All posts by Martyn K Jones

Have been a writer of stories of science fiction and the paranormal for quite some time. From a first article published in 1978, and despite getting enough rejection slips to wallpaper an entire twenty bedroom country mansion, still writing. Six books so far, with more to come. Lives in western Ireland. Keeps bees. Likes dogs.
Site Maintenance

Site changes


The appearance and mapping of this site are undergoing a few changes while my head isn’t in story mode. My psyche has taken one too many shocks to the system to concentrate properly on stories of late, so I thought I’d have a tidy up of the blog. Produce some new headers to try and create a more consistent and workmanlike look than previous iterations. I’m also currently joining authors sites like crazy in order to up my commercial visibility and improved marketability; Not just Goodreads or Authors Den, but some of the others as well.

The five new header images which will appear on each page of this site are based on public domain Astronomical pictures, several of which started life as colour separation overlays and maps of Mars. I’ve played around with them to produce low to medium resolution images. There is also a new email contact form on the ‘About the Author’ page, and I hope to add my LinkedIn profile details to the sidebar as I expand my freelancing portfolio. There will also be a more professional ‘parent’ site, which will be more about our technical writing and educational business than my science fiction.

General musings

Google and Facebook


Is there a better alternative to Google and Facebook? I ask because I travel periodically, and every time I do, I have to reverify my Facebook and Google accounts, which not only shifts my immediate focus away from the task in hand, but is one of those nagging ‘man from Porlock’ irritations. I’m using the same machine through various secure and insecure Wi-Fi network points, the same fairly strong passwords and access protocols, yet still having my email and access to Facebook arbitrarily cut off is less than funny. I know they’re ‘free at point of use’ services, but they do make their advertising revenue from clickthrough traffic and various other means. Yet my Facebook account and two of my Gmail accounts are now ‘locked’. They may remain that way as I can’t be bothered with the fuss of reopening them. Those who need to know will be notified of changes.

We’re currently in a bereavement crisis on the UK front, scooting between relatives and care homes, and these pernickety and unnecessary interventions to both work and essential on the fly problem solving are less than welcome. My LinkedIn account is globally accessible, as is WordPress and several others, no problem, so why not Google or Facebook? We have an alternative paid for domain with available mail aliases and server, and I’m inclined to build a web site there and activate the email accounts. It means the small expense of changing business stationery, but we can handle that.

Over dinner last night, my eldest stepdaughter was talking about building a service similar to LinkedIn for younger professionals. I’m inclined to buy a new domain name and some extra web space for her to play with. Give her the wheel and see what she can do. It’s just a question of time and effort. Facebook and Gmail are all very well, but I’m thinking that they’ve had their day.

Technology

Biting the bullet


What with everything going a little sideways in the last seventy two hours, I’ve compounded my various felonies by signing up for Simon Fraser University’s Certificate in Technical Communication course. Three modules, the first of which is now bought and paid for. Most of the ground I’ve covered as paid work before, but as the saying goes in BC “If you haven’t got the right piece of paper”. My XML and HTML are a bit rusty, I need to get totally au courant with the Canadian style guide, and I’m fine with editing PDF’s, but now with WordPerfect I have the best tool for any writing job. Might even be worth my while buying Corel’s PDF editor, although I’ve already got an old Adobe 5.0 licence and software buried somewhere in my collection.

Now Angie’s on the home stretch of her biology teaching course, which the Education Ministry have insisted upon, the educational burden will shift onto my shoulders and she can relax and enjoy the Summer. However, my April and May will be spent head firmly wedged in English textbooks and burnishing my CV until it gleams. I have DreamWeaver if need be as a web site builder, and a spare domain name to experiment with, so away I’ll go. I also need to put in some serious work on my professional online presence, which is a bit sketchy at present.

Of course this will mean delays on the creative writing front, but as that doesn’t pay many bills, it will be done during ‘leisure’ time only. ‘Darkness’ has just undergone a major narrative restructure, and between now and Tuesday when we head off to the UK for a week, ‘A Falling of Angels’ will be getting similar treatment. If I’m really lucky, I may even get some writing time in while we’re on the move or hanging around in England. If not c’est la vie.

General musings

Improved proof reading


Finally installed my copy of WordPerfect yesterday, and was promptly reminded what an utterly superb word processing and formatting toolbox it provides. Proof reading is an absolute breeze using Reveal Codes. Editing likewise. Going through a current work in progress, it highlighted several errors I’d repeatedly missed using Word and OpenOffice, including a massive tranche of unwanted tab settings and assorted code. I’d long ago forgotten what a superb piece of word processing software it is. In the words of the advert ‘It does exactly what it says on the can’. Admittedly WordPerfect is for the advanced user, but once you’ve learned the basics, it’s not that hard.

