Geoff Nelder's Blog, page 10
July 5, 2017
Arriva arriving
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No, this isn’t really about buses but this X30 goes between Chester and Warrington with me on it.
An Arriva bus I was on today between Warrington and Chester. The driver was going very slow and finally stopped in a village. He told us that his dashboard had a persistent warning light saying possible engine management malfunction. It did it whenever he drove over 20mph. He still had 20 miles of major roads and dual carriageways to go where it could be dangerous to go that fast so he’s aborting and has sent for an engineer and another bus is diverting to pick up everyone going to Runcorn. I was the only one going to Chester. So I had nearly an hour to wait for the next one. I wasn’t in a rush, had a book to read for my book group – The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter and today’s puzzles in the paper. Turned out that the driver used to do the route passing my house years ago, is a keen cyclist and hiker. He took my card and said he’ll buy ARIA. The engineer turned up opened the back of the bus and within a minute said, “Those bloody lazy sods haven’t filled the coolant.” That’s all it was. Except, although the engineer enjoyed driving a big van, he’d forgotten to carry a stock of coolant. So, I still had to wait for the next X30. When it arrived, the first driver jumped on and kissed the other! He then said to her, “This stranded passenger has been the model of patience and I’m buying you his book.” To me he said, “Meet the wife.”
One of those days of good and bad news.
Months ago Solstice Publishing agreed with July 24th as the release date for XAGHRA’S REVENGE. It’s a symbolic date as it is the 466th anniversary of the pirate abduction of the entire population of Gozo, the Maltese island in the Mediterranean. Great for publicity and to mark the authenticity of the research ethos that went into the novel. Today SP tell me the release date will have to be the 25th after all because the 24th is on a Monday and it would mean staff working on Sunday. Oh well. Pity they hadn’t said months ago when I’d already used the 24th in publicity shots. On the other hand the abduction of 5,000 people took a long time. Many hid in caves and there was much celebration of the pillage and carnal variety through the night. They left on the morning tide, so that would have been the 24 th July 1551. Phew. Two-day events can be so helpful.
Latest book cover by Andy Bigwood. Note the Maltese font.
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In Other News
On April 12th my short science fiction story, Locked Out, was published by Perihelion SF magazine and you can read it for FREE athttp://www.perihelionsf.com/1704/fiction_4.htm
On May 1st was the release of the summer magazine of The Horror Zine within which lies my fantasy, Girl in a Wandering Wood. I’d mis-overheard a phrase ‘wandering wood’ – probably wander in a wood, but my brain concocted a story in which a young botanist investigating unusual trees discovered they were closing in on her! You can buy the Kindle for less than a meal deal or the paperback for a bit more at
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Horror-Zine-Magazine-Summer-2017/dp/1626479992/
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My newest published book is The Chaos of Mokii published by Solstice Publishing. It is an experimental scifi and takes only half an hour to read. Summed up with: Olga sits in a train but her mind is in Mokii, a city populated entirely by the consciousness of its inhabitants. Once she’s tricked her way past the figment [image error]bouncer she finds fun but also danger. 99 pence http://mybook.to/ChaosOM
A fun illustrated (kind of) book for little children is Timmy the Tornado. pdf copy that can be printed or viewed on your device for £1.50 at https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
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Other books of mine including anthologies are at amzn.to/zrC6J6
The post Arriva arriving appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
May 17, 2017
#Win a copy of ARIA: Left Luggage
Above Minera looking south towards World’s End
It’s been a while since the notion of infectious amnesia wheedled its way into my brain while I cycled up Horseshoe Pass in North Wales. I was thinking about how mother suffered yet with comical moments, when a stroke robbed her of memory episodes. Another shove of my legs up that hill and I thought: “Thank goodness amnesia isn’t infectious!”
I stopped.
Jotted it down before I forgot it, but surely someone has written a story involving infectious amnesia? Maybe with retrograde aspects so memory is lost backwards, steadily, say at a year’s worth per week. Let’s have it so contagious everyone has it with no cure. An alien suitcase is discovered on the space station, brought to Earth and so it starts. Great fun to write, first published in 2012. Sales have declined so the publisher, LL-Publications, now based in Texas, want to boost things. They urge me to tell you:
#AmazonGiveaway for a chance to win: ARIA: Left Luggage.
