Running out of Time

This year's Open University coursework has arrived, meaning there's only three weeks to the start of the course. Realising that I won't have much time for writing again until October, I forged ahead with another story that's been floating round my head for a while. It's about bats and chickens and was inspired by Asimov's classic story Nightfall and an episode of Noddy.

I still have another 7 story ideas waiting for inspiration to strike them. They may have to wait some time.

It's All Greek To Me

I received my second foreign language acceptance today. Artefact Nouveau has been accepted by the Greek magazine Universe Pathways and is scheduled to appear in October. They do both Greek and English editions, but mine is due to appear in the Greek version.

A Sequel

I've just finished writing a sequel to last year's The Grey Hole, entitled The Grey Void. It's the first time I've written a sequel and it's been interesting to compare the improvement in my own writing from 11 years ago when the original was written. Hopefully the editor of Aphelion will agree when I send it off to him!

Too Late the Hero

The new edition of Aphelion is out today, bringing an end to the two months that Too Late the Hero has been featured. Here are a few of the comments I received:

'I greatly enjoyed the flow of dialogue.' - Marianne Kirby, Editor, Cyber Age Adventures

'Very cool idea, very ironic.'

'A very dark future indeed for superheroes: relegated to the funny pages by the endless march of technology…'

'Another winner from Gareth. Tightly written with a good premise and a main character you could empathise with. I enjoyed it.' - Gareth Lyn Powell, Author

'I enjoyed this one very much. Short, and to the point, it simply explores what happens when superheroes become redundant due to technological breakthroughs.'

'I liked this simple but resonant piece.'

'Very short but entertaining.'

'I love it. The idea is so compelling.'

The great thing about Aphelion is that a lot of its readers are also aspiring writers, so you get some good feedback via their lettercol. You might not agree with all of it, but these are the comments I liked!

 

Don't Panic!

The Hebrew translation of Devotion has been completed, so it should be appearing in Bli Panika (Don't Panic) in a couple of weeks time. Meanwhile I've submitted another two stories this week, so that's now four I'm waiting to hear back from.

Work on the novel has slowed down as I keep inconveniently thinking of ideas for short stories that need to be written!

Third First

My time travel story Artefact Nouveau, my longest short story to date, has been published by Planet Magazine today. The thing I like about this webzine is that it provides art work to go with each story. This will make three 'firsts' I have coming up in the next couple of months:

- My first translated story in the Hebrew webzine Bli Panika
- My first story in print in Scifantastic
- My first story with accompanying art work in Planet Magazine

That's Novel

I reached a landmark today. My epic space opera adventure hit 40,000 words; that makes it officially a novel! Only a short one at the moment, but I'm about 1/3 of the way through the plot so it should end up at about 350 pages.

Fluctuations

On first reading Fluctuations you may well be thoroughly confused. It's all about a tear in the fabric of reality, and as I wrote it subjectively you have even less idea of what's going on than does the protagonist. The Bewildering Stories editors wrote an excellent review of it though, so hopefully you'll like it too once you've worked out what's going on.

Trek Fiction

I didn't particularly intend to write any fan fiction, but the two Star Trek stories I wrote this time last year were based on very specific ideas I had.

The idea for Data Dump came about after watching Nemesis. I wondered whether it would be possible to bring Data back; after all, we thought he'd been blown up in a space ship once before. After some thought I came up with a plausible sounding pseudo-scientific way for him to make a come-back.

The title Pro Capitaneous Mori is derived from the Wilfred Owen poem Dulce et Decorum Est. I wondered what life was like on the Enterprise under Captain Kirk for those red shirted security guards who always got shot. I wrote this one as a diary, one of a number of different formats that I've tried. I'll tell you about the others another day.

The Stories So Far

Here's a list of my published stories so far:

A Feast of Eyes - Star Trek & Science Fiction Stories - Dec 2004
Data Dump - Trek Writer's Guild - Feb 2005
Fluctuations - Bewildering Stories - Mar 2005
Pro Capitaneous Mori - Trek Writer's Guild - Mar 2005
The Grey Hole - Aphelion - Apr 2005
Devotion - Bewildering Stories - Apr 2005
Fluctuations - Bewildering Stories 'Best Of' Anthology - Jul 2005
Fool Britannia - Aphelion - Aug 2005
Too Late the Hero - Aphelion - Nov 2005

I've put links to these stories or the sites they appear on to the side. I've also added a link to a review of Fluctuations. Comments on the stories that appeared in Aphelion can be found in Aphelion's Lettercol under the relevant month.