Geoff Nelder's Blog, page 7
March 22, 2019
Across The Nightingale Floor
[image error]I belong to an active science fiction and fantasy book group that meets monthly in the fabulous new Storyhouse library / theatre / cinema / restaurant. We are an eclectic mix of old and young, male and female but mainly from Earth.
Our book for March 2019 was “Across the Nightingale Floor” by Lian Hearn. This is not a book review as such and this blog post would not have been written were it not for the intriguing title. In brief the novel, probably targeted at teens, is set in medieval Japan, but using generic settings and mores of the era rather than real geography as I prefer to do.
It’s a classic revenge story in which our hero discovers he has powers such as super hearing, invisibility, being in two places at once, and being able to walk noiselessly and super carefully on a cunningly constructed wooden floor so that the creaks sound like a nightingale. As it happens Lian Hearn (aka Gillian Rubenstein and G. M. Hanson) knew of the reality of such floors as aural security devices and thought it would make a great premise. Trouble with this book is that while it is indeed a marvellous idea, it hardly features and our hero rushes across the floor in a kind of anti-climax. In spite of that I can recommend the novel especially to young readers who’d like to meet feudal Japanese troubles and cultures. A boy and a girl, apart but destined to meet, are both in dire trouble, trapped by evil or beneficent Lords. The boy has slowly developing superpowers that are fun to discover. I do wonder if the lad, Takeo, has so many superpowers that he could do anything. It was H.G. Wells who observed that “When anything can happen, nothing is interesting.”
However, returning to that clever, musical floor. Haven’t all of experienced this? As children we needed to tiptoe across floorboards at night, learning which boards complain at the slightest weight. As parents we discovered the burglars’ knowledge that the edges of wooden stairs are the more silent.
More interesting are musical roads. I used to drive on a road in the Scottish Borders between Coldstream and Berwick-upon-Tweed, where my dad lived. I could have sworn that the ridges in the road talked to me. “S L O W D O W N” it said for at least a mile. After a bit of research I discovered it was the result of a highways department experiment to calm traffic. However, I understand that the opposite effect resulted. Some drivers varied their speed to see when the noise the ridges made with the tyres spoke and some would go really fast for the fun of it. There is a link to something similar here
https://www.eta.co.uk/2016/06/24/musical-roads-to-soothe-traffic-calming/
I am reminded of road noise because we are intending to relocate our home from quiet rural-ish Chester to a suburb of Manchester. Sadly, Urmston is surrounded by motorways and busy A roads. I am keen to avoid living where traffic noise beats bird noise. Also because it would mean traffic pollutants would float up into my nostrils. I might be tempted though if a nearby road sang some Richard Strauss to me.
A plus then for Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn is the use she makes of sounds other than speech – a sensory achievement often ignored by so many writers.
Nelder News
The Other side of the Pebble is a short story of mine giving Goliath’s version of the event in the bible with David. Facts as I could ascertain them from various historical sources are accurate with a tweak of my imagination. Goliath was bullied as a boy and well it is in this
http://www.alternate-history-fiction.com/magazine/ahf-magazine-6.html
SUPPOSE WE – a science fiction novella, is with the publisher’s editor as we speak. FALLING UP, its sequel is nearly written.
INCREMENTAL is an amazing collection of surreal shorts. For a tenner, you can laugh, be amazed, and blurt into your coffee. paperback or as a Kindle and KindleUnlimited[image error]
Xaghra’s Revenge is set in Malta Libya, a harem in Constantinople and in France.
When pirates abducted 5000 from Gozo in 1551 revenge was inevitable even though it took 500 years for me to give it to them. Free on KindleUnlimited
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
My other books can be found on the Amazon Author page http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
Or if you fancy a children’s picture book about Timmy the Tornado – a kind of social story to help children grow up and be kind. ebook 99 pence https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
Chester’s Climate
Local to North Wales & Merseyside too. Data, graphs, analysis
Air Pollution ebook £1.50
More info https://payhip.com/b/62pM
The post Across The Nightingale Floor appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
Across a Nightingale Floor
[image error]I belong to an active science fiction and fantasy book group that meets monthly in the fabulous new Storyhouse library / theatre / cinema / restaurant. We are an eclectic mix of old and young, male and female but mainly from Earth.
Our book for March 2019 was “Across the Nightingale Floor” by Lian Hearn. This is not a book review as such and this blog post would not have been written were it not for the intriguing title. In brief the novel, probably targeted at teens, is set in medieval Japan, but using generic settings and mores of the era rather than real geography as I prefer to do.