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/adedad96b6d59967/?ref_=tsm_4_em_h_dashboard. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. All you have to do is watch the two minute trailer and enter!.
See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules.
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I won a Kindle Fire at BooksGoSocial. Can you spot ARIA?
In the meantime if you’ve already read ARIA: Left Luggage and yet to leave a small review on Amazon, I’d be very grateful if you did so.
Thanks
In Other News
On April 12th my short science fiction story, Locked Out, was published by Perihelion SF magazine and you can read it for FREE athttp://www.perihelionsf.com/1704/fiction_4.htm
[image error]On May 1st was the release of the summer magazine of The Horror Zine within which lies my fantasy, Girl in a Wandering Wood. I’d mis-overheard a phrase ‘wandering wood’ – probably wander in a wood, but my brain concocted a story in which a young botanist investigating unusual trees discovered they were closing in on her! You can buy the Kindle for less than a meal deal or the paperback for a bit more at
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Horror-Zine-Magazine-Summer-2017/dp/1626479992/
My newest published book is The Chaos of Mokii published by Solstice Publishing. It is an experimental scifi and takes only half an hour to read. Summed up with: Olga sits in a train but her mind is in Mokii, a city populated entirely by the consciousness of its inhabitants. Once she’s tricked her way past the figment bouncer she finds fun but also danger. 99 pence http://mybook.to/ChaosOM
A fun illustrated (kind of) book for little children is Timmy the Tornado. pdf copy that can be printed or viewed on your device for £1.50 at https://payhip.com/b/2aj3[image error]
Other books of mine including anthologies are at amzn.to/zrC6J6
The post #Win a copy of ARIA: Left Luggage appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
May 12, 2017
Timmy the Tornado
[image error]My infant grandson loves tornadoes but I failed to find a picture story book featuring them. A pal said, “You’re a writer, so write your own.” You could say being a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society is an overqualification for a booklet aimed at infants, but this is fiction, mostly. Timmy is a little twister, living in a storm cloud with his mum and dad. Timmy likes eating sheds and trees but gets into bother as most little kids do. There’s a problem to solve, observations to make and a little fun info. The drawings are inexpertly done, but the kids love them, perhaps because they know they could do better!
I uploaded the 10 illustrated pages to payhip, rather than Amazon. Authors get 95% royalty and Google finds it fine. I’ve priced it at the cost of an ice-cream.
Timmy the tornado https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
It downloads as a PDF so can be viewed on your device or printed.
I have other children’s illustrated surreal stories looking for a publisher. Maybe I should get them out on payhip too.
Geoff facebooks at http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy and tweets at @geoffnelder
http://nelderaria.wikia.com/wiki/NelderAria_Wiki
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/nelder_geoff
Most of my other books are on Amazon author at http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
The post Timmy the Tornado appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
May 6, 2017
Is everything fiction?
Nothing is what it seems
When a writer in one of my groups asserted that all non-fiction becomes historical fiction I took umbrage. My umb had never been so raged.
Perhaps she meant the newspapers. I recall my school in Cheltenham setting us a week’s homework whereby each of us in the class asked our families to take a different daily newspaper. We were shown how to detect the difference between pure factual reporting, opinion, advertising (often disguised to look like news) and how to measure the column inches. Even the sceptics among us were astonished how little in newspapers was straight information. Perhaps 10%. The Financial Times came out best with 30% factual reporting. We thought it would be heavily biased toward the right-wing politicians but the paper caters for hard-headed business people who rely on facts and balanced opinion for their investments. This was back in the 1960s. I’ve read papers with a jaundiced eye ever since and reckon the percentages of pure news hasn’t changed. If anything some of it has worsened, often by presenting facts, but biasing opinion within them by not reporting contributing information.
Also, it could be that the group member was referring to a more philosophical position such as that taken by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in his Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940). He argues that there is no such thing as Truth, as we know it. Ie that Truth isn’t an unassailable entity like a rock – although even rocks change over time. What is generally supposed to be Truth is really the ‘latest acceptable consensus’. This is a scientific maxim in that you never hear a good scientist refer to Truth but to hypotheses. They know that many so-called constants are very tricky to measure unambiguously and some ‘constants’ appear to change over time and space.
