Old Man in a Spacesuit – New Cover

 

I really should make an effort to keep this blog up to date, because now I'm late announcing that Old Man in a Spacesuit has a spanking new cover. It's from Kritzelkunst (Doodle Art) in Germany.  

I was never fully happy with the old cover. Probably because I designed it myself. I am not a cover designer, and yes, it showed. But this one?

 I love it.

The expression on HBs face is worth a thousand words. He seems to be saying, "Okay, so I'm here on Mars. Don't expect fancy speeches or even a smile. I don't have to pretend that I like this, but I'm here, and that's how it is."

If the previous cover didn't grab you—and who would blame you for that?—then maybe this one will.

Try the book, on Amazon, here.

Old Man in a Spacesuit

I launched a new book this week. Old Man in a Spacesuit is a near future sci-fi, that's light hearted, but also has a serious side.

Harry Burton – HB to his friends.

Ex-author: old, knackered, and psychologically fragile.

As a candidate for First Man on Mars, HB isn’t just the wrong stuff; he’s the wrong stuff that got lost in the post.

But they’ve sent for him anyway.

Others, too. Others nearly as unqualified and unwilling as him.

And while HB would rather sit in a coffee shop and pretend to write…

He’s curious.

You can find it on Amazon here.

This one started out in the Odeon cinema in Bromborough, a year or so ago. I was looking a film post that showed an old cowboy, I don't even remember what the film was, and I started imagining the character in a spacesuit. I filed it away. Then a few months later I found myself in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, and came back to that Old Man idea. I started creating a character who lived in Utrecht. I decided which street his house was in. I walked the route he would walk, or cycle, into town. I had coffee in the coffee shop that would be his regular haunt (after a bit of geographic relocation). Then I wondered about the circumstances that would get Harry Burton into space. I got on a train to Cologne and Frankfurt, a trip Harry would make.

And it all came together.   

Electric Vehicles, Driverless vehicles – the future is backwards

In a few years, we’re all going to be jumping into our electric cars and putting up our feet while we’re driven to work. We might even read a book on the way, or our car might do the reading for us while we gaze with bleary eyes at the passing scenery, not quite awake from our slumber. Sci-Fi would have us think this, but there’s a sci-fi future that looks a little different. Technology does not always move in the direction we expect.

Take your morning bowl of cereal, for example. Perhaps in the future our milk will come to us, fresh each morning, delivered by an autonomous, intelligent drone with a super-low-carbon footprint.

Well, a century or so ago that’s exactly what happened. The vehicle was a horse-drawn milk cart. It knew the route; the driver/milkman didn’t need to guide the vehicle, it knew the way. Then, when they reached a row of houses the four-legged AI processor was able to keep the cart moving, in pace with the human, who took the bottles to each doorstep. Very efficient. No noise apart from the restful clippity-clop of hooves, and low carbon emissions from the 100% bio-fuel power unit.

Then we had technological progress. Enter the electric milk float in the early 1900s. Yep, that’s right, 1900 and we had electric vehicles. In fact, by 1967 the UK had more electric vehicles on its roads than the rest of the world put together. They were nearly all milk floats. But now the milkman had to stay awake and drive his milk round because he’d lost the AI module at the front. But still, milk floats were quiet – with their open or sliding door – they non-polluting, and they were efficient.

Then we had more technological “progress”. The milk companies started to switch to diesel vans. So not only did the milkman have to stay awake, he ensured that everyone else on his round, his customers, were awake also. Jolted from their dreams by the steady knock-knock of the idling diesel, the revving engine, the opening and slamming of the van door outside every house. And if the window was open they could smell the fumes, blue and oily, and laced with particulates. 

Progress didn’t end there. Now we drive to the supermarket in our own cars and load up with a week’s supply of milk. The milkman is virtually extinct. Electric vehicles – gone. Artificial intelligent guidance systems – gone. Until Google re-invent them.

I’m not knocking science fiction, I love science fiction. You want to try some of those futures? Here’s a chance to read 58 science fiction stories and novels, for free, courtesy of BookFunnel. Click on the link, here, for free e-books.

Bullet Journal

It could be said that I have a lot of notebooks. Do not ever let me near another stationery shop. Ever! Sew up my pockets. I wonder if there's such an organisation as NA (Notebooks Anonymous) that I might join.

Well, after getting up at four AM this morning, with a burning urge to start indexing all the material in my notebooks, I realised I needed help, (although I found some cracking story ideas that I'd forgotten about).

