Tag Archives: Observation

Astronomy, General musings, Short Story

Debris

Leave a comment

There’s a lot of nonsense talked about astronomy. Mainly because we’re discovering so much now. All the while Cosmology is in the process of being upended by new observations, and all the old paradigms have become subject to question while others are confirmed. But that’s how science works. You go the way the data tells you.

One of the reasons my thoughts are turning this way is the hoopla over 3I/Atlas, the latest of three large interstellar objects observed whizzing through our solar system. Closest approach to Earth is about 1.8 AU (Astronomical units) or about 269,276,167,260 kilometres or a smidgeon over 700 times the distance to the moon. Not even close.

The usual suspects are out on social media doing the wavy hand ‘look at mee!‘ thing, spouting off about how it could be ‘Aliens!’ without a shred of proof. Even some of the more sober commentators are getting caught up in the fuss because drama gets clicks and in the digital economy, clicks mean cash.

While these antics are entertaining, it doesn’t mean we have to take them seriously. Like speculation about the ‘wisdom of the ancients’ and ‘ancient technologies’. We simply don’t know because there is no incontrovertible evidence, which just highlights our ignorance.

However, this is how we falteringly increase our knowledge of the world, by asking questions, speculating about the answers and either proving or discounting the questions asked or by observation derived from experiment. This is the scientific method. There is no such thing called ‘the science’. Science is questioning and observing. Fudging data to make a postulation or theory work is not ‘science’ but risks producing dogma. And there’s way too much of that about.

Excuse the rant, but I feel quite strongly about this sort of thing.

Anyway. This is besides the point of this post. My collection of what I call my ‘future parables’ has just increased by one with the completion of a tale of humanities first contact with a completely alien species and the end result. It is called “I scatter Lavender”, just under 1900 words. A short first person narrative born from my natural scepticism, first hand experience of my fellow humans and online chatter over the recent interstellar objects whizzing through our solar system from who knows where.

While not working on my kitchen upgrade and various repairs to the house, fixing the drains and other general domesticities, this is what I do. I’ve been keeping a video record of the completed stages, and may put it up on YouTube / Rumble / Bitchute in one to three minute chunks when my new kitchen is finished.

Christmas means family, and we have a full house this year which means all my projects will grind to a halt for a couple of weeks until it is time to take down the decorations, pick through the festive debris and carry on regardless into 2026.

General musings, Observations, Short Story

Not with a bang

1 Comment

Back in 2015 I wrote the following story outline which never went anywhere (I do a lot of this):

Not with a bang

A comic tale of a truly man made apocalypse.

Outline.

Mankind finally develops the means to control CO2 levels on Earth with fusion driven power and a new electrostatic technology that literally unbinds the Carbon and Oxygen molecule that makes Carbon Dioxide …

In 2021, the United Nations proudly announces its forthcoming ‘World Climate Day’ which will save the Earth from man made global warming. After five long years of testing and building the necessary technology, the system is switched on … combustion becomes a crime, punishable by life in prison.

Despite an outcry from a minority of the scientific community, the Secretary General switches the system on to public acclamation and world wide celebration.

In the first year, the levels of CO2 drop below 390ppm. In 2032, the level drops by another 30ppm to 360ppm. By 2033, the level is 310ppm and dropping. 2034 and the level reaches an all time low of 265ppm and the experiment is hailed as a great success, despite no significant reduction in the rise of global temperatures. In 2037 the atmospheric CO2 level dropped an astonishing 50ppm in fourteen months. In 2038, with expanding deserts and massive dieback of temperate zone forests, some scientists state that the project has achieved it’s objectives, and at this point may have gone too far. The UN convenes a climate advisory council to discuss whether the system should be switched off.

By 2041 the level of atmospheric CO2 drops below 150ppm and despite several large volcanic eruptions, keeps falling. Crops begin to fail all over the world as there is no longer enough carbon dioxide to support photosynthesis. The climate wars start in sub-Saharan Africa as millions of starving people try to destroy the massive arrays of carbon dioxide reduction machines. In south east Asia, two whole islands in the Philippines are evacuated to prevent the poor and starving rioting and destroying the massive carbon sequestration machines. Massive algal blooms cover almost half the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans forming mats tens of metres thick which disrupt shipping. Finally the carbon sequestration machines are switched off, but the drop in world wide CO2 continues. Starvation ensues and all remaining foodstuffs are sequestered.

Now the UK carbon zealots, driven insane by bad scientific models, want to dim the sun and remove CO2 from the environment. Even putting balloons loaded with sulphur dioxide (what about acid rain?) into the atmosphere. They don’t seem to understand that carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor a poison, but an essential part of the biosphere. CO2 is life.

Without enough CO2 the world dies. Humanity dies. For what? There is no empirical proof that CO2 controls the weather or climate. As for the ‘all scientists say’ argument, that is based on the Cook et al study 2015 which was such a statistical fudge that it is a wonder it ever got published.

I might be tempted to say that you could not make this up. Obviously I was wrong about that.

