not showing up very well on anything made by Apple. I know all that will change but it's a service I'm paying for and it just doesn't seem necessary anymore.

So please browse the page tabs at the top to view all (or most) of the content that was previously available on my website. I will, in a short while, update the page redirects for my web domains to point to here, so that links to me are not lost.

The Train Set - A Glimpse at the Cover

My short story collection "The Train Set" is now out on Kindle. A great little book for Halloween.

The collection includes the following stories:

At Steepdean Halt - Previously published in 2008 in The Ranfurly Review

The Suited Man of Lock St Station - New to this collection.

Last Train to Tassenmere - Previously published in 2009 in Supernatural Tales. Received an honourable mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror. 

The View From Setcham Viaduct - New to this collection (although briefly seen on this blog last year)
Dark Tickets - Also briefly seen on this blog, but new to this collection.
Flyers - A novella that is new to this collection.

Buy The Train Set from Amazon on Kindle now.

Books now available on Kindle

I'm pleased to say that four of my earlier works are now available to buy on Kindle via Amazon, all for less than a quid. Considering they are all so ridiculously cheap there isn't much of an excuse not to have a look, unless you don't have a Kindle, in which case, get it for the Kindle app on your phone or tablet. See I told you there's no excuse.

Go here to see them.

Interactive Fiction

Proof that the internet has a page for everything (I think we already knew that) is that I found a good many sites full of love for the old Choose Your Own Adventure book series from the 1980s, of which I had a shelf full. Those old books were about 100 pages long and featured a branch-like narrative with multiple endings. With titles like "The Cave of Time", "The House of Danger" and "Journey Under the Sea", these books worked for readers of my age (which was about ten).

"You reach a fork in the road and find an old man sitting there. To turn left in the fork, go to page 45. To turn right, go to page 56. To talk to the old man, go to page 80."

That sort of thing.

Later on, when computers came along, I fell in love with the text adventures of Magnetic Scrolls (yes there's a website for them too). With games like Jinxter, The Guild of Thieves and Corruption, I was hooked by the way that these games built worlds in your head.

Even now there is a cult following for these old style games, but interactive fiction lives on in the form of hyperfiction (hypertext fiction where you navigate the story through hyperlinks on a web page).

I've decided to have a go at creating a piece of interactive fiction for the Android phone. As a fan of the old Myst-style point and click adventures too I wanted to try and merge some of those elements in there too. As a writer I could combine a number of passions into one. Who knows, I might even end up with an App I could sell for a small fee.

So I've been having a heap of fun (a little bit of sarcasm in there in case you didn't notice) installing the Java Development Environment, along with all the necessary stuff to create and build Android Apps. Let's see where I end up. I have a story, which I am building into a game narrative, and I've devised a few puzzles to challenge the reader. And I've even dug out some of the old MP3s of music I wrote on my trusty Yamaha V50 synthesizer back in the 1990s, to add a little atmosphere.

I'm very excited about this little project, and will post more as I progress on this new journey.

Pandora's Star

A few years ago I had an idea for a novel. I even wrote a full synopsis, character list, complete with information about their own personal story arcs, and drafted the first twenty pages or so. It was going to be a trilogy, my magnum opus. The most ambitious piece of science-fiction I'd ever tried to write. It was going to be called "The Construction".

One day all the stars disappear. The Space Foundation call it "Star Blacking". A crew is assembled and a ship is sent out to the edge of the solar system, only to find that our solar system has been enclosed in a barrier, a shell. Alien's tell us it is for our protection, but then a war takes place outside the shell, and another set of alien's tell us they are attempting to free us from the imminent enslavement of humanity by the first aliens. Who do we believe? It sort of goes on from there...

Imagine my total disappointment when I recently picked up Peter F Hamilton's "Pandora's Star", only to find that the king of Space Opera got there first. There are a few minor differences but the principal is the same and so are the dilemmas faced by humanity.

So it's back to the drawing board for my magnum opus. Time for some new ideas. There's a beautiful moon in the sky tonight, and a stunning vista of stars. Always inspiring. New ideas area out there waiting to be had.
And it reminds me that there's a new character that's been bouncing around my head. His name is Derek Pytance. And for those of you who have read my short story collection "The Axiom Few", he's a new individual in that universe. Because I always wondered what would motivate a man to create something as powerful and omnipotent and calculating as the Biological Retro-Enabled Nth Dimensional Array (BRENDA to you and me...)

