Richard Dee's Blog, page 58
July 29, 2020
Sourdough
In response to demand, here is the recipe for the Sourdough loaf that I recently featured on Facebook.
I make multiple loaves, the quantities quoted below are for EACH loaf; so you will need to adjust for your number.
The great advantage of this method, is that NO kneading is required, you simply fold the dough over on itself every now and again, time is an extra ingredient that allows the structure of the dough to form.
I’m assuming that you have a sourdough starter to use in this recipe, it contains all the wild yeasts that give this bread its unique taste and structure. Before the advent of instant yeast, all bread was made this way.
If you don’t have a starter, I can give you a simple method to make one, it’ll take you a couple of weeks, after that, it just requires feeding once a week, and you’ll have it forever. Let me know in the comments and I’ll set up a post.
This recipe is based on one fromTeresa L Greenway.
Ingredients
130 g of vigorous sourdough starter at 100% hydration. I start to feed mine about two days before making this bread, to get it nice and active.
275 g water
10 g salt
450 g strong white flour
Method
Best started at lunchtime, the day before you want to bake.
Mix all the ingredients together in a large container and cover.
After 2 hours fold the dough, not kneading it, just pick up a corner of the dough, stretch it out and fold it back on itself.
Do this for all four corners. Then gently pick the ball of dough up and turn it over.
Fold the corners in again.
Cover and leave for another two hours.
Fold again as above
Leave for two hours. Then turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, If making more than one loaf, split it into equal portions.
Shape the dough and place it into a banneton, cover with a plastic bag
Leave it for two hours, then put it in the fridge overnight.
Next morning turn the oven to max (240°C) with a baking stone or heavy baking sheet for the loaf to cook on.
Remove the banneton from the fridge, take off the plastic and leave it for one hour, while the oven warms up
Turn the loaf out,
slash the crust and bake for 45 minutes, the internal temperature needs to be 95°C or higher, or make sure it sounds hollow if you don’t have a thermometer.
There’re two bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of my books in each.
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
Women Solving Cozy Crimes — July
Searching for your next favorite story? Look no further! These bestselling authors have teamed up to offer a delightful selection of new books. Discounted for a limited time.
Check them out, there are lots of great stories available.
All my publications can be found on my Amazon page, at
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
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July 26, 2020
It’s life, Jim
Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
What elements from your life are woven into your latest book?
Travel, to strange and exotic lands. I spent most of the 1970s and 80s at sea, those were times before globalisation, when everywhere you went was completely different to everywhere else. Places like the USSR of Brezhnev, the Philippines of Marcos, and all the rest, they each had something special to offer, a uniqueness; even though they were all on the same planet.
It got me thinking, if countries were this diverse, how different would one planet be to the next, in some far-off future?
Which brings me rather neatly to my next novel.
In The Hitman and the Thief, my hero, Dan Jones (not his real name) is a contract killer, fed up with his life and determined to leave it all behind, after one last job. When things don’t go according to plan and before he can contemplate retirement, he is forced halfway across the galaxy to try and make things right.
Now you may have decided that I’m not an international hitman (and what if I were? Would I tell YOU?), and I’m not living in the future, on a planet called Gallix.
But, like Dan in this book, I spent a lot of time going to all sorts of different places, trying to understand and fit in with the local customs while doing a job for my employer. In that way, being a merchant seaman has a lot of similarity with being an international hitman (only joking).
The great thing about my sea-going career was that it gave me a store of information, stories and events which I could dress up and send out into my words, either the worlds of the future or those of an alternative now.
And my life didn’t just provide the hard landscaping for my writing. While it’s true that spaceships are really only ships, just in a different medium and that travel; whether it’s to the islands of the Banda Sea or the furthest reaches of the Galaxy, is the same, there is another element.
People.
The benefit of seeing all those cultures, untainted by too much foreign influence, meant that they had their own way of dealing with life. Travel gave me a wonderful insight into human nature. And it helped me to develop my own way of looking at things, an amalgamation of the best (or worst) of all I’ve been party to.
Whether it’s the world-weary cynicism of Dave Travise, the naive hope of Horis Strongman or the befuddlement of Andorra Pett, they’re all based on reality, somewhere and somewhen.
It’s important to remember that, when we move out into the galaxy, we will take all our emotional baggage with us. And I like to think that we will keep the same ways of dealing with it, as well as being influenced by our new surroundings.