Anyway, I'm trying something new. Not just another notebook, this time I'm trying a different kind of notebook. I'm trying a Bullet Journal, and New Year's Eve seems as good a time as any to start.

So what is a Bullet Journal?

Well, I couldn't help it. I've spent money on the official, shop-bought, bullet journal layout, but really it can be done with any notebook because it's a method more than a physical item. Bullet journalling appears to be a cross between a diary and a notebook. A word of caution, though. I haven't started yet, so anything I say here can, and probably is, wrong. But maybe there is no such thing as wrong. Maybe there are just different ways. But, hey, there's a website with videos you can watch that explain the process far better than I can, here.

In short, it's all about rapid logging, which uses bullet symbols to categorise and organise all the different kinds of notes, such as tasks, migrated tasks, scheduled tasks, etc. There are three types of log: The Future log, the Monthly Log, and the Daily Log. Items from the short, bulleted monthly log are either actioned, scheduled or pushed forward. The whole thing is flexible and can contain notes sketches, appointments... anything. My daily log already has sections for story ideas, blog ideas, writing goals for 2018, and for recording my daily writing progress. There is no limit to how the system can be used. And central to it all is an index system – and this is a big deal for me – in which you can find the notebook entries that you know you made and can't remember where you put them. Only this week I spent hours searching for some notes I made about my ongoing travel book project. I can't remember which notebook they're in (and I have more than the small stack shown above, believe me) or they could be in one of my many Evernote notebooks – which should be easier to find if I could remember the right tag words.

Anyway, depending on where in the world you're reading this, 2018 is here or drawing close. I've written my resolutions in my Bullet Journal, and I'm even nuts enough to share them below.

All that remains is for me to wish you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Mjke Wood is the author of the Sphere of Influence series. Deep Space Accountant and The Lollipop of Influence are available now. The Spherical Trust will be published in 2018. Visit www.mjkewood.com for details of how to get your copy of his short story collection, Power for Two Minutes and Other Unrealities, for free.

Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade

Writers of SciFi have another great bundle of FREE books and stories to offer. It's available now through to the end of September. Click here to access your free downloads.


Launching in November is The Jim Baen memorial Award: The First Decade. It's an anthology of 16 optimistic short stories that present a plethora of futures beyond Earth.

My own story, A Better Sense of Direction, was the first winner of the award back in 2007. It's a story I've included in my own collection, Power for Two Minutes and Other Unrealities.
I'm super excited to be included in this book. All the stories are from past winners, and I get to rub shoulders with some top award-winning authors. The anthology has been edited by Nebula-award-winning author, William Ledbetter, who has administered the Jim Baen Award right from the start.

Here's a pre-publication review by Publishers Weekly which should help the book to hit the ground running on launch day. I've had a sneak preview of the proofs, of course, but I decided to wait until I have the book itself in my hands before I read the other stories. I can't wait.

In two days I'm off to Peterborough, for Fantasycon, the annual bash of the British Fantasy Society. It's a great place to meet up with fellow writers, and has been a regular event on my calendar for several years now. I'm very much looking forward to it. But with all fun things there comes a penalty: I need to get ahead on my word count for The Spherical Trust (Book 3 in the Sphere of Influence series) so that I'm not having to play catch-up when I come back. Hey ho!

Interview – Massive Black Hole

I'm delighted to have been interviewed by author Andrea Barbosa for her Massive Black Hole blog.

Andrea's blog is packed full of interviews with writers and creatives from a whole range of backgrounds. I've enjoyed reading them and I'm sure you'll be as fascinated as I have been to discover both the differences and similarities in how other authors like to work, and what inspires them.

You can link to Massive Black Hole, here.

Shh! Don’t use the R word: How not to Retire

A few years ago a friend of mine retired. He’d been looking forward to it for years. He bought a cottage on the isle of Anglesey, in Wales. He furnished it, then waited for the moment when he could walk away from forty-five years of work and drop down into his new patio lounger, glass in hand, and watch the tide coming in and out. The big day came. He moved over to his new home and a week later he dropped down dead.

It could have happened to anyone. We were all shocked and saddened. But so often we hear similar tales, and the common thread seems to involve that dreaded transition from being needed, respected, indispensable… to being surplus-to-requirements.

You are going to want to avoid this happening to you. Whether you are in your thirties, forties or fifties, the time to avoid the scourge of transition is now. This isn’t about planning for retirement, it is about planning for non-retirement.

Who wants to feel useless? All that training and knowledge gone to waste? I think cloud-watching could be an over-rated pastime.