Bertrand Russell
I’ve just realized that Russell wasn’t the only person I’ve talked to face-to-face who was born in Victorian days. It feels like two centuries ago – 1800s and now 2000s! He used to attend the Cheltenham Fabian Society in which I was its youngest member as a young teen in the 1960s.
My umb was raged partly because whereas I am mainly known, if known at all, for my fiction: 100 short stories of mine have been published and 6 novels with another novel coming out this summer. However, my first published piece was a non-fiction article for a college magazine in 1968 and my first two books were on climate. I’ve also written a dozen articles for cycling and weather magazines. Just this year I’ve updated Chester’s Climate: past and present and released it as an ebook at https://payhip.com/b/62pM
It isn’t fiction but it contains stories: the word used by journalist to describe an event usually involving people. For example pirates were blown onto the coast hundreds of years ago and were interred in Chester Castle. Not fiction, but fact.
So, is my umbrage justified? Yes. There are some facts that aren’t fiction even if they are just the latest acceptable hypothesis and best interpretation.
In Other News
On April 12th my short science fiction story, Locked Out, was published by Perihelion SF magazine and you can read it for FREE at http://www.perihelionsf.com/1704/fiction_4.htm
On May 1st was the release of the summer magazine of The Horror Zine within which lies my fantasy, Girl in a Wandering Wood. I’d mis-overheard a phrase ‘wandering wood’ – probably wander in a wood, but my brain concocted a story in which a young botanist investigating unusual trees discovered they were closing in on her! You can buy the Kindle for less than a meal deal or the paperback for a bit more at
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Horror-Zine-Magazine-Summer-2017/dp/1626479992/
My newest published book is The Chaos of Mokii published by Solstice Publishing. It is an experimental scifi and takes only half an hour to read. Summed up with: Olga sits in a train but her mind is in Mokii, a city populated entirely by the consciousness of its inhabitants. Once she’s tricked her way past the figment bouncer she finds fun but also danger. 99 pence http://mybook.to/ChaosOM
Other books of mine including anthologies are at amzn.to/zrC6J6
The post Is everything fiction? appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
March 23, 2017
#Review of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Paperback: 736 pages
Publisher: Headline Review (19 Sept. 2005)
ISBN-13: 978-0755322817
This review is of the extended paperback book not the upcoming TV series.
Plot summary from somewhere, probably Wiki – edited by me. ‘Shadow Moon served three years in prison for assault. He is given an unexpected early release after wife Laura is killed in a car accident. Flying home for the funeral, Shadow is seated next to a man calling himself Wednesday, who offers Shadow a job. Arriving home, Shadow finds that the life he thought was waiting for him is gone. He accepts Wednesday’s offer. At first, it appears that Wednesday is nothing but a con artist who runs scams for cash and needs Shadow as a collaborator and bodyguard. Shadow soon learns that Wednesday is in fact the god Odin of Norse mythology. Wednesday is making his way across America, gathering all the old gods, who, without believers, have now incorporated themselves into American life and pretend to be ordinary people, while the New Gods – Media, Technology, and a host of others – grow ever stronger. Shadow finds himself drawn into a final confrontation between the old gods and the new.’
Road story. Generally I enjoyed it although there is precious little back story on Shadow and yet I cared for him. This version is the longer ‘preferred’ one but I can see why his editors wanted to cut 12,000 words. Many side / back-stories with very little relevance to moving the story on. Of course with gods as a theme, almost everything could be involved but I didn’t see why the slavery chapter 11 helped, interesting though it was. In fact all of the asides are enjoyable and so adds to the élan of the novel even if not moving the plot onwards. It’s as if the melange of almost-unrelated scenes compiles to the whole.
In some ways the unnecessary back-stories applies to the scams Wednesday does for ready cash. Eg the First Illinois Bank deposit scam where he poses as a bank employee and standing outside persuades gullible business people to leave their money with him in exchange for a forged deposit slip. The coin tricks are fun and the illusions form part of the godlike powers in allegory form. In my Chester SF Book Group members point out that Wednesday, like many of the ancient and mostly unfollowed gods have insufficient ‘magic’ to make money and so resort to such tricks. It’s as if the power of a god is in direct proportion to the number of followers. I like that.