So, to answer the question (and regular readers will know that’s a rare thing for me), there’s a little of me and my life in all my books, if you know where to look.
The Hitman and the Thief will be published on September 1st and is available for pre-order at just 99p.
Assassination can be a messy business, especially if you’re having a bad day.
Dan Jones is the ultimate problem solver, the hitman for crime boss Fliss Bauer.
Fliss has a rival, Kalindra Dallin. She runs a particularly unpleasant planet. Dan is told to arrange her demise. It’s just another job; until a random event means that it all goes horribly wrong.
To save his skin, Dan is forced to try again, only this time he has to work with a partner. He doesn’t want to but it’s the only chance he’s going to get; if he wants to put things right.
Can the hitman and the thief get the job done, more importantly, can they keep each other alive?
Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Now check out all the other blogs in this hop by clicking below.
Check out the other great blogs here.
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July 24, 2020
The Sykm
Just when I was thinking that writing in three genres was enough, a possible fantasy adventure is worming its way into my mind. Featuring parallel universes and a race of benevolent creatures who are controlling another, with potentially disastrous results.
Here’s the first glimpse ever of Skander. This is by no means a complete chapter one, just a rough outline of what I want to happen. In it, I introduce the main characters and give you an idea of what might be going on.
Please let me know what you think.
Skander
They were the threat of my childhood, the thing that made us all obedient. Behave, or The Sykm will come and take you away, we were told. And it worked, we went to bed, put out our lights, stopped our shouting. Because we were young, we believed in The Sykm, creatures who watched over us and could do unimaginable things.
~~~~
Now I’m older and wiser, I know that they are everywhere in the city. Among the crowds that thronged our streets and markets, there were those who didn’t belong. The Sykm were real, and they had a plan for us. I was starting to find out what that was, and the truth of everything connected to my existence.
The Sykm looked as we did, at least that was the view of themselves that they let us see. Dressed like us, in robes and suits, they could have been us. Your best friend could be a Sykm, you would never know.
I found my first Sykm when I followed a particularly interesting girl into a side alley. My intentions were honourable, I might have been a source of annoyance, even despair, to my parents but I was never as bad as they imagined me to be. I say followed but looking back, I think it’s more likely that I was led.
That day, I was walking the market-place in Skandir, a poor suburb of the city, looking for a gift. My mother was soon to celebrate her birthday and the market was known for selling the things that she collected, hand-made ornaments and jewellery. I had shaken off my peers, they would have mocked me, called me a motherling or some other word for a man who they thought was too attached to his mother.
I was scanning the stalls when I happened to glance up, at the same time as she looked straight at me. As our eyes locked, the strength of her gaze did something in my mind. I felt myself go suddenly cold, then hot. Her face was framed by dark hair and the hood of her cloak. Some might say it was a plain face, in honesty, who knows why anyone takes a fancy to the face of another? There was a strong brow, heavy lashes perched over bright eyes, the blue colour enough to mark her out as someone special.
She was as tall as I, the long robe billowed around her as she walked, giving no clue as to the figure underneath. Her step, in the polished boots that showed between the hem of her robe and the dusty road was firm, purposeful. The tread of a warrior; or at least of someone with places to be.
As she passed, I felt her stare, the eyes seemed to say, ‘follow me and I’ll show you the secrets of the universe’. So, naturally, I did. She turned off the street into an alley between two high brick buildings and I stepped after her into the gloom.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, she stood in front of me. Now it looked as if she was encased in a glowing cloak of rainbow colours. It was a trick worthy of the best entertainments at Kauron’s palace. Perhaps she was a theasp, an illusioneer, or should that be illusioness?
Hearing my footsteps behind her she turned and looked back at me. I couldn’t see her expression, just a flash of bright teeth as she stepped sideways, into the wall. It accepted her, she was gone.
That was impossible. I ran to where she had been and looked at the bricks. They carried a faint glow of rainbows. Gently I reached out to touch them and watched in disbelief as my hand vanished deep into what should have been solid.
One small step was all it would take to follow her. I didn’t hesitate, had no thoughts of right or wrong. Where was I going, how would I return? It never crossed my mind.