General musings, What if

Playing with ideas

1 Comment

I’m currently messing around with an idea regarding warp technology. Just postulating a measurement of warp speed using the logic outlined in ‘clearing up’ I came up with a measurement that would fit with the described technology of an Alcubierre warp drive. Warp speed being measured in increments of ‘Ex’, short for ‘Exponential’ where velocity increases exponentially with warp field flow and compression.

After all, ‘Ex’ sounds a bit more dramatic and flexible as a term describing the more pedestrian sounding ‘Warp 2.5’ which could mean anything. ‘Ex’ as a measure sounds more exciting, a better adjective for multiples of light speed through warped space.

Woke up in the wee small hours this morning with an idea about a triggering event for something like the Younger Dryas era 12,800-11,600 BCE (Before Common Era). About 1,300 years. Now the current preferred (But highly debated) hypothesis is for a meteorite impact.

However, what if that were not the whole story? Meteorite impacts happen all the time. What if, and here’s no reach, astrophysicists have proved that there are extrasolar or ‘rogue’ planets, wandering giants with their own trajectories. 540 detected at the last count, with millions more potentially out there. There’s even a NASA mission scheduled for launch in 2027 to detect more of these objects and find out if any pose a threat.

Then another ‘What if’ that one such, a Jupiter plus mass object, passed at speed, too fast to be captured by our suns gravity, but exerting enough influence to subtly shift the orbits of Earth, Mars and Venus, then swung out on a hyperbolic slingshot to disappear among the stars again at the end? That might have triggered the mini ice age of the Younger Dryas, depending upon the orbital mechanics.

It’s a hell of a thought to wake up with. There might even be a story in it. It’s a gardening day today, so I’ll mull it over as I dig before putting fingers to keyboard.

General musings, Stars Trilogy

General note


Have been digging around in my notes for revising ‘Darkness’ the third of the ‘Stars’ trilogy, and found this snippet:

How Civilisations end

  • Prolonged warfare, dramatic over expansion of administrative function, catastrophic environmental changes or destructive social movements destabilise the supply chain of resources.
  • If the burden on general resources grows too destabilised, the overall living standards of the general population declines. Critical infrastructure maintenance also declines while yet more resources are diverted for administrative purposes without return.
  • Resource flow declines as available resources shrink. More resources are diverted into administration.
  • Administration leaders and their contacts unsustainably divert public resources for their own benefit.
  • Increasing authoritarian control and surveillance is required by administration to ensure that the general population continues to comply with increased resource reduction and other constraints, even if administrative demands cannot be reasonably met by the contributing population.
  • In this final phase of collapse, administration turns against its own people, treating them like an enemy. Economic and social collapse occurs, often marked by excessive unrest and riots, capital flight, excessive inflation, and the permanent exit of the most productive.

File creation date: 8th September 2014, last edited 29th January 2019,

General musings, Old projects, Stars Trilogy

Physics, a conundrum


Was watching this recent talk by Mr Eric Weinstein today and was struck by the thought; is he right, is modern physics ‘stalled’? Are modern physicists simply spinning their wheels over Quantum Gravity, Nuclear Fusion and String theory?

Superficially this does seem to be the case. Mainstream Fusion technology has been, for the most part, stuck chasing down the old Soviet era route of Tokamaks. Linear accelerators are still used to smash high energy particles together at high speed. String theory seems to be stuck in a self propagating loop. As for Quantum Gravity, from the research I’ve been able to access and understand, that appears to be going nowhere. Is this right or wrong? Are the incremental changes far too small to justify the money and effort currently expended?

Stepping back, this phenomenon seems endemic to science as a whole. Theories that go nowhere and produce no positive results have the funding, while those pointing in other, more data driven, directions do not. The list is extensive.

However, the picture is not all as bleak as Mr Weinstein postulates in this talk. Data is coming in that upends certain sacred cows from instruments such as the JWST, which is forcing a rethink in cosmology. In that area at least we are facing a change more profound than of Einstein’s theorems. Where this may lead, I have no idea, but the raw data has to drive research, not the ideologically captured theoretical side.

Why? Because theory is merely the art of asking near-rhetorical questions based on assumptions. Experimental raw data (Not ‘adjusted’) and credible real world observations are needed to confirm whether any such question is on the right road or disappearing up it’s own fundament.

These are my thoughts on the matter. Whether they are right or wrong , or even only partially correct has yet to be seen. I just write stories.

On that topic, I am busy looking at a couple of spin offs from the ‘Stars’ universe and seeing if they would be better incorporated into the main MSS of ‘Darkness’. One such is ‘Straight on till morning’ a tale about asteroid miners who have their feet cut out from underneath them by greedy and overweening authority.

General musings

Overlooked


No, this is not about my writing being overlooked, that’s a given, but a town in the Dordogne known as Albi. As far as traditional towns in the South of France, it is quite the unsung story. In the English speaking world it is more overlooked than looked over. At least in the circles I move in.

