Stephen Hunt's Blog, page 9

Star Trek Discovery vs Godzilla.

Well, it’s been a 12-year gap since Star Trek Enterprise finished and the new Star Trek Discovery beamed back down onto our TV screens. Ironically, that long gap led to the technological ascendance of streaming and an odd conundrum. Discovery is on Netflix in the UK, Europe and just about everywhere except the USA, where some sort of CBS ransomware-lite attempt seems to be being made on fans’ wallets.

At least, those U.S citizens who didn’t immediately make Discovery the most pirated show on every dodgy download system, or used their proxy servers set to ‘British – Leeds and Glasgow’ to access Netflix as loyal subjects of her Maj. All those centuries since the yoke of King George was cast off, and it takes this to make you come back?

I enjoyed the new Trek, apart from one small detail. The drought of scifi series on the small screen was one of the inspirations behind me starting my Sliding Void series of space opera novels. Attempting to fill the void, if you forgive the pun-nishment, of the end of Galactica, Stargate, and Enterprise. Now, what with The Orville, Discovery, The Expanse etc., that once empty schedule is becoming a more target rich environment than the DRADIS screen on a Colonial Viper!

I do rather worry a new TV Trek doesn’t mean much to the younglings, anymore. My ones can tell you where Boba Fett hides his vibroblades, but when it comes to Discovery, it’s more of a case of: “Spack’s sister? Speck’s sister? Spod, who?”

Oh well. I’m currently finishing off the 7th book in the Jackelian series, Mission to Mightadore. It should be with you early 2018. Possibly as early as January, as long as Kim Jong-un doesn’t start tossing nukes at Japan while I’m there at the end of this year. Ditto, tsunamis, super-volcano eruptions, and heck, I don’t know, Godzilla vs. Mothra. I’ve got form with this kind of thing. Fingers crossed.

Star Trek Discovery vs Godzilla.

Book title troubles and hundred quid meals.

This is the first blog update post from me for a goodly while. Sorry. Utter idleness on my part. Never one to clog your broadband unnecessarily.

Anyway, I recently returned from Norway’s capital, Oslo, visiting friends and family. Great city – truly insane prices, even self-catering. Five quid for a can of coke. Ten for a small block of cheese from the corner supermarket. Close to a hundred quid for each eat-out-meal for a family of four you’d care to mention – breakfast, lunch and dinner (that’s 200 bucks per meal in U.S. folding green). Beautiful place, but I’ll probably be taking out a second mortgage to pay for that short city break. Ouch.

Viking Boat Museum, Oslo – with some cracking river-mud-preserved originals!

On the writing front, I’m now about a third of a way through completing the seventh Jackelian series novel, Mission to Mightadore. There’s also a new far-future science fiction novel I’m working on – also about a third completed. I was going to call it The Dark Between the Stars, until I checked Amazon and there’re already at least six SF novels with an identical title – including novels by both Poul Anderson and Kevin J. Anderson. What’s that about? Back to the drawing board, at least as far as title is concerned.

One of the many side-effects of the indie publishing rush is that it’s getting a lot harder to generate titles that someone else hasn’t thought up first! As far as plot goes, think Dune/The Name of the Rose. It’s going to be pitched at the high-IQ end of the genre … %^&* accessibility and the mass market.

Finally, I’ve laid out the plot bones of the next novel set in the Sliding Void universe and have started writing this in parallel to the above-two books. It’s rail cannon-blasting military science fiction, so just a slight deviation from the series’ space opera roots. I do have a title, but I’m now keeping it firmly under my hat, given the Dark Between the Stars experience I mentioned above. No jinxing to be permitted.

I’ll be sure and post some photos of my Tokyo visit in November – just me and an old chum flying out, rather than the whole clan descending. Never been to Japan – and Tokyo has always been on my bucket list. I’m hoping for the full neon Bladerunner experience. Culture shock? Bring it on!

Stephen Hunt, Genre Buster?

Sometimes you choose the title and other times the title chooses you. One of my readers, Sam Briggs (thanks, Sam), sent in this link to an article that U.S. book store chain Barnes & Noble wrote about one of my novels – the first in the seven-book Jackelian series, The Court of the Air.