On the home front, I’ve just celebrated my fifty seventh birthday, am signing up for a Techcomm course, and Angie and I are flying to the UK on Tuesday to undertake one of life’s sad duties. This interferes with main project writing and the prospect of being crammed into an alloy tube for ten hours like so much toothpaste is hardly enticing. Then the infernal hanging around in airports waiting for boarding and security. It’s not so much the travel I hate, I love watching the world skim by. Sitting in a passenger seat, or better still the drivers. That’s not the issue. It’s more the sheer fuss surrounding getting from A to Z and all stations in between. Still, we’ll do what we always do; grit our teeth at the indignities, then try to smile and forget the annoying impedimenta as best we can.

The one consolation is that we’ll be seeing more or less our entire diverse little clan over the next few days, so that can’t be all bad.

Events

Happy Birthday World Wide Web


Today is my birthday. 12th March. I had no idea that Tim Berners-Lee first submitted his proposal for the World Wide Web today, twenty five years. A quarter of a century ago. Although the technology itself didn’t go public until 1993.

So short a time. Back in 1995 I recall penning a thousand word piece called ‘Cybermarket – the future of retailing’. Just a speculative PR article for the trade press. I believe I managed to place it in one of the trade technology journals of the time, although have no idea where it was printed. In the article there were predictions about Supermarket chains like Tesco’s getting into Financial Services and having online stores. Reference was made to the amount of bandwidth necessary to create an interactive online 3-D model of a Superstore, and how it might come about. Now Supermarkets provide online banking and financial services, the world and its wife provide on line shopping, and I think the fully interactive 3-D catalogue is not that far away. Certainly Internet driven home deliveries have been popular for some time now, and the graphics of certain game engines might be adapted to provide a better interface. Maybe the next iteration of online shopping will be a sort of World of Warcraft meets Second Life meets the retail sector.

Didn’t foresee the rise of eBay or Amazon, but those were then outside the scope of the article.

Anyway. Happy birthday World Wide Web. Well I never. So far so fast.

General musings

I like George R R Martin


I’m not generally a fan of fantasy as a genre. On the other hand, I’m very happy to read and watch the work of George R R Martin. The series is engrossing, and I think (takes deep breath as I’m about to write fantasy heresy) better than Tolkien. I’ve read Tolkien, and it just never took hold with me the way that George Martin’s work has.

I watched this interview, and discovered much that finds resonance with me. No-one is completely good or evil, and his female characters are less bound by stereotype than in many similar works. Characters morph and change throughout a story, being moulded and in turn moulding the narrative. They do the unexpected for their own strange reasons. Loyalties shift, even within families, and I feel this is a good thing, as it adds depth and surprise.

The only thing I hope he doesn’t do is kill off Tyrion Lannister. Not yet anyway. Both the narrative version and Peter Dinklage’s performance in Game of Thrones are far too much fun.

Oh well, I have my own lonely furrow to carry on ploughing. Back to the keyboard.

General musings

Prezi


I’ve been thinking about experimenting with the way a story is told for some time now. A new tool has dropped into the box called Prezi, which is intrinsically a tool to create shareable presentations. I’ve decided to convert a couple of short stories into this format when I make the time. Just to see what they look like as a kind of visual précis.

In the meantime, progress on all other projects is slow. There’s too much going on in the real, paying the bills part of my life at the moment, and when I’m done there rarely seems to be enough energy to plough full steam ahead with ‘Darkness’ or ‘A Falling of Angels’. Maybe I should do the Prezi thing to help clear the junk out of my head, post a link or two and see what feedback happens.

Angie wants us to move, so a lot of time is currently being spent on looking for a new home further south. I need, and am actively looking for, a new job in the Victoria area to help pay the bills. I’m also signing up on Simon Fraser Universities Techcomm courses to update my billable skillset. All of which detract from writing the next books. Although I’m sure there’s time to be squeezed into the schedule somehow.

General musings

Hiatus


Managed to pick up some form of bug the other week while visiting Vancouver. The result of which was a thick head and snivelling cold. Neither of which have been conducive to laying down a sensible sentence. I’ve simply not had the mental reserves to push ahead strongly enough with narrative, and have found myself picking and chipping away at paragraphs and dialogue, deleting the odd pronoun here, checking tenses and points of view fiddling, not really writing at all.

