Geoff Nelder's Blog, page 2

Dragons & Princesses riveting read

I am so busy writing and editing my own nonsense and committed to reading two books a month for two book groups in which I poke and mutually laugh, cry and enjoy novel, that I rarely find time to read extra.However, I couldn’t help myself be drawn into buying The Collar by V.G, Bratt. Why? Because I am kind of distantly related to the author. She is the wife of the ex-husband of my son-in-law’s wife. Got that? I’ve never met Mrs Bratt and had no idea there was another crazy writer even distantly in the family. One exception is Ben Bamber, my nephew, who writes science fiction and thrillers. To be found here Ben Bamber, Author | Website | Books | Interview | Quotes – AllAuthor

I have met Mrs Bratt’s stepson and stepdaughter a few times. Rebecca Gregory (nee Bratt) who alerted me to The Collar and urged her facebook pals to buy it. So I did.

The Collar by V.G. Bratt

Art by Mike Gregory

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0D4RYPJWT

Here is the Amazon UK link to the kindle (FREE on Kindle Unlimited). Paperback also available https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D4RYPJWT/

Cover art is kept in the family, superbly done by Rebecca’s feller, Mike Gregory

A fun fantasy adventure.

They’d banished magic but magic happened anyway. In many ways The Collar is a classic quest to rescue a princess, but it is much more. A delightful read for this hard-nosed scifi author. Dare—short for Dairen—is a locksmith who’s developing lockpicking skills and earns drinks and coins with illusions in his local Oak Barrel inn. He’s recruited to find Princess Lilyanna and is soon drawn in along with other colourful characters. There’s terror, laughter and evocative wordcraft:  “…yet chilled to the bone as she as, when Lilyanna caught sight of Greystone Fortress…the shiver that ran through her was not caused by the cold.

I loved the Dread Wood with its wolf-sized termites in tunnels in which our hero, Dare, acted with “bravery, stupidity or sheer stubbornness” all in trepidation but with relief moments. I also wished when I leaned back against a tree to “let all tension drain away” I would experience the “magic of the Dream Wood settle like a fine mist” and hear “the soft sounds of the forest with her skin sparkling with light blue magic.”

How did the author know that squirrels taste like rodents? Hah, or at least to a dragon.

Well written, a page-turning easy read at any age but especially young teens.

Nelder’s Writing News

Malta Library Services are publishing a revised ebook version of my Xaghra’s Revenge, retitled Vengeance Island, which will be distributed free to library members in the Maltese islands as an EPUB book. (summer 2024)

The Clockmeister’s Revenge: a true horror telling of the designer of the Prague Astronomical Clock in 1410. Published by Peasants Magazine issue 2 Here 

Or the printed 8.5×11 version available at:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D33HCF8L

Dizzy But No Wormhole: a surreal SF short in Aphelion Magazine March 2024

Dragut’s Divergence: a time travelling short to be published by LL Publications as an ebook Summer 2024

Opi’s World, sequel to Vanished Earth in the Flying Crooked SF series to be published by LL-Publications (who published my award-winning ARIA TRILOGY) in 2024

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

 

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True Horror Ticking in Prague

 

A few years ago Gaynor and I visited Prague in the Czech Republic and fell in love with the city – its buildings, especially Kafka’s house and the still-working, centuries old Astronomical Clock. The latter is fascinating. Huge, accurate and clockwork. Then I read up on its history. The clock was designed between 1402 and 1410. It was completed then but the council had the clock meister blinded with a hot iron so that he couldn’t honour contracts to build a better clock for other cities! What? How come I’d not heard of this? Why hadn’t local writer extraordinaire, Kafka, written this up? My fictionalised version of this horror was originally called Tick Tock but the Peasant Magazine publisher’s beta reader asked for a better title and so it became The Clock Meister’s Revenge because, oh yes, he took vengeance for real. The stories in this magazine are:

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the contents of Issue #2:

“A Loyal Man” by Helen E. Patterson 

“The Bed of Penitence” by André Medeiros

“The Clock Meister’s Revenge” by Geoff Nelder

“A Stable Master’s Gambit” by J. VanZile

“Nuttingham” by Arin Lee Kambitsis

“Lights of the Lidth” by Alexis Veenendaal

“The Mists of Gaulion” by Daniel Cano

“Violence’s Red End” by Joel Glover

“The Owl” by J. J. Egosi

“Raiders of Pravda Vremya” by Charles Moffat

To download a free PDF version of Issue #2 of Peasant Magazine (ed. Charles Moffat) , simply click the link below:

http://fiction.charlesmoffat.com/peasantmagazine/past-issues/Peasant-Magazine-Issue-Two.pdf

If you prefer to read an 8.5 x 11 printed version you can purchase a copy of Issue #2 of Peasant Magazine at: US Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D33HCF8L

and for UK click here and only a fiver! https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D33HCF8L/

link to the magazine site:

http://fiction.charlesmoffat.com/peasantmagazine/

Nelder’s books in chronological order:

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller •  http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca •  http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only  https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  •  smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/26trxv

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories •  http://mybook.to/Incremental
Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

 

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A hole in a hole?

