Vote me!
I’m standing for council in May’s elections. Today, I collected the necessary signatures to register. Then Wendy and I stopped to make short videos. Here’s the first of them.
Monthly archives: March 2019
Kiddie seats and coffee cups- new 3D printed products for modellers
New 3D printed items have been added to my shop on Shapeways.
Child car seats, in various scales, for detailing models-
Various scales of coffee cups for dioramas and detailing.
Support your local indie author!
I don’t sell enough books to make a living, mostly because I’ve never been much good at self promotion. But, increasingly, also because I’m not a cheat, it seems.
You can help independent authors like me- real people, writing because it’s what they love to do- fight back. If you’ve read one of my books, and enjoyed it, please leave a review. They feed into Amazon’s* algorithms, pushing my books up lists and getting them in front of more potential customers. If you didn’t like the book, contact me directly, and I’ll take the criticisms on board and try to do better next time.
If you think it’s cool that one of your friends is an author, show that appreciation by buying one (or more) of their books. They cost less than that pint you were going to buy them the next time you’re in a pub together. Sales push books up the charts, another way to raise a book’s profile and get it seen by more potential customers.
I can’t ask that you stop buying the churned material barfed out by scammers. Part of the scam is that customers don’t know they’re being scammed until it’s too late.
*Other ebook sites exist. My books are available from most of them, as well.
Didn’t Bleed Red 12
Jasmine’s hand was encased in a hard red shell, the lines on her skin crowding down her arm to the injured extremity. Danny had fashioned a crude sling to support the limb, though neither he nor she knew whether it was necessary or helpful. Swallowed by an overstuffed chair by the windows, she had closed her eyes and was perfectly still. She might be asleep, no-one was going to disturb her.
Chen stared at her from a desk all the way across the open plan office space. “I knew there was something special about your black friend. But how could she catch a bullet from the air?” he said. It was almost a whisper, as if he feared she might hear him. He was beginning to come out of the shocked state he had lapsed into after they had pulled him from his headquarters.
“Like I told you, we have our reasons for avoiding the authorities. Imagine what they would do to her if they found out about what she can do.” Kyle told him. Perhaps bringing the gang leader into their headquarters had been a bad idea. But there had been no way they would have left him out on the street, near catatonic with shock, and just waiting to be picked up by rivals.
“She saved my life. You saved my life. If I still had a crew to command, I would offer you all the help and protection I was capable of.” Chen shrugged. He noticed that the left sleeve of his jacket had started to part from the shoulder, damaged as he had been carried and dragged from his base. Tugging at an errant strand of cotton, he made it worse.
“Many of your people escaped with us. I am sure they were supposed to run into the guns of the group we knocked out. Perhaps you can reform.” Ersilia pointed out.
“Who would wish to work for a boss who let his base be ambushed so? And who had a traitor within his own ranks? I was a fool to think I could take on the real bosses.”
“That’s what happens when you play at gangster.” Carla snapped. The comedown from the adrenaline was making her edgy and annoyed.
“Will you believe me if I say I did it to make things better? If I could have a little territory, I could control it and keep the worst of the old gangs’ ways out. I would have to do some crime, to pay the way, but I would keep it away from the small shops and businesses and ordinary people.” Chen stopped tugging at the thread, and removed his jacket before he completely detached the arm.
“Like a Robin Hood sort of deal?” Tonya asked.
Chen frowned, trying to make the connections necessary to understand the comment. “That was a film, was it? I did not see it.”
“Robin Hood robbed from the rich to give to the poor.” Stone explained. “At least, that’s one version of the story. He was always up against the corrupt and powerful, protecting the little people. And always an outlaw.”
“Then maybe that is what I was trying to do. If it helps you understand me better. But now…. I am not safe. If they have aliens, then they shall roll over any who stand in their way, and it shall be worse than it ever was.”
“And they will come after us as well, I am sure. I do not know why, but I believe you about your motives. Perhaps we may work together. What do you say?” Ersilia’s question was aimed at the rest of the group. “We cannot allow gangsters to have alien warriors at their disposal. We cannot allow anyone to have alien warriors, I think.”
“Apart from you?” Chen pointed toward Jasmine.
“Jas is human.” Carla objected. “The aliens put something in her, but she’s still human.”
“I would be interested to hear more about that.”
