David Gullen's Blog, page 26

What’s next? The Future!

You can read my stab at Futorology over on Pete Sutton’s excellent Bristol Book Blog.

Thanks Pete!

Happy New Year everyone.

Friday Flash – Ozzie Barfs it Up

Failure used to stick in his gut like a hot coal. Crazed with frustration, he’d trash the room, stamp the wastebin flat, scream and swear. He’d drink until he passed out, sleep all night and half the day and still feel exhausted.

The inevitable happened: she left him.

What a wake-up call. He sat on the edge of the bed in his underpants and it occurred to him, like a steam train through his brain, that he was a loser.

He didn’t like it, he accepted it. He tried being himself.

Things got a little better.

~

No. 22 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence.

ISP Blocks Author Websites – A Christmas Challenge

Tonight my partner and fellow genre writer Gaie Sebold discovered her website was blocked by O2, a major UK ISP, under their ‘Parental Guidance‘ controls.A quick check showed that my web site (gentle reader, the very website you are now reading) was also blocked.

A few tweets established other genre writers, such as Gareth Powell had the same block in place. So we checked a few more:

Genre Writers Blocked

Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt)

John Scalzi (RedShirts, Old Man’s War)

Emma Newman (Split Worlds)

Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)

Robin Hobb (Assassin’s series, Ships series, Dragons series)

Children’s & YA Authors Blocked

Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowle)

Philip Pulman (Dark Materials)

Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games)

Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines)

Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

They even blocked Jane Yolen, ‘the Hans Christian Andersen of America’.

Don’t worry, people – it get’s better. Scholastic’s web site specifically for children’s books and encouraging children to read is – Blocked!

And so are various other publishers, such as Angry Robot, Solaris, Gollancz, Jo Fletcher books.

So what else? Well, that well-known bunch of dodgy geezers, the Directors Guild has been blocked too. And to cap it all, because we do want the web to be very, very safe, O2 have wisely blocked Save the Children, and Childline.

There is no excuse for this level of incompetence. Is this Cameron’s worthless  Great Firewall of Britain falling at the first hurdle, or one company’s failure? Neither is acceptable.

So, here’s my Christmas challenge – find a web site or blog specifically aimed at helping children that is NOT blocked. The first three entries will win a free copy of my SF novel, Shopocalypse. The next three will win a copy of Gaie’s first ‘Babylon Steel’ novel.

Here’s the link to the O2 checker.

Happy hunting, and Happy Christmas.

~

 

Friday Flash – Bianca at Sea

Bianca at Sea

Every day she wore a clean black skirt, a fresh white blouse. Every evening she walked between the tables of the empty restaurant and polished the glasses behind the bar. She served drinks to solitary businessmen and loud groups of young men trying to impress their new girlfriends.

Foreign football teams soundlessly contested goals on giant screens. Beyond the picture windows lay blue sky, the empty sea, a deserted beach. Three separate kinds of infinity.

Every day Bianca wished someone would walk through the door and restart her life. She had forgotten that person was already here.

 ~

#21 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence.

16 Tales of Terrible Beauty

Open Waters, my first short story collection is now available from the publisher’s website. If you’d rather have an e-book, then the Kindle version is coming very soon. (And if you’re subscribed to this blog you’ll see my post here as soon as it’s available.)

Just in time for Christmas!

~

Open Waters…

At once beautiful and dangerous, a sun-dappled ever-shifting landscape, restless, emotionless , impenetrable, capricious and heartless.

Open Waters…

Across which the voyager will sail to wars without end and to the hiding places of the desperate survivors of alien invasion, will follow in the footsteps of lonely, far-from-home explorers and colonists, journey back to Creation itself then burrow into the darker recesses of the human psyche.

Open Waters…

Sixteen tales of terrible beauty from the imagination of David Gullen

 ~

 

Open Waters – Cover Art

Here is the cover of my new short story collection, Open Waters, from theEXAGGERATEDpress.

Daniele Serra has created a wonderful impressionistic cover, the style and use of light reminds me of Turner and Manet. I am indeed a lucky man.

~

Friday Flash – Wilson & Masters

Wilson & Masters

They cruised along the elevated section. City lights spread all around them in constellations and reefs of light in an ocean of night.

‘We think we’re at the centre of things but we’re not,’ Masters said. ‘There is no centre.’

The road rose and dipped. Streams of red and white vehicle lights flowed away and towards them.

Wilson missed the old certainties. ‘We’ve done some pretty amazing things.’

‘We’re still lost.’

Wilson looked up at the night sky and imagined planet earth a lonely speck in the endless dark. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.’

~

No. 20 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence.

Friday Flash – Mr Crane’s Garden

Mr Crane’s Garden

 Every night Crane put his shrapnel, the smallest of his small change, in an old glass spaghetti jar. When it was full he took it to the charity shop. Between times it served as a door stop.

‘Look at this.’ Crane held out three pennies and two five-pence pieces. ‘No wonder today’s been so difficult.’

I was impressed. Even so, extraordinary claims etc… ‘How does this keep happening to you?’

‘I don’t know, They-’ In Crane’s world ‘They’ was always capitalised.

‘And that was the only change in your pocket?’

‘No.’ He glared suspiciously, hurt. ‘Even so…’

~

18th in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence.

Honourable Mention – Year’s Best SF

Hurrah! I’ve just discovered my short story ‘All Your Futures Are Belong to Us’ from ARC 1.3 magazine has an honourable mention in Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best SF, vol 30.

I’m told there’s a good crop of other ARC authors in there too – congratulations to you, and everyone else on the list.

Friday Flash – The Cop

The Cop

One day I asked him: How do you cope?

He showed me his basement, a well-lit, clean and empty space. Against the back wall was a sea-chest, the old type with iron straps and reinforced corners. The padlock was as big as my fist.

‘I go through it, now and again’ he said. A key hung on a nail. ‘Go ahead, take a look.’

Alf sat forwards, ‘And did you?’

‘I didn’t need to. There was a luggage label on the handle, brown card, tied with a bit of string. On it he’d written, “Not Needed On Voyage.”’

~

Number 17 in the ‘Beyond the Streets‘ sequence.