As my face passed through the brick, instead of the inside of the building I saw a grassy plain, stretching away to the horizon. The sky above was the deepest blue. Small clouds borne on a breeze made shadows on the sward as they passed under a red-gold sun. It was late autumn in Skandir, here it was mid-summer, the air was warm and sweet.
The girl was facing me, ten yards ahead. Her hood was down, her hair thick and cut short.
I looked behind me, there was no wall but I thought I heard, briefly, the sounds of Skandir as a ripple on the breeze. Or perhaps it was just the grass rustling?
“Come on,” she said, drawing my gaze, “no time to waste.”
She shrugged her shoulders and the robe fell to the ground. Underneath, she was dressed as a warrior. A simple tunic and shorts. Muscled arms and shoulders, a flat stomach. Her torso was adorned with crossed leather straps, a collection of blades hung from a wide belt at her waist. The legs were encased in long boots, extending to mid-thigh.
But that wasn’t the strangest thing. I watched as huge wings unfolded from her back, gossamer-thin with white ribs, they extended and beat the air.
“That’s better,” she said, “they’ve been folded away too long, if only you had been easier to find.”
I stood, rooted to the spot. The journey through the wall had been enough, without this new revelation. I knew then that the Sykm were real and that I was at their mercy.
She frowned and moved towards me, “no time for doubt, Hors Lawis,” she said, taking my wrist in a strong grip. Without thinking, I did the same, locking our arms together. “Hold tight,” she whispered.
The wings flapped, before I knew how, or could even think of which question to ask first, we were riding with the clouds.
Laid out below me was the land of the Sykm.
Let me know what you think about this opening chapter, who knows what will happen next?
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
There’s a bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of mine. Check it out at
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
And another one here, featuring a lot of great books.
Women Solving Cozy Crimes — July
Searching for your next favorite story? Look no further! These bestselling authors have teamed up to offer a delightful selection of new books. Available for free for a limited time.
3,463 total views, 74 views today
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July 22, 2020
This is Lockdown
This week, I’m very happy to showcase and review a new book. Compiled during the Coronavirus lockdown that started in March 2020, its a collaborative effort between a lot of talented authors and bloggers.
The collection has been put together by Marjorie Mallon, I’ll leave it to her to introduce it.
Thank you to Richard, (who is an awesome contributing author,) for hosting me at his lovely blog today to talk about: This Is Lockdown.
This project has grown enormously! It started off as a popular series on my blog, in which writers and authors shared their thoughts about isolation during COVID19. At the time, I was writing my COVID19 personal diaries, flash fiction, poetry, and short stories to take my mind off the sad news reports and escalating deaths. It didn’t occur to me that this coping mechanism would become a published book! As the contributions grew, I realised that this lovely project had the potential to become much more… Not only that, but it could connect a diverse bunch of authors who might never have discovered each other if it weren’t for COVID19.
This is Lockdown is an anthology and compilation of diaries, short stories, flash fiction, contributions from the ‘isolation writers,’ plus poetry written during the time of lockdown in the UK. This Is Lockdown is written from a writer’s perspective highlighting the simple pleasures of day-to-day life during such an uncertain and frightening time. It also gives a glimpse of the blogging, writing world. The book showcases several authors and their thoughts on what it is like to experience ‘isolation’ as a writer. I also discuss the handling of the pandemic and my thoughts on what might happen next. In the final part of the book I include my latest short story idea: a YA romance and various short pieces of poetry, and flash fiction inspired by the pandemic.
The wonderful contributing authors and creatives are many in number!
Richard Dee, (Sci Fi , Steampunk, Amateur Detective author,) Catherine Fearns, (Amazon Bestselling Author of Police Procedural/Mysteries and Music Journalist,) Lynn Fraser, (Author,) Jackie Carreira, (Writer, musician, designer and aspiring philosopher,) Willow Willers, (Poet and writer,) Sharon Marchisello, (Murder Mystery, Financial non-fiction,) Fi Phillips , (Author, Copy Writer) Jeannie Wycherley, (dark stories, suspense, horror,) Chantelle Atkins, (urban fiction, teen/YA,) Tracie Barton-Barrett, (Speaker/author,) Peter Taylor- Gooby, (Crime, Love Stories, Political Fiction,) Ritu Bhathal, (Chick Lit romance, poet,) Alice May , (Author, Artist and Speaker,) Miriam Owen, (Blogger and Doctural Researcher,) Drew Neary and Ceri Williams (Ghost Horror, Supernatural,) Katherine Mezzacappa, (author name: Katie Hutton,) (Historical Fiction/Romance,) Sally Cronin, (huge supporter of indie community/blogger/author) Debby Gies (D G Kaye), (Memoirist/NonFiction,) Adele Marie Park, (Fantasy, horror, urban fantasy,) Marian Wood, (blogger, poet and writer.) Samantha Murdoch, (Writer, Blogger,) Beaton Mabaso (Blogger, African Storyteller,) Frank Prem (Poet, Author,) Anne Goodwin (Author, Book Blogger) Sherri Matthews (Writer, Photographer, Blogger,) and Jane Horwood and Melissa Santiago-Val – Community Masks 4 NHS
.