We were lucky to have a rare, warm February day for our visit. Despite negotiating a funfair taking over the streets which played merry hell with our satellite navigation. Didn’t pay attention to the dates posted at the time, but apparently it runs from 15th – 23rd February. Every year. So much for being out of season. Despite that, we navigated our way into the Cathedral car park, which formed the beginning of our visit. straight into St Cecile cathedral.

The cathedral of Albi, to not put too fine a point on it, is stunning. An epic story in brick and stone, displaying the apogee of any gothic stonemasons skill. Delicate stone fretwork at the very limit that limestone can be dressed to. Painted walls surpassing even the famous St Chapelle in Paris. In short, the high church magnificat. Saved from the iconoclasm of French revolutionary zeal by one man, an engineer, who had the foresight to squirrel the finest carvings away from the revolutionaries before it was all destroyed in a fit of anti-catholic pique.

While the institution of religion, whatever form it takes, can prove toxic to the greater mass of humanity, some of the values it teaches will always remain worthy. Respect and tolerance for those not quite like us. Respect for those giants upon whose shoulders we all stand while knowing that we will benefit all the more by adding, rather than subtracting from their legacies of knowledge. Using that understanding to weather any storms that might afflict us in our lifetimes. Because storms there will be. That is a fact of life.

The weather has been warm and sunny

Of late I have found myself leaning on cemetery walls, reading the names on French war monuments, and coming to the conclusion that these memorials are not an act of mindless worship, a love of monuments and corrupted institutions, but more of a deep love and respect for those who have gone before. Love for those whose lives, small grains of sand, laid the foundation of our futures, so that those future people, like us, have no need to re-invent society from the ground up at every generation. Understanding this simple truism, we can find stability, a sense of belonging from our forefathers and reasons to keep the march of the generations going. Not to be frightened all the time. To discover love and happiness on our own account, subsequently passing on the baton before our own brief candles are snuffed.

As we visit the hilltop villages of southern France, with their eclectic histories, wonderful scenery and patchwork architecture, grown organically down the centuries, I cannot help but reinforce my view that we have to embrace our pasts to produce a worthwhile and wonderful future, and perhaps that is what being human is all about.

General musings

Powering down


While we’re still away, we’re giving thought to the increasing likelihood of power outages back at home. This is not a phenomena restricted to the west of Ireland, but one across all Western Europe and Canada. Those chilly nine January days without electricity got a little grim, washing out of buckets of warm water heated on a barbecue, eating fast food at a service station as our only hot food for the day. Angie got fractious, I just ran out of energy and the atmosphere in the house was like the weather, stormy with clouds and rain. Not conducive to writing.

Back in 2011 I was writing a story about a family split over the issue of carbon capture and it’s ramifications. Meant to be a black comedy of errors, ‘Not with a bang’ was the story of how humankind finally develops the means to control CO2 levels on Earth with fusion driven power and a new electrostatic technology that literally unbinds the Carbon and Oxygen molecule making Carbon Dioxide. Essentially it was about what would happen if the radicals got their way and reduced atmospheric CO2 to under 150ppm.

However, real life got in the way, my thread was lost and the story still sits, part completed, on my hard drive. Unfortunately the story went from an intended 5,000 words to a mini novella of 20,000 words and I still had integral story lines which needed far more narrative room.

At that point I decided not to keep going with it as I felt the story would be out of date before it was completed. That and having other projects I was more keen on, like with my comic paranormal tales, which I wrote mainly to cheer myself up. In its current form ‘Not with a bang’ isn’t very good, so will not be posted here, or anywhere for that matter. Besides, I am committed to complete ‘Darkness’, so the tale will remain in my archives, never to see the light of day. Even if it is pertinent to the insane push for ‘Net zero’.

On that topic we’ve decided to find backup sources of heat and light for our home. My calculations indicate that a 22Square metre solar array and at least a backup 4kw diesel generator with 20kw/hr battery storage should inoculate us from any further outages. Water might be an issue if the backup generators fail at the local pumping station like last time, but our property still has an old bore hole, a well that could quickly be brought back into commission to supplement a rainwater collection and storage system. That would require a small water filtration / treatment facility added to the water softener, but if the current crop of politicians have their way. That might just be a wise investment. Not enough to go completely off grid all the time, but certainly enough to tide us over in comfort for a month.

As for comms, we’re considering Starlink for Internet with hopefully their mobile phone subscription to keep us in touch no matter what the outside world, in its lack of wisdom, decides to do. Candidly I’m fed up with the ineptitude of the modern European political class, and am electing to insulate myself from its worst insanities. Western Europe may be going to immolate itself in a purge of insane self loathing, but I have no intention of joining it.

General musings, Old projects, Short Story

New feature


Had a bit of a sleepless night last night. Not because I was worried or felt ill, nothing of that nature. I was thinking about something I should have been doing ages ago, but have only recently considered, being a massive introvert.

Now I have been doing a few readings of some of my stories, but they don’t seem to generate much interest. So instead of beating myself up or trying to redo the readings. Which took me weeks for each story, such was my ineptitude, I am normally quite relaxed when speaking, but reading to camera? Not my forte. I have decided instead to do interviews about my stories and post them in part or whole on several video sharing platforms. Maybe as much as one every two weeks. Depending upon what else life throws my way.