Apparently I’m knocking down the barriers of genre with my work. Cool! Like most vain authors, I’ll take any publicity I can get.

M. John Harrison’s recent work sounds very interesting, too – have to add that to my already crazy-sized bedside reading pile.

Read their article over at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/6-books-break-genre-barriers/

The Stealers’ War (Far-called book #3) is out now.

The third book in my Far-called fantasy-science fiction series, The Stealers’ War, is out now from Gollancz. Yippee. There’s an interview about it over at SFF World here and you can lay your hands on the novel online in the UK at http://amzn.to/2591KZf, and the USA at http://amzn.to/1Rr3XVK

Always mixed, bittersweet feelings when handing in the last book in a sequence. Lots of things I could be doing next – some of which even include more writing –  and always more ideas swirling around my increasingly age-addled noggin than I will possibly have time to implement.

Of course, the publishing industry has changed beyond recognition since I started writing my first Jackelian series work, The Court of the Air. Amazon has consolidated as the dominant force in print book sales, and even more so in e-book sales. Their mixture of continual innovation, ruthlessness, low prices and genius has left me breathless. Naturally, most of my own fiction reading is on the Kindle now. Having run out of physical book shelf space long ago – I reserve the dwindling free atoms of my house for graphic novels and art books; I discovered that colourful Judge Dredd compilations really suck on the Fire HD.

Amazon has, personally, proved a mixed blessing for the likes of me as an author. On one hand, they Prime – pun intended – the indie published pipeline that helps keep a mid-list hybrid author like myself in the game, which is greatly to love (as are their 70% royalties). I’m fairly sure without KDP, I wouldn’t be around – at least as a writer earning a living more or less full-time from fiction. On the other hand, Amazon – much like the big six, or what is it, four, legacy publishers, now – is a Godzilla-sized giant able to crush mere mortals on the turn of the wheel.

With trad books published by the likes of Gollancz (Hachette), HarperCollins, and Tor (Macmillian), I’ve gazed up in awe from the ruins of my paucity as the giants of the old and new world clash in just about every Trad versus Amazon holy war going. And as well as the cross-fire, of course, there’s always the general fuckwitery, friendly fire and self-inflicted wounds of the biz to keep times interesting.

My ebooks price-fixed by Apple. Check. My trad books vanishing from Amazon’s catalogue when sales terms couldn’t be agreed. Check. Silly over-pricing of my trad digital works. Check. Spotty international availability of my ebooks around the English-speaking world. Check. Legacy contracts so outrageously egregious and one-sided, that my UK lawyer friends tell me supposedly freelance authors could probably actually sue publishers (and win) for outstanding pensions, holiday pay and any minimum wage differential on the basis that said contracts makes authors full-time employees without the corresponding rights. Check.

The latest nonsense?

Amazon hiding the buy button on The Stealers’ War print edition three levels deep. Making it so hard to buy, I couldn’t even find the new print book’s order button until I phoned my agent, thinking the Amazon database hadn’t been updated properly with the new book, and he had to tell me how to access it.

I used to be a GUI designer who still codes on the side. Either I’m inheriting my dad’s PC skills in my advanced decrepitude (What is this thing you call ‘scrolling the mouse?’), or Amazon are seriously trying to divert all legacy publisher print sales to their Kindle platform.

Okay, so here’s how to buy on Amazon the new print copy of The Stealers’ War, buried as deep as a nark’s grave in The Wire. First, go to the book’s product page. You’ll see this screen, below.

This shows the Kindle edition and the corresponding paperback. However, the paperback shown is the smaller size mass marked edition out in 2017. Not the newly released Mr Biggie (you know, the hardback-sized paperback which publishers love charging hardback prices for), which is the only print edition currently available now in 2016. You wouldn’t know I actually have a print edition you can buy looking at this page. Let’s put aside the rather ‘interesting’ (but depressingly normal) fact the e-book price is actually set dip-shit higher than the dead-tree edition (to quote the end of Apocalypse Now: “The horror. The horror.”).