The Woman in Black - YouTube Ghost Story Competition

When I saw that Daniel Radcliffe was launching a ghost story competition for the release of the film adaptation of The Woman in Black I thought I'd have a go. The criteria being that the story must be read aloud by you on YouTube in 2 minutes. I tried chopping back an old 1600 word story but that was taking way too long to read, so I thought I'd write something original, and calculated that it needed to be about 400 words in order to fit the time slot. Not easy to tell a story in 400 words, but here's my entry...

I uploaded it yesterday, and saw that of the other 77 entries in the official YouTube channel for the competition, only a handful seem to abide by the actual entry rules. Many entries came from the US but the competition is only open to UK and Ireland residents. Some people had uploaded existing videos of "true" ghost stories. Some had uploaded videos that were radically overlong (yes, I know mine clocks in at 2:08, but some entries are over 4 minutes). Some had uploaded videos of the written text with some spooky music over the top. When I say spooky music, I actually mean it sounded like someone had dusted off their old Yamaha DX7, plugged it into an amplifier, selected SynthViolin, and sat on the keyboard.

Another type of video people were uploading were short horror movies. One was genuinely spooky and extremely well made, but it wasn't what the competition asked for. I'm intrigued that these videos, which are not appropriate for the competition, are being added by the competition staff to the official channel. Unless I'm missing something.

I don't want this to come across as sour-grapes. After all, I won't know that my entry has lost until 6th Jan 2012, but it's intriguing, and I am interested to see how many actual law-abiding entries I am up against.

On a final note, please go and "Like" my entry on YouTube if you have the time. You never know, it might actually help.

From "Idea" to "Published Story" in 24 Hours

On Friday 18th November 2011 I managed to do something that I never thought possible.

Whilst walking to work I was listening to an old Level 42 album and pondering a new idea I had for a story. When I got to the office, to preserve the idea, I opened up Google Docs and jotted down a couple of sentences.

At lunchtime I re-read my notes and decided to turn it into a story. By the time I'd written about 400 words I realised that this would easily work as a 600 word story for 365tomorrows.com, who publish a daily flash-fiction piece in the sci-fi genre.

The last time I submitted something to 365tomorrows they rejected it weeks later, on the grounds that there was no narrative to the story (the story was written in pure dialogue).

Once this new story was completed I made two changes. I changed the gender of one character and the name of another. By the end of the day I had submitted the story, entitled "Freedom Someday" to 365tomorrows.

The usual turnaround response time for a story submitted to 365tomorrows is 4-6 weeks.

On Saturday morning, the next day, 365tomorrows had emailed me back to accept it, saying that the story was fantastic, and would be published on their website as the piece for Monday 21st November. Naturally I was thrilled!

So, within the space of 24 hours I'd had an idea for a fiction story, which I converted to a set of notes, which I converted into a 600 word story, which I submitted to an online publishing entity, and had it accepted; an achievement symptomatic of the Internet Age.

www.365tomorrows.com

A Map of the Floating City, Autumn, and Inspiration

The musical creativity of Thomas Dolby has influenced me greatly over the years. In my writing I am inspired by soundscapes and the changing of the seasons and when it comes to Autumn, for some reason, Thomas Dolby's music captures the feeling perfectly.

I had only a fleeting knowledge of Thomas Dolby in the eighties when his single "Hyperactive" came on my radio and I can't say it grabbed me much. The sounds were a little to harsh for my young ears and it all seemed a little too jokey. Tears for Fears and Level 42 were as far as I was willing to go at the age of twelve. It wasn't until 1992 when I was watching the ITV Chart Show one Saturday morning that I heard his single "Silk Pyjamas", which I loved on first listen. I took a punt on the album "Astronauts & Heretics" and it very quickly became one of a my all time favourite records. My girlfriend at the time had negated to tell me (not that I expected her to) that she already had a copy of another single off the album "Close But No Cigar". She bought a copy of "Astronauts" too and it quickly became one of those quirky aspects of young relationships, an "us" record. With lyrics like "Once in a while, a girl comes along, and opens your heart like a spam tin", how could it not be..? But the album was also, for me, the sound of Autumn; of wet leaves painting urban pavements. Of wind, rain and grey clouds. Of bracing Sunday afternoon country walks with blue, blue sky.