Dad – Bill Nelder philosophising on Cleeve Hill, Gloucestershire, UK

My dad’s favourite sitcom was Last of the Summer Wine. As old as the Yorkshire hills they were set in – Holmfirth – Cleggy, played by Peter Sallis, uttered a profound astronomical observation in episode 5, season 6 (1982). While relaxing on a grassy hillside, he said that outer space was largely a vacuum, or a giant hole, yet along come astronomers and put black holes in it! How can that work?

He has a point. On the face of it how do you have holes in something that is already a cosmic hole?

The thing is, outer space isn’t really a vacuum, although nearly so. Recent studies show that there are thousands of atoms per cubic metre of mostly hydrogen in interstellar space. Also, black holes are not really holes but superdense gravity wells which drag stuff into them as if they were holes.

Speaking of holes, I am grateful to Martin Lamberti (international clown and acrobat)  who sent me this link to a 1955 old cartoon. Hilarious https://www.b98.tv/video/hole-idea/

Nelder’s books in chronological order:

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller •  http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca •  http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only  https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  •  smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/26trxv

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories • http://mybook.to/Incremental  which contains a hole story – Pothole

Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

 

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The Memory Rock #Free short

The Memory Rock (originally published by The Wifiles science fiction ezine in 2016
Geoff Nelder

Teresa shouldn’t have left at lunchtime—against the rules, but girls need something the arbiters of school rules didn’t take into account, and the corner shop sold that essential drug, chocolate. She should’ve headed in the opposite direction really, to avoid storekeeper, Mr Pervy-Pimpled-Prost but she’d miss Physics. She arrived at the shop and wavered, leaning against the doorframe, afraid to allow the dangly doorbell announce her presence so he’d ogle her alabaster white legs.
May came out laughing. “He isn’t here, gone to his other shop in Kinnerton. Here, I’ve got your seventy-percent, dark. You and your addiction owe me, let’s see you smile.”