Still feeling a bit post viral two weeks on, and all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep.

General musings

Moving on


Angie gets back from England tonight on the eleven thirty flight from Vancouver. Much to my relief. Cooking for one is difficult. While she’s been over the other side of the pond on family business, I’ve been busying myself with various paperwork, job hunting and looking for new accommodation. Somewhere more convenient for Metro Vancouver.

‘A Falling of Angels’ has found its final direction and with luck I’ll have the manuscript finished for first proof and edit by April. About 25,000 words to go, with the ending planned and plotted. The story threads are set to tie up neatly, with the bad guys (mostly) caught and brought to trial, my hero redeemed and on a new start in life. Until the next volume of course.

‘Falling through the Stars’ unfortunately, is crawling along very slowly. There’s a whole chunk of storyline that’s simply not working and has to be junked. I’ll just do what I normally do, cut and paste the offending section into a separate file. For future use. Maybe.

While Angie has been away, I’ve been doing a little reading to help keep my Technical writing skills current. One note of enlightenment came from an old copy of Arthur Plotnik’s “The Elements of Editing“. Although it’s a little dated, reading certain sections rather confirmed my suspicions about why so many submissions to publishers go unanswered.

General musings

Site maintenance and short fiction


While struggling a little with the major projects, I’ve amused myself with rearranging the site menu a little, creating a sub page and section for short stories no-one would really be interested in.

First offering is an odd little tale entitled ‘Christmas in Space‘. I’ve got a few others, but I’m wondering whether I’m brave enough to let them out into the public domain. For what that’s worth.

General musings

Skipping Christmas again


Times are tight, as is the money supply, and this year we’ll be sending gifts and money to close friends and family as usual. As well as sponsorship for youngest daughter, who is firewalking for charity this year. But with the kids (Grown up young women really) and other family on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific, Angie and I will be making this festive season a very low key affair. We’ll have a guest and friends over for Christmas eve and day but won’t be making a big thing of it. Don’t think I’ll bother with a tree. I might string up a few lights, but that’s all. I’ve even managed to avoid the day job Christmas party. Which gets me out of the interminable gift giving I can’t afford to people I hardly know. Fine if you’re well paid and have money to spare. Not so fine if you aren’t and haven’t. My boss was surprised when I told her I didn’t want to come, but respects what I do, at least enough to acquiesce. She even sat down as if expecting an explanation. I just hunkered down to begin my shift and said it would take a decade to explain why this time of year always makes me uncomfortable. Which it does.

This doesn’t mean I hate Christmas or any other time of year. No, I say live and let live. Respect the rights of others. If they want to participate, fine. Just don’t judge me for wanting to have a quiet time instead. Maybe work a little, go easy on the whole conspicuous overconsumption thing, smile affably, nod, walk on by. Chill away from the fuss, noise and ‘fun’. Most of it’s for the kids anyway.

John Grisham has a little novella called ‘Skipping Christmas’ about a couple who want to take a break from interminable ‘celebration’ and go on a cruise. Like all these cautionary tales it doesn’t end well for Luther and his wife. Charles Dicken’s ‘Christmas Carol’ and other like works of emotional blackmail are, like Santa, fantasies for small children. “Be like everyone else or bad things will happen.” Is the implied threat. Real life is usually somewhat more forgiving. ‘Couple go away for Christmas, save money and have a really nice relaxing time’ wouldn’t have made much of a story.

As I shall be working on and off, as well as putting in time and energy on my major writing projects, the TV will stay tuned to Netflix and YouTube. We’ll spend time with close friends. New year calls for study, when I intend to improve my various Technical Writing certifications. Writing novels is all very well, but it’s not very good at paying the rent.

Cerberus

Heading those chapters


There’s been a trend for some time with TV shows for episodes given punnish titles intimating brief hints about the episode content. While with ‘Stars’ I went for the rather dry numerical convention like with a technical document. In the Cerberus series I’ve taken a leaf out of the TV playbook, and gone with the pun. Not so much in ‘Head of the Beast’, but definitely in ‘A Falling of Angels’. Three sample chapter headings being ‘Breaking the bad’, ‘The End of a Beginning’, and ‘Lloegr’ (Which means ‘England’ or more poetically ‘Lost Lands’ in Welsh). For an additional example, I’m currently writing a chapter entitled ‘Travelling in Hope class’ which starts to take my hero back to his beginning, and final confrontation with the current bad guys. Possibly. While pursued by another bunch of bad guys who have him pegged as a terrorist. Kind of.

It’s complicated. A lot of fun to write, but quite involved.