Mr Dolby's earlier albums followed quickly for me that Autumn and each had their way of being the soundtrack of that time. From Dolby's "Fieldwork" I stepped sideways into the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, and by association into the works of Aztec Camera and David Sylvian. Through the production of Bill Bottrell on Dolby's "Aliens Ate My Buick" I found Sheryl Crow's "Tuesday Night Music Club", which he also produced.

Dolby's career became difficult to follow after that. He did a concept album called "Gate to the Mind's Eye" which, for me, only spawned one masterpiece song "The Valley of the Mind's Eye". He moved into the mobile ringtone business as well as being a speaker and all-round tech pioneer based in Silicon Valley. Now he has a new album out and strangely it appears in Autumn. In the 19 years between "Astronauts & Heretics" and "A Map of the Floating City", I had three interactions with Thomas Dolby.

The first was an email which I sent to a Compuserve account (address printed in an album sleeve) circa 1996 asking where I could find the latest information about Thomas Dolby. I was directed in the reply, to one of those new-fangled website thingys, the Flat Earth Society, the fanclub homepage. The email was signed simply "Thomas".

The next time was during an interview with him on BBC 6 Music in 2003, where a question I had submitted to the program was actually read out. In short, "When would there be a new album?". He replied that he had a garage at the bottom of the garden and that one day he would get in there and start recording. That "garage" later turned out to be a lifeboat on the Suffolk coast.

The third time I approached him was in 2009 under the umbrella of the Commonwealth Business Council, to ask if he would be able to speak at one of our conferences. We were holding a flagship forum in Trinidad & Tobago and were looking to create a session on innovation in technology. Thomas was enthusiastic and we exchanged a number of emails to arrange for him to get there, but unfortunately, in the end, his schedule did not permit for him to come, as even then he was becoming more and more involved with touring and working on the new record.

"A Map of the Floating City" came out in the UK on October 24th 2011 and on that day I happened to be working on a conference in Australia. If any of this blog so far says anything to you, it would indicate that this geographical hurdle would present a challenge worth taking on. Amazon UK MP3 downloads don't permit purchases outside the UK, so in order to get this record loaded onto my player for the long flight home I had to remote access the CBC's London server, install Amazon's MP3 downloader, purchase the album through a browser window, download it to the server, install Dropbox there, copy the album to the Dropbox folder, and bring it down to my laptop in Perth. It was worth the effort.

To quote a lyric from 1992s "I Love You Goodbye", "Typhoon Pierre delayed our plane till morning". The truth of it was that the Qantas strike had left us stranded at Perth airport with perhaps no way of getting home for several days. I was already missing my wife and son, so when our plane was grounded I felt further away from them than ever. Thanks to Emirates we were able to get a flight out a few hours later. Hearing this album on the plane I felt once again that sense of longing that music so beautifully underpins. And Dolby's songs often talk about airline travel. From air-lanes that "comb dark Earth", to the "wide Brazilian sky that swallowed you", it all seemed to fit.

Dolby remains a master of sowing a musical flourish under my skin. The short, distorted and reverbed guitar riff in "A Jealous Thing Called Love". The sweeping harmonies in "Oceanea", which is perhaps the most evocative piece about the sea since the Tears for Fears B-Side "Pharoahs", and is somehow reminiscent of his lovely 1984 song "Screen Kiss". The epic "17 Hills" which is the "Budapest by Blimp" of this new work all serve to remind me why I loved Dolby back in the 1990s, and still do to this day. This album made me think about how, as a thirty-eight year old, and as a father to a two-and-a-half year old boy, my son is closer than me to those teenage years of musical discovery, where songs become the soundtrack, the foundations and the scenery of your life. Maybe it'll be Thomas Dolby. It probably won't. But I cannot wait to experience that discovery with him when he gets there.

Spireclaw - Print Version Coming Soon

I have always maintained that I would never make profit from Spireclaw, and my feelings on that stems from the subject matter of the novel. It is freely available as an e-book that can be read online on my website, downloaded as a PDF or text file, and even listened to as an audiobook read by me.