I arranged the book into two sections. The first half is a compilation of my personal diaries, poems and photography and an anthology of writings about isolation from contribution authors, their poignant poetry and thoughts at this time.
My diaries in This Is Lockdown are expressed from a writer’s perspective, but they are also from a family perspective. They honestly share the manner in which this virus affected my family of four: myself, hubby and our two grown daughters. To date, we have been lucky, and for that I am incredibly grateful. There are anxious moments, sad stories, but there is also a sense of overcoming, hope, and kindness.
This Is Lockdown releases on 20th July, it is on preorder until then.
Buying Link:
Amazon UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08CD1MCFB?pf_rd_r=NPA6S5SQJ30A6VYX87Q5&pf_rd_p=e632fea2-678f-4848-9a97-bcecda59cb4e
Amazon US link:
Author Bio
I was born on the 17th of November in Lion City: Singapore, (a passionate Scorpio, with the Chinese Zodiac sign a lucky rabbit,) second child and only daughter to my parents Paula and Ronald, only sister to my elder brother Donald. I spent my early childhood in a mountainous court dwelling in the Peak District in Hong Kong.
It’s rumoured that I now live in the Venice of Cambridge, with my six-foot hunk of a Rock God husband. My two enchanted daughters often return with a cheery smile.
Sometimes when the mood takes me, I adopt an alter ego, M J – Mary Jane from Spiderman. I love superheroes!
When I’m not writing, I eat exotic delicacies while belly dancing, or surf to the far reaches of the moon. To chill out, I practice Tai Chi and Yoga. If the mood takes me, I snorkel with mermaids, or sign up for idyllic holidays with the Chinese Unicorn, whose magnificent voice sings like a thousand wind chimes.
My favourite genres to write are: YA fantasy, magical realism, and various forms of poetry. I blog about books, writing, photography and inspiration at: https://mjmallon.com
I enjoy writing articles celebrating the spiritual realm, my love of nature and all things magical, mystical, and mysterious. One of my greatest pleasures is reading. I’ve written over 150 reviews at my lovely blog home: https://mjmallon.com/2015/09/28/a-z-of-my-book-reviews/
I’m a member of a professional writing body. SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators.
Links:
Authors Website:https://mjmallon.com
Authors Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/M-J-Mallon/e/B074CGNK4L
Twitter: @Marjorie_Mallon and @curseof_time
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjmallonaut...
#ABRSC: Authors Bloggers Rainbow Support Club on Facebook
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17064826.M_J_Mallon BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/m-j-mallon
Collaborative Group: https://www.facebook.com/pg/5SpiritualSisters/
This is Lockdown. My thoughts.
When people look back on the events of 2020, books like this will assume a great importance. They will remind us of all the little things that we took for granted and were suddenly gone.
I’ve known Marjorie Mallon for quite a while, I read and enjoyed The Curse of Time, see my review here, and beta read the sequel – which is excellent!
She approached me in March for my thoughts on Lockdown and I was more than pleased to be able to contribute to what was originally a series of guest posts on her website. The fact that it has grown into this book is fabulous, there is so much here that deserves to be read to put the days of March to June 2020 into context.
We start with Marjorie’s diary, a daily recounting of the familiar things that became the early casualties of Lockdown, interspersed with thoughts and the things that we do to try and keep a sense of normality in a world that has lost the meaning of the word. There are snippets of fact and some great pictures as well. It reminds me of the way my thoughts went as the days passed, hopping from subject to subject as I tried to keep busy.
