Richard Dee's Blog, page 94

More about sequels.

 

I’m following on from a post that I did a while ago, I guess that you could call this the sequel to it.

Here’s the thing, I wonder how to market a sequel, sure there are those who read the first part of the story, they are a reasonable bet for the sequel, but what about the ones who have never read part one, where do they fit into your marketing masterplan?

The trouble with sequels is that they demand to be written. It might be because you realise that you haven’t actually finished the story, or you think of some more adventures for the people that are left standing. It could even be that your readers have asked you for more.  The strangest reason is where the characters themselves won’t leave you alone and keep pestering your subconscious with demands for more.

For whatever reason, you find yourself with a sequel to promote, and how are you supposed to do that.

Obviously, you need to tell everyone that read the first book, but beyond that, you almost have to market the first or preceding parts more than your new work, just to make sure that people are up to speed.

Now I try to write sequels that are complete in themselves, so that they can be read without a constant reference to the book that came before. This requires a bit of planning and inclusion of backstory, enough to give a clue but not too much. The last thing that you want to do is put off the readers that are already familiar with what’s going on.

So no excessive repetition, as few spoilers as possible (the idea is to make them want to go back and catch up), in fact, if you can give the other volume a mysterious air it will encourage things. Maybe leave tales half told, making then want to catch up.

The reason I’m writing this is that I have a sequel to promote. I’ve tried, on various platforms to get people interested but all they do is say that they’re not interested in sequels, from a review or blogging point of view that is, unless they’ve read the first part. And when I offer both novels, FREE, to review, that is too much to expect, as they are so busy.

Which brings me neatly back to my original question.

The trouble is, to a certain extent, I have little choice about whether I write a sequel or not. In the case of the request, I can hardly refuse if people show enough interest in my work to want more. If the characters suggest (via my minds-eye), that they can have more adventures, again, I can hardly shut it out.

So in the same way that Wilbur Smith has the Courtney’s, Ballantyne’s, Egypt etc., I have series coming out of my ears.

The Dave Travise series, the Balcom series, the Andorra Pett series, they have all developed from a single starting point into almost unstoppable creations, with the more I write giving me ideas. Soon Dave and all the others will be having adventures in their jet-propelled wheelchairs, or ordering cocoa in the seedy bars of their various universes on O.A.P.Wednesday.

Or I could go the other way, and like the Young Sherlock or the Indiana Jones Chronicles, I guess that I could always go back to before it all began. I can start to tell the story from the other end, so to speak. After all, as well as the examples above, it worked for Asimov with the Foundation series. Roll on the Box-set.

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A Halloween tale

I haven’t written about my writing this week because I have something that I’d like you to listen to.

Last year, my good friends at Circle of Spears, who produced the audio version of The Rocks of Aserol, asked me if I could write them a ghost story for Halloween. They had a performance at the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle booked and wanted a piece to put in it.

I wrote a story called The Veil, a poignant piece about love and loss, they performed it and said that it went down well.

As its nearly Halloween again, I thought it would be nice to post a recording of Tracey Norman, from Circle of Spears, reading The Veil.

 

So here it is. I hope you enjoy it, please leave me a comment below.

 

http://richarddeescifi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Veil.mp3

 

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Room for one Inside?

Are you a secret warrior? Do you wish you were more assertive? Do you have some other character trait that you keep well hidden? Perhaps you’re frustrated that your life didn’t turn out how you’d wanted or hoped it would.

I’m going to show my age here, I remember a T.V. show called Joe-90 in the late 1960’s. For those of you that don’t recall, it featured a boy (Joe McClaine) whose brain could be filled with knowledge and skills, implanted by some fancy machine. It enabled him to become a super-spy.

 

 

An idea which was also pursued in the film Total Recall, based on the short story by Phillip K Dick.

Or for those who can’t go back that far, a more recent variation on the same theme was Dollhouse (2009); again people were given knowledge and skills by mean of some sort of science which implanted it in their brains.

Where is this leading, you may wonder? Well, the idea of having an alter ego that could be downloaded into your head so you could be what you wanted has always fascinated me.

I could be all the things that I haven’t, I think I’ve led a boring life, although to others it may seem to have been interesting. The trouble is, as Bob McClane from ReKall says in the 1990 movie version of Total Recall, “Whenever you go on holiday, you’re always there, it’s the same old you.” Strangely enough, the man’s surname in the movie is the same as Joe-90’s was. I bet you never spotted that.