Many people have praised the novel and that really makes me want the story to reach a wider audience. There are plenty of people out there who can't or won't read a novel on a website. For the novel to appear in the two most accessible formats (print and e-Reader), I would need to publish it through a print-on-demand service that formats for devices like Kindle automatically, and releases through Amazon.

So I have decided to take this route. I am compiling a print-version of Spireclaw, which will be for sale on Lulu and Amazon. I will zero my profits from it, so that the cost of purchase purely covers the charges Lulu and Amazon impose for creating the product for you to hold in your hands, and I have made it as slender as possible so that there aren't too many spare pages, which should keep the printing costs down, and therefore the purchase costs too.

Here's the cover...

The print version should be available on Lulu.com in a couple of weeks, and a few weeks after that on Amazon. I hope you are able to take this opportunity to discover the novel.

But remember, it is already online, in it's entirety, to read at www.spireclaw.com

Checking In

It's been a long time since my last post, although those of you who follow me on Twitter know what I've been up to.

Writing has been sporadic of late. Work has been all-consuming as our company has seen it's busiest year (with fewest staff, but isn't that the case everywhere?). When you want to write, it's a shame that life gets in the way.

That said. I have had some real, though occasional bursts of creativity; pushing forward with a novella that was previously titled "The Fourdrinier Operator" and has since gone through two more titles and a 5,000 word boost in its word-count. The first draft went to my mother for review (she's just completed an Open University creative writing course and her opinion is valuable in these matters). A positive response on the whole but she identified areas for revision and reworking. So that's a job for later.

In the science fiction area I've been thinking up the next batch of Axiom Few stories and once they crystallise a little more I will start on them. I've got another interesting short story on the go called "The Tower and My Number" which has been brewing in my head. It's based on a very odd dream I had recently, and I'm liking the dystopian atmosphere in it.

In 2012 I should be in a position to release my next short story collection "The Train Set", so more on that as it develops.

Facebook Pages for you to "Like"

For those of you who have been swallowed into the populous Facebook, which is apparently some sort of website for seeing what your ex-partners now look like, you might be interested to know that I have created a couple of pages on there. One for Spireclaw and one for The Axiom Few. If you have a moment, please visit, and click the "Like" button when you're there. On the pages you'll find links to reviews of the stories, among other things.

See you there...

New Spark

For those of you wondering where I've been since my last blog post, apart from travelling to Malaysia and Australia, you would be able to find out if you followed me on Twitter. For those of you who don't, and those of you who do (follow me on Twitter that is) I've been on a hiatus from writing while I recharged the batteries over what has been a most uninspiring season. My writing skills, and my desire to write, hibernate when the nights draw in.

Then a funny thing happened two days ago. I was walking to work listening to a decidedly "January" album, entitled "From Monday to Sunday" by Nick Heyward. And suddenly I was thinking out my nemesis novella, The Fourdrinier Operator, for which this album (along with "Astronauts" by The Lilac Time) has acted as a sort of soundtrack. Readers of this blog will know how much pain I've felt in concocting this piece of fiction. But the music helped me have a revelation. There were two things I needed to do to revitalise the piece. One was to change the name, which I have now done, and the other was to change where it was set. Suddenly, after a year, I was able to write another 500 words of the story and do some much needed editing on other parts. Much of the story is set in early Spring, so I hope that as the flowers start to bud and the sun shows it's face more often, and for longer, I'll feel that I have the wherewithal to actually finish the novella.

Welcome to the Test Shack...

Archer pitched his car into the outside lane of the motorway, London-bound. Accelerating to ease away the tension. Geek's inventions always pushed The Axiom Few into dangerous territory. It came with the job. And ultimately it was a case of "no guts no glory". They never wanted the glory, but they also didn't want any of their devices to fall into the wrong hands. It had never happened before and he'd always hoped they could keep things just the way he wanted. Secret. And revealed to others in only the method and measure that was to his preference...

The Axiom Few short story collection is now available to buy in paperback or eBook download. It features eight interconnected tales, three of which have been previously published in Jupiter SF magazine. With an introduction by Rod MacDonald of SFCrowsnest.com.

Click here for more info and click here to buy.

The Axiom Few - A Peek at the Front Cover

We're a week away from release day, but I really want to give you a sneak peek at the front cover. Hope you like it...

