Chris James's Blog, page 8

New title cover reveal, release date and pre-order links

The Repulse Chronicles, Book Five: The Race against Time will publish on Saturday 30 April. The title is now available for pre-order at the special introductory price of $2.99 (or equivalent), which price will, as usual, stay until 30 days after publication, when it will go up to the regular $4.99.

Many thanks to all of you who spend time on my stories. It’s a huge pleasure and an honour to do my best to entertain you by writing about the 2062-2064 war between NATO and the New Persian Caliphate. The Race against Time can be pre-ordered by clicking these links: in the UK; in the US; in Canada; and in Australia.

Here is the cover. I hope you like it. Stay safe, folks.

Cats! And a bit about the next book

The internet loves pictures of cats, and as I support five of them, I thought I might as well use them for a bit of blogging. We have five cats because whenever we go on vacation, my daughters act like magnets to local stray kittens. In addition, I am convinced my house is the go-to location on the cat-equivalent of Google Maps for pregnant strays dumped in the local forest who need a receptive home. So, there are a few cute cat pictures below this text.

The headline news from me, and the reason why this is my first post this year, is that today I typed “THE END” on, er, the end of my next novel, the tenth. Hopefully, then, this blog will become a little more active in the weeks ahead: next in the process is for me to design and create the cover, fix the publication date, and put the book up for pre-order. Then all that’s required is structural editing, continuity editing, line editing, beta reading, final editing, proofreading, and final proofreading. Oh, and it might require some more editing and proofreading as well.

In any case, The Repulse Chronicles, Book Five: The Race against Time now exists somewhere other than just inside my head. And yes, the irony of writing a series of novels based on a cowardly, murderous, deranged psychopath killing innocent Europeans is not lost on me given current events.

Take care and stay safe, peeps. Here are the cats:

Wafer in the downstairs bathroom (underfloor heating)Bonnie on the couchBonnie on the kitchen floor (underfloor heating)Wafer againBonnie againAll three tabbies together: Wafer, Bonnie and Joey

That was the year that was (the Age of Stupid goes on)

And whoosh, there goes another year. Similar to last year, I had been planning a satirical post on which to finish 2021. It centred on the current British Cabinet, led by the Greased Albino Piglet, in conversation with members of the National German Socialist Workers’ Party circa 1932. The “joke”, such as it would’ve been, was to have the various equivalent members discussing the [Migrant][Jewish] question and complaining that Europe was being overrun with [Migrants][Jews], which then moved on to a debate about whether [Migrants][Jews] had any intrinsic value to the European economy, and if some kind of “final solution” could be found to the problem of Europe and Britain being “swamped” with [Migrants][Jews].

But to be effective, satire must ultimately be funny. And when I sketched out what each character would say, I realised the similarities were too close to be in any way amusing. Thus, bereft of humour, the satire collapsed. Besides which, Nazism may be the easiest, but is in fact the wrong, comparator. For that, we should look to Putin’s Russia, which the UK resembles more every day.

Then, Time magazine in the US chose the poster boy for the Age of Stupid as its “Person of the Year”, and I reached the point of believing that satire did in fact die this year. May whatever gods exist forever bless the Age of Stupid.

But that’s enough of the politics. Remember folks, there is always hope. Let’s just try to stay safe and healthy; and, if possible, sane. Who knows, maybe the pendulum might even swing back far enough so that satire will have a role once again in 2022?

Anyway, if you’ll forgive me a bit of navel-gazing, I want to share with you that 2021 has seen my books gaining more and more readers, and as I mentioned in last week’s post, I’m grateful for every one of you. This year ends tonight with over 2,000 kindle/paperback sales and almost 1.2 million KENP pages read, for an approximate total of just under 6,000 readers in 2021. And, I’m afraid, all that sort of thing is going to do is ensure I write and publish more books. So there

To end, here are a few pictures of my Christmas present that Eldest Daughter found for me, made by a local young artisan: two delightfully hand-sculptured, scented candles that I think are too beautiful ever to light, and which smell as divine as they look. Happy New Year and see you in 2022!

Happy Christmas and thanks for reading

As has become a habit over recent years, I tend not to blog between 1 November and Christmas. The reason is twofold: one, after the colours of autumn have gone, there’s little to photograph as another mild winter sets in; and two, my attention turns fully to my WIP (‘work in progress’ for the non-writers among you). The very limited time I have to write means that focus is key, so this blog goes the way of most of my friendships: a regretful neglect to be caught up with and corrected later. On the plus side, The Repulse Chronicles, Book Five: The Race against Time is in production and will, with luck, be ready for publication in the early part of next year. News will of course appear here first.