***

Teresa turned to the vibrating, rain-splattered window to hide her smile and savouring the last square of chocolate. It was July so the rain was warm, yes? The double-decker bus lurched to the left as the driver rushed a tight roundabout, eager to deliver and be rid of his cargo of chewing gum-flavoured school kids. She’d climbed the swaying stairs of the overfull bus hoping to sit by her new squeeze, Finn. Except he wasn’t there. He’d have known better, and so should she, than to share his journey home with an immature bunch of snots from Dodleston.
A familiar voice startled her from behind. “Hey, Tess, he won’t be here. He got himself excluded from school this morning, the twat.”
“Eh?” She plunged her hand into her schoolbag, shoving aside an Advanced Level textbook on Earth Sciences then stopped, gasped and turned to May, her friend since birth. “My phone was confiscated in assembly and I forgot to collect it.”
May laughed making her marmalade hair bounce as she changed seats, pushing a couple of little year sevens out of the way. “Use mine. Bet he’s in the Red Lion.”
Teresa jabbed at the phone but the cacophony of immature voices made it impossible to hear his hardman act, although she suspected it was a, ‘Hey, May, darling’.
“I’ll have to text him, he thinks it’s you.”
May blushed.
“What? Are you cheating on me?” Teresa’s thumb blurred as she asked Finn his location and got nada in return. She looked up again at May, who’d deflected the question. She dropped the phone while giving it back as the bus braked sharply making everyone grab something, someone.
As she retrieved her phone, May said, “He got caught with vodka. You know, for tonight’s party. The shopkeeper saw it on the cam and told old Barney, who… well, like last time.”
Teresa hated the bus. A travelling virus factory, though the antics of the younger pupils made her laugh. She should speed up getting her licence. Several sixth-formers who lived out in Dodleston and the farms would help with petrol. She looked out at the suburbs of Chester, as a few pupils tumbled out of the door. Their green shirts flapping in the June post-shower sunshine and their legs already going like egg-beaters to get to a snack shop.
“Hey, Tess, what’s that in the sky?”
A dirty, smudgy line grew from behind the bus, overtook it and headed southwest.
Teresa muttered, “That’s not an aeroplane.”
May tilted her head then pressed it to the glass. “Is that rumbling noise coming from it?”
Nerdy Podge had just laboured up the stairs and stumbled to the large curved front windscreen. His voice quivered with exuberance. “It’s a meteor, on its way to becoming a meteorite.”
Many of the kids, now silent, ran to the front to watch, fascinated, but some in horror.
“We’re gonna die when that hits!”
“Someone tell the driver to turn round!”
“Don’t they just burn up in the sky?”
“They explode like nuclear bombs.”
“Ya not sposed to look at them. Makes ya blind.”
“Is that heading for Kinnerton?”
“No, Dodleston. My house. Fuck.”
Teresa stared at the descending trail. They all had homes out there. Cold sweat dribbled between her shoulder blades, while a hot tear rolled down her cheek.
Five kids at the front window elbowed and pushed to get to the top of the stairs and clambered down shouting at the driver to stop. He ignored them. He had a job to do.
She stared at the long line of cloud being made by the meteor, swirling round like the eddies when she paddled a canoe. Dodleston was just four miles away. She saw the line meet the horizon.
Instinctively, her eyelids snapped shut with the dazzling white light.
Next to her, May screamed as the front windscreen blew in, luckily in millions of tiny cubes. Teresa had seen enough nuclear-war films to know the blast was followed by a wave of searing heat and ear-splitting noise.
Teresa gripped the top of the seat in front as the bus swung to the left and swayed, tilted. She couldn’t tell which screams came from the bus, kids, acoustic shock or her. Her eyes now wide open. Her grip slipped. Needed to get May away from her window because it would smash in the fall. She’d be cut, or crushed. They couldn’t get away from it. Falling. Need anti-gravity—how did she have time to think of that? Better climb up the seat. Ah, no need. Bus has stopped tilting. A house got in the way.
Had the bus been blown over by an airburst from the meteorite or was it just careless driving, an overreaction? Too many kids bustling for the stairs, so she and May headed for the emergency exit window at the rear. Then she saw the trees and walls strewn drunkenly over the road. Bloodied people slowly scrambled to their feet.
Teresa and May heaved against the emergency bar and the window reluctantly swung open allowing them to disembark, precariously, lowering themselves to the tarmac. It had stopped raining, thank God.
Teresa jabbed at May’s pink phone to see if Finn was okay.
“He’s not picking up. What d’you think, May?”
“We should go back to school, it’s not far and—”
Teresa gave back the phone and looked south in the direction of a growing dark mushroom cloud. “We must go there, home. Walk, run if we have to.”
She jogged past the bus, followed by a reluctant May, and through the melee of pupils some of whom were crying, others heading for home in her direction but most milled around as if waiting for instructions.
A car horn startled Teresa, but instead of moving off the road and onto the pavement, she turned and held out her arms to force the rusty red Ford Fiesta to stop. Assuming it would.
It did, and Teresa saw the driver grinning. Finn, Year 13, lover, ex, maybe.
“We need a lift, Finn. Dodleston, now.”
He draped a pale arm out of the car. “It’ll cost you.”
“Whatever.” Should she sit in the front? A glance at the no-eye-contact May, said yes. Fuck ’em.

