Gardening on Crete

Here are some obligatory shots of the garden here. The weeds were at shoulder height and after 3 days I pulled them all and dug over the soil. This shot is of the front garden restored to order and salad seeds planted:

 

Here’s a garden that runs up beside the path to the ruin behind my house. At this point I was halfway along it. The Ruin, incidentally, is a name that has stuck from the days when that was precisely what it was. It even has a sign saying so on the wall despite it now being a self-contained apartment.

 

And here’s a shot from the front of the house showing one of the 3 piles of weeds I pulled out. It’s been very therapeutic exercise, as are the walks I’ve been going on, which I will get to anon.  

 

Oh, and I only came close to putting my hand on a scorpion twice.

Sullivanized House

I’m out in Crete now having spent the first three days here weeding and digging over the garden, cleaning the house and sorting out and passing on, either to neighbours or an animal charity, Caroline’s remaining belongings here. It has been hard, again, but I expected that. On day four I took my first walk – a six mile circuit up into the mountains behind my house then back by road. Today’s walk was a mere five miles, but if you consider about one mile of that was roughly on the level while the rest was two miles down a staircase then two miles back up it...

But more on that later. I’m going to catch up here with some pictures from my house in England and how I’ve Sullivanized it. First off here are the ‘frames’, though no actual frame is involved with these Perspex thingies.

 

Here are the pictures unpacked from their tube and laid out on the bed to flatten out.

 

Here they all are now in their frames.

 

And here they are up. These ones are in my living room.

 

While these ones are in my bedroom.

 

 

The picture of the Skinner is directly opposite my bed. As I mentioned elsewhere I prefer my monsters to the real kind. Will it give me nightmares? Well, at the moment I find that my main nightmare exists when I wake up and remember that everything that happened from June last year really did happen. Frankly I would prefer the running away from the Skinner variety.  

Bit of a Stroll

Since Caroline’s death I’ve stopped drinking alcohol because my head just hasn’t been in the right place for that, stopped smoking after a brief venture back into it while she was dying, and I started walking. The reason for this last is twofold. In the past I have been prone to depression and know that exercise is the best cure and, if ever there was a time for depression to get hold of me, it’s now. Also, for many years I’ve wanted to lose some weight, so I’m walking and dieting. I guess the psychology of it is that I’m controlling something I can control and fighting a battle I can win. I’ll now intersperse this with some pictures from one of the last walks I took. 

Head out from Latchingdon ...

past what used to be the Wagon and Horses pub. 

A common sight in Essex is the house that 'used to be a pub'.

As far as the dieting is concerned I’ve cut out potatoes, bread, pasta, rice … basically high or complex carbs. In fact, since I’m now living alone, I got all that stuff out of the house so I have little choice in the matter. I’m now eating one meal a day of veg like cabbage, courgettes or peas along with some meat or fish. Sometimes I’ll eat some more in the evening: fruit, canned fish or nuts.

Turn right down the permanently dank Rectory Lane ...

to the end where someone is converting a water tower into a house, 

and seems to have got no further than this over 2 years. Turn left...

I started off with a walk Caroline and I did together, though in reverse and with some variation to the route. This was basically a circuit in Maldon that included the side of the river and the promenade. I then bought a pedometer or, rather, I bought some cheap pedometers off ebay then discovering how crap they were gave them to a charity shop and got something better: an Omron GoSmart pedometer. I also learned that 10,000 paces a day is what I should be aiming for, and began extending that walk. I’m now somewhere in the region of 15,000 paces.

along Lower Burnham Road overlooking the Crouch until reaching ...

the war memorial. Turn right.

I went from a 2 mile walk a day to 4 miles, then 5 and finally to where I am now at 7+ miles a day. I extended the walk around Maldon to take me round the ring road to the other side, then back, and then along the river and the prom again. However, one thing has perpetually annoyed me about walking around Maldon: I have to drive to get there.

Tramp down to Althorne Station. Manage to get across the level crossing without being squashed because, y'know, trains don't tend to swerve in unexpected directions.  

Finally reach the River Crouch and turn left at the marina. 

Take in the briny air and observe the mud.

I next used Google Earth to plot some circuits from my house in Latchingdon and these came in at 5, 6 and 7+ miles. The problem with this part of Essex is that pavement runs out once you get beyond the bounds of a village. I could have tried some of the local footpaths but, as you know, it has been very wet and I would probably have come back with a few pounds of Essex clay on each shoe. As for walking beside the roads … well you can usually find a verge to walk on or beside and, if you listen and keep your eyes open, it’s easy enough to step out of the way.

Tramp uphill from the sea wall back to 

the boring roads.

I’ve done a number of circuits now (it’s working out at about 50 miles a week) but have now settled on one that takes me down to the river Crouch, along that for a little way, then back up and home by road. It’s about 7.5 miles and the pictures of that walk are what you are seeing here. Maybe these aren’t for British people but, the internet is worldwide so others might be interested… 

Go past what used to be the Black Lion where Caroline worked behind the bar in the days when I first met her - another 'used to be a pub' house - then back by...

dodgy roads where white van man tries to clip you with his wing mirror.

    

Skyhorse Covers

Here are the full covers of the US versions of Polity Agent and Jupiter War that Skyhorse should have sent to the printer by now:

Enjoy!

Jupiter War - Publishers Weekly Review

This just in from Skyhorse Publishing. I haven't seen the full review but there's an excerpt below.

This dizzying and unusually thoughtful space opera, which concludes the trilogy begun in The Departure and Zero Point, shows the tyrannical forces of Earth trying to stop a lone genius from fleeing the solar system. Serene Galahad, Earth’s psychotic dictator, is willing to kill most of the “human scum” and genetically alter the rest in order to mend the damage of overpopulation. Alan Saul has been mechanically augmented until he is much more than human, and he now questions whether preserving the humans aboard his stolen space station is worth the bother. These two very clever opponents, armed with mind-stretching super technology, feint and parry as they struggle for supremacy. Mordant commentary interspersed throughout the action reminds readers to observe how the different definitions of “humanity” influence the conflict and the question of who—if anyone—is in the right. The result is a challenging, extremely satisfying read.(May)

Jupiter War Paperback

Bella Pagan at Macmillan informs me that Jupiter War is out in paperback on the 10th of April. Copies have arrived there even now and very pretty they look too.

Happy reading!

Full of Illusions

On June 3rd of last year there was only this post that might have given anyone a hint that something was wrong:

Well, how odd that my last post concerned health systems. So, without going into personal detail, what do you think of the likelihood of this happening on the NHS: getting to see a doctor, without appointment, in quarter of an hour; less than an hour later getting blood and urine taken for testing at a microbiology lab; then an ultrasound scan shortly after that, but only when your bladder is full enough – being sent away by the technician to drink beer and water; then being sent by the technician to a specialist doctor for further check-ups and another scan (though having to wait for half an hour because the doctor was busy); and the next day – at midday – getting an MRI scan; and, in every case, being greeted by the professional concerned with, “Yes, I know who you are.” Actually, I wonder if this would even be possible in England if you went private. Quite a lot of this is to do with numbers of people.

Of course this was about Caroline who, though she felt fine at the time, had noticed some blood appearing where it hadn't since before her (early) menopause. I wrote some more for this blog, but she didn't want me to post stuff about her and, as things steadily went from bad to worse I just didn't write about it any more. Writing is often cathartic. In this case it just wasn't.

But why the title of this blog post? Well, here's one of those unpublished posts from a week after the one above.

June 10th

Well, it’s been a traumatic week, hence the lateness of this blog entry. The hospital stuff I related last Monday concerned Caroline who, it turns out, has a cluster of growths eleven-and-a-half centimetres across in one of her ovaries. The internet being the perfect hunting ground for the hypochondriac, in that it is a place where you can relate any set of symptoms to some lethal malady, we were having fun looking at ovarian cancer. If she had that her chances were not much different to those of my brother Martin i.e. she could survive for five years, with treatment, but it wouldn’t be life. However, there are no growths outside of her ovary, her lymphatic system is showing no signs of anything nasty and it seems that these growths are benign. That being said they have to go.

A number of years ago we would have gone running back to England but now we know better. If we went back it seems likely that months of hospital and doctor visits would ensue, with lengthy waits between each, followed by another lengthy wait for an operation. Screw that – we’re going private here. What else are savings for if not for something like this? The gynaecologist is booking Caroline into a private clinic in Iraklion for an operation within the next ten days. Hopefully a result of that will be that she’ll lose all those twinges and back-aches, and regain her waistline – much to the irritation of many women here who already think she’s far too slim.

...

We were wrong about the tumours being benign, wrong about the survival time, wrong about staying in Crete for treatment, wrong about the kind of cancer it turned out to be ... in fact it was from this point onwards that our illusions were steadily destroyed - the ground cut from underneath us week after week. But yes, she did lose her large belly after the oophorectomy and hysterectomy she had here in England and, of course, there's nothing quite so slimming as something called cachexia.   

Dark Intelligence Artwork

Here's the Jon Sullivan artwork for Dark Intelligence - book one of Transformations...

Books on DVD

Nick Macarty has been playing silly buggers again. We can all dream about this...

Caroline

My lovely wife died last night.

Caroline Asher

10/7/59 to 24/1/14

The Engineer ReConditioned

So, anyway, someone complained on Twitter that this short story collection The Engineer ReConditioned wasn't available as an ebook. I got onto John Betancourt at Wildside Press who publish this and pushed to have it done. He mulled over the idea of a bit of a relaunch whereupon I suggested he get Jon Sullivan in to do the cover picture. Here then is the result:

Mysterious aliens ... ruthless terrorists ... androids with attitude ... genetic manipulation ... punch-ups with lasers ... giant spaceships ... what more could you want? This great collection of 10 short stories by the author of Gridlinked, The Skinner, In the Line of Polity, and many more is a great read!

Note: The Engineer ReConditioned is a revamp plus some additional stories of the book below, which means it contains stuff a minimum of 16 years old.

Oh, and if you can find copies of this, I've seen them going for $125 on Ebay.

Afterparty - Daryl Gregory

A number of pages into this I had a brief reservation when I discovered that the protagonist was a lesbian. I’ve no problem with lesbians, but I do have one with books that are right-on politically correct and might begin preaching at me at any moment. However the relationships here weren't handled in a preachy way, but as simply being an accepted part of the near future, which of course they will be. And that’s science fiction at its best. Later on I did have two ‘meh’ reactions to obligatory nods towards global warming and the left-wing good right-wing mad school of thought. Both of these could have been lost by the simple expedient of removing maybe a couple of pages of unnecessary exposition.

And that leaves 300 pages of the good stuff.

Right now we’re in the midst of the smart drug revolution and we’re also beginning to produce more than just text from our printers. Combine those two and extrapolate and you get a chemjet printer, whereupon anyone with a bit of nous can download a program and run up a few A4 sheets of LSD and much more besides. But we’re producing more than drugs that make you high or hallucinate because, after all, most designer drugs now are a side-product of drug company research into curing our many ailments. Also, a drug once made might find other uses beyond its design. Now imagine a drug aimed at one target (schizophrenia) but whose larger effect in high dosages is something akin to that produced by the God helmet.

Next set a couple of psychiatric patients on a quest to try and stop this stuff getting on the streets, one of them an original developer of the drug along with her personal angel, the other a special forces lunatic with pattern recognition abilities that take her into the realm of paranoia. Toss in some drug-dealing and corporate villains and a split-personality killer who has wandered in from No Country for Old Men. Spice this with some uncomfortable questions about belief that range from a Dawkins rant to a nod to Life of Pi, along with hard neuroscience, and you a have a recipe for a good engrossing read. What you get, in fact, is smart biological cyberpunk focusing on designer drugs rather than AIs and virtual reality. I polished this off in two sessions over one day, finishing at 1.00 in the morning.

Recommended. 

Oh, and incidentally not yet available since this is an ARC. Should be out in April this year. 

The Broken Empire Trilogy - Mark Lawrence

I had a brief exchange on Twitter about me writing episodes of Dr Who, to which my reply was something along the lines of, ‘The Doctor would be dead a few seconds after his first encounter with a Dalek’. I find it very annoying when a person or a thing is made out to be dangerous and doesn’t live up to expectations … which, in a rambling roundabout way brings me to Jorg Ancrath in Mark Lawrence’s trilogy.

  

Jorg is a ruthless, highly capable and vicious character who will let nothing stand in his path. Great, I would have thought if someone had told me that before I read the books, and then I would have been expecting disappointments. You see I’ve heard it all before. I’ve come across these ‘ruthless, vicious, unstoppable’ characters before and every time they never quite measure up. Jorg Ancrath does.

On the whole I've had a ball with these three books, with their magic and fantasy sitting on a bedrock of science fiction. There’s some quite beautiful writing here, especially when the pauses between storms are described. There are moments of utter horror that even made me wince, relentless plot with some nice convolutions, and plenty of surprises. I'll say no more than this - I don't need to.

These are a worthy addition to my book collection. Recommended.

Writing Update

On my last writing update I prefaced the post with an apology for my absence and here must do so again. I’ve got some horrible stuff going on in my life at the moment that’s put me severely out of kilter, and I can’t say much more about it than that. These particularly shitty events are also why you won’t be seeing a video clip from me answering your questions for … well, until I’m ready.

So back to the writing. The above has slowed me down quite a bit but I have now managed to work my way backward through all the Penny Royal books. To re-iterate: I read a book backwards a paragraph at a time (not a word at a time!) so I don’t get involved in the story and am more likely to pick up errors (and it’s incredibly boring). While doing this I also made 26 notes on stuff I needed to go back to. I’m now working my way through those.

And now, as in that other ‘writing update’ I’m going to insert picture that has nothing to do with the subject of the post. Here is an image from the new Jon Sullivan cover for The Engineer ReConditioned. A cover so good, incidentally, that the publisher Jon Betancourt of Wildside Press, might be issuing a special trade paperback to celebrate it.

Each note on the Penny Royal books has required me following plot threads that have sometimes extended across all three books, or sometimes across the three books just focusing on one item. Take for example note 2: Consistency in the kind of space suits they are wearing. I’ve had to make sure my characters are wearing the right suits, whether they are ones with collapsible helmets or ones that can be removed, visors that slide into the helmets or down into the neck rings, shimmershield visors, suits that are motorised or not etc. Other notes have required me writing additional sections. The note I’ve been working on today has required me writing one additional section concerning the theft of three runcibles, extending a couple of other sections, and now going through the rest of the books to make things match up with what has happened in the new stuff.   

Once I’ve got all these notes sorted out I then have to get onto the editorial notes that Bella Pagan has given me for the first book. I’ve no doubt that when I get into that it will create further work in the ensuing books! It’s been an interesting experience writing the books as a bloc like this and it makes me wonder how the hell the Cormac series managed to mesh together so well.

Now onto the names of things: I think we have now settled on the series being called Transformations I, II & III. The first book will (don’t hold me to this) be called Dark Intelligence … beyond that things are still a little up in the air. Plenty of time to get that sorted out.

Owner Trilogy Poster

Nick Macarty has been at it again...

Promo Clip

Nick Macarty, whose concept spaceship blog you'll find here, was bored over Christmas so he started playing about with some cover pictures...

Books Available from Start Publishing

These are Kindle editions for US readers:

The Line of Polity

The Voyage of the Sable Keech

Polity Agent

Enjoy!

Totalitarian Europe

How about this for a bit of totalitarianism from the EU? This is from the Tobacco Products Directive and part of the stifling regulations they propose to bring into law.

5. Member States shall ensure that:

a) Commercial communications with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and refill containers are prohibited in information society services as defined in Article 1(2) of Directive 98/48/EC, in the press and other printed publications, with the exception of publications that are intended exclusively for professionals in the trade of the products and for publications which are printed and published in third countries, where those publications are not principally intended for the European Union market;

b)Commercial communications with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and refill containers are prohibited in the radio;

c)Any form of public or private contribution to radio programmes with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and refill containers is prohibited;

d) Any form of public or private contribution to any event, activity or individual with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and refill containers and involving or taking place in several Member States or otherwise having cross-border effects is prohibited;

e) Audiovisual commercial communications falling under Directive 2010/13/EU are prohibited for electronic cigarettes and refill containers;

You would think this is about something bad for you, like cigarettes, rather than about something that has allowed 7 million people across Europe to either quit smoking or cut down on their smoking. Do you see what the above means? A health revolution akin to the invention of the Polio vaccine must not be advertised, anywhere.

If you, as an individual, have given up smoking by using an ecig you are not allowed to talk about it on radio, on the TV or in the newspapers, or here on the Internet. All the media – newspapers, TV, radio, Internet – is to be gagged because if anyone in them talks about ecigs in any other terms than them being the product of Satan that will be the ‘direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes’. The ‘cross-border effect’ can be ignored, since newspapers, TV, radio & Internet cross all borders. In fact most of the posts I have on this blog concerning ecigs will be prohibited. Meetings of ecig enthusiasts will be banned and ecig fairs will be prohibited, since just one tweet would make it ‘cross-border’.

Welcome to the future as it increasingly looks like The Departure. 

Here's my Vamo which I recommend to anyone who wants to try quitting smoking.

Fuck EU.

SF Writing Contest

This is from Start Publishing and of course I had to put it here!

With the great success of our last contest, we would like to continue to offer the opportunity to inspire more writers. This time we ask that you write a 500-word short story using Neal Asher’s The Departure book cover as a starting topic. Ask yourself, what do you see in the image? Let your imagination take over.

Our publishing team will select the best 5 stories. The stories selected will then be posted to our blog page. We will host open votes on Facebook, Twitter and by email. The story with the most votes will win.

Winner will receive a signed blue ray copy of The Europa Report produced by Start Motion Pictures (formally known as Wayfare Entertainment) and poster. Deadline for all submissions will be January 13, 2014. Once all submissions are received we will announce when the voting polls will be open for the public. Please note, if your story does not have a title we will not accept your submission, as the title and author name will be used for voting.

Please send all submissions and inquiries to contest@start-media.com