The Axiom Few - 24/09/2010

I've just posted up on my website that The Axiom Few book will be surfacing on September 24th. I'm putting the finishing touches on the final story and playing around with that wonderful concept known as "the law of the economy of characters". I'm off on holiday to sunnier climes for a couple of weeks and hopefully the change of scenery will help me mull over those last bits of story before getting it ready for publication on my return.

See you in September!

"Inception" (contains spoilers)

This entry contains plot spoilers about the film "Inception". But it's not really a review. You can find those elsewhere...

What a strange week it's been. My 14 month old son Oliver had an ear infection at the weekend and an allergic reaction to something that gave him a puffy eye that made him look like he'd lost a boxing match. Quite embarrassing when you take him out in public because it really did look like the little guy had done ten rounds with Cassius Clay. "We're not beating our child, honestly", I wanted to say to the people sitting at the next table in Pret a Manger, Kingston.

So we had Ollie in and out of A&E and the doctors to get him well. He was a proper pharmaceutical cocktail of steroids, piriton, Amoxycillin and Calpol. Poor little thing. He's alright now thankfully, but it was funny to watch him throwing Lego everywhere in the waiting room. That's what performance-enhancing drugs do to you when you're a toddler.

Then on Sunday I catch a fever. Later I learn I caught it from my son. I go to bed early with the chills and get hardly any sleep (perhaps you can see where I'm going with this). I suffered a very surreal night of alternately being too cold or sweating like mad.

On Monday I barely made it to work. I felt so ill on the densely packed, short-carriaged train, I had to lean my head against the cold glass of the door and take deep breaths to make the nausea go away. I even had to eyeball the nearest toilet, and thoughts of a desperately embarrassing situation unfolded in my head. That toilet cubicle would echo an awful lot in such a quiet carriage, if I had to puke in it. Luckily for all not involved, the sensation passed. But on that train I started to think that maybe I would be too ill to see Inception that evening. With all this talk of gravity-defying visuals, would I want to dash out of the cinema in a fit of motion-sickness induced nausea? But I was desperate to see it, and the tickets were booked. I decided I would need to be almost dead before I cancelled a trip to see a 9.3 IMDB-rated film.

Now we get to the film, and I'm not here to write a comprehensive review. Many others have already done it and I agree with most of them, especially Ebert. I will say that it is one of the few films that got right under my skin. I can only say that about a handful of others (Contact, The Matrix, Timecrimes, Almost Famous, Panic Room, Knowing, Fandango). So to put Inception in that list is the best accolade that I can give. This film somehow managed to create the idea that all the main characters, despite being in a 747, were suspended over some bottomless "virtual" abyss. They were entering a dream within a dream within a dream, and there was no limit to the imagination, and no limits to the depths they could descend. And to my memory the film contained no cheesy rushing shots of people falling down tunnels as they entered each other's dreams. The notion of the characters descending was created purely through the dialogue. Hans Zimmer's constant score is urgent and superb. The casting was first rate. I've loved Ellen Page since that gripping performance she gave in Hard Candy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I've not seen much of before, was so cool in Inception that I started wishing they might make a spinoff film all about him. His hotel scenes are just unbelievable. But his eyes give real nuance to his character in the first half and I really enjoyed watching his performance. I'd go as far as saying that these two take the film from Leonardo di Caprio. But that's not to say that Leo wasn't excellent. He really was, and for me, always is.

My visceral reaction to Inception may have been compounded by my illness, because after I saw it, I lay awake most of the night, suffering from a fever I already had, and as I lay there with my eyes shut, all I could see was the slow motion sequence of a white van falling backwards off a bridge. The sequence that takes probably 40 minutes in the film (when all is taken into account) seemed to take the entire night for me while I replayed it in my head. For me, that falling white van has quickly become an iconic, cinematic image, like the descending green numbers in The Matrix or the UFO at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Then, in my semi-conscious state, wishing my own sleep upon me, I became convinced that there were additional threads to the film that ran through the five layers that Christopher Nolan had already put into his second half. In other words, the film seemed to have fluidity, or it seemed to organically grow and evolve in my head, almost as though it had been incepted. I had taken the original idea and, with the help of a semi-delerious frame-of-mind, was plying it like plasticine into new shapes.

I wonder if Inception would have had the same physical effect on me if I had not been under the weather. One way I might be able to know, is to get the Blu-ray when it comes out, and watch it in good health.

If you've seen the film, I hope you might be able to meet me at least halfway on this blog entry. I hope it goes some way to explaining why it had such a great effect on me. And if you have seen the film, have a look at this cool graphic.

A quick Axiom Few update

For those of you who are interested, here's an update on The Axiom Few book.

I mentioned in an earlier post that all the stories in the collection will be be standalone, but interconnected. However, I have decided (or rather, the plot and characters decided for me) that stories 6 and 7, namely "The Precipice Faction" and "The Autumn Structure" would work better if they ran together. While they are two separate stories with separate events taking place within them, it started to make a lot of sense to have the first story run straight into the second one, with an overall arc that leads to a big revelation at the finish of the second story. Think of it as a little two-parter in the series. This is effectively the finale of the collection because story 8 is a prequel, focussing on the events that brought The Axiom Few together.

The Precipice Faction and The Autumn Structure have been written almost in tandem, which is a first for me. But I feel the result is something with some real scope and will hopefully be a worthwhile read, especially in the wider context of the other stories.

So I'm still on track for a release in September. My Dad, who dabbles as a sketch artist, has (after a little persuading) agreed to come up with a drawing of the Test Shack, and has also told me that he won't be offended if I choose not to use it. So we'll see.

Now, if only I could get SFCrowsnest's Rod MacDonald to write a foreword...

Spireclaw gets 5 Stars at Obooko.com

It's great to see that Spireclaw is getting a consistent 5 star rating over at Obooko.com. Thank you to those who are voting for it. If you've read it please drop me a line via my contact page and let me know what you thought. It's always great to have feedback and I like to put quotes from readers on my site to hopefully encourage others to dip in.

Also, in response to Fiona Gregory's review on the Web Fiction Guide, I have decided to put in a marker (basically a line) at the bottom of each chapter page, to indicate the end of the chapter. I'd hate to think that readers might be missing a vital piece of the story!

And of course, I know I've mentioned it before, but as the summer holidays approach, and with all those iPhone4's hitting the market, there's every reason to grab a copy of the free audiobook for 5 hours of beachtime storytelling. After all, who doesn't like a story with a good twist?

What's next for The Axiom Few?

Three of my short stories about The Axiom Few, a team of freelance techno-graduates who operate on the edge of science in a future London, have been published in Jupiter SF magazine, and not a bad word was said about any of them. Two further stories are available to read for free on my website and I am in the middle of writing the sixth, seventh and eighth instalments concurrently.

While they are not direct sequels of each other, they do link together like a jigsaw puzzle and only through reading all eight stories will the whole scope of the story become clear. And even then it feels like just the beginning, as some pretty scary doors get opened.

So I have decided to take The Axiom Few to the next level. I am going to publish via Lulu.com a book of all eight stories. Everything should be ready to come out this Autumn, at which point I will remove the two free stories from my site and encourage you to buy the whole collection. Here's the story listing, and the order they will appear in the book.

The Ceres Configuration
The Darken Loop
The Detention Spore
The Voidant Lance
The Techipre Filament
The Precipice Faction
The Autumn Structure
The Axiom Nascency

I can't wait to finalise this book and put it out there for you to read. The Axiom Few are my favourite creation, and others think so too, and I feel this collection is the next great step in bringing them to as wide an audience as possible.

Is "Foundation" filmable?

When I read that Roland Emmerich is to adapt Isaac Asimov's seminal science-ficton book "Foundation" my first reaction was one of glee. After all, with Fincher's Rama hitting the wall there was a lot to be depressed about when it came to seeing adaptations of the genre's classics on the big screen. But just how filmable and accessible is Foundation? And is Emmerich the man for the job?

I'm currently reading the first Foundation trilogy again after getting through only books one and two when I read them some fifteen years ago. The books were written in the late 1940's. Could Asimov's tales of humanity spanning millions of planets thousands of years in the future still be credible? Students of the genre no doubt agree that sci-fi that speaks of the future ends up giving away more about current thinking at the time it is written, rather than being particularly prophetic about what is to come. For example, look at how dated the futuristic sci-fi movies of the 1970's look now. Will those all-in-one suits really be fashionable in the future?