Next, click the highlighted link above, ‘see all formats and editions’

That brings you to screen (2), below.

Next, click the highlighted link, ‘paperback’.

That brings you to screen (3), below.

Next, click the highlighted link, ‘Paperback 17 Mar 2016’.

That jumps you to the actual product page for the book just released, see screen (4) below. Congrats, you can now buy the large-size dead tree copy.

Buried deep on the 4th screen, even after you’ve gone to the trouble to actively search out the title using the Amazon search? Well. I think I can sum up my feelings about that in one handy, sophisticated info-graphic. Everyone loves info-graphics, right?

Much like in Aesop’s The Scorpion and the Frog fable, the giants and titans play, and you kind of know – even as you find yourself lying spread-eagled as collateral damage inside the house-sized footprint left by a monster – that the scorpion will always sting the frog. That’s just how scorpions roll.

Yes, readers, Sliding Void #4 has now hit the bookshops!

Anomalous Thrust is the 4th book in Sliding Void series. It’s a completely stand-alone adventure, not directly linked to the first three books (although Anomalous Thrust is set chronologically a year after the end of the previous books). It’s also full novel-sized, rather than novella-sized. Your feedback indicated you wanted it all at once, rather than drip-fed as a sequence of novellas; so this is what I did.

Here’s the links:

AMAZON: UK – USA – Canada – Australia

OTHERS: iTunes – Google Play – Kobo – B&N Nook – Smashwords

Here’s the blurb:

Captain Lana Fiveworlds might be flying with the same motley crew of misfits, but her problems are all-new.

Lana believes that a demanding and difficult client on board her beloved starship – the Gravity Rose – is the sum of her woes. But that was until she has to emergency ditch inside a star system which holds a full range of deadly secrets.

There are the murderous intentions of the local government with its slave-owning aristocracy to contend with, not to mention the ruthless rebels trying to overthrow the regime. And then there’s the moon-sized unknown alien vessel that jumps into the system every few centuries, along with the chance to claim untold riches. Or the chance to die, well, really quite horribly.

With Calder, Zeno, Skrat, Polter and the chief still helping Lana, there’s the smallest of chances the crew might survive. But as every spacer knows, it’s not where you jump into hyperspace that counts. It’s only ever where you end up!

Hope you enjoy the adventure.

The wicked wild wild web.

Story Update (10th March 2015)

Yipee. Sanity has been restored it seems, touch wood. The cyber-attacks on this site and SFcrowsnest.org.uk have dwindled away in the face of the counter-measures suite we introduced, and the attacks on the social networks have been taken care of too. Thanks to everyone who helped with suggestions of who to contact and how to beef up our anti-hacking systems. It’s great to know I have such well-connected and knowledgeable readers. Back to writing for me, now!

________________________________________________

A quick note to my readers sending me pictures/details of your cosplay costumes, etsy handiworks, artworks, indie-published books, etc and hoping for a re-post on my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/steampunkish – I have to suspend new posts for the moment.

My online presence – web and social – has come under sustained assault recently, taking the form of a scary level of hacking attacks on my own web sites, in conjunction with fraudulent HMCA takedown notices and bad content reports aimed at removing my social media accounts.

Pinterest has already closed my board down in this face of these wave attacks and FaceBook is now sending me auto-generated warnings that https://www.facebook.com/steampunkish is about to be deleted.

The main attack began after my vocal support for the author Becca Mills . . . her books were recently taken off Amazon by a scammer (also) filing fraudulent HMCA reports against her works, so he could sell pirated copies on Amazon without competition from the real owner. Given the timeframe and similar payload of attack, I’m working on the presumption that the assault on my internet presence is by the same criminals in revenge for Becca’s books now being returned to her by Amazon. You can read Becca’s story at http://the-active-voice.com/2015/03/01/nolander-blocked-at-amazon-and-smashwords/

The wicked wild wild web.

I have sought professional advice and shored up my own web site’s digital defences (for obvious reasons, I won’t detail the measures taken). Sadly, FaceBook and Pinterest are proving every bit as faceless and useless as you’d expect – responding to online reports submitted by me of this attack with canned responses stating they ‘value my feedback’.