Then we get on to the guest posts from her website, from as diverse a set of authors and bloggers as you could find, all with a lockdown tale to tell or some wisdom to impart. As authors, we make things up, these pieces reveal life as unexpected as any fiction and reveal how we cope and deal with a new normal.
As well as the stories of everyday life, there’s a lot of quality poetry from a varied selection of people and to finish, flash fiction and poetry from Marjorie herself, which will be familiar to readers of her novels.
It’s hard to pick out a piece and say “that’s the best” because they’re all good. And it would also seem a little unfair, as everyone’s story or contribution was so important.
This is a great record of a society in flux. You need to read this.
Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
There’s a bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of mine. Check it out at
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
Women Solving Cozy Crimes — July
Searching for your next favorite story? Look no further! These bestselling authors have teamed up to offer a delightful selection of new books. Available for free for a limited time.
5,275 total views, 74 views today
The post This is Lockdown appeared first on Welcome to the worlds of Richard Dee..
July 19, 2020
I’ve got nothing to wear.
Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
How do you decide how to dress your characters?
The simple answer is – Realistically.
Many of my books are set in the far future. If you remember the sci-fi of the 1950s, then according to them, all my characters should probably be dressed in shiny metallic one-piece jumpsuits, with short boots and a fixed, determined, grin.
However, my cast tends to be dressed in the same way that we are. Andorra Pett wears jeans and a tee-shirt, or a boiler suit if she’s working. Everyone else has normal clothes, a mixture of styles.
It’s the same with the Steampunk settings, the dress is nineteenth century, lots of suits and gowns for the ladies. My character Jessamine, of the Orphan Detectives, shocks Jackson Thwaite when he finds her wearing trousers, it wasn’t what he expected a lady to wear. Which is a nod to the times and not an expression of any “ism”.
The thing is, the clothes are what is required by the setting and what the function of the wearer is in the scheme of things. Working people wear overalls, office types have suits, officials might have a uniform (unless they’re secret police when they will look like everyone else). There’s casual gear for weekends.
Not forgetting the specialised wear required for certain situations.
It rains a lot on several of my worlds, on Nova-5 they have the anti-static hat, which repels water as you walk. On the slightly less advanced planet Fallop, a one-piece oversuit does the same job.
It’s a case of being appropriate for the function and creating a picture in the reader’s mind.
Little things like a hat can set a scene and create a background.
For example, a person in a rumpled suit would help you to picture an overworked and world-weary detective, whereas a smarter suit and tie would suggest an executive. I’m not necessarily harking back to the days of black or white hats, my characters are not good or bad purely based on their dress. I’m just tapping into people’s perception, based on familiar tropes. Without becoming stereotypical.
I’ve got far too much to do working out the plot and all the other parts of the world to create new fashion for everyone, they wear what’s practical for the job in hand. And in general, that means roughly what we would wear to do the same job today.
Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Now check out all the other blogs in this hop by clicking below.
Catch up with the other great blogs here
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July 17, 2020
Canonteign Falls
Back in the day, I used to join in a bloghop called Wordless Wednesday. In it, you posted a gallery of pictures based on a single topic, with no explanation except for the title.
I found some of these posts when I was going through my old blogger site and thought that I might share a few with you.
Canonteign Falls are near Bovey Tracey in Devon, we visited on a beautiful day.
I’ll be back on Monday, with another #Openbook blog hop. Meanwhile, check out the offers below.
There’s a new bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of mine.
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
Check them out, there are lots of great stories available.
All my publications can be found on my Amazon page, at
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
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July 15, 2020
Time Travel.
Not so long ago, I was talking to someone about time travel stories, and why don’t I write more of them.
The answer is that it’s really complicated. I’ve managed it twice, both in short stories and I’m trying to write a longer tale at the moment. There are so many variables to consider, you almost have to write the story backwards to make sure that it all fits together and stays logical. It’s more than the fact that you can’t kill your grandfather (although that’s important), you need to remember all the other constraints that time travel involves. And how your plotting can become impossible very easily.
Incidentally, you can find the time travel stories in Flash Fiction (It Works Both Ways), and in 1066 Turned Upside Down (If you Changed one Thing).
The time travel story that I’m trying to write is called Passing Thru, it’s proving to be tricky.