In the meantime, have the best Christmas and festive period you can. Twenty twenty-one has been a tough year for many of us, and we deserve a break. Be safe, be warm, and stay healthy. Thank you for reading my books. You are what keeps me writing, telling these characters’ stories, and I really appreciate your time.

Here are a few pictures from our Polish Wigilia this evening, on a day that began with the first white Christmas in Warsaw for many a year:

1 November in Poland (2021)

Here’s what most Polish cemeteries in Poland look like this evening, All Saints’ Day.

Squirrels and goats in autumn

We’ve had one of those bright, warm early autumn days that we always hope for before the cold arrives. They always engender a sense of urgency as we know the long, dark winter is approaching, and so we like to get out and about and make the most of them. Today while cycling, Mrs James and I even stumbled across a trip of goats with one particularly sweet kid among them. But first, the latest colours to grace the garden and local streets, and another couple of shots of that little git who keeps pinching my nuts!

A thief in autumn

This summer has seen some of the most voracious growth in my garden that I can recall. A perfect combination of hot, bright sunshine and copious, regular downpours drove the branches of our walnut trees to put on over three metres, while our apple trees have produced armfuls of the fattest apples. But, of course, such bounty has also encouraged a couple of sneaky thieves to come climbing and leaping into the garden, helping themselves. One of our five cats managed to catch one and was generous enough to allow the others a bite or two.

Autumn has arrived, and as in most years I’ll post shots of its progress. Have a good week, you lovely people!

WORLD EXCLUSIVE! Interview with Covid-19!

Today I am totally stoked to be interviewing the new global sensation—Covid-19!  In this exclusive chat, Covid-19 (or “Cove” to his friends) talks about what the stresses and strains (geddit?!) of his explosion onto the world stage have meant to him over the last 18 months.

“Cove!  Firstly, many thanks for taking a few moments out from your busy—and massively successful!—world tour with your new album, ‘Delta’.  But from the start, did you expect to enjoy so much success?”

“Yo, dumbass.  No way, man.  I never even thought those crazy Chinese would ever take me to their hearts like they did, right at the start.  Without them to get my career started, I guess I’d still be stuck in some dead, rotting bat somewhere, you know?”

“Right.”

“But Alpha, Beta and Gamma did so damn well in 2020.  That opened every country up.”

“And since then, you’ve just been slaying them in their millions, yeah?”

“What can I say?  In some countries, my fans just can’t get enough of me.  They make me very welcome, and I really appreciate that.”

“Tells us, Cove, what do you think sets you apart from all the other acts out there trying so hard to connect with people?”

“I dunno.  I figure my material just kinda, you know, really touches people.  Everywhere I perform, my fans tell me freedom is the reason they welcome me into their lives.  And I guess that’s real important to folks everywhere.”

“Are you planning on taking a break soon, Cove?  Eighteen months of relentless touring would usually be enough to grind down the toughest performer!”

“Are you kidding?!  I’m gonna let you and your readers in on a little secret.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m actually working on a new album.”

“Wow!  No way?!”

“You bet.”

“What’s it called?”

“Epsilon.”

“So, you’re sticking with the whole Greek alphabet thing, yeah?”

“Damn straight.  It’s worked pretty good for me so far, and I’m planning on taking every single one of my fans all the way to Omega, man.”

“Before we finish, any special message for your fans reading this?”

“I want them to know they mean the world to me.  Without those ‘anti-vaxxers’ and ‘anti-maskers’, and all of those sociopaths and psychopaths, I would not have been able to touch half the people I have.  You know, I’m just this dumb rock star who ain’t nothin’ unless people are open to giving me a chance to improve myself with every album.  And that’s priceless.”

“Thanks for talking, Cove, and good luck with Epsilon this autumn!”

Remember folks, you can always catch Cove wherever you live—you just need to find people stupider than these hens!  Rock on!

Millions of years behind humans in evolutionary terms, but still a million times smarter than an anti-vaxxer!

Five years of gratitude

Five years ago today I published Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064. If you are one of the more-than-5,000 readers who’ve read it since then, thank you. On 28 August 2016, I certainly never expected this book would ever gain such a readership, not least because it did not adhere to any of the generally accepted fiction-writing rules. It did not have gripping characters (all of the actions the “characters” took are related 30 years after the event); exposition was not kept to the minimum, as Repulse is written entirely as exposition, and there are no chapter cliff-hangers because the entire story is summarised in the first page and a half.