Look…, I’m sorry, I can’t help being a geek!

I think that goes a long way to explaining why other people always seem to be more interesting. Because they’re not us. They might think the same if we asked them.

Anyhow, back to the old alternate personality. If it was good enough for the T.V. and movies, why can’t I interchange personalities in my head? In fact, I do, without all the flashing lights and technical wizardry.

I can make my characters behave in the way I’d like to, maybe all writers do it. If you’re shy you can have an outgoing hero, or a fearless one or whatever. It’s a way of being what you’re not. Or alternatively, they can behave in the way that you’d like those around you to behave. So your character can be an extension of you or someone you know.

You can create a whole community of people, behaving exactly how you’d like your social circle to behave because very often, we’re surrounded by the same sort of people who would inhabit any world anywhere; all that’s different is the setting.

This also works in the opposite way, for the sake of realism I find myself trying to think like my characters would, to do that you have to become them, see things from their point of view. That’s where the observation comes in, you have to spend all the time you are out and about watching that way people behave, adding it to the way you want your story to develop and seeing where the two fit together.

You may find that there are places where you have to modify their behaviour, a bit like you do in real life, but in your head, you can get away with doing things that you wouldn’t dare, or even attempt whilst you are stuck in reality.

The funny thing is, once you start off, you’ll find that your creations develop lives of their own. You can equip them with the basics, i.e. good or bad, helpful or whatever but once you set them in motion in your story they will find their own voice and do or say things that may surprise you. Or at least mine do. As the persona of the character develops in my head, I find that they fill out and become more and more real. The problem then becomes separating them from the reality that I currently have to inhabit. And they move from being an extension of me or my desires to independence.

Once they achieve independence, they continue to have adventures, long after the reason that they were brought into existence for has gone.

For example, I created Miles Goram as the hero in Ribbonworld. After he finished the job I had set him, he demanded more adventures, so I wrote a sequel or two for him. The same went for Dave Travise and Andorra Pett, they have all outgrown the original story, all found other things to do and all become so much more than I thought they would when they were just an extension of my psyche. And they almost seem real to me.

Which brings us back to the original idea. Could you really have a person’s entire character on a hard-drive, ready to insert into a willing brain? Would it be static or would it develop in use? In the end, could it outgrow its original design and be impossible to expunge?

And, if you can create alternate realities in your head and make them seem real, do you really need it?

Let me know what you think, please leave a comment below.

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A Shameless Plug – And why not?

Not much of a post this week, my daughter has been over from her home in Australia for a few days, I’ve been involved in more important matters.

Just to let you know, my Steampunk adventure, A New Life in Ventis will be released at the end of the month, It carries on from where The Rocks of Aserol finished and takes the story forward.

For those who are yet to start the series, The Rocks of Aserol is currently only 99p or 99c in the USA. You can find it here,

If you want to see a sample of The Rocks of Aserol, click HERE

Or, for a sample from A New LIfe in Ventis, click HERE

 

There’s also a collection of sixteen Steampunk short stories exclusively available at my shop, click the cover picture to go there.

You can find purchase links for the special price by clicking the button,

 

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Computer says no.

An easy one to write about this week, I’ve been having trouble with my eBook pricing and this has resulted in me having to un-publish all my eBooks and re-publish them just to get it sorted out.

The basic problem came from a certain websites pricing algorithm, which for some reason increased the RRP of my eBooks from that which I had set and did not respond to any price changes that I requested, thus making it pretty useless when it came to promoting special prices. No wonder I never sold many through them.

 

But, one thing I have learned is that changing anything that is stored on a computer somewhere is never simple, at first I tried to convince people that there was a problem, that is never the easy bit, looking back I guess that I should have just deleted it all and started again at the first sign of trouble. But, being the sort of person that I am, I persevered. In the end, company one told me the problem was with company two and I should call them. Naturally, company two disputed this and told me to call company one again.

 

This is a version of tennis for the electronic age. You are the ball and spend your time on hold at one or the other company, when connected you always have to describe the problem from the start (strange in these days of ‘all calls are recorded and monitored,’ don’t they keep notes?), only to be told that the whole sorry mess is not their fault and you need to speak to the others. You then hang up and dial the second company, where the whole thing repeats. You can play for as long as you like, or your phone bill (even, at a push – life) allows.

 

In between times, when customer service lines were shut, I took advice. The general consensus was that I should start again, and detailed instructions were generously given. Thank you to all who helped me, you managed to show me that in the long run, this would be the sensible way to proceed. That all this hassle would be worth it, in the end.