Phrases I wished I’d written and might steal in an adulterated way:
P9 “Two pale hands rested on the desk like pink animals.”
“rains… slickened the roads into road accidents”
“Life is a Cabernet” bumper sticker.
p467 Shadow: “I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of the people in the dark.”
Great Backstage scene when Wednesday uses runes on the RV to avoid a road block and they both experience the ‘other’ world the gods live in.
P397 Laura – I like his dead wife appearing now and then to rescue him. She describes him as a ‘man-shaped hole’ when asking him if he is really alive. I wonder if Gaiman really meant a hole or a shape in existence that has form but no or little substance.
Sometimes Shadow doesn’t quite hear or misinterprets names of gods or their entourage so his brain thinks Elvis when he knows they’re probably not really called that. I like.
When Wednesday ‘died’ I felt sad. As Shadow describes him, he is irascible but he grew on you.
p.462 Exact centre of America: this notion always of interest to me and to my geography pupils. I’d tease them with the concept that there is no precise equator because the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere (an oblate spheroid) and down to an exact mm it is always changing with snow on the poles accumulated or melting. Also – the geometrical issue of what is a line? Same with the exact centre of things. Great Britain it’s near Dunsop Bridge, Lancs; Britain it is Whalley, Lancs; England it’s Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire. The mid point N-S, W-E Haltwhistle in Northumbria
With the blood spots, Wednesdays pale suit became a pointillist mess.
The point we’re all waiting for – the coming Storm – the war between the old and new gods was defused by quite a weak speech by Shadow on how the ‘main’ gods only wanted a battle so they could feed off the mass deaths.
The symmetry of the ending with the coin toss and it hesitating, so to speak, and perhaps not falling – fabulous story ending.
Which is his ‘best line’ taken from Gene Wolfe in the Epilogue? Is it the one where he says you can’t judge the shape of a man’s life until it’s over and done? Or the one where Shadow says he doesn’t believe in gods but they believe in him. Similar to a line in the film Gothika (2003) “I don’t believe in ghosts but they believe in me.”
P633 Odin, on Iceland – (not Wednesday although Wednesday is him) ‘…his skin was lined with tiny wrinkles and cracks, like the cracks in granite.’
Ends with Shadow flicking a gold coin he produced from the air high up and it hovers up there as if not coming down.
I like that scene for an ending even though I thought the battle – the actuation of the coming Storm was feeble.
Similarities between AG and The Stand by Stephen King (1985)
Both are road stories
Both have bad v good groups leading towards
A “Coming Storm” – often said in both books
Both have characters playing magic tricks
Both have the same idea line – I don’t believe in X but X believes in me. In The Stand, Nick – the deaf mute – writes a note to say he doesn’t believe in God but old Mother Abagail says it doesn’t matter because God believes in him. John Rennie in the Book Group thinks this idea goes back to Herodotus.
Everyone in the Chester Library SF Book Group enjoyed American Gods. Most of us, especially me, enjoyed his Neverwhere, too. We agreed that American Gods was Gaiman’s turning point in making it big in the US market after his success in other media.
Nelder News
Xaghra’s Revenge continues to go through its editing phase at Solstice Publishing. There’s now a facebook page dedicated to it at http://www.facebook.com/xaghrasrevenge
ARIA Trilogy. This apocalyptic story based on infectious amnesia still hasn’t reached significant numbers of readers I think it deserves. Similar books like Station Eleven and The Andromeda Strain achieved greater numbers. So, I’ve contacted many of those who gave positive reviews of those novels to see if they would review ARIA: Left Luggage. Currently it has 43 reviews on Amazon. If you’ve read it perhaps you’d be good enough to jot a line about it even to say you enjoyed it, or not. A recent reader said, ““Hoping to finish Aria tonight. Loving it. You’ve got me interested in Sci Fi after not reading any for years.”