Ages ago, I wrote a blog post about the problems of time travel writing, it’s worth repeating it here.
“Thirty years ago, ten years from now,” – Jason Nichols.
In case you don’t recognise the quote, it’s from “The X-Files,” series 4 episode 19 and Jason Nichols is a time traveller. The old Jason has travelled back in time to try and stop the young Jason creating the conditions for time travel to be invented.
I know. It’s confusing; perhaps that’s why they only ever did one episode on time travel!
When I started writing science-fiction, I had a good idea what I wanted to write about, the worlds of the future and how humanity adapts to the new challenges that the future will bring.
Well, the writing about the future bit is straightforward enough, after all, I had a lot of reference material I could call on, a lifetime watching and reading other people’s ideas of what the future might be had given me a good place to start developing my own ideas.
But the one subject I shied away from was time travel; you see there were just so many “rules.”
And unfortunately, there were also too many ‘experts’ who rigidly enforced the rules, instead of just saying, “well it takes liberties but it’s a da** good read,” they prefer to say, “Illogical and unrealistic.” Killjoys!
We all know the rules, you mustn’t change anything, you mustn’t leave anything, and the one thing you definitely mustn’t do is kill your grandfather. It makes writing about it complicated. You, the author have to become a time traveller. You have to write the story backwards, working out the end and seeing how things have to be to get the start. And then, you have to decide the order of events necessary to achieve that. And all the time you have to watch for all the little hints that give the game away and mean that your plot can’t stand up to close scrutiny. That’s just not the way I write, it’s far too disciplined and it leaves no room for the creative in me to just hit the keys and see what happens.
In a moment of creative abandon (and we all have them) I wondered who decides these rules? And how do we know they are valid? Surely we need to find a time traveller and get him to tell us what the rules are. Or perhaps I’ve got that the wrong way around and in fact the rules for writing about time travel are written by time travellers, based on their experiences. Time travel may be such a closely guarded secret that the rules are there to put people off the scent.
Logic seems to suggest that these rules are absolute. BUT, to a Victorian scientist, logic suggested that a machine heavier than air could not fly. He had tried to make it fly and had failed; it was heavier than the thing that was supposed to support it, therefore logically to him it could not be done.
Of course, we know now that it was his logic that was at fault, but it took an advance in science to prove that a heavier than air machine could fly, logic had to be adjusted to fit. You don’t get the rules for flying a plane written by a jockey, or football written by a cricketer. And it doesn’t really matter how much “logic” you throw at it, logic can never be absolute, it’s really only dependent on the extent of our knowledge.
And one day, science will give us something about time travel that causes logic to be redefined, as it has so often in the past. But while we’re here, it’s all we have so we’re stuck with it for a while.
Current logic suggests its own paradoxes; you can’t change anything that threatens your own existence, for instance. But if you stop and think for a moment, if you didn’t exist then you wouldn’t be able to go back in time to threaten it. And it’s the same with the killing your grandfather thing.
Let’s imagine that you made it back to the time before your grandfather was a father and killed him. But would you be stood there, over his body? You wouldn’t exist; you COULDN’T exist. Doesn’t that mean that you would disappear? After all, you can never have been born!
And here’s the significant point; if you had never been born, then you won’t have been able to go back in time and kill your grandfather! So it looks like he’s safe from you, you murderous, ungrateful offspring.
Let’s examine the other rules in more detail; first, you mustn’t change anything. The old Butterfly effect as portrayed in the movie. Change one thing and change everything. But is that reasonable, or even correct?
Michael Crichton in his excellent novel Timeline (forget the movie version) argues that it is not, that there are just too many things that have to be changed to deflect the whole human experience. If you broke Roger Bannister’s leg, for example, someone else would still run the first four-minute mile. It just wouldn’t be him.
And to return to our original X-Files example, in the end, the two Jason Nichols kill each other. But the research goes on.
You mustn’t leave anything behind, again that seems to be reasonable, yet in the film Timestalkers, written by the great Brian Clemens, the time traveller’s presence is revealed by a modern gun in an old photograph.
But the present hasn’t been altered by it. As far as we know. And how could we?
Having dealt with the past; how about going forward? Could we travel into the future? Well, that creates another paradox all of its own. And aren’t we already travelling into the future anyway?