 

 

To be fair, I actually managed to turn this to my advantage. I had been meaning to update the end pages in my eBooks, where I tell everyone about my other titles and invite them to leave reviews. And I had also spotted a couple of typo’s that needed correcting. But I had never got around to it as it meant re-formatting and all the fun that goes with that. After a lot of work, I had the file ready to go. All I needed to do was add it to the epub, recompile it and upload it, right?

Which was where snag number two turned up. Sure, I could upload new versions, with updated contents, but I couldn’t include the links I had so carefully embedded, the reason for me doing this in the first place. As I had now unpublished everything; the links were no longer valid!

So I had to upload the old files to their new home and get them listed as on sale. Then grab the links that were created to my new versions and get my file amended. Then I could incorporate it and upload the new eBooks to replace them. The links would be valid this time as these were only updates to already published books.

Simples, as they say. Well yes in a logical, step by step sort of way, but oh so infuriating to have to do it.

Still, it’s all done, now I have to deal with the rest of the incorrect links, on this website, Facebook and everywhere else that I might have placed them. And it’s surprising where they had actually ended up.

In a way, I’m pleased that this all happened. It brought things to a head and made me do what I’d been putting off for too long. Now all my eBooks have up-to-date lists of other titles and links at the back, ready for people to click straight through when they finish the main event. Even if it did make me want to do this.

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More Research.

Everything needs research, even this post.

It’s Friday and I have a blank page in front of me. I have to write something for my website and have it ready to post on Monday; the trouble is that I don’t have a subject.

 

How about research? I could write about that. I wrote a bit about it earlier this year, looking back it was interesting but didn’t say everything I wanted, so I thought that I would add some more thoughts. So this should really be called research part two.

When I first started writing Science Fiction, I had this idea that I wouldn’t need to do much in the way of research, after all, I wasn’t writing about things that were. I could say anything I wanted, couldn’t I?

 

Then I sat down and started typing. I was describing a farm on another planet and I suddenly realised that I had to have some idea about how they produced power for all their equipment. Now I could have gone with the same way that we do but hey, it’s sci-fi, so I wanted to do something a little different. After all, if we are now colonising other planets, would we still be using oil to power our tractors?

Then I remembered a thing I had heard on T.V. a long time ago, about how it might be possible to transmit electricity using microwaves. It was all a bit hazy in my mind but it gave me an idea for a centralised power-generation system transmitting wirelessly.

Then (and this is the big problem with research), I had to get the power from somewhere. Maybe I could make it on the farm?. If I didn’t want oil, could I have Nuclear power? But it seemed to be a bit of overkill for a farm to have its own atomic power station, so then I considered renewables.

As an ex-seafaring man I know all about the power of water, I’ve seen it over the years and have the greatest respect for it. I have always thought that a better use for all those wind turbines littering the sea would be to turn them upside down and let the flow of the tides or river currents turn them. It’s predictable and, unless we lose the moon, everlasting. If we lose the moon we would have other things to worry about anyway.

Developing the theory, we could have micro-generators in just about any piece of running water, spaced a few hundred metres apart. The power in a river like the Thames or the Amazon is so enormous that it could produce plenty of energy if harnessed correctly.

Can you see what’s happening here? I only wanted to power a tractor and now I’m re-designing the national grid!

As a bonus, if you could have a big generator in a river, couldn’t you have a small one? Maybe even a pocket-sized one with fold-out blades? Travellers would find them invaluable to recharge equipment while they slept, camped by the side of a river? Why not?

The principle has stayed with me and now I use a lot of my ‘inventions’ in my novels, I guess that you could say I’m inventing the history of the future, not in the broad sweep that Asimov did in ‘Foundation,’ but in the little things that make society. And as a bonus, the background to how the people of the future discovered and used these things provides me with a wealth of material for short stories.

From that moment I’ve been hooked on making my writing as logical and fact-based as I could. I wouldn’t say that I became obsessed with research but I certainly saw the importance of it more.

There’s a fact behind everything that will be, what we have today was science fiction to my grandparents, yet the vast majority of it is based on things that they would have been familiar with.

I also discovered that there was a lot of present-day science that could be dropped straight into a future world. All that is needed is a little bit of embellishment, a twist to make it ‘futuristic.’

Now, as I write I actually look forward to the bit where I have to make something work or justify some piece of description. Basing the future on what we have today, trying to guess where science will take us and always being prepared for the leap, the serendipitous discovery that changes everything.