Try it for 99p or $1.23 on Kindle, a bit more in paperback
My newest published book is The Chaos of Mokii published by Solstice Publishing. It is an experimental scifi and takes only half an hour to read. Summed up with: Olga sits in a train but her mind is in Mokii, a city populated entirely by the consciousness of its inhabitants. Once she’s tricked her way past the figment bouncer she finds fun but also danger. 99 pence http://mybook.to/ChaosOM
ASIN:B01N53B56B
Other books of mine including anthologies I am in are at amzn.to/zrC6J6
The post #Review of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
March 6, 2017
Here comes Leah Hamrick
This is the final week of the Solstice blog tour and I give up my page to the effervescent Leah Hamrick.
Hello, everyone! My name is Leah Hamrick, and I’m the author of Frost on my Pillow, numerous short stories of all genres…amongst other unpublished novels that I have yet to grace the world with. (He-he)
I live in Michigan with my husband, daughter, and plethora or turtles, fish, and a spoiled tree frog named Sticky.
I decided to start writing one day because I was bored… yes, I had nothing better to do than sit at the computer all day and type this nonsense that was spilling out of my little mind.
Well, I’m going to tell you about my novel, Frost on my Pillow, book one of the Fire Bringer series.
The story is about a girl named Lyla Hall, who lives an abusive life in her home, the Summer Solstice. Everyone in her little town is blessed with the ability to use Fire.
After she gets beat for the last time by her stupid step-dad, she makes a run for it, leaving her home, the only place she has ever known, behind.
She then finds herself in the real world, Toledo Ohio.
A young man named Rylan finds her, and takes her into his home for her safety.
When she starts school, she finds a book about her kind in her new school’s library, and she steals it. When she finally gets around to reading it, she discovers that her necklace holds the power to end the world if fallen into the wrong hands.
When she meets Ethan Killman, an Ice Bringer, things are going to change… forever.
Demons start harassing them, and they will stop at nothing to get the necklace and the power it holds.
When secrets from the ones she loves comes out, nothing will ever be the same again.
I know that is a bad description, but me trying to explain something? Yeah, right. You’d get a better explanation from a dog watching you throw away that cheese wrapper… I mean, I am so bad at descriptions that it’s a struggle for me to even get a blurb put together that even tells the reader half of what they will be reading…
Okay, I’ve taken up enough of your time… maybe you will join Lyla and Ethan in their adventures…?
Thank you♥
Want it? Click here: http://getBook.at/FrostonmyPillow 
Thank you, Leah, that’s tickled my reading muscles, grab a copy from the above link.
The post Here comes Leah Hamrick appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
February 25, 2017
KA Meng hops on my blog
I loved that TV series, Northern Exposure set in Alaska and often wondered how my poor circulation would cope in those climes. Here, a lass from Northern Dakota, explains somewhat about how she can write and be a mum in the frozen north.
Finding the Time to Write with a Busy Schedule
K.A. Meng, writer keeping warm in the frozen north
Thank you for letting me take over your blog today. It’s been a great pleasure to be a part of the Solstice Author Winter Blog Tour. I want to talk today about finding the time to write with a busy schedule, but I’ll start by telling everyone about myself first. You can see how crazy my schedule it.
My name is K. A. Meng. I live in the frozen tundra of North Dakota with my teenage son and our two cats and two dogs. I write paranormal, urban fantasy, mysteries, and sci fi. Sometimes I add in a hint of romance to the stories. I work full time as an administrative assistant.
My job is from Monday thru Friday from 8 am to 5 pm. When I get off work, I have (if I’m lucky) thirty minutes to myself before my son is demanding food or the dogs want to go for a walk. Yes, my shelties want to walk until it reaches a certain temperature then they stop whining, usually way under zero degrees F. Between working, having a son, pets, owning a home, and trying to market my book, I don’t have a lot of time to write.
The first thing you need to do is squeeze your writing in whenever you can. One of the first books I wrote took me ten months to write. I won’t speak to much about it since I need to edit it. I’ll jump into my third novel, I’ve written which took about six months. It happens to be published.
My first published novel, Superior Species is through Solstice Publishing – Solstice Shadows. You can find it here:
Amazon: http://getbook.at/SuperiorSpecies
Superior Species
K.A. Meng
Superior Species is about a girl named Ivory Ames. She has caught the attention of four gorgeous guys. At Los Roshano University this isn’t normal, even when all the upperclassmen have perfect physiques, flawless complexions, and hypnotic looks. That’s not even the weirdest part. The town has a strict sunset curfew because of wild animals attacking.