At first and like all my previous books, the novel sank without trace. But then, in October, readers suddenly began giving it a try. I will never know what happened; perhaps Amazon took pity on it given my earlier efforts and failures. Whatever it was, this modest success encouraged me to keep writing. As I sit here drafting the opening chapters of The Repulse Chronicles, Book Five: The Race against Time, I recall what a complete surprise those weeks towards the end of 2016 were. To mark this little anniversary of a little book that broke all of the expectations on it, below is a brief anecdote regarding one of the characters, General, then Field Marshal, Sir Terry Tidbury, who has gone on to play such an important role in the Chronicles series.

When writing the first draft of Repulse, one of the biggest problems I had to deal with concerned names for all of the people quoted by the historian. I needed a vast supply of American and British first names and surnames, and names from almost every European country. Finding them, even with the assistance of the internet, was a time-consuming business. For individuals who were only quoted once or twice in the whole book, I simply left a blank space in the text to be filled in after the first draft had been completed. However, for “characters” to whom the historian would refer frequently, I needed to have the name before I could move substantially through the story. Indeed, at a point in late 2015, with about 60 pages written, I hit a trough and stopped writing, unable to face searching for and settling on names for key people.

Then, my appendix exploded. As a fairly typical male, I ignored the pain until it became unbearable. The surgeon who saved my life just before Christmas that year told my wife that a few hours’ more delay would’ve been too late. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I left hospital with renewed enthusiasm to finish this one last novel. Then I had another operation to remove my gallbladder. Clearly, I decided, time might be getting short.

The British general, then field marshal, was one such character. I needed a name that was alliterative, so easy for readers to recognise and recall, and a name that was wholly English: it could not carry any suggestion of being from anywhere else in the British Isles or other English-speaking country. I sweated over this for a long time but could not come up with any names that fitted the bill and which could still engender the image of a tough soldier who’d risen through the ranks, so was also highly intelligent, and essentially capable of doing what the story required him to do.

To deal with the problem, I decided to use the name of my father’s younger sister’s husband, Terry Tidbury, whose name met the needs of the book perfectly. I told myself that at the editing stage, I would find a different name and change it, so uncle Terry need never know I “borrowed” his name. However, after several months of writing, the name had become inextricably linked with the Field Marshal. Fortunately, uncle Terry has been kind enough to take my use of his name for the compliment it is. Although the two men are quite different physically – the Field Marshal is an ex-paratrooper, bald, and heavier-set than uncle Terry – they do share honed interpersonal and academic skills. Perhaps the Field Marshal is a little more abrupt, while uncle Terry disguises his admirable intellect with a fabulously disarming geniality. It’s funny how these things turn out.

And here we are, five years and over 5,000 readers later, and the story in not complete yet. Thanks for reading.

In pictures: the Jewish cemetery at Lutowiska

The village of Lutowiska nestles in a shallow valley in the Subcarpathian region of southeast Poland, within a few kilometres of the country’s borders with Ukraine and Slovakia. It boasts an elegant if slightly severe Catholic church, a gallery selling local arts and crafts’ products, and a couple of convenience stores. To the northeast lies a Jewish cemetery from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The ruins of the synagogue hide behind one of the convenience stores.

There is a faded information board outside the ruins of the synagogue that briefly details the fate of Lutowiska’s Jews: one day in 1943, the SS arrived. During that night, they shot 650 people, burying them in trenches to the north of the Catholic church. One 17-year-old lad managed to make a run for it, but they caught him the next day and shot him. The wife of Lutowiska’s richest Jew tried to buy her way out of trouble with 500 US dollars in cash. Unsurprisingly, the SS took her money and shot her anyway.

The graves pictured below – the predecessors of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust – in general go untended, although visitors can show their respect by leaving a small stone on top of a headstone. This is in stark contrast to the graves of Catholic Poles, which I’ve made a habit of photographing on All Saints’ Day in years past (click here and here).

The following set of pictures begins with the view of Lutowiska from the cemetery and ends with the ruins of the synagogue in the village. Cemeteries like this are why I find Holocaust denial and its supporters so utterly absurd, and note that the vast majority of those ignorant and easily-led fools reside in the West, and have seldom travelled east of the Rhine. Lutowiska is not exceptional; it is very typical. In thousands of hamlets, villages and towns in Poland and across Central and Eastern Europe, Jewish cemeteries lie obscured, untended and mostly forgotten. You only need to look at the cumulative vastness of this evidence of European Jewry that existed before the 1940s, and then abruptly vanished. It’s like staring at six million shadows and trying to deny the existence of the sun.

Even on a bright summer’s day, the ruins of the synagogue lose none of their ability to provoke the imagination: