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Showing posts from 2012

Life in the Kuiper Belt - Free today and tomorrow

My science-fiction adventure novel Schaefer's Integrity is free today and tomorrow on Kindle. That's Friday 30th November and Saturday 1st December. Set at the edge of our solar system, amongst the many spinning stations and stones that make up the Kuiper Belt mining colony, Duncan Schaefer, a lowly chef, becomes infected with a virus that brings into question a number of beliefs held by the scientific community. The virus has a mind of its own and soon Duncan is on a quest to Earth to discover the truth about the strange mutations in his body, and his bizarre dreams of an inverted pyramid structure in distant space...something called the Extraction Point. Below is a snippet from Schaefer's Integrity. Get the novel free here . After the meeting with Carl I returned to my cabin, put on Kuiper Limit’s latest album and prepared for the launch.  Halfway into the first piece of music we took off.  Amidst a stomach-churning rumble of the high-pressure pumps firing steam in

The Train Now Departing

A hearty thanks to everyone who downloaded my short story collection The Train Set over the weekend. I shifted 181 copies and made it to #6 in the Amazon short stories chart in the UK! If you have read the collection, or even only part of it, I would be hugely grateful if you could write a short review on Amazon . Every review helps sell more copies and I really would like this collection to be a success. Sometime between now and Christmas I will be promoting one other book in a free 2-day extravaganza, Schaefer's Integrity, so keep an eye out for that, and I will obviously be making it known here, and on Twitter and Facebook, when that happens. In the meantime please look at my other works which (due to various copyright issues) will probably not be going for free on Kindle in the foreseeable future. Those are The Axiom Few, Spireclaw and The Daedalus Transfer (the latter two of which can be read right now on this website). Thanks again everyone!

The Train Set - Free Today and Tomorrow

Just a quick post to let you Kindle readers know that my short story collection "The Train Set" is available on Amazon for free today and tomorrow (Nov 23rd and 24th). I would love it if you downloaded and had a read of one or two stories within it, (or all of them if you like). Then tell your friends! You can get it here . Here's a snippet from one of the stories... "At Steepdean Halt" I was twelve that year when we had our last family picnic at Steepdean. The field where we had come for years was just as beautiful as ever, and in the heat of June 1976 it possessed a summery beauty that seemed to contrast so plainly against the tragedy that happened here; a tragedy that protracted an idyllic day in the countryside into a sad and mournful autumn. My younger brother, Samuel, aged eight, hands sticky with dried orangeade, beat me in a running race to the edge of the field where the trees began. He may have been four years younger than me but he was just a

Sighting FM

...point three. Surrey's favourite destination for talk. That's the weather. It's eleven oh six. Now, before we go to our next caller I have to say. Jane in the booth opposite me who lovingly takes your calls tells me that the switchboard is going absolutely crazy tonight. Apparently people have been ringing in saying there are some mysterious lights in the sky above Dorking. I'm gonna take one of those calls now. Barry, you're up on Box Hill aren't you? What are you doing up there so late, shouldn't you be in bed? Well Nick there's loads of us up here and we've been watching these three lights going back and forth for the last hour. Whereabouts are they exactly? I mean, you should have a pretty good view up there right? Yeah, they're sort of over Leith Hill way. Isn't that the approach to Gatwick? Are you sure these aren't just planes landing Barry? Yeah well, they would be if they were moving towards the airport but these lights are jus

All my stuff has moved

Now that The Train Set has launched on Kindle (what do you mean you don't have a copy?), I have turned my attention to relocating all the content from my website into this blog site. I was getting tired of updating multiple locations with new information, and also becoming less of a fan of Moonfruit due to my website not showing up very well on anything made by Apple. I know all that will change but it's a service I'm paying for and it just doesn't seem necessary anymore. So please browse the page tabs at the top to view all (or most) of the content that was previously available on my website. I will, in a short while, update the page redirects for my web domains to point to here, so that links to me are not lost.

The Train Set - A Glimpse at the Cover

My short story collection "The Train Set" is now out on Kindle. A great little book for Halloween. The collection includes the following stories: At Steepdean Halt -  Previously published in 2008 in The Ranfurly Review The Suited Man of Lock St Station -  New to this collection. Last Train to Tassenmere -  Previously published in 2009 in Supernatural Tales. Received an honourable mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror.  The View From Setcham Viaduct -  New to this collection (although briefly seen on this blog last year) Dark Tickets -  Also briefly seen on this blog, but new to this collection. Flyers -  A novella that is new to this collection. Buy The Train Set from Amazon on Kindle now.

Books now available on Kindle

I'm pleased to say that four of my earlier works are now available to buy on Kindle via Amazon, all for less than a quid. Considering they are all so ridiculously cheap there isn't much of an excuse not to have a look, unless you don't have a Kindle, in which case, get it for the Kindle app on your phone or tablet. See I told you there's no excuse. Go here to see them.

Interactive Fiction

Proof that the internet has a page for everything (I think we already knew that) is that I found a good many sites full of love for the old Choose Your Own Adventure book series from the 1980s, of which I had a shelf full. Those old books were about 100 pages long and featured a branch-like narrative with multiple endings. With titles like "The Cave of Time", "The House of Danger" and "Journey Under the Sea", these books worked for readers of my age (which was about ten). "You reach a fork in the road and find an old man sitting there. To turn left in the fork, go to page 45. To turn right, go to page 56. To talk to the old man, go to page 80." That sort of thing. Later on, when computers came along, I fell in love with the text adventures of Magnetic Scrolls (yes there's a website for them too). With games like Jinxter, The Guild of Thieves and Corruption, I was hooked by the way that these games built worlds in your head. Even now t

Pandora's Star

A few years ago I had an idea for a novel. I even wrote a full synopsis, character list, complete with information about their own personal story arcs, and drafted the first twenty pages or so. It was going to be a trilogy, my magnum opus. The most ambitious piece of science-fiction I'd ever tried to write. It was going to be called "The Construction". One day all the stars disappear. The Space Foundation call it "Star Blacking". A crew is assembled and a ship is sent out to the edge of the solar system, only to find that our solar system has been enclosed in a barrier, a shell. Alien's tell us it is for our protection, but then a war takes place outside the shell, and another set of alien's tell us they are attempting to free us from the imminent enslavement of humanity by the first aliens. Who do we believe? It sort of goes on from there... Imagine my total disappointment when I recently picked up Peter F Hamilton's "Pandora's Star&qu