To keep her friends and herself safe, Ivory must figure out the truth behind the town’s mysteries before it’s too late.
To find the time to write, you need to want to write. Find your motivation. The Superior Species book series sprang to life after I asked myself, “What would I do if I met a monster?” I asked this question after the sudden rise in popular vampire and werewolf novels in which they made the monsters into something not scary at all. I do enjoy those type of novels, but I grew up on where you shouldn’t befriend the beasts. They are scary and want to kill you. You should run away. Of course, I’m asked this a lot:
But the monsters are still good-looking in your novel how can they be scary?
My character Ivory Ames will explain it soon best. A white tiger is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean she wants to for a pet. They are dangerous and could kill you without warning.
I’m pleased to announce my second novel in the Superior Species world will be released this year by Solstice Publishing – Solstice Shadows. I wrote it in four months. I don’t have a release date since it is under editing. If you want to know when it will be released keep checking out my website, www.kamengauthor.com, and scroll down to the Books section where I’ll post anything coming out soon. I plan for a lot this year.
The third novel in Superior Species, I wrote it in two and a half months. As you can see, I’ve been getting faster and faster at completing novels sooner. I wrote this one during NaNoWriMo in November 2016. For those who don’t know, its National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in one month. You should check it out. I pushed myself to write 60,000 words this time and will from now on. My novels tend to be longer so I set a bigger goal. You should join and find people on there to talk to. Support helps when you want to write. I tell everyone I am not available for the month of November. If I’m lucky, people will listen.
Another good way to gain words is doing word sprints. They are easy to do. Set a time frame with someone and write. It’s a good way to challenge yourself to get more words done. You can find people on twitter under #wordsprints. You can ask your writing friends or find me on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012856366750&fref=ts and send me a message. I’ll let you know if I can or not. I will be on in November to write again. July is camp NaNoWriMo. I may be writing then I don’ know. My plan is to be on for June doing my own NaNoWriMo.
One big thing that has helped me write more is set a goal. My current one is small, 1,000 words a day. I do this by writing at my break for work, one hour a day Monday thru Friday. And at night. I write in 250 word sprints. I start supper or help my kid by telling him what to cook while I write. Eat. Write. Do a chore. Write. Do another chore. Write. And before I know it my goal is met. Most nights I write more and on the weekends a heck of a lot more. Think of it like this in 20 days, I have a short story done.
I hope some of these tips will help you. If you want to know more about me, you can find me on here:
Website – www.kamengauthor.com
Facebook Author Page – https://www.facebook.com/KAMengAuthor/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/KAMengAuthor
Blog – https://kamengauthor.com/blog
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/kamengauthor/
Thank you for having me. -K.A.
Thanks, K.A., back to your hot water bottles and inspired writing.
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February 22, 2017
#Chester’s #Climate updated
Cheshire Life 2017 March
You have to laugh. In 1985 Cheshire Life misquoted me and spelt my name wrong about my Chester’s Climate book. I was interviewed last month by them for my updated edition and oh how we laughed about those errors. Today, I see they’ve got my name wrong in exactly the same way. Good thing we writers have a sense of humour.
If you’re interested in acquiring Chester’s Climate: past and present in its updated ebook form for only £1.50 it is at
River Dee, Chester in 1929
The post #Chester’s #Climate updated appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
February 18, 2017
Nelder on a blog tour
There’s a group of writers from Solstice Publishing who are in a blog tour and they’re a daring bunch because they asked me to contribute a piece – and this is it.
Writers’ Delusions by Geoff Nelder
This is the question Mrs Nelder stabbed me with when she once peeped over my shoulder at my list of story rejections being three times longer than the acceptances.
“What on Earth made you think you could be a writer?”
Answer: I didn’t know I was okay at writing until a teacher made me stand in front of the class and stumble through an essay I’d scribbled. A silly tale about a red squirrel scrambling on the gnarled boughs of the village’s oldest oak tree, stealing an acorn from a tree spirit to bury under a pupil’s desk. Imagine my surprise when every kid sneaked a peep under their desk.
Yes, those words held power and I liked it. Through my teens I wrote jokes. Sold some to British comedians and my first was published in a magazine in 1969. At university I became a co-editor of the rag-mag, a dreadful collection of very funny, awful smutty and politically-incorrect gags. We’d gather in the bar and brainstorm until the beer ran out. That was nearly half a century ago and I still see those jokes. Uncredited, no royalties. It was for charities then, still is. During that time I studied geography, mathematics and literature. Struck dumb, me, when the lecturer read out loud William Langland’s Vision of a Fair Field full of Folk. This is a wondrous sample of that early medieval poem:
‘In a somer sesoun, whan softe was the sonne,
I shope me into shroudes, as I a shep were,
In abite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,
Wente forth in the world wondres to here,
And saw many selles and selcouthe thynges.
Ac on a May mornyng on Malverne hulles
Me biful for to slepe, for werynesse of walkyng;’
The Malvern Hills in England
I learnt it by heart, while hiking on those actual Malvern Hills, a short bike ride from my house. I took my son on those hills a few years ago and the ‘sonne’ softly warmed our backs. I learnt the energy in words of sensual Show. Engaging the reader via all their five senses in every story. I read the great writers and they all do it. Even those science fiction and thriller books that the literati often overlook. Consider these two words from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: ‘She gave him a perfumed hug.’ You know which two words. Did you experience that hug? You were there, right?
After graduating, twice, I taught high school where writing lies takes over. Not really, but all teachers have to write masses of words. We talk about a target of 2000 words a day on our novels but teachers often achieve that when writing lesson notes, worksheets and above all, end-of-term reports. Most teachers hate that but writerly ones love it. It gives us the opportunity to be creative with an otherwise tedious activity. (assuming the school isn’t using computerized multi-guess reporting). One of my favourites: ‘The dawn of legibility in John’s writing revealed his utter incapacity to spell.’ Such chores honed my writing decades ago.
Not that I’ve stopped learning the craft. I’m with Pablo Casals – the famous cellist on why he continued to practise at 90: ‘Because I think I’m making progress.’
I remain fascinated enough by gnarled oak trees and squirrels to write them into my stories. This 2017 year sees publication of my ‘Girl in a Wandering Wood’ in The Horror Zine. I’d overheard the phrase wandering wood and thought what if a wood actually wandered? So, a botanist is trapped in a copse, animated by a spirit trying to stop her escaping. A squirrel helps her out, kind of. The same squirrel I wrote about in 1957.
A sample flash story. First published in Bobbing Around: (2004)Vol 3 No.6 A newsletter by psychiatrist Dr Bob Rich.
Nothing Upstairs
By Geoff Nelder
He should take advantage of the perspective from the top floor of a bus. Forrister’s car lingered in Foley’s Vehicular Care Centre for its annual medical but he had to put in a work appearance.
Green vinyl seats as opposed to his red leather but not bad. His nose expected sour milk odours—a foolish bias, so his eyebrows arched with surprise as fresh air slapped his face from the open top windows. Even so, those reasons for individual travel, cocooned in his Ford, came to him—personal space, sublime solitude listening to opera. He sought the least offensive fellow traveller. The beard looked normal enough: its owner gazing through a demisted circle on the window as London glided past.
An uncomfortable moment passed as Forrister obliged the window-side occupant to move a corner of his coat and shuffle up. In his car, Forrister would by now have tuned in to Classic FM talking back, unheard, to the presenter, so he turned to his companion.
“Cold, today.”
No response. Could be his new friend had defective hearing but more likely incredulous anyone had the temerity to strike up a conversation. Twenty minutes before disembarking—he had to give it another shot.
“Hey, there’s Putney Cinema. Don’t go in Screen Three, it’s squeezed in between One and Two—you only hear the other two films and at the same time!”
“Grooten!”
“Pardon?”
“For—is that all?” Beard conversed all right but in gibberish and to the window. Suddenly, Forrister’s head received a blow from behind as a robust woman thrust her elbow over the seat.
She treated Forrister to a cloud of gardenia fragrance.
“Grooten?” She barked. Beard turned, looked at her and nodded.
What? He hadn’t appreciated the rapidity of language development since he last used public transport. Contorted out of recognition. Forrister couldn’t participate. The woman had slumped back into her seat and the beard brushed again at the condensation. Forrister had to try again.