I’m currently working on an idea for a novel about a man who has vivid dreams, so far I’ve learned about all sorts of scientific and medical stuff connected to dreaming and how we perceive reality. It’s a fascinating subject and I’m hopeful that the inclusion of so much truth will enhance the fiction, giving it an air of authenticity.

In the end, that’s what it’s all about, and it seems to be working, I get people who have read my novels complimenting me on the science, which is weird as I’m not a scientist, comments like,

 “A lot of effort has been put into the research for the story; it comes across as real instead of patently fake.”

And,

“I LOVED how you had technical details to support machinery, ships, practices, but it didn’t bog down the story.”

That means that I’ve done my job as a novelist, I’ve created a world that’s believable, and once you’ve done that, you have the reader on your side. If I can convince you that the world is real, making you accept the characters and the situation I’ve placed them in is going to be easy.

There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? I’ve managed to get a post out of half an idea and tried to give you an insight into my creative process along the way. Let me know what you think by commenting below.

 

By the way, my original post about research is HERE

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Getting ready for NaNoWriMo

It’s that time of the year again. NaNoWriMo is fast approaching. I’m starting to wonder what to write for this annual attempt to concentrate the mind and get a first draft finished.

In case you don’t know, the idea of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Check it out at nanowrimo.org.

 

 

I’ve actually managed to complete the challenge twice, in 2014, while I was off work with a shoulder injury, I wrote Ribbonworld (60,000 words written in the month). In 2016, I extended Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café to novel length, from the original short story (67,000 words written in the month). I had 2015 off, I was busy retiring from my day job.

 

My trouble this year is that I have so many ideas on the go that I can’t yet commit to one of them. Since I’ve started writing full-time, my stock of works in progress is increasing faster than I can finish them. Ideas beget ideas; for sequels, prequels and spin-off stories. A backstory that I invented as a way of enhancing my universes will take on a life of its own and demand more exposition.

So what could I do for NaNo this year? Here are a few notes about my current works in progress.

 

The Lost Princess. Part three of the Balcom series. (Ribbonworld and Jungle Green) Miles and Layla finally solve the secrets of the shadowy group who have dogged their lives.

 

Miles Goram, journalist. Part zero of the Balcom series. Why Miles Goram went to jail and ended up on Reevis at the start of Ribbonworld.

 

The Orbital Livestock Company, a short story that wants to be extended into a full novel. Mystery and mayhem on a dairy farm in space.

 

Promise Me. Part three of the Dave Travise series, the sequel to Myra and Freefall. All the questions are answered…for now. Maybe.

 

Life…and Other Dreams. My alternative reality idea. Do your dreams feel so lifelike because they aren’t dreams? Perhaps what you think is your life might really be the dream. Accused of murder in one reality, our hero is stuck in the other, where his life is falling apart. Which one is real, which one would you choose?

 

Andorra Pett and her Sister. Another of Andorra’s adventures. Following Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café and Andorra Pett on Mars. “When a sister hates you, then it really is the end of the world.” Unless she’s blundered into more trouble than she can handle on her own and needs Andorra to rescue her, then all bets are off!.

 

Andorra Pett takes a break. And another one, surely nothing can happen when Andorra and her partner take a luxury holiday…, can it? Crazed environmentalists wouldn’t hijack the “Solar Breeze” and threaten to fly it into the Sun, leaving Andorra as the only person to save the day…, would they?

 

Survive 2. The sequel to Survive (Obvs) No spoilers here as Survive isn’t out yet, but you can expect more conspiracy and adventure out on the wild frontier!

 

Steampunk, unnamed. Part three of my Norlandian series. (The Rocks of Aserol and A New Life in Ventis). Horis and Grace are still trying to lead a quieter life; will they manage it at last?

 

Jack. A boy in a sort of Victorian England is introduced to a strange collection of individuals, what are they up to and where does he fit into their plans?

 

As you can see, I’m not short of options; I have made a pretty good start on all of the above stories (5-15k words). And I actually want to write them all, it’s really only a question of time, I can only do so much in one day before life gets in the way. The trouble is, they crowd my mind and I get confused about who’s doing what and where. I have to keep taking notes and remembering where I’ve left them.

It’s really strange but, as I’ve said before, the story won’t allow itself to be written if it’s not ready to come out. I can always tell if I’m going to be able to work on an idea for a story as it just flows and I can’t stop typing. I find it impossible to type much until my subconscious or wherever the work is coming from is ready to produce it. When I’m in the zone, however, it appears with very little in the way of plotting on my part.