The secret is: Do the thing. You know, the thing you always wanted to do. The career you couldn’t choose because you had a family to feed, a mortgage to pay. Photographer, artist, actor, musician, and in my case, author. And I suggest you do it now. Don’t wait. Don’t get to that big day and find yourself looking up at a learning curve that resembles The Eiger.

Of course your day job might also be your thing. If that is so then congratulations, and I have nothing here to offer by way of advice. But of course you have no plans to retire, anyway. Why should you give up doing the thing you love? The rest of us, well, we need to start now.

Begin to dabble. Start acquiring the skills. Take a little time to ease into your chosen creative world and learn the connections. There’s often a barrier to entry, a gatekeeper, and this could be the insider knowledge about how to submit to exhibitions, how to get into Musical Directors’ address books, becoming known in the local amateur theatre circuit or knowing where to submit stories. Get to know the gatekeeper early and get yourself a set of master keys. None of this has to detract from your career. There’s nothing wrong with hobbies. Except you know: it isn’t a hobby, it’s a beginning. It’s that thing that will grow and become all-consuming. Your raison d’être.

Then, when the time comes for you to make the transition – note we’re not using the R word anymore – you will find there is no transition. You are ready. You are accessing a supporting income, that some people call a pension, to allow you a moderately risk-free transition into the thing you always wanted to do. The old day job is no longer a precious jewel you have lost but an old thing you can at last push aside so you can get on with the real meaning of your life. If you can earn some income from your former-hobby/new-career, then great, every bit helps. If you don’t earn much, then no matter, you’re not going to starve.

All of this is subject to your own circumstances of course: having access to a reasonable pension, retaining your health, having a conducive domestic situation. These things matter and they are all part of your forward planning, not just your creative thing but taking exercise and being serious about financial plans. But if you haven’t done so already, now is the time to act. Find your thing and take those first steps.

Mjke Wood took his first steps more than thirty years ago, when he started writing short stories, submitting to magazines, collecting rejections, and learning the craft from his many mistakes. He now writes full time. His novel, Deep Space Accountant is available on Amazon and other platforms. His stories are available in many science fiction and fantasy magazines. One such story has been optioned for a motion picture on which script writers are working at this very moment.

Mjke now writes full time.  He doesn’t miss the day job.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

A question asked of every writer at some time is: where do you get your ideas?

Image credit:Pixabay

I usually have a flippant answer stored and ready to use. Ideas come through the plumbing in my house, because every time I climb into the shower the ideas flow, and of course this is the moment when I’m most separated from my notebook. So many times an idea has come while showering, only to be rubbed away in the towelling process soon after. I fixed that problem. I bought a waterproof notebook.

It’s a silly answer to the question of course, because ideas come at any time from any trigger. It is rare that I can even remember what triggered any single idea.

Deep Space Accountant is different, though. It’s one of the few story prompts I’ve had for which I can remember the exact thought process that gave rise to the idea. And no, I wasn’t in the shower.

For Deep Space Accountant I must thank the cartoonist, Gary Larson. I love Gary Larson’s cartoons and I have several books of his collected work. One cartoon in particular rang bells. It shows an accountant standing on a promontory with his briefcase. The caption reads Seymour Frishberg: Accountant of the Wild Frontier. (I’m not going to infringe copyright and post the image here, but here's a link.)

Straight away I wondered what a science fiction version of the Seymour Frishberg cartoon might look like. Pretty much the same layout except that he’d be in a spacesuit instead of a business suit. And maybe there’d be the odd ringed planet in the sky.

Then I started wondering about the accountant’s story. Why is an accountant in space? Deep space? And there it was. I even had my title - originally Nathaniel D Nicholson: Deep Space Accountant, I changed it to Elton D Philpotts midway through the first draft, then I dropped the name  part when I realised I’d have a tough time cramming it all onto the book cover.

You’d think, also, that my job as an accountant might have had an influence? Not true. The idea came to me in 1985, long before I ever considered accountancy as a career. Back then I earned my crust by compiling bus timetables and duty rosters.

So, I wrote a first draft, hand written on secretary’s spiral notepads. It was horrible. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t plot. I knew nothing about accountancy. I put it away in a drawer and carried on writing short stories.

Flash forward twenty-five years. I’d become an accountant. I’d started winning the odd award for my writing. I found Deep Space Accountant in a box.

It was still horrible.

I put it back in the box and buried it. And started again.

Different plot. Different characters. Different Result.

Want to know how it turned out? Find out here. 

Deep Space Accountant is the first book in the Sphere of Influence series, available in paperback and all major e-book formats.