It’s a classic revenge story in which our hero discovers he has powers such as super hearing, invisibility, being in two places at once, and being able to walk noiselessly and super carefully on a cunningly constructed wooden floor so that the creaks sound like a nightingale. As it happens Lian Hearn (aka Gillian Rubenstein and G. M. Hanson) knew of the reality of such floors as aural security devices and thought it would make a great premise. Trouble with this book is that while it is indeed a marvellous idea, it hardly features and our hero rushes across the floor in a kind of anti-climax. In spite of that I can recommend the novel especially to young readers who’d like to meet feudal Japanese troubles and cultures. A boy and a girl, apart but destined to meet, are both in dire trouble, trapped by evil or beneficent Lords. The boy has slowly developing superpowers that are fun to discover. I do wonder if the lad, Takeo, has so many superpowers that he could do anything. It was H.G. Wells who observed that “When anything can happen, nothing is interesting.”
However, returning to that clever, musical floor. Haven’t all of experienced this? As children we needed to tiptoe across floorboards at night, learning which boards complain at the slightest weight. As parents we discovered the burglars’ knowledge that the edges of wooden stairs are the more silent.
More interesting are musical roads. I used to drive on a road in the Scottish Borders between Coldstream and Berwick-upon-Tweed, where my dad lived. I could have sworn that the ridges in the road talked to me. “S L O W D O W N” it said for at least a mile. After a bit of research I discovered it was the result of a highways department experiment to calm traffic. However, I understand that the opposite effect resulted. Some drivers varied their speed to see when the noise the ridges made with the tyres spoke and some would go really fast for the fun of it. There is a link to something similar here
https://www.eta.co.uk/2016/06/24/musical-roads-to-soothe-traffic-calming/
I am reminded of road noise because we are intending to relocate our home from quiet rural-ish Chester to a suburb of Manchester. Sadly, Urmston is surrounded by motorways and busy A roads. I am keen to avoid living where traffic noise beats bird noise. Also because it would mean traffic pollutants would float up into my nostrils. I might be tempted though if a nearby road sang some Richard Strauss to me.
A plus then for Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn is the use she makes of sounds other than speech – a sensory achievement often ignored by so many writers.
Nelder News
The Other side of the Pebble is a short story of mine giving Goliath’s version of the event in the bible with David. Facts as I could ascertain them from various historical sources are accurate with a tweak of my imagination. Goliath was bullied as a boy and well it is in this
http://www.alternate-history-fiction.com/magazine/ahf-magazine-6.html
SUPPOSE WE – a science fiction novella, is with the publisher’s editor as we speak. FALLING UP, its sequel is nearly written.
INCREMENTAL is an amazing collection of surreal shorts. For a tenner, you can laugh, be amazed, and blurt into your coffee. paperback or as a Kindle and KindleUnlimited[image error]
Xaghra’s Revenge is set in Malta Libya, a harem in Constantinople and in France.
When pirates abducted 5000 from Gozo in 1551 revenge was inevitable even though it took 500 years for me to give it to them. Free on KindleUnlimited
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
My other books can be found on the Amazon Author page http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
Or if you fancy a children’s picture book about Timmy the Tornado – a kind of social story to help children grow up and be kind. ebook 99 pence https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
Chester’s Climate
Local to North Wales & Merseyside too. Data, graphs, analysis
Air Pollution ebook £1.50
More info https://payhip.com/b/62pM
The post Across a Nightingale Floor appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
December 25, 2018
TOUCH by Claire North – a writer’s novel
Touch by Claire North (2015) 426 pages (paperback)[image error]
I started reading this intriguing science fantasy novel in October and finished it Christmas Day, 2018. It would take a normal reader a couple of days but I had my own nonsense to write.
Should be compulsory reading for writers.
Just like a piano tuner once told me that Puccini’s La Boheme was a singer’s opera then so Touch is a writers’ novel.
Why?
Many novels are 100,000 words of a story told through the senses of a single narrator in his or own singular body. Many others have perhaps a handful of narrators still within their own bodies. The art of the writer is to make the reader believe in those narrators, feel their sensations – what they smell, see, hear, touch and taste along with their fears, loves, and understand them, care for what happens to them. In Touch, we have one mind—the narrator’s—but hundreds of bodies. The clue is in the title: When Kepler touches the skin of someone else and wills it so, he / she can ‘jump’ into that person’s body and escape enemies, ripple to the front of a queue, learn skills, have fun or fear. Such a ‘ghost’ entity leaves the host perplexed, of course. Their own minds slept during their body invasion and awake maybe a few seconds, hours, days or rarely years later. Some are pleased that a boring journey only took seconds while others wake bloody in a hospital.
The writer in me saw something else besides a cunning plot and enviable literary skill. All those bodies of that single narrator are different. From the obese to the anorexic, old person to the child, hooker to doctor, murderer to the police officer, the bloom of health to a dying patient. All these characters and more became the body of the narrator and needed to be described, often in just a few clever words. Eg from Chapter 64 “…I slipped from skin to skin, a bump, a shudder, a slowing-down and a speeding-up, a swaying of the carriage, a stepping on another’s foot, I am
a child dressed in school uniform,
an old man bent double over his stick.
I bleed in the body of a woman on the first day of her period, ache down to the soles of my tired builder’s feet.
I crave alcohol, my nose burst and swollen from too much of the same.
The doors open and I am young again…”
I have not touched on the main story or its subplots. Like many of my own surreal stories the concept is, to me, more interesting and dare I say, more important, than the story itself.
Nelder News
SUPPOSE WE – a science fiction novella, is with the publisher’s editor as we speak. FALLING UP, its sequel is nearly written.
https://geoffnelder.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/fire1537514316.mp4
INCREMENTAL is an amazing collection of surreal shorts. For a tenner, you can laugh, be amazed, and blurt into your coffee. paperback or as a Kindle and KindleUnlimited
Xaghra’s Revenge is set in Malta Libya, a harem in Constantinople and in France.
When pirates abducted 5000 from Gozo in 1551 revenge was inevitable even though it took 500 years for me to give it to them. Free on KindleUnlimited
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
My other books can be found on the Amazon Author page http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
Or if you fancy a children’s picture book about Timmy the Tornado – a kind of social story to help children grow up and be kind. ebook 99 pence https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
[image error]Chester’s Climate
Local to North Wales & Merseyside too. Data, graphs, analysis
Air Pollution ebook £1.50
More info https://payhip.com/b/62pM
The post TOUCH by Claire North – a writer’s novel appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
December 5, 2018
Fond of a font
The publishing industry professionals are up in arms. Well not all of them, but the traditionalists are. There I go tainting a swathe of friends unfairly. Let’s start again.
A year ago at a writers’ retreat in Greece (Limnisa.com) I launched my imagination into space. LL-Publications, who publishes my ARIA Trilogy and INCREMENTAL short story collection, said, ‘Nelder, we want a science fiction novella – a series.’ I admit that the scifi story in me bursting to get out is a trope: crashlanded spaceship lands on a barely inhabitable planet and need to survive / check possibility of human settlement / watch for nasties. Where it is different is that the natives are a million years ahead of Earth in their civilisation, science and evolution. They ignore the four humans crying out for help. Worse, but I won’t give too much away.
I’ve taken this opportunity to create a strange world yet with viable science even if that science follows rules in the Kepler 20 planetary system. The buildings are odd, the natives… where are they? Not all the birds are birds and not all the butterflies are lepidoptera. There is so much strangeness that even the charming British science fiction writer, Jaine Fenn of the great HIDDEN EMPIRE series says it has ‘original touches’. One of the butterflies attaches itself to Gaston, the senior science officer. It appears so much in the story it has become a silent yet important character.
While in Greece I was in the spaceship and it needed a name. Many real space vehicles, films and novels use names of famous astronauts and scientists, or laudable human goals such as Endeavor, Enterprise, Challenger but I wanted to be different (surprise, surprise). Suppose we call the ship erm… SUPPOSE WE. So I did. Initially as a temporary, working name and the novella’s temp title also became SUPPOSE WE.
However, as I neared the end and I mentioned to the critique group I inhabit that I might change the name, I was threatened with a lynching. Suppose we … could do this, or that. Suppose we don’t. Suppose we explore the universe and suppose we discover something absolutely astonishing… The group and I fell in love with the name and what it could mean. Even so it is unusual and in publishing terms that makes it a ‘filter’ between a browsing reader in a bookshop – strike one.
The atmosphere on the Keplerian planet is often a lilac colour. I found a stock image of an astronaut on a lilac planet with a butterfly! What are the odds? The publisher bought the licence then played with fonts. This is what happened.
[image error]Yay. It’s bold, adventurous and experimental and there’s an enigmatic tower in the story that the vertical Suppose could symbolise. Butbutbut will casual browsers in the Kindle and bookstores ‘get’ it? Has it become filter number two? I put the question on facebook, some scifi writers and book discussion boards and sat back. Whoa! Like Marmite, people either loved it or hated it. Well, maybe hated is too strong but many found it hard to read. Do you? I am wondering if we’d hit on a cusp in optic perception when a few people couldn’t read it at all. Someone said maybe it is like the issue some have in reading white on dark backgrounds.
I laughed when a friend read the title as WE SUPPOSE then a few more did. Funny because I had considered We Suppose instead of Suppose We. They’re both enigmatic and I might use We Suppose as the title of a sequel!
I examined the comments from those who advise we shouldn’t use that font (EVAA). Many merely found it difficult initially, some found it unreadable and the industry professionals (agents and other publishers) wanted us to be normal, use standard fonts and horizontal words. You see, they are interested in sales. Some publishers expend more money and energy into marketing tricks and being ‘normal’ than in the art, originality and literary exuberance of what is between the covers.
To be honest, I don’t sell many books. I’m not famous and probably not good enough. So if a few readers don’t get the title I’ll not notice. In the meantime more responses rolled in and gradually the swing was towards acceptance. Some loved the bizarreness and scifi look although one (I was surprised it was only one) accused us of being ‘too’ scifi and pretentious. On the more positive side some readers have come up with interesting variations:
[image error]
Alt cover for Suppose We by Peter Baldiccino
Eg this from twitter’s @moonsparrot (turns out that I’d taught him over 30 years ago!)
My favourite comment came from Bindi Workman, writer of fantasy, poetry and shorts as Robyn Cain: “It’s good to be different and true to yourself.”
From Oscar Windsor-Smith “I like it a lot. The title does take a few seconds to sink in, but that’s no bad thing, surely? Rather like those scrambled sentences that are deliberately created with missing letters, the pattern recognition part of our brains engages and gives a rewarding buzz once the meaning resolves. The typeface is very distinctive and the overall effect is eye catching and intriguing. I think you have (another) winner.”
We have yet to make a decision but the experience has been illuminating.
Other Nelder news
INCREMENTAL is an amazing collection of surreal shorts. For a tenner, you can laugh, be amazed, and blurt into your coffee. paperback or as a Kindle and KindleUnlimited[image error]
Xaghra’s Revenge is set in Malta Libya, a harem in Constantinople and in France.
When pirates abducted 5000 from Gozo in 1551 revenge was inevitable even though it took 500 years for me to give it to them. Free on KindleUnlimited
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
My other books can be found on the Amazon Author page http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
Or if you fancy a children’s picture book about Timmy the Tornado – a kind of social story to help children grow up and be kind. ebook 99 pence https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
Chester’s Climate
Local to North Wales & Merseyside too. Data, graphs, analysis
Air Pollution ebook £1.50
More info https://payhip.com/b/62pM
The post Fond of a font appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
October 3, 2018
#Copyright flutterbies
[image error]
There are butterflies in my stomach. What does that mean? Am I worried about something, or scared that an event is approaching about which I have little control? Yes, and no. SUPPOSE WE is approaching lift off and it nearly got away from me, its author. This working title for a spaceship is quirky enough but stuck as I and the BSFA Orbit 7 critique group became familiar with its four human crew and a wayward AI that called itself CAN because… well, many reasons but one was that it came out of a can. Butterflies? Get on with it.
When I was 10 a teacher made my class learn a 60-word, 10-line poem about a butterfly. It was Flying Crooked by Robert Graves. Here it is by kind permission of its copyright holders Carcanet Press Ltd and as seen in The Complete Poems v.1 Robert Graves programme: poetry. 1995
Flying Crooked
The butterfly, the cabbage white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has – who knows so well as I? –
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying crooked gift.
Robert Graves [image error]
(Probably written in 1931 unless someone knows better.)
I was already into writing SUPPOSE WE when a butterfly landed on my laptop. It was at the remote writing retreat, Limnisa, on the Methana peninsular of Greece. There are hundreds of butterflies drinking in the nectar, like other insects, of the many aromatic flowers on site. That butterfly flew into my story, but as an alien creature. The narrator, Gaston, names it Papillon (well, he’s French) but it is not actually a butterfly as he discovers at the end.
Flying Crooked is such a clever poem. It flows erratically like a butterfly, lurching here and here in its random, predator-avoiding flight. Maybe it is more than that. Random movement might get through certain airflow more efficiently if gathering information—scents is the aim. Flying in a straight line wouldn’t take in the aromas from surrounding plants as much as a meandering path. Maybe that’s what Papillon is doing in my SUPPOSE WE. Apparently wandering but really…
Naturally, I want to include lines from the poem in the novella. Maybe the whole poem to set the tone. Apparently Robert Graves was a little narked (as he often was with his agents and publishers, especially over I, Claudius) at people poking fun at his poem. In a 1933 letter he says that people “fail to understand that the cabbage-white’s seemingly erratic flight provides a metaphor for all original and constructive thought.” – from Poetry Friday site. Hang on, copyright for poems, lyrics etc are with the author’s estate until 70 years after their death. Graves didn’t leave us until 1985.
I knew that the maximum penalty in the Magistrates Court for copyright infringement is 6 months jail and £50,000 – gulp. More if it went to the Crown Court. See http://libanswers.anglia.ac.uk/copyright/faq/78776
So I found the Robert Graves estate website and they directed me to the Circana Press Ltd who handles copyright.
Their licence application form asks for the title of the publication from which I obtained the poem. I wanted to enter: the brain of my teacher in 1957! Haha. I looked at all the poetry books on my shelves and those in Chester library. None of them had Flying Crooked. It’s rare to find in print. Plenty of websites but that’s not what was needed. Even books of the nation’s favourite poems didn’t contain it. Finally, I found a couple that the library had to order in, including The Complete Poems v.1 Robert Graves programme: poetry. 1995 Carcanet Press
The form also needed to know how many printed copies there will be. I had to guess here, based on the sales of my previous science fiction novels. Not an exact science with print-on-demand publishing these days! Naturally, LL-Publications and I hope to sell millions of copies but in reality it will be hundreds. If by a flying crooked miracle sales go into orbit, I’ll have to return to Carcanet and pay more than the £95 + VAT I’ve paid so far, for an extension to my licence to use the poem in the book.
Don’t get me wrong. I benefit via the ACLS (Authors’ Licencing and Collecting Society) from where people photocopy or quote my own works – although why they do, I’m not sure. I think it’s great that authors should receive a modicum of recognition and money long after they originally composed it, and that a legacy of that goes to their children and grandchildren. I smirk at the thought of my paltry royalties continuing after a lorry gets my bike with me on it, and helps my wife and descendants to buy a vegan icecream. I believe both of Graves’ wives have passed on but some of their children survive to benefit from my licence payments for their father’s genius.
As for this blog. I believe I can quote the poem legally under the ‘fair use’ purpose because it is for critique and quote. I don’t make any money from this blog. See fair use guidelines in UK law here https://www.bl.uk/business-and-ip-centre/articles/fair-use-copyright-explained
Note these lines:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Note this behaviour of butterflies isn’t limited to Cabbage Whites nor even to butterflies! Nor does a butterfly guess, nor is it hopeless, but the prosody (or rhythm) of the verse forces us to think of their apparently random flights. Also, perhaps butterflies think it is advantageous to let predators believe it is hopeless. Love the ‘who knows so well as I’ for having a ‘sense of how not to fly’. At least not without being inside a thin aluminium tube.
Copyright applies to images too. SUPPOSE WE is set on a planet with a lilac sky and purple vegetation – on the whole – and I wanted the butterfly to feature. I was going to paint one such myself, but found a fantastic image in the stock art files. Jim Brown at LL-Publications said yes they can work with it and agreed with its magnificence for the project and paid for its licence. What do you think?[image error]
The moral of this copyright story is to check if your quotes are within the author’s limitation for copyright and if you possess a strong urge to use it, get a licence.
Other Nelder News
https://geoffnelder.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/glassbreak1537475868.mp4
My insane collection of 25 short stories on an incremental theme is due to be published on October 6th 2018 initially as an ebook followed by a paperback. Stories such as a pothole that doubles in size daily, and doesn’t stop! A man wakes up on the ceiling. Preorder now at
My Maltese islands’ based historical fantasy continues to sell: When pirates abducted 5000 from Gozo in 1551 revenge was inevitable even though it took 500 years for me to give it to them.
XAGHRA’S REVENGE is Free on KindleUnlimited and cheaper than a rum and coke otherwise
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia pandemic. KindleUnlimited
and paperback.
ARIA: LEFT LUGGAGE smarturl.it/1fexhs
If you’re going to BristolCon on Saturday 27th October 2018, you might see me there.
The post #Copyright flutterbies appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
September 21, 2018
MORE MENTAL THAN INCREMENTAL
[image error]
I am really pleased with this collection of my own favourite short stories. Some have been published before, but in anthologies or magazines no longer available or rare. Such as What Kept You? A story published in Ultraverse in which time accelerated with altitude on a strange planet. My favourite is Prime Meridian in which a teacher’s house is hit by a grape-sized meteorite at 3:15pm — every day! Here’s the blurb:
Did you enjoy The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, and those stories that follows the logical consequences of a slight abnormality in everyday life? This collection of 25 surreal short stories are of mixed genre but mostly science fiction, fantasy, and a bit mad. Or, as one beta-reader put it: “More mental than incremental.”
Example: a pothole doubles in size daily near Madrid. Is it merely subsidence? Another appears at its antipodal point in New Zealand. When will it stop? Does it stop?
A man awakes on his ceiling and can’t move…
Sir Francis Bacon, walking a dog in the woods, spots a rope and pulls it…
It will be published on October 6th 2018 by LL-Publications who produced ARIA. Why October 6th? It’s in honour of my mother’s birthday. She had joined me up to the Children’s Science Fiction Book Club when I was just old enough to read.
Pre-order now! Cheaper than a coffee and cake. This link gives you your Amazon Kindle anywhere in the world.
The post MORE MENTAL THAN INCREMENTAL appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
August 28, 2018
One new and one revised book
I’m delighted to report… several things.
INCREMENTAL is to be published on the 6th October 2018 by LL-Publications
An updated version of How to Win Short Story Competitions by me and Dave Haslett has been released today
I am reading Claire North’s clever body swapping novel, TOUCH, and she wrote the sky having the colour of “a two-day bruise.” Another phrase I might have to steal.
[image error]1)INCREMENTAL is a collection of 25 short stories I’ve written over several years but mainly in the last 12 months. They are slightly mad, surreal tales with an incremental element to them. ie. something grows or is added to each day, or other unit of time. For example a pothole doubles in size daily. You’ll be amazed how soon a country can be swallowed… then the world… then… Another story has a sound, heard globally, increase in volume by a decibel every day. I loved dreaming up these stories and had trouble not laughing too much while writing them.
The publisher of my ARIA trilogy is publishing it on October 6th 2018. It would have been my mum’s birthday. She joined me to the Children’s Science Fiction Book Club when I was an infant, an act that kickstarted my interest in “What-if?” tales of the possible and the bizarre.
2) HOW TO WIN SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS is written by two judges of fiction: Dave Haslett and myself. We’d met in an Exmouth hotel, recorded a long conversation about this topic and this is the edited transcript. There are two short stories in the book.
Here’s me and Dave chatting about the book.[image error]
Kindle http://mybook.to/storycomps2k
Paperback http://mybook.to/storycomps2p
[image error]
Other Nelder News
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
My other books can be found on the Amazon Author page http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
Or if you fancy a children’s picture book about Timmy the Tornado – a kind of social story to help children grow up and be kind. ebook 99 pence https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
The post One new and one revised book appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
June 22, 2018
Books and biscuits
Yesterday I gave my fifth book talk of the season about Xaghra’s Revenge to readers at the Lache Library, Chester, UK.
[image error]I gave a quick outline of the plot. Fact: pirates abducted 5,000 people off the Mediterranean island of Gozo in 1551 and sold them into slavery or ransomed the rich. A few young women were shipped to a harem in Constantinople. I gave those souls revenge in the novel, but often while doing research the truth is stranger than fiction.
Most of the attendees at my talks in Britain had been to the Maltese islands but didn’t know of the pirate raid in 1551 and were as shocked as I. Most didn’t know that one of the oldest buildings in the world (older than the pyramids and Stonehenge) is in Xaghra on Gozo.[image error]
I showed them photographs of the ruins along with a facsimile of the Mother figure found there and thought to be over 5,000 years old. Of course religious archaeologists automatically label ancient, mysterious ruins as temples but were they really? The Ggantija could have been a community meeting place, a memorial or a celebratory building. Or since we know virtually nothing about those people, perhaps an alien beacon or landing place. I wrote a short story sequel to XR called The Visit based on that idea – must do something with it!
I even baked biscuits for yesterday’s Chester library talk. Ginger biscuits, vegan, baked as close as I could to how a 1550s Maltese cook would make them. Delicious too.
The discussion ranged on oddities discovered. For example many of the abducted were sold at a slave auction in Tarhuna, Libya. To this day Maltese surnames can be found among residents there.
Before that though – why didn’t the people on the island hide in the many underground caves and passages? The island is limestone and is riddled with holes. The official reason is that during such times of imminent raids a curfew existed in the C16th such that people all over the island had to go into the citadel at night or when the bells sounded. I think many did that (ironically, making it easier to be captured once the few defenders thought they’d strike a deal with the pirates and threw open the gates), but many could have hidden.
[image error]
The square in Xaghra under which is a bomb shelter and maybe older than the 1940s
I found a second world war shelter under the main square in Xaghra. Just by chance one Easter a few years ago I saw a line of people vanishing underground and thought I’ll have some of that! I suggested to the organisers that such caverns could be much older, centuries older, but was met by denial. In fact that particular shelter is hard to find on the internet and doesn’t exist on tourist leaflets and guidebooks.
A word of warning to other writers of historical fiction. Just because a remarkably beautiful flower is abundant all over the
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Yellow oxalis and the Corallian limestone.
islands – the Yellow oxalis, check when it arrived. I was going to mention it in the scenery setting for 1551 when I discovered that flower was brought to the islands by an English woman in 1806! She’d probably brought it from South Africa – its often called the English weed.
I read out an excerpt of Xaghra’s Revenge. You can see it here https://geoffnelder.com/sample-xaghras-revenge/
Other Nelder News
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
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April 21, 2018
Sample of Xaghra’s Revenge
Xaghra’s Revenge excerpt from Chapter 23 used on talks
Read to the Salon literary event in Malta April 2018 and at the Gozo Central Library
[image error]1551 – Stjepan was one of 5,000 people on the island of Gozo, near Malta, who were mass abducted by pirates and sold as slaves in Libya. His wife, Lidia, was taken with other women to a harem in Constantinople.
Convinced his life couldn’t get worse, Stjepan sat on a warm stone outside a single-floor long hut. On the rocky horizon, the pomegranate sun whispered goodbye to another blistering day. It appeared huge, as if welled up with the same tears Stjepan fought to control. Losing his family was bad enough, but the talisman, too? A whiff of rosemary reignited a memory of Lidia stirring a stewpot, but that merely reinforced the grumbling in his stomach.
An uneasy shiver told him of a presence behind him, probably Guillium intent on poking him with a rusty Crusader short sword. He’d stolen it off one of the young slaves who’d found it in the sand.
A guttural voice spoke to the hills as if they listened too. “You’re missing today’s speciality, hard bread and sour cheese. You need to keep your strength up.”
Stjepan looked up, not sure who’d spoken. He was surprised that Sabid would bother and waved his hand dismissively rather than reveal the angst in his voice.
The negro was in grumbling mood. “Stjepan, we are in similar circumstances. Here we are where nothing much grows, the sun bakes us, our master makes us dig ditches. Both lost our families to raiders. You probably think that I was one of them, don’t you? On el Suleimein I was a trustee, but a slave nonetheless.”
Stjepan didn’t know why Sabid talked to him. He couldn’t give a fig whether he was a slave or not. On the other hand, the moor had been less barbaric than other overseers. The big man’s empty right eye socket encouraged curiosity rather than a search for emotions. Finally, Stjepan found his voice.
“I’ve lost more than you know.”
“We’ve all lost loved ones in this sorry world, Stjepan. Ah, then it was the trinket they took off you.” His face hadn’t betrayed humour, nor teasing. Stjepan’s hand slid into his ripped, once-green shirt as if the numinous effigy still hung from his neck.
Stjepan murmured, “As I said, I’ve lost more than you could know.”
“And I know more than you think, my Gozo friend.” He handed over a piece of bread as if it too was a talisman only to loosen a tongue. “In my village, our magi used objects to make the unusual happen. Is that what your’s did?”
“Our religion has relics of saints we pray to.”
“Not the same, is it?”
Sabid either knew more about the stone female effigy or he was an intuitive speculator.
The man squatted to whisper. Stjepan was surprised he could smell his sweat since he must reek as much as anyone. “The magi are human. Even with their incantations they die, eventually. I was with our Mgubi-the-wise, and he told me the spells on the feathers were in the minds of the victims. The feathers were nothing.”
Stjepan’s voice became dangerously loud. “I thought that but why am I here, my wife God knows where, and my son…?” Emotion dried his throat and he couldn’t continue.
“If your spirits have been asleep for too long, they’d take a long time to work. You’ll need patience.”
“Then what about you, Sabid? If your spirits don’t need a talisman and your magi have used them all the time, why are you stuck out here with me?”
“I don’t pretend to know. Perhaps my people’s magic is being used for others or has grown tired.” He poked a stick in the sand and drew a perfect circle. “I know this. If your spirits had lain quiet for many generations, then by awakening and moving through you, something big will happen. Don’t you think so?”
Stjepan didn’t know what to think. He looked at the circle in the sand. The setting sun cast shadows on half of the rim. It was as if he was one of those grains of sand. A scintilla, one among countless thousands. As he stared gloomily into the sandy arena, a small part of the centre shifted. Both men stood and stared briefly at each other in shock before looking again at the circle. From beneath the centre an emerald green beetle surfaced. The size of a date, it looked at them, turned and scurried away.
Stjepan wondered if it would turn at the circle’s circumference; give up trying to escape and return to its hole. After straddling the indented curve, the iridescent beetle crawled away at speed.
The metaphor was obvious. The two men exchanged glances.
Stjepan wondered if the beetle’s hole was better than his own usual night reposing places. He spoke first. “What have we to lose?”
Sabid grunted approval, but tapped his nose with a scarred finger. “Although two scarabs are better than one, this thought needs exploring more.”
Stjepan eyed Sabid as if for the first time. Ignore that empty right orb and the man’s face was extraordinarily handsome with square jaw and smooth black-olive skin. Old: mid-forties, broad shoulders and taller than most. Perhaps he’d lost his eye as the result of envy for his good looks. A jealous master. Yet disfigured slaves held a higher value. He could have seen something he shouldn’t. Whatever it was, Sabid would be a useful ally in an escape situation.
Sabid shook the light manacles they wore at their ankles. “These wouldn’t be a problem, my friend, but look at our beetle now.”
Stjepan’s eyes followed the pointing finger. A red hairy spider the size of a hand had pounced on the beetle.
Stjepan’s stomach tightened. He stood. He knew the Camel Spider could run on sand faster than a man. “Surely it is no match for the beetle?”
The spider took on the battle and had turned the beetle on to its back and sunk its fangs into the softer underbelly.
Sabid stood too and threw a stone, but missed. “It’s already over. Our beetle is having its insides turned into gruel.”
Picking up a sharp fist-sized stone and wishing he had his farmer’s sling, Stjepan took a few cautious steps closer before hurling it. Both beetle and spider were hit, putting an end to misery for one, and executing the other.
Scratching his head, Sabid grumbled, “That changes things, Stjepan. It’s an omen.”
“I thought the beetle was an omen, from Tzabib, telling me to make my way to Gozo and–”
“I thought so too, but other spirits are operating here.”
“So, I shouldn’t try to leave? That cannot be right. My home is on Gozo, my son is there and my wife will try and get there. I know that.” Tears filled his eyes.
“We need to think more like in a game of chess. Sacrifice pawns to gain strategic positions for later. Consider this, Stjepan. Who is likely to be in a stronger position–you as a slave digging ditches, or Lidia in a rich merchant’s home possibly earning enough to buy her freedom?”
“She could as easily be in chains in the harem’s cellar.”
“Harem, possibly, but if she’s good looking–don’t look at me like that–they don’t get damaged. Unless…”
Stjepan didn’t want him to finish. He knew women in the seraglio had to tread carefully. Upset the eunuch bodyguards and she could be badly treated. Even geldings have a nasty kick.
“So, the plan is to wait for her to buy her way out and come for me? That isn’t the way for a man.”
“I agree, but it is one way for a slave.”
The cool of the night crept in over Stjepan’s shoulders. He hadn’t agreed to stay but he might have to, until chance threw him an open window.
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There is a provenance of nostalgia to this excerpt. I lived in Cheltenham Spa in the 1950s and 60s. My street, Hester’s Way produced SIDEREAL, a science fiction fanzine printed by Gestetner skins and stapled. I thought every street produced a scifi magazine. My dad illustrated it including the cover art. I thought every dad did that. One of his illustrations was for a story on Mars when a man drew a circle in the sand. A tiny creature crawled up through the centre of the circle – first contact. Hence the circle in Libyan sand in the above excerpt.
#Free on #KindleUnlimited – or cost of a cake
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April 20, 2018
Why do a book tour?
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Why do a book tour?
It was inevitable. I’d written a historical fantasy set in the Maltese islands. We go there for a holiday every few years so as sure as sand + cement = mortar, this year’s holiday had to involve the nervous energy involved in public appearances.
[image error]It was made easier because the Preluna Hotel & Spa in Sliema, Malta offered to host a book signing. Aren’t they nice? Their Marketing Manager, Mandy, said that since I’d stayed at their hotel while researching XAGHRA’S REVENGE and wrote some of it there, they’d be honoured to arrange a signing. They released a notice in their newsletter and created a poster. Information was posted on a facebook group Gozone (nice play on the name of Gozo, the island from which 5,000 souls were kidnapped by pirates in 1551 – the core of Xaghra’s Revenge), which led to invitations to other events. The Central Library on Gozo invited me to talk about the book to their book group and a local bookshop, Bargate Bookshop in Victoria, Gozo invited me to a book signing. In addition, a local poet-Miriam Calleja- invited me to a literary Salon meet (see below) one evening.
Besides the stage fright one always gets before a public appearance, two big problems loomed. How many books did I need to take to Malta? What to wear? You may laugh, but I usually pack two books to read and shorts and casual shirts – maybe not appropriate for a suave book event. Haha. I am under no illusions about quantities of books. I sum it up with a signing event I did at NewCon in Northampton years ago. I sat next to Ian M Banks – the science fiction writer (RIP). His queue wound around the room and out of the door. I had no queue, however, Ian was a gent and advised readers in his line to give my EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEE scifi novel a try. So, was ten books going to be enough in Malta? Yes, if it was just the signing at the hotel. So I arranged for the publisher, Solstice Publishing, to send ten to a friend in Malta. Then the other invites came in so I took ten more in my baggage. Even that wasn’t enough. I ran out of books at Bargate Bookshop and had to disappoint people who turned up. Luckily, the shop owner kindly offered to stock and sell them. Yeay.
It’s charming bookstore selling everything the local community needs to help their kids through school and college and for local readers. As I sat there I was reminded of a reading I did in Carlisle for my humorous thriller, ESCAPING REALITY. A couple of young mums came through the doorway and aimed straight at me. Good – I poised my pen. One said to me, “’Scuse, love, can you shift? You’re in front of Spot the Dog.”
Of the events I suppose the Salon evening was the most intellectual and frequently bursting with laughter. Salons were originally in women’s homes, centuries ago when female writers and artists struggled to gain recognition. They were evenings of music, poetry, discussions, art and stories. This one was organised by Miriam Calleja on a theme of Anemoia: nostalgia for a time you’ve never experienced. Appropriately, the venue was Marpesia & Co in San Gwann, Malta a new jewellery shop – exquisite yet not expensive pieces made by the owner. I heard meaningful poetry read, stories told and they listened to my Chapter 23, an excerpt where two slaves discuss their fate and draw metaphorical conclusions from watching a beetle in the sand. I described the sun as a setting pomegranate – ironic because Miriam’s poetry volume is Pomegranate Heart. Link here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pomegranate-Heart-Poetry-Miriam-Calleja-ebook/dp/B01AT478JM/
Miriam’s piece in The Times of Malta about Xaghra’s Revenge
In spite of the stage fright I am very glad I did the book tour. Through it I met more real Maltese people and spoke with readers.
Latest review of Xaghra’s Revenge is humbling for me coming from the literary reviewer and poet, Magdalena Ball. Read it here.
Other Nelder News
Run, hide! alien apocalypse.
Infectious amnesia. Free on KindleUnlimited or
99 pence/cents ARIA smarturl.it/1fexhs
My other books can be found on the Amazon Author page http://author.to/Amazonauthorpage
Or if you fancy a children’s picture book about Timmy the Tornado – a kind of social story to help children grow up and be kind. ebook 99 pence https://payhip.com/b/2aj3
The post Why do a book tour? appeared first on Geoff Nelder - Science Fiction Writer.