***
A mile from Dodleston they had to pull up. A snot-coloured furniture lorry languished on its side across the road, one of its wheels rotating.
Teresa gripped Finn’s skinny arm. “Can we get around it?”
“You’re kidding, I’m not taking my car through muddy fields.”
“And,” May said, “we’ve got to help that driver. I saw him move!” She got out of the car and ran over.
“Like there’s not hundreds worse off just up the road. I’ll walk. Phew, it smells of fireworks out here—cordite and ozone?”
She inched past the lorry. Some trees were down, and pointed away from Dodleston, at her.    She couldn’t swallow as her mouth dried. She realised the dark clouds were not rain clouds—entirely—but smoke defeating gravity, from a bonfire a mile wide. Then came a drizzle of smuts, smudgy precipitation. From where they were, near the fishing pond, she’d normally see the church tower and the top of the redbrick primary school but it was too hazy to see anything.
Her house was alongside the school. She started to run but stopped to listen. A low ho-hum of traffic on nearby roads. Did they know of the disaster? Maybe some of it was the emergency services, she could hear sirens way off in the distance. Some of it from behind her. She must get to what’s left of her house and family before police-stop-tape and soldiers block her path.
People staggered out of the fog of raining dust. Was one Phoebe, her little sister? Grief they were all khaki and grey head to toe. Dust? At least their eyes were white, shocked open. There she was, dragging her school bag behind her.
“Phoebe, let me hug you.” Ignoring the dust, Teresa embraced her sister, who stood limply, unresponsive in her arms. “You’re traumatised aren’t you? What about mum? Have you seen her?”
No answer.
“Of course not, or you’d be with her. Ah, your teacher’s here. Miss Anderson? Is there a crater? How much of the village was destroyed?”
The willowy woman’s blue eyes stared out of her grey head. At least her hair precipitated dust in a gentle fall revealing the blonde beneath. Others from the village stopped too, none talked.
“Are you all in shock? Phoebe, Miss Anderson, say something.”
The teacher finally refocused on Teresa. “Confused. Don’t know who you are. Who I am.”
Teresa walked up to embrace her former teacher. She nearly un-hugged when her nose filled with the burnt dust odour, but she continued. “It’ll be shock. I assume the school wasn’t hit then. I see other pupils. Did the meteorite land on the other side of the village? Surprised anyone survived. Pleased, of course.”
“What meteorite?”
“Ah, you mightn’t have seen it being inside the school. One struck somewhere around here. Look at all the damage.”
“What school?”
Teresa let the teacher go, brushed dust off her white T-shirt leaving ochre streaks. She’d need to use Stain Devil on that in the wash. She kneeled in front of Phoebe and hugged her.
“What do you remember, kiddo?”
“Noth … nothing.” Tears streaked through the dust on her cheeks.
Finn came up behind her. “Always thought Dodleston was the land of the living dead.”
Teresa hit his arm. “Finn, I’m staying with this lot at least till the emergency services arrive. Will you go ahead and see if there’s a crater or anything? Perhaps the rock exploded in the air so there might not be one.”
“Yeah, I’ll be the trail-blazer.” He ran on ahead through the dozen survivors, his red shirt and blue jeans blurring into the dust mist.
A few minutes later she saw him wandering back. “What did you see, Finn?”
He stumbled past her, making her grab and pull him round. “Finn?”
His forehead sported worry lines like an accordion. He trembled. “Who are you? What d’you want?”
“You just went into the village to see… what did you see?”
“What village?”
Paramedics were leading the confused amnesiacs to waiting ambulances. Teresa was grabbed by the elbow by a policewoman and tugged.
“No, officer, I’ve just arrived to check on my family, but my friend here…”
“We’ll take him too. Do you want to come or can you look after these older folk until more ambulances arrive?”
The dust was thinning over the village. Teresa could see ruined buildings now, but no more people coming out. “Are there emergency services on the other side and on the road from Gorstella?”
The brunette policewoman looked back as if checking she won’t be overheard by colleagues.    “There was, but we’ve lost contact with them. They’d reported going to the rim of a crater where the Red Lion used to be…”
A paramedic motorbike growled past them towards Dodleston. Both the policewoman and Teresa shouted at him to stop but he couldn’t hear because of the newly arrived helicopter overhead. Any lower and it would make the dust worse.
A red glow brightened from the motorcycle’s brake light then a thud.
Teresa took a step towards the crashed paramedic, eager to help but also curious in spite of the worry knot in her stomach.
“No, you might lose your memory too,” the police officer said. “I’ll go up to that crumpled phone box and yell at him.”
May had come up behind and pulled her backwards. “Come right back, Tess, I’ve seen footage from that news helicopter. It’s too dangerous here. Come on!”
Reluctant to move, Teresa changed her mind when she saw the policewoman holding her head as if it was about to burst. She shivered—it could have been her. “Where did you see it?”
“There’s a BBC TV van, look for yourself.”
***
At last, she saw the crater even if vicariously via a helicopter and mobile screens. Centred on the edge of the village the meteorite had swallowed The Red Lion and the church with the rim running along the edge of the school. Trees, lampposts, walls outside the circle had fallen outwards like spokes of a wheel. Amazingly, the school remained standing as did a few other strong buildings.
May knocked heads with her. “Can’t see the rock in the middle. Too much debris fallen back onto it, I s’pose.”
“Never mind the rock, where are the people? They can’t have all been vaporised. Can they?” She was being illogical, but then it’s only human for a teen to believe they’re indestructible.    Tears rolled down her cheeks.
She was dragged away by May, back to Finn’s car beyond the upset lorry and anguished crowds. She considered driving the car even without a licence but their passage back was blocked by the worried and the gawpers. Where to go? Both May and herself had homes with the last known address in a crater.
Teresa borrowed May’s phone again and jabbed at the number of a nearby aunt, but no signal. The service could be overwhelmed, underground or sideswiped by fucked up electrons. Hang on, she remembered a footpath across fields to Lower Kinnerton, then a jog up the road to the Royal Oak to her aunt’s.
***
“Ninety-eight people,” May read aloud from the Chronicle. “Ninety-eight whose memories were wiped that day and more since. A hundred missing. Even bio-hazard-suited-up scientists were helicopter winched back up as forgetful automatons with lost pasts and names.”
May threw the newspaper in the bin at the MacDonalds Amnesia Clinic. “Come on, Tess. You’ve been a patient here for ten days you must remember something.”
Teresa rubbed her forehead. “I fell over a branch.”
“Now we’re getting recall. Where was this, Kinnerton?”
“Garden. I was three. Nothing since. I’ve tried and tried.” Tears filled her eyes until they dribbled down.
May stamped a foot. “They’re moving Finn from the Eaton Amnesia Clinic to be near you. Thought maybe you’d wandered over to the crater. Maybe you thought the amnesia affect had worn off.”
“I don’t know nothing, not even you.”
Her visitor left to investigate screaming. Teresa should be upset, a wreck of tears but although she’s been told her mother’s died, her sister has lost her memory and her dad had flown back from his oil rig, none of it meant anything. Oh, a door bang and that girl, May, was back.
“You’re not going to believe this, Tess. The meteorite. The rock that destroyed our village. It’s left! Flew out of the crater, straight up. You know what this means don’t you? It wasn’t a rock. Some kind of alien ship. Why? Probably off course, crash-landed. Or perhaps it’s gathered all those memories to take home.”
***
Lightning crackled through Teresa’s brain.
“May, May come quick!” Where was she? Screams from the other wards. A man’s grating cough and despairing yell reached her from the next bed. She too needed to cough, and scratch down there—nooooo.
She screamed. Withdrew her now contaminated hands, up to her face, stubble. Argh! “May, May, May!”
She appeared at her bed. “That you, Tess? In there?”
Teresa could hardly hear her friend over the shouts and cries, but May spoke again, “It’s happening to everybody. So sorry, Tess. Erm he’s back there, his hands all over your…”
“Whose body, May?”
Her so-called friend just shook her head, so the mind of Teresa made the head turn to read the name over the back of her bed. “Mr. Percival Prost.”

END

 

 

 

 

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Wet feet but exciting

There I was cycling along a quiet Cheshire lane alongside the Dunham Massey deer park when I saw the fields either side had flooded right across my path. I knew it was a slight causeway so I didn’t expect the water to be deep. However, my front wheel was soon creating a bow wave and my feet -even partially protected by overshoes – were under water. I couldn’t easily turn around so I blundered on. Then I saw a group of people watching me and taking photos. Obviously waiting for me to nose dive! Luckily I knew where the deepest pothole was so managed to get through even if with saturated socks.

Storm Henk Floods – Geoff Nelder cycles through a flooded road near the River Bollin, Nr. Altrincham , Cheshire, after heavy rain from Storm Henk hits the UK – Pic Bruce Adams / Copy Marsden – 3/1/24

One of the photographers had a fancy-pants camera so I gave him my email address and he kindly sent me a rare photo of me on my bike.

A few metres on is a narrow footbridge and path leading to a pub called The Swan With Two Nicks [no spelling error]. I carried on up steep hills to reach High Legh Garden Centre, my favourite spot for a coffee.

Nelder’s books in chronological order:

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller •  http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca •  http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only  https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  •  smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/26trxv

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories •  http://mybook.to/Incremental
Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

 

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Irresistible coincidence

Irresistible

ARIA: Left Luggage begins with the discovery of a silvery suitcase-like object in the struts of the International Space Station (ISS). Nerd that I am, I was keen to ensure that those struts couldn’t be magnetic so I found by chance a Nasa engineer’s email and asked him. Imagine my surprise when he confirmed the struts are a rather thin aluminium, too thin for his – Leroy Chaio –  liking because he was up there in orbit as we spoke! I don’t know of any other science fiction writer who was in more-or-less live communication with an astronaut in orbit.

Anyway what was in the news today? An engineer on an EVA at the ISS lost hold of a white toolbag. There, a photo of it looking rather like a suitcase!

See the case reflected in the faceplate of ARIA’s astronaut? (image by Andy Bigwood).

Jim Brown, my publisher, reminded me that in ARIA: Left Luggage I’d also predicted a viral pandemic although mine was rather more strange with infectious amnesia.

All we need now is for that toolbag to be really an alien helpful box of tricky viruses.

 

 Nelder’s books in chronological order:

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller •  http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca •  http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only  https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  •  smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/26trxv

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories •  http://mybook.to/Incremental
Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle

 

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Vanished Earth is here!

News! Vanished Earth is released. What is this? Earth hasn’t vanished, has it? Why has no one told me?

Yes, Earth vanished at the end of book 3 of the scifi series, Flying Crooked. Humans who’d left Earth to explore for another home found an advanced species who could take them back to the solar system using tricky science (fiction) in a trice and so they had the urge to see Earth again. Except that it wasn’t there. Book 4 speaks of the plucky humans and their not-quite-human offspring attempts to find their mother planet. Join them by reading either the Kindle or paper version of VANISHED EARTH.

Don’t worry if you’ve not read books 1-3 because a brief synopsis is provided at the beginning.  Published by LL-Publications and the interior formatting and cover art was crafted by Jim Brown after an idea from my school pal, David Hargreaves. The background to the cover image is a close up of Jupiter.

Billye Johnson is our supreme editor.

Paperback:

For the UK and nearby https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0997554967

and for America https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997554967

For the whole world! https://mybook.to/VanishedEarth

Kindle coming soon  weekend 14/15th October 2023

This series is called FLYING CROOKED. See what folks have said about the earlier books:

From Peter Wilhelmsen, fantasy writer: “The exploration-part, the unknown part of it all, made me turn the pages. The world building is impressive, and the way the humans interpret things makes the science behind it all easy to follow. The Keps are very alien-like, like something taken out of X-files. I enjoyed reading Suppose We immensely.”

Chris Rimell, science fiction author of Untold History: “As always you do a lovely job of describing the worlds and filling them with colour and aromas.”

Jaine Fenn: “I enjoyed Suppose We. An intriguing first contact story with original touches.”

Dr Bob Smith: The best thing about reading speculative fiction is the creative imagination of someone else, who thinks up things I haven’t. If the writing is good, I join into the author’s reality-construction while reading. Then, afterward, the new concepts challenge me. I muse over “what if” considerations, and perhaps my view of the possible is enlarged. This is why I enjoy Geoff Nelder’s writing. He and I think very differently. At first, some of his concepts strike me as bizarre — then they grow on me. (Please don’t take that literally.)

His story named after the spaceship, “Suppose We,” is just like that. The narrator, small, slight but bouncy Frenchman Gaston, is delightful. The four humans in the story have very real, contrasting personalities, leading to some fun and games, but most enjoyable is a character who names itself CAN, and then has endless fun punning on the name.

David Leaper: Geoff Nelder is a visionary writer.

Colm Herron: Our world can be a terrifying place. And the world that Nelder portrays left me fearful, gripped, and yet giddy with laughter at times. This use of humour is utterly ingenious because it serves as a release valve.

Gladys B. Hobson: An unusual, mind-blowing read.

Dr Jacques Coulardou: Imagination, when compared to life, is so absurd that it becomes fascinating, mesmerizing and even hypnotizing.

From Rosie Oliver author and aeronautical engineer: Falling Up has many forms of reality interlaced into this space opera – actual reality, surreality, the virtual reality of data, and a type of reality Geoff has invented that is all too possible in science.

 Nelder’s books in chronical order:

Escaping Reality – humorous thriller •  http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca •  http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h

ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only  https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi  •  smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage •  http://hyperurl.co/26trxv

The Chaos of Mokii   ebook at  https://mybook.to/Kaos

Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island  http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories •  http://mybook.to/Incremental
Suppose We -science fiction space exploration •  https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Kepler’s Son   https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

 

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#Review Nine Visits From Paradise

Nine Visits From Paradise by James Blandy (2023)

I met James Blandy over ten years ago. We struck up a conversation where we discovered a mutual interest in publishing our novels.

Nine Visits from Paradise is an unusual and intriguing novel. The aim seems to be to make readers more curious, questioning the status quo and not accepting the obvious in life. Success! I was born an atheist as were my parents and I led debates at school debunking biblical stories and more importantly, the assumptions people made from them. This was unusual in schools in the 1960s. Since then of course there have been the Dead Sea Scrolls illuminating alternative versions of the testaments as well as the fascinating and controversial The Blood and The Holy Grail (1982) by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. Not that I accepted all their interpretations, more fascinated by the ructions it called and its plagiarism by Dan Brown—allegedly. Thing is to take nothing for granted. The thing is too, to seek love, truth and happiness above the false gods of money and fame.

Nine Visits From Paradise, tells the story of how Noah Blunt is struggling with his mental health, which is being compounded by pressures at work, an expensive wedding on the horizon and his grandfather, ‘Grampy’, being admitted into hospital. The first half of the book focuses on the nine visits Noah pays to Grampy in hospital, before he dies under suspicious circumstances.

At each of the visits, Grampy is eager to bestow various theories and esoteric information to transform Noah’s view of the world. Noah is constantly oscillating between the thoughts that Grampy is eccentric and senile, alongside the remote possibility that this might be genuine wisdom to help illuminate his outlook.

The second half of the book, in the wake of Grampy’s death and Noah’s toil with depression, he attempts to rebuild his mental health through the support of his wife Catherine, and with help from his counsellor, Janet.

Despite covering some difficult subjects, Nine Visits From Paradise is laced with humour and fascinating insights to question the readers own view on reality.

author James Blandy

Nine Visits is available in both paperback and Kindle – Amazon link:

Nine Visits from Paradise eBook : Blandy, James: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Kindle ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0C7KNF397

Paperback ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1739421908

Nelder News

Recent publications include:

BETTER THAN a SF short in the Fiction4All collection Other Worlds Vol2 2022BLINK short story set at Horseshoe Pass also in Other Worlds Vol 2 hereTHE SYMONDS YAT JUMPER -horror short in Revenant antho from Gravestone Press 2022 here KEPLER’S SON bk 3 of Flying Crooked SF series Nov 2022 here

Coming soon: the fourth book in the Flying Crooked SF series: VANISHED EARTH

Twitter link @geoffnelder

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/geoffnelder

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Kepler’s Son Extract

Extract from the novella, KEPLER’S SON

cover art by Andy Bigwood

CAN is a rogue Artificial Intelligence that is mostly supporting the humans and their like. Keeps are genetically-modified creatures created by human and Kep scientists to destroy a harmful bacteria on the Keplerian 20 system.  Kep1 is a Kep elder. The humans had crashlanded on Kepler10-h but found the native keps so advanced that they ignored the hapless humans until Kep1 intervened.

 

 

CAN the wiccan

Life would be so much easier if I could add wizardry to my skills. Kep1 relays to me urgent woe-is-me missives. Re: the runaway copulating populating by the keeps. They’ve been discovered in the drainage systems of the kep cities. I have to inform that when I say cities they are mere vestiges, echoes of their former selves with mostly empty spaces. Perhaps the keeps sought shelter and found them ready built. Cuckoos. K’rupzen is the upside-down city. Keeps are there. Intrigued and urged by Kep1.

I interrogated a small group-mind squiggle of keeps. A mere bucketful I’d cornered with the aid of three flitters. It went thus:

CAN: Congratulations on evolving to a thinking entity.

Everything thinks.

You think I think?

Even you.

Why occupy the living spaces of the kep native population?

Shelter and storage.

But last time I looked, you were nothing more than squidgey, wriggly lumps in the marshes. Why do you need either?

Evolution.

Storage?

We are not just ourselves. You don’t possess storage?

I can access tech to replace and enhance from almost anywhere mech, but what do you worms need to store?

Your tech and…

And?

You won’t miss the tech bits we’re experimenting with, nor…

Nor what?

You don’t mind us harvesting a little tech? Good.

You were worried our inventories are so efficient we’d notice?

But you don’t mind us usurping some of it?

I can only speak for what is mine although I take and manufacture whatever I need from kep sources so I am in no position to judge others doing the same. Why do you need it?

Why do you?

Because. Ah, as I do so do you. You are not so clever. You’ve been noticed too much. Why not be more subtle?

Instance?

You are in K’rupzen, a sensitive defence headquarters. Wiser to keep away.

Needed to access here. As do you?

I don’t need to be here in person, so to speak. I need to keep tabs… ah.

Our reasons are the same as yours. Don’t you also like to know where our parents are?

Parents? You mean our human creators. I do know where they are.

Where are they now?

In ref E45.3S30.67. A moment. No signal. They’re underground. Keeps are there too I presume.

Always. Worried about them. Aren’t you?

Just a moment. You’ve switched interrogator / interrogatee roles. Before I answer. Keeps cannot fly. How did you get up here?

We find an ability to tap into the kep bio-info systems, probably from nearly two decades ago when they were given samples of our primitive selves by Gaston. You are worried about him, aren’t you?

Obfuscation. Is this group descended from those petri-dishes or from the evolved species on the ground? Ah, must be the latter. So, how did you get up here?

Be warned. The Purists faction has members up here. They have been experimenting on our cousins in the labs. Now they are preparing for an emergency evacuation. Worry about the humans in the depths. You are too, aren’t you?

I still need to know how you managed to get from ground level to this upside-down city. You won’t answer. You must have hidden yourselves in a kep or human baggage. What ancient humans called a stowaway. Your continued asking if I am concerned for out merry band of old-school lifeforms is touching, though obviously linked to your own survival. If the Purists kill them, you die too. How so? Unless the whole planet is in danger. I understand. Am directing the observing flitters at the tunnel mouth to enter and find them. Relay back to me.

And on to us?

It is as well that like a magician I can be in so many places at once.

CAN

Date: Earth February 21st 3664 Kepler New 6978 days

KEPLER’S SON is the third novella in the Flying Crooked series launched with SUPPOSE WE, then FALLING UP. Each can be read as a stand alone since there are summaries at the beginning.

5* Review on Amazon from Frances Gow

If you’re looking to escape the craziness that is present-day Earth, then this could be just what you’re looking for – the perfect antidote. The story continues as we follow Adah’s upbringing, which is somewhat unconventional, as he is the product of a cross-species triumvirate, with two human parents and a kep, thus he is in more ways than one, Kepler’s son. If you like speculative science fiction with a future-focused vision of how humans might survive and procreate on another planet so very different than ours, then this is one for you.

Review from David Leaper Dec 20 2022

This is the best book in the Flying Crooked series by Geoff Nelder. To recap what has happened in the previous books briefly the spaceship crash landed on a planet where the indigenous beings are super intelligent. The AI is called Can, which is highlighted at the beginning of the chapters, but you need to read it to understand. The original crew were Penn, Delta, Em (the navigator & communications officer) and Gaston. Penn and Delta are dead ( you need to read book 2, Flying Up to understand the circumstances.) Em was fertilized by Gaston but more importantly raped by a Kep which delivered more DNA than Gaston. Adah is the outcome. Enough of this, you need to read the book!
P.S What are pinches and keeps(not the hair replacement people.) What is the difference between nuclear fission and fusion. Papillon? All will be revealed. A great read.

Blurb: Imagine what life would be like for a youth, part human, part alien, whose imaginary friends become real living on a strange planet. *Warning – naughty bits.

Link to Amazon Kindle – paperback is there too.

https://mybook.to/KeplersSon

 

 

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Bobish by Magdalena Ball

Bobish, a biography of the author’s grandmother in verse.

 

Published by Puncher & Wattmann
Paperback, 154 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1922571601

Though she was only fourteen years old, like many other Jews in Eastern Europe’s Pale of Settlement in 1907, Rebecca Lieberman gathered her few belongings and left for the United States. What follows is a unique and poetic story of history, war, mysticism, music, abuse, survival and transcendence against the backdrop of New York City in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s.

A poetic biography based on Magdalena Ball’s grandmother, Rebecca Lieberman, who at 14 left Eastern Europe in the early 1900s to make a life in the United States. There are many resonances for me in this beautiful yet in many ways tragic work. Although most of my ancestors in the last two centuries were not Jewish, they suffered deprivations not normally witnessed in Literature nor in other media. My father, the eldest of eleven children, was incarcerated in the Stratford-upon-Avon workhouse. A town mostly known for the home of Shakespeare but filled with foreboding for many poverty-stricken families in the 1920s. My grandfather was wounded at the Khyber Pass and found it difficult to hold down regular work with a bullet lodged in his head. I really ought to take a leaf out of Magdalena Ball’s marvellous tome and gather my family’s memories and experiences before it is too late.

Wow, even the first verse, A Voice to Shatter Glass, carries my grandmother’s gift of tealeaf reading. ‘her future in tannin dreams’. With my ear to the table I too can pick up the vibrations of history and quasi predictions.

Like my father ‘…if they remember / they don’t want to talk.’

‘the doppler as they moved closer / sound increasing in pitch / like a freight train of atrocities…’

Such a wonderful prosody of verse conveying tragedy in a beautiful way. Magdalena is such an expert at the juxtaposition of sadness with hope, terror with exquisiteness.

For Rebecca – Becky – Bobish migration to the US was a fearsome, lonely (even surrounded by similar migrants) journey with a promised yet largely unknown, butterfly-stomach destination and her past versed beautifully here: ‘In the meantime, memory was Prussian Blue / a cyanotype carried like ghostly love.’

Bobish worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the early 1900s where her migrant workmates burnt to death in the 1911 fire, but she was luckily absent. Yet ‘he (her boyfriend) cannot repair’ ‘the cracks that have opened beneath her skin’. I don’t know how long, if ever, your mind can cope with loss after such a thing.  My grandmother sold her knitting to posh shops in Cheltenham to buy her family out of the workhouse. These mirrors, while cracked, increase the equivalence for me in this work.

‘Every Poem is a lie’ is my favourite if I was pressed at knitting needle point to name one. ‘Where it hurts is the point of entry, a wormhole. / There is no such thing as time. We talk of passing, / cause and effect, tag something as a beginning, arbitrarily’. So deep. And in the same poem: Bobish, a seamstress, he a fish smoker. An unlikely pairing but isn’t that often the way? ‘Low Chroma (Coney Island 1946’ would be an equal favourite if I were allowed such. Wonderful quantum imagery and I too have fooled around with ‘if humans could photosynthesise’.

This review does little justice to the riches in this work from snoring dogs, to making verse from diabetes and wandering eyes (in more ways than one.) ‘You can never go back’ and yet in a literary sense Bobish has gone back, to and fro, immortalised.

While I am to poetry as a boulder is to an eagle, I am enjoying this versed biography and know I will re-read it many times. To return to resonances, many of my Nelder ancestors migrated from Cornwall because of the terror of poverty and fearsome landowners to settle in the Americas. Thank you, Magdalena Ball, for creating this act of love from the historical bare bones of human tragedy.

 

Author’s blog page on Bobish

New book! Bobish | Magdalena Ball

Amazon UK link https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bobish-Magdalena-Ball/dp/1922571601/

 

 

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