Angie has agreed to help by playing the part of interlocutor from off camera, asking questions about the stories. For example; what I intended them to mean, what led me to write what I did and where was I at the time in the cycle of narrative. Metaphor, character evolution etc. Nothing too long. Ten minutes maximum. Three questions per video. Maximum answer length three minutes each. Possibly even cut down versions for TikTok if the visuals are right.

Why am I doing this? Well that’s an interesting story. I was digging through my comment spam and came across one that gave me pause for thought. The commenter obviously hadn’t read more than the title, and had come up with some very strange ideas about the ‘Cat tree and other stories’. So I thought, “why not set the record straight so that there is no possible misunderstanding.” No spoiler alerts, just some general hints about where the ideas came from. What the metaphors mean without giving the whole game away.

Of course video production will happen some time in early March when we get home and will, I hope, become an ongoing process. The first few videos of course will be made free, and depending upon how they are received, may put some longer ones on a subscription only basis, so that those who want to can get first access to them via my buymeacoffee account for a small donation.

Regarding WordPress, I may have to migrate my site elsewhere, as they don’t seem to be doing me any good. They want to charge me for something I was under the impression that I had bought and paid for, specifically widgets. They have also cut certain popular social media platform links and no longer seem to be quite the friendly platform that I signed up with thirteen years ago.

On a parallel topic, I recently received an advisory booklet from my financial advisors, entitled; “Don’t play politics with your portfolio.” I have been with my current financial advisers for almost ten years now, and apart from one mis-step they have provided sound advice which has made me money. This is guidance I would encourage anyone to follow.

General musings, Stars Trilogy

The whole point

1 Comment

…while we are in Montauban, Southern France, I have been reviewing my manuscript for Darkness, the third title of the sequence, yet again, and have decided that the project is not beyond reclamation. In some ways it is like having an obsessive compulsion to complete. In others I feel stymied because the story loses focus about the half way point, plot lines scattering like a startled flock of chickens with every fresh idea meant to take the story forward. So I really need to painstakingly unpick the manuscript back to its coarse fabric, then re-stitch the main threads to complete the planned 150,000 words. Excuse the embroidery metaphor.

Notwithstanding, the whole premise behind the ‘Stars’ trilogy (for anyone interested) a story sequence set in the late 21st century, is set when corrupt neocons and neoliberals, are back in power after a series of tumultuous events, including a middle eastern nuclear exchange. Under these circumstances the story speculates about the social and technological changes that might ensue from the development of a radical new technology, specifically a reactionless space drive allowing fast travel between star systems. It also speculates about how armed conflict between two heavily top down pseudo socialist western regimes, one of which, called the Gaians (After Gaius Julius Caesar or the ‘Sons of Gaia’, an extreme environmentalist movement – I’m a bit fuzzy about this myself), uses religion to bind the European peoples into a loosely cohesive social structure and makes war across the Atlantic with the United States and Provinces. Also how a maverick pseudo democracy driven by one devious and ruthless man (William J ‘Bill’ Colby, de facto ruler of the Cascadian Republic based in the Pacific Northwest) challenges and fights back against both regimes.

One of the problems with trying to write ‘hard’ science fiction is trying not to use too many ‘miracle’ technologies to gloss over a plot difficulty. To stick to the physics as outlined in the implied premise. Because all stories must have rules. For me this means no subspace communication, because subspace as envisaged is too chaotic for any coherent non-relativistic signal modulation. Like all communication in the days before radio or satellite, all messages have to be by download from orbit or in person, there being no direct, real time communication between solar systems in the assumed timeline. Transitioning subspace only being possible within an enclosed warp bubble of space / time.

Likewise with AI. I’ve always felt ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was a bit of a misnomer. Intelligence is not merely logical, nor measured purely in terms of IQ and requires a whole range of cognitive and emotional skills which require a non-algorithmic and often illogical non binary approach. My position is this; AI has no glands, it is not organic and can ‘learn’ only along predetermined lines. It has no environmental pressures like humans, and cannot relate emotionally to humans. No matter how complex, faced with innovative problems, machine intelligence can only apply the solutions it’s programming allows. Which will always remain that technologies greatest restriction. AI will be fine to do the mundane, the simple repetitive tasks, the routine. But for novel solutions? Humans will always have the edge on AI. So in my version of the future, AI will always need a human supervisor.

Similarly, all the other technologies (Nuclear fusion , Thorium reactors) I cite are within the realms of the possible, just not ready for implementing as the maths and attendant technologies haven’t been fully worked out yet, even though the technology is theoretically possible. Therefore some leaps of faith have had to be taken in the narrative (As with all works of fiction), one of which being that a subspace drive occasions an unexplained reverse time dilation. Not enough for drive equipped starships to qualify as actual time machines, but enough to require careful scheduling to avoid temporal near-paradoxes. It’s an interesting paradigm. Just like assuming that within our branch of the Orion spur of the Milky Way, humanity is the only sentient spacefaring species. During the imagined timescale, humanity does not make contact with another spacefaring species.

This is where I am with the story, one which has been stuck for far too long. Too many half written spin offs and well over a hundred thousand words of notes. Some worthy of converting, some not.

By the way. If anyone wants to help me out with sundry expenses like web hosting (And the occasional coffee) as I try to re-write ‘Darkness between the stars’ and other stories like ‘A Coelacanth in the Bathroom’ and a few others I’ve recently opened a buymeacoffee.com account.

Unfortunately WordPress insists I have a more expensive ‘business’ account to add the necessary widgets to make this work. Which I can’t currently afford. So I had to bodge a link manually from a cobbled together graphic placed on this sites primary sidebar for the time being. Yes, it does read ‘buy me a whiskey’ but for a basic $3 ask, I don’t think that should be too onerous. Certainly cheaper than a medium Americano from most western coffee shops.

My only regret for all the above is that the work has taken so long. I have other projects on the drawing board. Incidentally, for anyone who is interested in a copy of ‘The Cat Tree’ from 2019, I’ll pop in a direct link to both the print to order hardback and eBook versions via Lulu.com when I’ve got the final versions ready. Should have done that ages ago, but migration to Ireland and all sorts of other issues like rebuilding houses got in the way, for which I can only apologise.

All assistance will be gratefully appreciated.

There will be a short pause for a commercial break and a word from our sponsor while matters move forward. All serious questions will be answered but don’t expect answers until after I get home from my travels in March 2025.

On the communications front, my Twitter / X account has been restored, and I have been sternly warned that whatever it was that I was doing wrong, don’t do it again. Which puts me very firmly on the naughty step, unless of course I cough up 12 Euros a month or so to get a blue check mark verification. Said resurrected account by the way is @martynkjones, where I intend to post travel pictures and videos, pictures of home, bees, and news of any newly completed stories etc.

General musings

The road to Les Halles


One of the things to like in off season France is the big covered markets. Most reasonable size towns have one, with a range of wines, meat and cheeses on offer is almost dizzying in scope. Even the Bull Ring indoor market in Birmingham UK, where any good quality foodstuff known to the English can be found, struggles to keep up with the French.

Nestled into the historic medieval centre of Tours, the famous Les Halles indoor market, even off season, is worth a visit for any food interested person. And despite a tortuous one way system (Something shared with central Birmingham), is well worth a visit. From several butchers and three significant Fromageries, each with a range of at least fifty types of cheese, to wine merchants and suppliers of all manner of cooked and uncooked produce, I found it of wallet-depleting interest.

One of the benefits of visiting off season is the lack of crowds. The ability to pause, take stock and just drink it all in, without being bumped and bored by people trying simply to get past we gawking tourists.

Getting here by car was another matter. We got off the ferry from Rosslare at Cherbourg at around half past one in the afternoon on Monday and arrived in the middle of rush hour. A timing that was to cause us, or rather me, significant anxiety as Angie was still groggy from the Dramamine she needs to survive the nausea ferries always give her and therefore not fit to drive.

My good lady does not travel well, which is rather ironic because she and I love travelling and have covered several tens of thousands of miles by car and ferries alone. From driving the Trans Canada (Twice. There and back), across twenty four states of the USA (Victoria BC to Jacksonville, Florida), along the Princes Highway (Melbourne to Sydney) in Australia and all manner of shorter road trips in the past twenty plus years. That is without extensive air travel, which she also does not tolerate well, from the UK to Canada, the USA and Australia.

For my part I find air travel tiresome because I like my personal space and as Jean-Paul Satre once pithily observed; “L’Enfer, c’est les autres.” Hell is other people, especially if flying Economy. The ennui inducing hours flying across either the Pacific or Atlantic is best spent asleep. Drugs have sometimes proven very useful. Even two paracetamol have been enough to help survive the enforced inactivity from rotate to touchdown. But that is something I rarely do, especially if driving any distance within an hour of negotiating baggage claim, immigration and customs.

We found the hotel we’d booked into well enough. Dropping Angie and the most of our luggage off at our hotel I set off to find the off-site parking. However, a fog had risen, making trying to negotiate Tours unfamiliar one way system and narrow streets a minor nightmare Near collisions with buses and other vehicles in the cloying darkness were only averted by sheer luck on my part. Indeed it took me the best part of an hour to find the parking, find a place, lock up securely and wend my overstressed and jangling nerves back to our accommodation on foot.

Or as Angie said to me when we were safely sitting in our room, glasses of a half decent Cabernet Sauvignon in hand; “We must stop having these adventures.”

To which I replied; “You’d only get bored if we did.”

General musings

Happy new decade


Not just a happy new year to everyone, if as usual the deadline for saying so has just whooshed past, but happy new decade. The futures I was afraid of over twenty years ago don’t look like they’re going to happen. Which is a bit awkward when you’ve been writing dystopian sci-fi for much of that time.

Over the last week or so, having put “The Cat Tree and other stories” out in the marketplace, I have been watching lots of YouTube videos on what makes a successful writer. The first is my least favourite. It feels like the two festively dressed presenters are giving the finger to those of us who like me, are massive introverts.
https://youtu.be/JkMXe4sGfuE
For the record, according to the Myers-Briggs test I’m an INTP or ‘Fixer’. I’m really terrible at socialising and can only do it for short periods, after which I need a long lie down in the proverbial darkened room. So to all these self publishing gurus who say you need lots of reader / writer interaction, sorry, that won’t work for me. I just don’t have the emotional makeup to readily switch between creator mode and dealing with the rest of the stuff that comes with marketing. I’ve worked in marketing and hated every minute. I’m happiest out of the limelight, firmly behind the keyboard, inner eyes focussed elsewhen, my attention focussed on the story.

My favourite video, well at least so far, on the topic of writing and success is the 2016 mashup below, where successful writers are being asked about what and how they think. I particularly like the interview with Elizabeth Gilbert starting at 25:14 where she talks about the shit sandwich all writers have to eat, every day. It’s candid and revelatory. As are the three sections where Neil Gaiman has something to say.

If anybody does drop by, check out the videos and tell me what you think.

If anyone wants me, I’ll be behind my keyboard.

General musings, Stars Trilogy

Looking forward


Generally speaking I try to keep away from mainstream politics, it distracts from my narrative habits. However, I may not be interested in politics, but that alas, does not mean that politics is not interested in me.

Take for example a forthcoming and hard earned holiday in London. The planning and booking for which trip were finalised in February, with only a minor panic over accommodation in June interfering with our schedule. On my to do list from the 15th October to the 6th of November are many visits to museums and all the other cultural wonders that the UK’s capital has to offer. Afternoon teas, theatre, lectures, sightseeing, a couple of grooming interludes and a few strolls down memory lane. Three whole weeks of just chilling out and having my own form of restrained fun. By restrained incidentally, I do not mean any kinky sojourns around the more salacious streets of the capital. I leave all that to younger flesh.

While there I will also be editing down an old copy of ‘The Sky full of Stars’ to make the story crisper and more engaging, refreshing my memory prior to a wholesale rewrite of the whole trilogy. A task I have long neglected. Then I have a few quirky stories which I will be throwing at some of the more mainstream sci-fi magazines from this list. I hope some of my narrative mud will stick, or at least get some worthwhile feedback.

Also whilst in London I hope to run into a couple of very decent people I have come to know through online contact. Just for a general chat and the simple pleasure of shaking their hand. A little face to face socialising, nothing much.

Regrettably a shadow has arisen which threatens our enjoyment. The whole dreadful soap opera of the UK’s departure from the European Union. Overall, I think leaving that bureaucratic farrago is a good thing. The UK should have been freed March 31st 2019. At least according to the date set by the triggering of article fifty of the EU constitution. I have seen no good reasons for not leaving on that date. Nor should another extension to the leaving date be sought, no matter the court judgements. Courts should not interfere with the political process, nor create political law retrospectively. That is a dangerous path to walk.

This does not matter to those who do not want the UK to leave. They do not believe in democracy. At least not in any form I have ever witnessed.

In the UK we were always told that we lived in a country where the average voter had a say via the ballot box. The general rule being that the majority gives an elected government an opportunity to fulfil promises made, contingent on their party being given a parliamentary majority. Whilst those elected are not compelled to keep their word to the absolute letter, a promise to their voter base is a promise and such commitments should not be broken lightly. Failing that, what is the point? If politicians continually break faith with those that elect them, does a walk to the polling station become nothing but an exercise in outright futility?

Let me expand. When I was eighteen, I had the opportunity of voting in the plebiscite for the UK to remain in the Common Market, as the European Union was called then. To my undying shame I voted for the UK to stay in, voting that way because my older brother told me it was a good thing and that I should vote yes. That decision has haunted me for several decades. It was a bad decision, made in ignorance that I have regretted for over forty years. During that time I have had the displeasure of watching the great promise of the then EEC morph into little more than an exclusive club for the well connected and arrogant. Of laws concocted by crass bureaucrats for what seemed no more than their own self-aggrandisement. Regulation for regulations sake from an unelected commission and rubber stamped by a parliament in name only. Watching the importance of my vote diminish as European democracy began to languish and die, the sovereign bodies of all the nation states gradually becoming little more than yes men for a patronising elite, hoping against hope for their turn to ride the bureaucrats great gravy train.

Now the UK is (probably) leaving the EU, I think a great wrong is at last, I hope, being righted. ‘Deal’ or no. All precautionary mechanisms are, from the best information I have available to me, in place for Britain’s World Trade Organisation terms exit aka ‘no deal’, or more pejoratively ‘crashing out’ if one is to maintain the hyperbole. Emergency provisions have been made and supplies stockpiled. The much prophesied worst is like the weak protestation of a street corner penitents mantra that ‘the end is nigh’, it will not come to pass. Like so many of the scare stories presented as news drip fed from so many once reputable media outlets.

On the day, the greater British public may not even notice the difference. Only those involved in warehousing and distribution will notice significant changes to their paperwork. The price of some goods may even fall as suppliers will no longer be forced to use EU based distribution hubs and instead bring their products directly into the UK as they did before the EEC and later EU.

My final word on the matter is this; if the UK does leave the EU on the 31st October I will be in a London bar somewhere celebrating with a modest glass of single malt, then stepping out to see the fireworks. This promises to be a Halloween and bonfire night to remember.

There may even be a story in it.

General musings

Word up


There are times I am thoroughly glad I no longer use Microsoft Word products for writing projects. I also tend to switch off certain functions in the thesaurus and grammar writing functions, why? Because a) I don’t need the help and b) if an infinitive needs splitting, then I want to take the biggest bloody word-axe I have to it, not have my creative licence suspended by someone else’s idea of what I should be saying. When language is narrowed, the ideas it can express become restricted and of lesser value.

I’ve recently heard that Microsoft, acting as some kind of self-styled Word Police are apparently introducing a tool in the latest version of word that will correct the users use of English to make it more politically correct which will;

“provide estimated reading times, extract and highlight key points in paragraphs, underline potentially sensitive geopolitical references”

Wait a moment. Extract key points in paragraphs? Well excuse me. If I write something, I want it that way because it expresses the ideas I want to examine. And so it should stay until the flow of the narrative demands otherwise. As for underlining potentially sensitive geopolitical references who decides what is ‘sensitive’? Does this value change with whatever political wind is blowing?

As a thoroughly disgruntled Windows 10 user, I find this function even more intrusive than the function-degrading ‘upgrades’ of Windows 10 that cannot be switched off.

Fortunately, I do not use Office 365 or any other Microsoft office product. Primarily because I’ve never liked how Microsoft Word can hide formatting code within a document. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are just as good, possibly better office suites, firstly because they can handle documents from a wider range of formats and secondly I think Bill Gates is quite rich enough, don’t you?

As for keeping copyrighted data out in the cloud, that to me is an invitation to copyright theft by a disgruntled Microsoft employee / teenage hacker / plagiarist. Therefore I would caution any would-be creative writer to avoid Microsoft 365 and derivatives like the plague. At least if they want their output to remain their own.

Nor does this make me some form of Luddite. I have no wish to return to the bad old days of strenuously bashing away at the mechanical keys of an old Imperial Safari as I once did. I like computers. They make it easier to create, organise and adapt ideas. From a creative perspective the advantages of word processing software speed up the transfer of imagination to page without repeated messy applications of semi-toxic correction fluid or wasting the growth of a small deciduous forest for each major writing project. As for the Internet, I was in at the birth of the World Wide Web and I still love it for the cornucopia of knowledge that it makes available, although I’ve fallen heavily out of love with social media of late and having deleted my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, will shortly be casting my little used Twitter and Instagram feeds into the nether voids between the datastreams if I can remember to do so. They contain nothing that is either real or of value.

General musings

Cogitus interruptus…


As someone who both writes and holds down a fairly mundane day job, I tend not to have very many adventures here in Victoria BC. Life is mostly routine with little real drama worth recounting. However, a few weeks ago I had a little medical discumbuggerance which threatened to upset a number of apple carts. My own especially. Let me expound.

My wife frequently complains about my snoring. It’s been costing both of us sleep. So, after considerable trial and error I worked out that the problem was catarrh based. During the hours of sleep, mucus was collecting at the back of my throat thus causing a partial blockage resulting in a sound like someone sawing a depressed camel in half. So just before Christmas I elected to try an extra strength sinus medicine to dry up the offending excess secretions and hopefully let the household get a good nights repose. The first night went reasonably well, I took the maximum dose and the morning consensus was that we’d all slept the better for it, so around eleven on the Wednesday evening before Christmas I popped another two of these over-the-counter nostrums and decided to stay up writing until two to let Angie take a run up at a decent nights repose.

At around two in the morning my heart began to pound uncontrollably. Just like a regular heartbeat but impossibly fast. Boom-boom-boom-boom. My body’s heretofore reliable muscle pump felt like it was trying to jackhammer out of my chest. Even at rest I couldn’t find a steady pulse, just my heartbeat thundering in my ears, my chest and fingers reverberating.

I went into the main bedroom. The light was on. Angie was awake and reading. So much for letting her get some sleep without me. “Hon. I’m not feeling so good.” I said. Truth be told I felt bloody awful. Light headed, unsteady and with an urgent need to call an ambulance. However, a quick run down a mental check list came up with no symptoms that might indicate a full-fledged heart attack. No pain, no clamminess or tightness in the chest. Just a super fast hammering inside my rib cage and the weird feeling that my head was going to float away.

Angie got up and joined me in the front room, checking my temperature and pulse as we sat on the couch. By now it was two thirty in the morning. “Emergency?” She queried.
“Please.” I said.
“Get dressed.”

I managed to pull on some clothes and stagger into the garage and thus the car. Angie hopped into the drivers seat and we took off into the early hours of a damp December night, me failing to bite my tongue as she put her foot down, pushing hard through suburban bends, nipping artfully through several tail end amber lights. As if my heart wasn’t hammering hard enough beforehand it was pounding even harder when we reached Victoria Hospital emergency. Angie decanted me at the door and I wobbled through the doors to the front desk. I managed to hand over my BC care card and burble something about having a fast heartbeat before slumping into a chair at front desk. A ponytailed girl in dark blue scrubs checked my heart rate and blood pressure. “Can we get a wheelchair for this gentleman?” She asked a colleague. By this time my vision was greying around the edges and I was too tired to walk down to the treatment area. Fortunately I was the only sick person in the emergency waiting room that night, so the road to treatment was short and timely.
“Thanks. I’m not sure I can walk. I’m a bit lightheaded.”
“With a heart rate of over two hundred I’d be light headed.” Someone, I’m not sure who, commented as I was wheeled into the very beige treatment area. I recall my head wobbling a little on my shoulders and commenting that my spatial sense was very disturbed. The simple act of being pushed around a corner in a wheelchair made me feel very uncomfortable bordering on nauseous.

A male nurse named Fraser, or was it Frasier? My normally accurate memory skips a groove every time I try and recall certain details. All I remember of him is an image of a jocund, portly young man with black frame glasses, short dark hair and jawline beard. He handed me one of those draughty hospital gowns and allowed me the dignity of changing behind curtains. Jeans and jacket draped over a cabinet I slumped onto one of those all singing, all dancing hospital beds that act as support, occasional operating table and sometime hearse.

One thing I noticed was a distinct distortion of my colour perception. Everything but the nurses and doctors scrubs seemed beige. Curtains, walls everything. Even if they were pastel shades of light blue or green. Which left me with an overwhelming impression of Victoria General Hospital’s curtain draped ER as an overall beigeness. I might have been mistaken but even the defibrillator-laden bright red crash cart parked at my beds foot appeared somehow pastel and muted. All I could do was lie back and let the medical staff get on with their jobs. Plugging leads into a heart monitor, taking various samples for testing. Ripping off bits of my chest hair when they had to move the electrodes for a better signal.

When properly wired up to a monitor I recall someone trying to find a vein in my left arm to stick in a needle and failing. Which in my semi-stupor struck me as odd as I used to be a blood donor and never had a problem with hidden veins before. A week later there was still a three inch long oval bruise on my left forearm punctuated with at least half a dozen bright red needle marks.

Then there was the annoying bleeping of the heart monitor alarm. My natural breathing rate is about five or six breaths a minute when the monitor alarm default was nine. Sometimes if I’m concentrating hard I’ll stop breathing for at least half a minute at a time. Some people stick their tongues out, others frown, I hold my breath. It’s an old habit from when I used to meditate a lot. Which of course set off the alarm every time I tried to focus on what people were saying.

Angie arrived, I’m not sure exactly when, after parking the car and chatted to the male nurse, filling in medical history details I’d omitted in my foggy mental state. She was briefly quizzed on why we hadn’t called 911, but that’s one of those questions you never have a decent answer for because you’re too caught up in the moment. Our attitude was, why call an ambulance when you can still walk?

At some stage the collector of blood samples switched to my right arm where they actually struck oil. I was also told to try various things like holding my breath and clenching my belly, which seemed to help. I believe it’s called the Varsalva manoeuvre or some such. After five minutes of this the pounding eased and I felt my booming heart gradually slow to a more leisurely eighty beats per minute and my hands stopped vibrating. To the point where I could actually use one of those cardboard urine collection bottles without spilling any. For some reason I really needed to relieve myself and couldn’t have hung on to it much longer.

What I do remember precisely is offhandedly wondering whether I was going to die that night. For some reason the thought did not worry me overmuch. At least I don’t remember feeling frightened. My heart hadn’t failed at the peak of the attack when I’d almost gone into full defibrillation, so now things were calming down I felt able to relax. I reasoned that the worst hadn’t happened by now, so it probably wasn’t going to. Panic over.

After my heartbeat steadied I dozed until four thirty despite the comings and goings of staff and one loudly complaining woman with a sand-rasp voice. At which point a slight bespectacled man with short sandy hair appeared at my bedside and introduced himself as a heart surgeon. He told me my bloods were all within normal range and we could go home. I was also quizzed about medication and confessed to maxing two doses of extra strength sinus medicine. With this revelation it was generally agreed a lack of decent regular sleep plus the medication had unbalanced my electrolytes, to the point where my cardiac electrical system literally shorted out, which was the cause of my ultra fast heartbeat. The medical name for my condition was Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia. Which is usually first noticed in much younger people. Highly unpleasant and not to be recommended, but watch the meds and get more sleep in future. At least that was what I remember being told.

After that advice I dressed, still a little unsteadily, and we walked out into the damp darkness of the early morning, arriving home just after five. Angie and I went to bed but all we could do was doze fitfully for another three hours, our little bit of hospital drama at an end.

As anyone with the slightest imagination might attest, the whole experience made for a rather thoughtful, sober and reflective festive season.

It’s a curious thing, this not-dying. Very curious indeed.