“Full today then,” Forrister said, sketching a wave at the one empty seat.
Nothing.
Then: “Jaffa. Man…”
“I have an orange. Would you like a piece?”
Before the Beard could reply, the elbow dented Forrister’s head again.
“Grooten?” she asked. He shook. She re-slumped.
Dejected, Forrister re-bagged the orange, stood and weaved his way to the winding stairs, three stops early. Before the descent he glanced back.
The woman took Forrister’s seat. Beard took an ear-piece out of his left ear.
And shared the cricket.
About the Author 
Geoff Nelder is a professional liar, badass editor, and fiction competition judge. He was awarded Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society for his research into air pollution and microclimates and used his students as unpaid researchers to discover urban heat islands in Yorkshire towns and villages. He taught now-out-of-date Geography and IT to the ungrateful alive but escaped on his bike to write.
His publications include science fiction novels Exit, Pursued by Bee and the ARIA trilogy; and thrillers: Escaping Reality, and Hot Air. Many of his short stories have found homes in mags such as The Horror Zine, Perihelion, Ether Books, Encounters, Jimston Journal, Delivered, Screaming Dreams and many anthologies such as Monk Punk, Science Fiction Writers’ Sampler (with Gregory Benford and David Brin), Twisted Tails, and Zombified.
His non-fiction include books on climate and he co-wrote How to Win Short Story Competitions.
Latest is an experimental science fiction short story, The Chaos of Mokii, published as an ebook by Solstice Publishing at http://mybook.to/ChaosOM It’s only a half-hour read yet will change every train journey you’ll make.
Links:
Where can we buy the books?
Geoff’s UK Amazon author page http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY
And for US readers http://www.amazon.com/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY
How can we follow you on Facebook?
http://www.facebook.com/geoffnelder
http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy
Twitter Handle? @geoffnelder
GoodReads? As Geoff Nelder
Website: http://geoffnelder.com
Are there any other sites we should know about?
http://nelderaria.wikia.com/wiki/NelderAria_Wiki
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/nelder_geoff
That’s it, thanks for reaching this far, if you did. May the rest of your life be deliriously wicked in the best possible way.
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February 17, 2017
Email from Space!
Leroy Chiao, US astronaut, wearing a Russian space suit on the ISS.
NASA’s Astronaut Leroy Chiao relaxed on comms duty on the International Space Station when a ping! alerted him to an incoming email. I had no idea my query would be routed off-world and yet it happened. You see, I was researching about the nature of the struts supporting the ISS. Specifically, the aluminium photovoltaic array supports. In ARIA Left Luggage I had an enigmatic piece of alien luggage lodged in the struts and I needed to know if they were magnetic. Of course I’d searched the NASA and JPL archives but only found the specification that had been sent out to industry for their bids, but not the final decision on construction. Next thing I knew, Leroy answered my questions.
Leroy Chiao – NASA Astronaut
He said the struts were made of a very thin aluminium. “But they’re so thin,” he says, “micrometeorites WILL go through them. This is rather worrying considering I am up here at the moment!”
My jaw dropped. This was in 2005 when it was unheard of for ordinary writers like me to receive emails from space! We exchanged a few more, then in 2012 when ARIA: Left Luggage was to be published by LL-Publications, I emailed him again to ensure I hadn’t been dreaming. I hadn’t and he wished me luck with the book.
I must find a mailing address for him so I can send him a signed copy.
Links to buy ARIA and other of my books are on my Amazon author page
Geoff’s UK Amazon author page http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY
And for US readers http://www.amazon.com/Geoff-Nelder/e/B002BMB2XY
Highlights:
ARIA is the first and so far only book to use the concept of infectious amnesia.
Although character-led, the novel has breakthrough plot threads, making us think of what is the most important and crucial aspects of our lives.
All the places on Earth used in the book are real geographical locations, including the ‘hidden’ valley – Anafon – in North Wales.
The cover art is designed by award-winning artist, Andy Bigwood.
The idea of infectious amnesia came while I was riding a bicycle up a steep Welsh hill.
You tube video trailer http://youtu.be/oh0AAXIe8VU
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