I guess one lesson for fellow authors – and indeed, any advertiser spending bucks with FaceBook – is to never rely on 3rd party social services such as FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest et al as a component of your ‘platform’ (how I loathe that wanky word). I have invested seven years of regular posting and many thousands of pounds of FaceBook advertising building a page with over 108,000 users, and it looks like that is now going to be deleted with nary a human-intervention on the part of FaceBook.

I know this is all online (sense of perspective and all that), but when your self-employed livelihood is also largely online, this sort of nonsense is the equivalent of a competitor creeping around to your high-street shop at midnight, pouring petrol through the letterbox and flicking a match after it.

Thanks, FaceBook. As Douglas Adams once wisely observed, ‘So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish’.

This is shortly to be placed in the hands of the police and my lawyers, but I’d like to apologise to all those in my online community for not being able to engage with you on FaceBook presently.

DPD – delivery service from hell.

Thanks, DPD. I have been waiting at home for eight hours having taken the day off work, sitting in my home office watching the road, when what do I spy, a DPD delivery van driving past my house with your driver clutching something in the air inside the van. A GPS unit, I wonder. Are you lost? Should I run out and flag you down? Then the van drives off. Oh well, I think. A coincidence. Must have been a different driver with a different parcel.

Then, five minutes later I get an e-mail with this message . . .

“Sorry, we were unable to deliver your parcel as there was no one present to sign for the delivery; we left calling card number.”

And I twig what’s really going on. Too busy to stop and deliver. Probably paid shit wages and on an impossible schedule, so drives past, takes photo of my house, makes no attempt to stop and knock because that’s five minutes his overworked arse can’t afford to spend.

Well, here’s a message back for DPD. Your driver didn’t try to stop. He didn’t even leave the calling card message – that was as &^$%^& fictional as my delivery. But I have wasted my entire day waiting for somebody who seems to think their job is to take a digital photo of my house and sod off.

Note to Richer Sounds and anyone else thinking of using DPD to deliver your products – find a delivery service that aren’t employing what look to me like underpaid, overworked drivers.

Find a delivery service where the company thinks their job is something more than wasting a day for a self-employed worker, depriving him of a day’s income, and taking a picture of my house to e-mail to me as supposed proof I’m not in.

Update 1 – Misery Loves Company: Check out hashtag #DPD_UK on Twitter or read the comments section below any post at https://www.facebook.com/dpd.uk – hundreds of angry comments from fuming DPD UK customers in the same boat as me. Multiple missed deliveries by DPD and customers at the end of their rag.

Richer Sounds are now going to get the delivery sent directly to one of their stores to redeliver to me via their own staff, which is a nice save by them (the chain store has a very good recommendation by Which Magazine for customer service, which is why I used them).

But %^$& me, what a palaver. We can land a space probe on a comet millions of miles away, but getting a package delivered by DPD – aka GeoPost UK Limited – means missing a day’s pay, wasting the day, then losing a second day, and the courier firm equivalent of dealing with the Keystone Cops. I’ll have to watch out for one of the DPD drivers getting out the van, the doors falling off, and giving his red nose a tweak. Honk honk.

Is it just me, or is 21st century existence turning into an Apple-branded version of Brazil, the 1985 film directed and written by Terry Gilliam? Technology that doesn’t work half the time, is too complicated to use the rest of the time (and is upgraded weekly with a new interface if you try), layers of bureaucracy, and where a call to your utility company of choice (or any other organisation) to sort out any issue you care to mention becomes a Kafkaesque journey towards a drooling, rambling Colonel Walter E. Kurtz at the other end of the tunnel?

Is this how the world ends, my son? Not with a bang. But with a million tiny requests over a premium rate phone line, to fill out a form on a non-existent web page using a mobile browser that no longer supports the non-depreciated form of Flash.

I’m either getting old, or the world is getting seriously %$£^&*. Maybe both at the same time?

And here’s a video of another happy DPD customer, Kevin, in the same boat as the rest of us. Like, what you said, Kevin. Warning … contains some serious f-word venting.

And here’s video of the DPD CEO addressing his organisational synergies.

Update 2: Just heard again from Richer Sounds on the next day. Seems like DPD are screwing around with them too, refusing to re-deliver the package until some date in the way distant future . . . oh, DPD. A delivery company who won’t deliver is like a pencil without lead – pointless.

Good old Richer Sounds are going to send me what I ordered from alternative stock and put it in a cab to me from their nearest store (they’ve had to write off the DPD delivery as a bad job). That’s why I love Richer Sounds. And why nobody in their right mind should ever have to suffer DPD’s comedy delivery service again.

Update 3: And Richer Sounds were as good as their word. A smiling private minicab driver knocks on the door with the package for me, slap bang in the middle of the two hour zone I was told to stay in for. Thank-you to Tom at Richer Sounds Customer Support for bypassing the useless ^%$%s at DPD. I hope you manage to get your original package of goods back from DPD one day this century. My pain with DPD has ended. Yours has probably just begun.

Trying to find DPD contact details that don’t include their automated-circle-jerk-charge’ya-we-saw-you-coming so-called ‘help’ line is like trying to pry out the location of the CIA’s long hidden Pakistan Station, but given I am now picking up lots of traffic from fellow DPD victims, here’s what I’ve dug up as a public service to you . . .

Basic DPD Details to chase them.

DPD’s web site says they are owned by laposte.fr – basically the French equivalent of our privatized Royal Mail. This explains a lot – the old legendary French customer service ethos at play in the UK. The Gallic shrug of the shoulders and low muttered ‘Casse-toi, rosbif !’ at le café table of life.

The current directors of DPD as listed by Companies House are David L. Adams, Paul-Marie Chavanne, Dwain M. McDonald, Charles M. Shiels, but I’m not sure how much good complaining to this lot will do, given they’re likely dancing to the tune played on Laposte’s grand corporate French Accordion.

Here’s some UK HQ details to try, anyway, if you fancy a laugh. Maybe they’ll tell you they’re re-engineering their core processes and systems to up-scale their customer engagement model.

marketing.dept@dpd.co.uk

socialmedia@dpd.co.uk

0121 665 3343

0121 500 2500

0121 698 3783

DPD HQ address

Hub 3

Broadwell Road

Oldbury

West Midlands

B69 4DA

DPT Depot List

10 West London 0208 978 3843

28 Commercial Way

Park Royal

London

NW10 7XF

11 Woodford 0208 498 8643

Unit 1, Woodford T/E

Southend Road

Woodford Green

Essex

IG8 8HF

12 London South 0208 243 3606 Unit 1

Beddington Farm Road

Off Purley Way

Croydon

Surrey

CR0 4XB

13 Kings Cross 0207 391 8646 101 Camley Street

London

NW1 0PF

14 Dartford 01322 625643 Unit 3

20 Kennett Road

Crayford

Kent

DA1 4QN

15 Crawley 01293 893647 Whitworth Road County Oak Way

Crawley

West Sussex

RH11 7SS

16 Chelmsford 01245 232093

Chelmsford2: 01245 232056

Montrose Road

Dukes Park Ind Estate

Chelmsford

Essex

CM2 6TE

18 London Bridge 0207 394 3968

Unit 5

Mandela Way

Southwark

SE1 1SE

19 Isle of Wight 02380 344644 Unit 1, Enterprise Way

Somerton Business Park

Newport Road

Cowes

Isle of Wight

20 Maidstone 01622 714646 Unit C

Riverside Business Park

New Hythe Lane

Larkfield

ME20 6WT

21 Southampton 02380 258646 Unit F

Omega Enterprise Park

Electron Way

Chandlers Ford

Southampton

SO53 4SE

22 Dunstable 01582 470643 Unit 16

Humphreys Road

Woodside Estate

Dunstable

LU5 4TP

23 Reading 01189 232643 Units 1 – 3

Commercial Close

Commercial Road

Reading

RG2 0QS

24 Newbury 01635 812643 Hambridge Lane

Hambridge Road

Newbury

Berks

RG14 5TU

25 Gloucester 01452 727196 Jessop Court

Waterwells Business Prk

Quedgeley

Gloucester

GL2 2AP

26 Leicester 0116 250 1606 28a Centurion Way

Meridian Business Park

Leicester

LE19 1WH

27 Bournemouth 01202 850300

Unit 1 & 2, Arial Park

Uddens Trading Estate

Wimbourne

Dorset

BH21 7NL

28 Geopost Wembley

(Park Royal) 0208 601 7643 Unit 2, Athlon Road

Alperton

Wembley

Middlesex

HA0 1YJ

30 Birmingham 0121 665 3343

Broadwell Works

Birmingham Road

Oldbury

B69 4DA

31 Thetford 01842 855646

10a Burrel Way

Stephenson Ind Est

Thetford

Norfolk

IP24 3RW

32 Rushden 01933 414645 Unit 17, Norris Way

Sanders Lodge Ind Est

Rushden

Northamptonshire

NN10 6BP

33 Peterborough 01733 842643 Empire House

Saville Road

Westwood Ind Estate

Peterborough

PE3 7PR

34 Cardiff 02920 772643 Spring Meadow Ind Park

Mardy Road

Rumney

Cardiff

CF3 2ES

35 Bristol 01179 415605 Units B1/B2

Kingsland Estate

St. Philips Road

Bristol

BS2 0JZ

36 Exeter 01392 449643 Heron Road

Sowton Ind. Estate

Exeter

EX2 7LL

37 Cornwall 01872 574643 Victoria Business Park

Roche

St. Austell

Cornwall

PL26 8LX

38 Swansea 01792 704643 Unit 1, Wyndham Court

Clarion Close

Swansea Enterprise Pk

Swansea

SA6 8QZ

39 Yate

(West Coast Express) 01179 374700

Unit 21

Pucklechurch Ind Estate

Pucklechurch

Bristol

BS16 9QH

40 Manchester 0161 777 4606 Northbank Industrial Est

Bessemer Road

Irlam

Manchester

M44 5BF

41 Nottingham 01159 777646 Unit 8

Centurion Business Ctr

Dabell Avenue

Blenheim Ind Estate

Nottingham

NG6 8WA

42 Leeds 0113 292 5642 Network House

Middleton Grove

Leeds

LS11 5PX

43 Warrington 01925 605646 Unit 20

Stretton Green Ind Est

Langford Way

Appleton

Warrington

WA4 4TQ

44 Abergele 01745 357843 Unit D

Tir Llwyd Ent Park

Kinmel Bay

Clwyd

LL18 5JN

45 Preston 01772 662606 Millennium Road

Millennium City Park

Preston

PR2 5BL

46 Sheffield 01142 572647 Unit 2

Thorncliffe Ind Estate

Brookdale Road

Chapeltown

Sheffield

S35 2PW

48 Stoke 01782 578643 Unit 21/22

Roseville Road

Parkhouse Ind Est West

Newcastle Under Lyme

Staffordshire

ST5 7EF

49 York 01904 476642 Plot 5, Centurion Park

Clifton Moorgate

York

YO30 4RY

50 Glasgow 0141 305 3643 104 Fullarton Drive

Cambuslang

Investment Park

Cambuslang

Glasgow

G32 8FA

51 Edinburgh 0131 335 4043 Unit 23

Cliftonhall Road

Newbridge

Edinburgh

EH27 8PW

52 Aberdeen (Express) 01224 878686 Ocean Trade Centre

Minto Avenue

Altens Industrial Estate

Aberdeen

AB12 3JZ

54 Newcastle 0191 402 5643 Unit 4

Monkton Business Park

Hebburn

South Tyneside

NE31 2JZ

55 Carlisle 01228 829643 Unit 2

Kingstown Ind Estate

Brunthill Road

Carlisle, Cumbria

CA3 0HA

56 Glasgow 2 01698 811235 Unit 3

Tannochside Drive

Uddingston

Glasgow

G71 5PD

71 Dublin 00353 18425122 Unit 53

Airways Ind Estate

Santry

Dublin 17

Is this how the world ends, my son? Not with a bang. But with a million tiny requests to fill out a form on a non-existent web page using a mobile browser that no longer supports the non-depreciated form of Flash.

DPD – delivery service from hell. Richer Sounds fail.

Thanks, DPD. I have been waiting at home for eight hours having taken the day off work, sitting in my home office watching the road, when what do I spy, a DPD delivery van driving past my house with your driver clutching something in the air inside the van. A GPS unit, I wonder. Are you lost? Should I run out and flag you down? Then the van drives off. Oh well, I think. A coincidence. Must have been a different driver with a different parcel.

Then, five minutes later I get an e-mail with this message . . .

“Sorry, we were unable to deliver your parcel as there was no one present to sign for the delivery; we left calling card number.”

And I twig what’s really going on. Too busy to stop and deliver. Paid shit wages and on a schedule, so drives past, takes photo of my house, makes no attempt to stop and knock because that’s five minutes his overworked arse can’t afford to spend.

Well, here’s a message back for DPD. Your driver didn’t try to stop. He didn’t even leave the calling card message – that was as &^%%$%^& fictional as my delivery. But I have wasted my entire day waiting for somebody who seems to think their job is to take a digital photo of my house and sod off.

Note to Richer Sounds and anyone else thinking of using DPD to deliver your products – find a delivery service that aren’t employing what look to me like underpaid, overworked drivers.

Find a delivery service where the company thinks their job is something more than wasting a day for a self-employed worker, depriving him of a day’s income, and taking a picture of my house to e-mail to me as supposed proof I’m not in.

Update 1 – Misery Loves Company: Check out hashtag #DPD_UK on Twitter or read the comments section below any post at https://www.facebook.com/dpd.uk – hundreds of angry comments from fuming DPD UK customers in the same boat as me. Multiple missed deliveries by DPD and customers at the end of their rag.

Richer Sounds are now going to get the delivery sent directly to one of their stores to redeliver to me via their own staff, which is a nice save by them (the chain store has a very good recommendation by Which Magazine for customer service, which is why I used them).

But %^$& me, what a palaver. We can land a space probe on a comet millions of miles away, but getting a package delivered by DPD – aka GeoPost UK Limited – means missing a day’s pay, wasting the day, and the courier firm equivalent of dealing with the Keystone Cops. I’ll have to watch out for one of the DPD drivers getting out the van, the doors falling off, and giving his red nose a tweak. Honk honk.

Is it just me, or is 21st century existence turning into an Apple-branded version of Brazil, the 1985 film directed and written by Terry Gilliam? Technology that doesn’t work half the time, is too complicated to use the rest of the time (and is upgraded weekly with a new interface if you try), layers of bureaucracy, and where a call to your utility company of choice (or any other organisation) to sort out any issue you care to mention becomes a Kafkaesque journey towards a drooling, rambling Colonel Walter E. Kurtz at the other end of the tunnel? Is this how the world ends, my son? Not with a bang. But with a million tiny requests to fill out a form on a non-existent web page using a mobile browser that no longer supports the non-depreciated form of Flash.

I’m either getting old, or the world is getting seriously %$£^&*. Maybe both at the same time?

Is this how the world ends, my son? Not with a bang. But with a million tiny requests to fill out a form on a non-existent web page using a mobile browser that no longer supports the non-depreciated form of Flash.

Bothered by the strange literary distractions of Brangelina.

It’s getting to the point that I’m now severely regretting offering to help Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie house-hunt in the UK.

For some reason when I was first introduced to Brangelina at an Oscars ceremony by Peter Jackson, the oddly photogenic couple got it into their collective celeb hive mind of a brain that I work as a London-based estate agent.

I think the misunderstanding arose when Peter told them I’d done some impressive alternative reality books, and they’d heard I was a high-end realtor with an impressive book of properties.

‘No,’ I yelled above the din of a food fight between Spielberg and Gérard Depardieu over whether Le Quai Des Brumes was really Jean Gabin’s finest film, ‘I’m an author! You know, as in steampunk.’

‘Steampunk,’ purred Angelina. ‘I love brown. Brown is really my signature colour. Could you find us a house with a brown theme in Mayfair, Steve?’

‘No!’ I insisted, ducking a glob of flying meunière sauce. ‘Author.’

Bothered by the strange literary distractions of Brangelina.

‘Offer,’ said Brad. ‘Sure we can offer, Steve. You just find us the right property, and we’ll make an offer.’

‘No,’ I tried again. Then sighed, knowing a Schlieffen Plan-sized defeat when I stared at it. To my side the food fight had moved up a notch when Tom Selleck got smacked in the head by a near-liquid raspberry mousse. ‘Okay. Houses, then. What are you looking for?’

‘Brown. Big. Do you have brownstones in London?’ asked Brad.

‘Rolling Stones, maybe.’

‘We’ll be in touch.’

I thought they would forget about it, I really did. But sadly, no. I was half-way through writing a major battle scene towards the end of the third in my Far-called series when George RR Martin Skyped me. ‘Stephen,’ the Big M. drawled. ‘You’re about to get visitors. Get dressed you lazy slob. Out of your pajamas, stat.’

The Big M. was a fine one to lecture me. He was wearing those yellow pyjamas he always writes in. The pure cotton ones with the Batman logo duplicated a hundred times. ‘What are you talking about, George?’

‘I gave  Angelina Jolie your London address. They just called me and asked for directions. Their chauffeur is lost.’

‘You frigging what! George, they think I’m a bloody estate agent.’

‘Jeez,’ the Big M. gave me his best cold white-walker stare. ‘You’re lucky, then. They think I’m some well-connected Hollywood taxi driver hick. I was halfway through shooting the last episode of season five of Thrones when they called me demanding a lift to the airport. I’d just finished a glass of wine at the time. Had to beg Peter Dinklage to drive them.’

‘Thanks, mate.’  The sly dog’s never really forgiven me for throwing up in his Gulfstream G350 on the way back from ComicCon that time. Most of the vomit comet went over Neil Gaiman, but enough of my Vesper Martini on full-reverse soiled George’s hand-monogrammed denelli seats that he still pulls %$£% like this on me. I’ll say one thing about the Big M. – that fella sure can carry a Nightfort-sized grudge.

The Big M. had barely closed the video connection when a bright red Bentley Mulsanne with the personalised plates BPAJ pulled into my drive.

‘This is great, Steve,’ smiled Angelina as I nervously opened the front door. ‘Your office has a really suburban vibe.’

‘But we’re not looking for suburban,’ added Brad, a touch too hastily. ‘Dalston or Hoxton, we’ve heard great things about them.’

‘Kevin Spacey simply adores Hoxton,’ said Angelina.

Brad Pitt slapped my elbow and gave a big honking laugh. ‘Only trouble is, he’s bought most of it and doesn’t want us to live there.’

Angelina shot him an angry look. Maybe there was a touch too much truth in that joke.

‘Croydon,’ I insisted. ‘Croydon is where it’s at. It’s like Manhattan.’ Yeah, Manhattan when the Manhattoes lived there, scalping puritans. I had just come up with a great wheeze to get myself fired from this estate agent gig before my publisher at Gollancz canned my arse for non-delivery of a manuscript. I was going to give Brangelina the commando-tour of Greater London. By the time I’d finished with them, they’d think that a war zone in the Middle East was a Muswell Hill-sized buying opportunity.

Ah. How little did I know.

An Authorly Odd Life – the Terribly True Tales of Life in the Word Mines, may well continue with another entry seized from the diary of Stephen Hunt . . .

‘

 

Green energy to bankrupt the energy mega-corps? (and a writing update).

With the upswell in ‘free’ green energy, electricity suppliers in Germany and Denmark have applied to shut down newly unprofitable power plants, but the nervous governments are resisting, afraid of being caught short on some cold winter’s night with little wind.

A case for a nationalised back-up system if I’ve ever heard it!

Read the full story on the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/science/earth/denmark-aims-for-100-percent-renewable-energy.html

With that odd but happy news, an update on my current writing schedule – I’m nearing completion of the third book in the Far-called series . . . The Stealers’ War. Should be with my editors at Gollancz (aka Orion/Hachette) by early 2015 for a 2016 publication date.

And here’s the second book in the new series – due February 2015-ish.