I write it as you would read it, in order, almost fully formed. It’s almost as if I’m watching a film in my head; all I have to do is type what I see. I can rewind and slow the action down to get it all on the page. I can even pause the playback to focus on the details. What I’m unable to do is fast forward or skip to the end, so the way the story finishes is as much a surprise to me as it is to the reader. And very often, the characters will say or do things that I only learn about when reading it back.

For that reason, I don’t really know which one of the above has the most chance of being completed in the month. Or even which one I’ll work on today. It’s always possible that I’ll have another idea which will take over and that will be the one that I end up writing. But I suspect

But I suspect that when we get to the start of the challenge, something will turn up.

If you’re contemplating NaNo this year, or you have a favourite from the list above that you’d like to see finished; let me know in the comments below.

Why not have a go at NaNo? Even if you don’t manage to finish, the results might surprise you.

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How To Write An Artist’s Resume

Note from Richard Dee.
This article was submitted to me for publication and it was so useful that I decided to post it unedited. I have tried to get in touch with the person who submitted it, to no avail. Therefore I have not included their details, just their words. If there are any copyright issues, I apologise but have posted this in good faith.

 

As an artist, you’ll feel as though that you can’t create a regular resume. This is true to some extent, but you are still going to need one in your professional life. That’s why you need a well-written resume that shows just why you’re unique and special as an artist. Here’s how you can write your resume and get the jobs and opportunities that you want.

How your resume should work

As an artist, your resume won’t look like most peoples’. However, you can draw upon some of the conventions of resume writing in order to get a resume that does you justice. The point of most resumes is to give an overview of what you’ve done over your professional life. The way you lay it out will be up to you, but this guide can show you what will need to be included as you write.

The artist’s resume layout

Your resume should contain the following sections. You may choose to change them around depending on your needs, but they will need to be included in some format:

Contact details: You’ll need to start with your name and contact details, as they’ll be needed if anyone reads your resume and wants to get in touch. What amount of detail you give to this section is up to you. You can simply give your name, contact number and email, or you can include your address too.
Education: This is especially important if you’ve got any degrees or qualifications in art. If you don’t have the qualification yet, include details of when you expect to graduate and your anticipated grade.
Professional experience: This will be any teaching and professional positions you’ve had that are relevant to your current career. You’ll need to include the dates, the employer, and the location.
Awards/grants/fellowships: Here, you’ll be listing all of your art related achievements. Think including residencies, grants you’ve received, or any awards that you’ve won in your line of work. Remember to keep this section related to your art itself.
Exhibition record: This is possibly the most important section of your resume, and so may need to be included further up the document. You’ll need to document every exhibition you’ve been a part of, either as a group or solo. If you have a few different exhibitions under your belt, then it could be split into two different sections to highlight both types.
Collaborative partnerships: If you work in fields such as digital arts or new media, then you may need this section. List the works you worked on with others, as well as where you created them.
Bibliography: Here’s where you’ll need to list where you’ve been interviewed, written for publications, or otherwise been published. The best way to document this list is by using the Chicago Manual of Style.
Lectures: If you’ve given lectures on your artwork in the past, this is where you’ll document them. You may title this section ‘Visiting Lectures’ or ‘Panels’, depending on how you’ve presented in the past.
Collections: If some of your work is in collections, list them here. You’ll need to state the name of the collection or collector, the city, and the state.

Basic Resume Writing Tips

Now you have your outline, you can start writing your resume. Here are some tips on general resume writing that will help you write a good document.

Keep it to the point

If someone is reading your resume, they don’t have time to be poring through all the details of your life. Keep your resume just to the points in your career that are relevant. You may find you need to edit it, depending on what you’re using the resume for.

Check your facts

The gallery your work is currently in may be working under a different name, or the school’s phone number may have changed. Before you include a fact, check it. You don’t want to miss out because you got something simple wrong.

Use online tools

Online tools can help you get your resume written well. Try these tools when you’re writing:

Resumention: You can give your details to the expert writers here, and they can create a professional resume for you.
Best Australian Writers: Find yourself a writing tutor here, and they can walk you through the resume writing process.
UK Writings: This specialised resume service will proofread and edit what you’ve written, to ensure that it’s at its best.
Top Canadian Writers: Talk to the writers here if you’re stuck with your resume form, as they can often help you with any thorny issues.