The question is; does the future already exist to travel too? Obviously, the past does in some form and some of the conclusions of Quantum Theory seem to suggest that everything is concurrent.
The theory is that it’s all here now; it’s just our view of things that is limited. In that case, time is only a way of making sure that everything doesn’t appear to happen at once.
And we mustn’t forget the old parallel universe idea, where every possibility is played out in a new universe, as portrayed in such shows as Sliders. That idea is outside the remit of time travel really because of course, the parallel universes do not interact. So we would never know which one we were in. Or what happened in the other. Unless we were Piers Anthony or Terry Pratchett.
At the end of all the theorising, it comes down to one thing. In writing about time travel, as in writing about anything, the only real consideration is to make it fun and make it believable, as long as there are no gaping holes in the plot just about anything goes. You’re inventing the world, get the reader hooked and you can get away with a lot.
I’ll leave you with this thought. In Australia, it’s tomorrow already while in America it’s still yesterday. If we fly from London to Sydney we travel into the future. London to Los Angeles and we journey into the past. Perhaps time travel is already with us.
Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
There’s a new bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of mine. Check it out at
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
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July 10, 2020
Carrot Cake Cupcakes
I made some Carrot Cake Cupcakes. For the recipe, see below.
Ingredients
· For the cupcakes
· 400g granulated sugar
· 325ml vegetable oil
· 1 tsp pure vanilla essence
· 3 extra-large eggs
· 280g plain flour
· 2 tsp ground cinnamon
· 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
· 1 1/2 tsp salt
· 375g finely grated carrots, well drained (you will need about 600g fresh carrots to get this amount).
· 150g sultanas
· 125g chopped dates
· For the icing
· 375g cream cheese, at room temperature
· 250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
· 1 tsp pure vanilla essence
· 500g icing sugar
Method
1) Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 4.
2) Beat the sugar, oil, and vanilla together in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the eggs, one at a time. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda, and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add 1/2 of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Add the grated carrots, sultanas, and walnuts to the remaining flour, mix well, and add to the batter. Mix until just combined.
3) Line muffin pans with paper liners. Scoop the batter into 22 muffin cups until each is 3/4 full. Bake at 200°C/gas mark 6 for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 180°C/gas mark 4 and cook for a further 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack.
4) For the icing, cream the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add the sugar and beat until smooth.
5) When the cupcakes are cool, ice them generously and serve.
There’s a new bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of mine.
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
Check it out, there are lots of great stories available.
All my publications can be found on my Amazon page, at
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
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July 8, 2020
Coming Soon – Andorra Pett takes a Break
I have finished the first draft of the latest Andorra Pett escapade. My editor will be seeing it soon, if it all goes well, I intend to publish it at the end of the year.
I’m amazed to see where Andorra has gone; from her creation in response to a bet and her first appearance in a short story. As well as the three novels, she has also been part of two anthologies and now, in Andorra Pett takes a Break, she has her fourth full-length mystery. This one is set in yet another part of the solar system.
This time, Andorra is on a new development in transport. The Solar Breeze is the cruise ship of the future. Powered by the Centi-drive plus, which allows travel at one per cent of light speed, it can go from the Sun to the Kuiper Belt in around twenty-four days. The plan is for the rich and famous to be taken on a ninety-day round trip, with visits to all the planets and the Sun.
Andorra is a guest on the maiden voyage, in return for giving a lecture on her experiences in mining the rings of Saturn. This voyage is a short one, from Earth, around the Sun via Venus and back to Earth. Onboard are the great and the good. Naturally, there’s also a whole load of trouble. Once again, she will need all her famous ingenuity, plus a helping of luck and a few laughs, to get out of this one alive.
I found that I needed to do a lot of research to write this story, far more than I was expecting.
In writing about the far future, I can take a few liberties, such as with faster than light travel and planetary engineering, although the basic science must always be sound.
As the Andorra Pett universe is more contemporary, I must make sure that everything I get her to do is at least possible under the laws of science as we currently understand them. Things like the travel time between planets (which are as accurate as I can make them) and the bits of a spaceship that do various things are all based on what we know, adapted for a new purpose. And of course, the social background to the story has to be close to how we are now. I’ve used environmental concerns to drive the narrative this time.
I hope that I have constructed a setting, in the Solar Breeze, that is relatable and would be achievable if our technology was slightly more advanced than it is now, without becoming all Star Trek.
The good news, for all her fans, is that this will not be her last adventure. There was a time when I thought that it might be, the last thing I wanted to do was let her become a boring series. I would rather stop than go through the motions with formulaic plots to keep sales, all the time realising that her glory days were behind her. Andorra Pett goes Lunar is in development and who knows what might happen after that. If I can’t think of any more stories for her, perhaps her great-granddaughter will get to carry on the sleuthing tradition, in some far-flung future?
Once I get the edited manuscript back, I’ll be looking for beta readers, if you’d like an advance copy, please let me know. You don’t need to have read the others to get into this one.
You can start Andorra’s adventures with this story.
How far is far enough? Andorra needs to get away from her ex, but is Saturn taking it a step too far?
When Andorra’s life turns upside down, she decides on a career change. Running a diner on a mining station orbiting Saturn. It seemed like a good idea at the time…
With her best friend Cy in tow, Andorra reckons it’s the best thing for them both. A chance to start again where nobody knows them.
Trouble is, there’s a secret hidden in the café. Before they have a chance to get settled, there’s a queue of dubious characters trying to find it.
While learning to bake and get used to life in space, Andorra has a murderer to catch!
Before they strike again…
“Agatha Raisin meets Miss Marple, in Space!”
“a tale that has everything – humour, suspense, a strong but struggling heroine, a fantastic sci-fi setting, and a truly universal story.”
All my publications can be found on my Amazon page, at
Author Updates
Follow Richard Dee and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com’s Richard Dee Author Page.
There’s a new bookfunnel promotion for Sci-fi mysteries. Including one of mine. Check it out at
Space Cozy Mystery Collection
Space Cozy Mystery Collection If you want more cozies in your life, don’t forget to check out Free Book Friday and the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook. Celebrate your favourite cozies on #cozymysteryday on the 15th September (Agatha Christie’s birthday).
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
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July 5, 2020
Breaking the Rules
Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
What generic ‘rules’ did you abide by when you started writing that have gone out the window?
Being self-taught, I never really had any rules to follow. Grammar was always a mystery to me. In many ways, it still is. As for the conventions of writing fiction, whatever they might be, I have no idea.
I’ve probably broken all the rules that I never knew existed. I’ve always written down what I see in my head. I leave it up to my long-suffering editor to sort it all out and make sense of the technicalities.
The fact that I go into my writing space with no preconceptions means that I’m free to express myself however I want. I can just listen to the voices in my head and concentrate on getting it all down, without worrying that I might be breaking some hallowed rule. I don’t have to keep one ear open for the screech of brakes and the pounding on my door from the grammar police, or the plot patrol. Or even the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe (thank you to the wonderful Keith Waterhouse for that one).
I simply try to write what I think people would like to read, a story with interest and one that’s relatable to their lives, experiences and aspirations. Even though it might be set in the future or an alternative now. My style is based on the sort of books that I enjoy reading. From Sci-fi by the masters to modern action adventures and most other genres in between.
I don’t have to worry about offending anyone with my content. There’s minimal explicit sex and gory violence in my work, largely because I don’t think you need it to get your point across. Which is not to say that there isn’t emotion, passion, action and violent death. I prefer to suggest what’s going on and leave it up to you to make it as graphic as you want in your imagination. A bit like the movies of Alfred Hitchcock. I think that doing it that way means that no part of the potential audience is ruled out.
Returning to the subject.
So what if I don’t conform to the rules? For a start, as far as I’m concerned, anything enclosed in quotation marks is exempt from any rules of grammar or form. The rest is open to debate. English might be the language of Shakespeare but a person from those times would struggle to understand my ramblings in what is nominally the same tongue. Because it changes, the language, the usage and even the wordage.
Every day.
Do the self-proclaimed guardians of literary purity allow for this evolution, or is their guidance set in stone? After all, Americans, Canadians and Australians (other English speaking countries are available) all speak different versions of the same language, with unfamiliar words and constructions to each other.
When I write the words of a man from the fifty-second century (or whenever), I write them in today’s language, for your benefit. Should my work survive to meet his ilk, they will need an army of historians to work out what I was on about.
Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.
I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Now check out all the other blogs in this hop by clicking below.
https://fresh.inlinkz.com/p/565ba3419fa747809940266122d6f922
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