One thing has struck me between reading the book in 1995 and reading the book in 2010. The advent of the Internet has probably aged this story more than any other cultural development since the book was written. Asimov refers to "machines" rather than "computers" and "diplomatic packages" rather that "encrypted data transfer". For a story that relies so much on communication, information, chat and political out-manoeuvring, this forking of reality against Asimov's vision seems quite sizable.

Most of Foundation consists of different political figures sitting across tables from one another trying to be smarter than the other. Yes they talk of space battles but often only their outcomes. The real action takes place in the nuanced verbal sparring of these individuals as they try to bend vast resources and events to their will. Can this really transfer to the screen and still be exciting?

And hasn't a lot of it been copied already by one Mr George Lucas, who, with the second Star Wars trilogy (Parts I, II and III) created (or pilfered) the notion of a vast civilization spanning multiple systems, with it's own political system, royalty, pseudo-science and trade blocs etc. Isn't the city planet of Coruscant a complete copy of Asimov's Trantor.

With Foundation the movie, Roland Emmerich has the freedom to create a universe of a scale and scope not seen since Star Wars. And with the developments in cinematic technology he has more tools at his fingertips to create SIZE and SCALE, which are key when it comes to capturing the imagination of science fiction enthusiasts. I believe Emmerich is the best in the business at this. Look at Independence Day, a film that is now fourteen years old. Remember that shot of the orbiting satellite crashing into the alien mothership. That was a lesson in how to make something look unimaginably BIG on the screen. George Lucas is also good at this. James Cameron, not so much. In my opinion, visually Emmerich is the man for the job, and through his interviews on the subject I feel he has enough passion for the story to stay true to its flavour. I agree with his decision to merge the many many characters (most of which don't cross from one book in the trilogy to the next), into just a few key people. This one decision convinces me that an adaptation really could work.

We'll find out in 2011 when the film is released.

Spireclaw audiobook - the iPod version

I'm not sure how many people who read this blog are on Twitter, but I confess I am a complete addict. I'm not going to try to explain it to the uninitiated. I've tried that in the past and I was met with shrugs and blank faces. All I can say is, to understand Twitter's power and simplistic brilliance, you just have to dive in and give it a go. There's something on it for everyone.

Plug over. The whole point of me mentioning this is because Twitter enabled me to find the user @prowlmedia who approached me about reformatting my Spireclaw audiobook (which was in the form of a bunch of unwieldy MP3s) and turning them into a very iPod friendly M4B file which is apparently the standard for audiobooks. This format also introduces chapter breaks, which makes navigating the 5-hour audiobook much easier.

Within 24 hours he'd given me the formatted file, all for the princely cost of nothing, (except a #followfriday, which acts like an advert for another Twitter user).

So here's the file. If you haven't downloaded it yet, what are you waiting for? And click here to follow me on Twitter

Best Horror of the Year - almost

Ellen Datlow, editor of Night Shade Books anthology of the year's best horror stories, has included a list of Honorable Mentions and I'm pleased to say that my story "Last Train to Tassenmere" appears there. I'm listed amongst some of the greatest names in the genre, which is a real honour.

A vision of the future?

After much waiting I finally received a letter this morning from a well known institute that deals with opticians and optical science, and no, I'm not allowed to name them yet. The contents was both scary and exciting. But I better give you a bit of back story.

For most of my life I had always thought it was normal to be able to see, on occasion, people's bones beneath their skin. We all think the reality we see is the absolute one and assume that others share this. We all, for example, think we're seeing the same colour "blue" but is each of our individual interpretations of that colour different? In August last year, I was having my eyes tested when the optician told me I had a number of additional blood vessels in my right eye. This was a bonus apparently. If I were to ever black out, the blood would be restored quickly and my eyesight would return much faster than your average person. When I asked the optician how he had broken his arm (I could see the mended fracture although it was an old injury), he was pretty confused at first, then alarmed, and then extremely inquisitive.

Since then I've been for tests at various hospitals and institutions and the truth of the matter is, to some degree I have what could conceivably be called x-ray vision. But only occasionally. The letter I received this morning confirms this. They are looking to name the new afflicton and have asked me to come in again for more tests (or should I say experiments!)

So, exciting and strange times ahead. Watch this space for more updates.