Use a good font

The font you use is important. It needs to be easy to read and appealing, especially as you’re in a field where you’ll be paying attention to the details. Never go below point 10 for size, and use a font such as Arial that’s easy to read.

Don’t forget your formatting

Good formatting is crucial. Use headings, bullet points, and white space to draw the reader’s eye to where you want it to go. If you use the above format, your resume should be laid out pleasingly.

Keep multiple formats

Different institutions will want different formats when you submit your resume, so keep this in mind. A Word document is a good idea as it’s easy to update as and when you need to. As well as this, keep a PDF version in reserve, as the formatting stays the same no matter what system you view it on. If an institution doesn’t specify a format, use a PDF to send your resume over.

As you can see, it’s easier than you’d think to put a proper artist’s resume together. All you have to do is follow the outline provided and you’re halfway there. Make the proper adjustments depending on your career, and don’t be afraid to let your achievements stand out. A good resume can show people just where you’re going, and how you’re going to progress in your career.

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Christmas is coming – RUN!!!

It’s September already, where has the summer gone? Before we know it the shops will be full of Christmas food and decorations.

Not that I’m complaining about the food, I’m a big fan, but it does seem to get earlier each year, after all, we still have Halloween and November 5th to get through. And all the mince pies will be out of date by the end of October.

So in the spirit of the (soon to be) season, I’ve added a festive short story to this post, I thought that I might as well get into Christmas mode early along with everyone else. You can read it here or download a copy here

Next week will be a first for my website. I’ll be hosting a guest post from a mystery writer, an unsolicited article that I received a while ago. I’ve tried to contact the sender to get more information about them but to no avail. As I can’t get in touch, I will not attribute it to them by name but they know who they are, and I’m very grateful for the effort they’ve put in.

Now, here’s your short story.

 

 

Maybe you were right

 

The crew had drawn straws and Martine had lost. I hadn’t bothered, I was happy to stay and let someone else go.

It wasn’t as if I had anyone special to go home for and I honestly couldn’t be bothered with Christmas, all the commercialism and repeat movies, it was for families and kids. The rest of the crew were on their way back to Earth for the holidays, I was the one who was stopping in orbit to watch the shop with the reluctant loser.

I hadn’t been lucky with that, or so I thought. It was typical; Martine was the one person that I had hoped was going home; she was the one who was stopping. I reckoned that the psychological profilers had slipped up with her when they had selected the crew. If I could have chosen someone else to share the fortnight with before the new crew arrived, it wouldn’t have been her. She was the awkward one.

Still, we had to make the best of it.

“Why did you offer to stay?” she asked me, as we watched the shuttle depart. “Don’t you have any family on Earth?”

A lot of us were unattached, the agency preferred it that way, there was less potential for problems as far as they were concerned.

“No,” I said. “And before you ask, I’m not bothered with all the festive stuff. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to enjoy being up here…”

“…With me?” she finished. “I know we don’t really get on but I don’t want to have a lousy fortnight with you and a load of ‘bah humbug’ bitching.”

She smiled, she had a nice smile; it was a pity that it hadn’t been on show more.

“Truce?” I said.

She smiled again. “I hope so. Let’s have a happy Christmas.”

We were in low orbit and passed the whole northern hemisphere twice a day. As there were only two of us we had plenty of work to keep us busy. And as the time had passed we started to get on much better. She opened up, she was very upset to be here, and not because of me. She told me that she loved Christmas and all the festive activities with her family. Her enthusiasm got through to me and I even started to see why people celebrated. I dropped my Scrooge persona for her sake; it was bad enough that she was here without me making it worse.

We had agreed to stop work on Christmas Eve and relax for forty-eight hours, apart from the essential safety stuff. The agency had supplied us with vacuum packed festive treats, but to be honest liquidised mince pies weren’t exactly enticing. But as we couldn’t have crumbs floating around in the cabin everything was made to be eaten through a straw.

As the day drew to a close we chilled and watched the night creep across Europe, we could see the snow clad peaks of the Alps, the sky was cloudless and the twinkling lights of the cities made a living map.

“We’re in a perfect position to watch,” Martine said as we sipped our non-alcoholic festive drinks, at least that was what it said on the pouch. It tasted like spiced apple juice to me. We were strapped in to stop us bumping around; even lifting the drink to our lips was enough to change our centre of gravity and move us around the cabin.

“To watch what?” Over the last few days, I had got to know her better, she wasn’t really awkward, just quiet and intense and I had to admit the profilers had got it right after all; it was me that had been out of step. I had learned to get on with her and was glad that she had stayed. Her reply still surprised me though.

“To see Santa on his sleigh; we have a perfect view.”

I thought that she was joking. “We could film it; record it,” she carried on. “Prove it once and for all.” Surely she was a bit old for all that?

“It would all be a bit of a blur,” I said, joining into her train of thought. “He would have to move really fast; all those houses in one night.”

“My nieces would love it though,” her eyes shone. “They still believe. I think I still want to, because of them.”

“I think we all want to believe,” I said. “It’s better than the real world with all its cynicism.” Had I really just said that? It showed how much being with her had changed me.

There was a rattle from the hull, we had grown used to the occasional piece of dust or whatever bouncing off us, relative motion meant that it was unlikely to do us any serious harm but this sounded like a lot more than usual.

Martine looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “A few bigger pieces, perhaps we should swing the cameras around and have a look.”

“Perhaps it’s reindeer,” I said. She leaned across and punched me on the arm.

“Don’t mock,” she advised; a flash of the old Martine. “Just when I thought you were going all mellow.”

The station suddenly rocked violently from side to side, Martine screamed, or perhaps it was me. All the loose objects bobbed around, creating a blizzard of motion, it was like being in a snow globe that had been rapidly shaken.

“What was that?” I shouted over the wailing alarms.

“There,” she pointed through the port, heading away from us towards the centre of a sleeping Europe was a dark shape. It must have been moving fast, it was already glowing in multiple colours from the heat of re-entry, green and red and gold as it hit the top of the atmosphere.

We both unstrapped and floated around the cabin, cancelling alarms, catching and stowing all the floating objects. As we competed to grab things in the confined space we kept bumping into each other. It turned into a game and we couldn’t stop laughing.

The last alarm to cancel was by the airlock, as I pushed the button, silence fell on us, broken only by Martine’s breathless giggles. I glanced through the inspection window.

“Did you put them in there?” I said.

Martine floated across to me; she looked through the clear panel at the collection of coloured boxes sitting on the deck.

“Maybe you were right about the reindeer?”

 

 

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The guest bloggers Part Three, Macie Turner.

For this weeks interview, I managed to get hold of Macie Turner. You might remember her from the Dome Diner on Reevis (Ribbonworld); she was working there to save up enough money so she could leave, just as fast as she could!

I asked her a few questions and then she said that she wanted to tell me a story, about how other people had made her change the way she saw Reevis.

Qualified in plant genetics and terraforming on Reevis, when Miles Goram met her she yearned to be free of the whole way of life under the dome.

“So when did you leave Reevis Macie?” I asked her.

“Right after all the re-organisation, I think that Miles had a bit to do with it, certainly after he arrived things started to change.”

She was right, MilesGoram was the catalyst, though he didn’t know that he would be at the time they met.

“He was a nice man,” she continued, “I remember him coming in the diner, Harris Morgan picked on him for being an off-worlder, which seemed a bit harsh.”

“Off-worlder?”

“Yeah, the Balcom workers hated people who weren’t Reevis born, they called them off-worlders. Mind you, the die-hard’s hated anyone who wasn’t one of them. You had to have been there before the dome, or perform some vital function to be accepted.”

“You were accepted though?”

“Sure, my dad worked in the power plant; he produced the air so he was acceptable. Mum worked on the farm. That was trickier, we needed food but it wasn’t a Balcom company. I was training to be a dome engineer so I was OK, they left me alone.”

“But you still wanted to leave.”

“I did. I wanted to see if you could be free, free to be what you wanted without judgement. And I wanted to see what it was like living without a dome over your head.”

“And once you were on another world, out in the open, what did you find?”

“I’ll tell you this story.”

~~~~

“So what was it like, growing up on Reevis?”

The question came from a tall, dark haired girl, sitting just behind me in the lecture theatre, I had noticed her on the way in.

I swung my head, “it was different I guess, I still can’t get used to the idea of there being no roof over my head. It makes me feel kind of apprehensive, in case I try to breathe in and there’s nothing there.”

Her face crinkled as she tried to imagine it, she took an exaggerated breath sucking the air into her open mouth with a loud inverted ‘whoosh.’

She shook her head, “weird,” she said, “I’m Dizz, great to meet you.”

“Macie,” I replied.

The speaker rapped on his lectern for attention and I turned back, the comments had got me thinking, about what it had been like. Reevis wasn’t just the dome; it was a whole lot more than that. And now I wasn’t there, like home always does, it felt wrong to moan about it too much. With all its faults it was my home and I felt that it deserved respect. Even if I had been desperate to leave.

Dizz came up to me at lunchtime, I was sat outside with the sun beating down, it felt hot to me but then under the dome it was always eighteen degrees. Unless you went to the farm, where it was twenty-five. And that always felt really hot.

She had three other students with her, another girl and two boys.

Can we sit here?” she said, I was glad to be making friends, but I had that moment of doubt, could I trust them? Then I thought, ‘you’re not on Reevis with the gangs and all the intrigue now,’ and tried to relax and see what happened.

“Sure,” I said, “It’ll be nice to get to meet some people here.”

“You don’t see many from Reevis,” said one of the boys, “I’m Grant,” he held out his hand. He was the archetypal kid from Centra, Blond and fair skinned, muscled and confident.

“I’ve heard it’s the Balcom punishment planet, at least it was while Donna Markes was in charge,” added the other, he was darker skinned with jet black curls and a gold stud in one ear, “Chester Thornton,” he said formally, “from Callix.”

“We’re together,” Dizz added, “I’ve known Chester since we were six. The quiet one is Moire. Grant’s after her but she’s playing hard to get.”

The girl went red, setting off her auburn hair nicely. “Dizz,” she said, in a tone which suggested that she said it a lot. “Hi,” she whispered to me, smiling.

“So tell us all about it then,” Grant encouraged me, “tell us what it’s like living under the dome.”

Where should I begin? The good bits or the bad, looking from a distance I could see that there had been both.

~~~~

My first memory of the dome was of being taken to see where it met the ground. I must have been around five, it was just before I started school.

My father, who worked in the atmosphere control plant, took me by the hand as we walked towards the metal framed panels.

“This is the dome Macie,” he said in that deep voice of his, “it’s important because it keeps us alive.”

“How?” I asked. I had never really considered being kept alive before. I just was.

“Well,” he said, “inside the dome is air that we can breathe, “outside is nothing.”

I remember my four-year-old mind trying to work out what nothing was. I could see through the dome, there were hills and vehicles; people worked outside. I had even been outside on a trip myself, for my birthday so I knew that there was something out there.

My father continued, “the air that we breathe is made by me and the people that I work with, we need the dome to hold it in and stop it all blowing away.”

I could tell them that, or I could mention the bit about the paranoia, the security and the control of every aspect of life under the dome that Balcom exerted, under the guise of benevolence.

~~~~

“It’s normal to me,” I said, “as far as I’m concerned, it’s strange that there isn’t a dome here to keep the air in.”

There was laughter, “and I suppose that you think that the breeze is strange as well,” said Moire.

“Oh no,” that was one freaky thing that people didn’t expect to hear about Reevis, “we have a breeze in the dome, quite a strong one as it happens.”

“Yeah right,” said Grant sarcastically, I noticed then that he was gazing at my thighs as he spoke, perhaps the shorts were a bit skimpy but it was hot. “If you have a breeze, then why don’t you run out of air?”

Thanks Dad, I thought as I realised that I would be able to explain it, all I had to do was listen to his voice in my head.

“How much detail do you want?”

“Short words,” said Dizz, “Chester can’t cope with long ones.” This remark resulted in a wrestling match between them which ended up with the other two cheering.

“OK, simply, the ice is melted using a lava flow, the liberated gases make fuel and atmosphere. But there are so many leaks in the dome that the air rushing out makes a breeze. So more and more needs to be pumped in to maintain the pressure.”

Grant stopped looking at my legs and turned his attention to my face, “you mean that if the plant stops making air, you’d all suffocate and die?”

“Worse than that, the pressure from the atmosphere helps hold the dome up, if it falls too much the dome will collapse before we had a chance to suffocate.”

“So why do you live there, if it’s so dangerous?”

“It’s not, as long as the plant works we’re fine. You couldn’t build something that huge without a few leaks. Anyway its home, and there’s a lot of scientific research and other useful stuff going on, I could ask you why you live here?”

“Fair question,” said Moire, “it’s what we get used to I guess, as far as I’m concerned, we don’t need a dome and that’s great.”

“It just sounds funny for you to say that the reason we feel secure is the reason that you don’t,” added Dizz.

~~~~

“Great story, I see what you mean Macie,” I said.

“Yes it’s all relative, and do you know what, I miss it, I’m going back as soon as I can.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts, please leave a comment below.

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