“I’m sure you would.” Kyle had laid a warning hand on Carla’s arm before she gave away any important details. “We’ll need to ask around, to see if you’re genuine. But Ilia is right, there is no way we can let the local Mafia use an alien soldier for their muscle. We have to stop that, no matter what.”
“I will help, if I can. I apologise if I offended with my comments about your friend. Now, if I may, I will see how many of my people escaped. And how many still wish to work with me. I thank you for my life.” Standing, he gave a little bow to the people around the table. “Please thank your friend, when she wakes up.”
Chen walked to the stairs, a confident strut returning to his stride. “He left his jacket.” Danny pointed out after he had left.
Northern Gorehouse: Vampires and Zombies and Brexit
The ‘Brexit novel’ is a thing, but they tend to be literary works, which aren’t really my thing. I would like to make the case for Northern Gorehouse being not only a fun alternative, but also one of the first to be published
The novel was finished in April or May of 2017, but it didn’t feel right to release it so soon after the Arena bombing, given the violent ending of the story. So it came out for Halloween of that year.
The book was written as an action horror story. The ability to map the stupid politics of the last few years onto it is a bonus. Indeed, the B word is only mentioned once in the story, right at the beginning, to establish the run down state of the nation, and show how the vampires have come in to take advantage of it.
Vampires as a stand in for capitalists and the ruling elite is not a new metaphor, but as I’ve established it’s post Brexit, I’m going to call them the disaster capitalists who caused, and benefit from, all the pain. Being vampires, they, of course, take advantage of the homeless the country has abandoned. And have corrupt servants in the political system, covering up for them, and pushing policies that aid them. Again, not new tropes in vampire fiction, but ones that map perfectly well onto the Brexit theme.
Of course, the political allegory was never the main aim of the story, and it’s harder to map metaphor onto it once the action really starts. The zombies are created by the vampires but (spoiler) it’s an accident. In a true Brexit allegory, they would be a deliberate method for distracting people at street level and keeping them away from turning on the elite.
Similarly, the fact that vampires exist wouldn’t be such a shock in a more pointed Brexit take. Everyone would have at least an inkling they were there, but their bought politicians and the media would be demanding that people look the other way.
Since I wrote the book, I’ve discovered another character who wasn’t included- the Brave Warrior claiming to be from a long line of vampire hunters, who has actually betrayed the people they pretend to be protecting, for reasons that don’t make any sense. There’s no Lexit Van Helsing in Northern Gorehouse.
I think you should read my accidental Brexit novel. If nothing else, you can pretend the vampires are Farage, Gove, Johnson et al. (It won’t be any stretch at all with Rees Mogg.)
Lexit means…?
I’ve been arguing Brexit with a Lexiteer (or whatever they call themselves), and it drove me to write this little rant. I can’t understand how someone on the Left can be such a noisy cheerleader for this-
The referendum was called by a Right wing Prime Minister, to appease the Right wing of his party, lest they defect to an even more Right wing single issue party.
The Leave campaign was funded by dodgy businessmen who saw exit from the EU as a way to decimate workers’ rights and consumer protections so they could make more profits. It also offered the chance to escape proposed EU rules cracking down on tax avoidance.
Labour Leave was funded by the same people.
The Leave campaign traded in lies and anti-EU tropes established by decades of propaganda in the Right wing press.
Despite the billions in free publicity pre-loaded into the campaign by the papers’ propaganda, and all manner of cheating, Leave only managed to win by a narrow margin.
So a new Right wing PM, with an authoritarian streak and a history of attacking immigrants, took this narrow victory, and used it to justify major constitutional change. She drew the team to plan it from her Right wing party, and always bent to the demands of the same Right wing members her predecessor had been pandering to, no matter how impossible they were. Meanwhile, the Far Right, buoyed up by the victory a bit of bullying won them, threatened riots if they didn’t get their demands met in negotiations.
We’re now in a position where the Right wing PM is basing the decisions she’ll allow to be made on Brexit on the demands of the same narrow band of Right wingers her predecessor was afraid of. She’s going to do whatever she thinks will save her party from disintegration, rather than what will work out best for the country.
Yet, still, the Socialist Leaver will go out of their way to insult anyone who dares point out any of these facts, because they believe that, somehow, this Right wing project will lead to a Left wing utopia. Never mind the long term damage this will do to the communities they claim to stand with, or the huge steps backwards for all their other ideals. They’ll betray those to give a victory to the ‘neoliberal bosses club’ they claim to hate.
There are reasons I have no sympathy for Lexiters’ claims they have anyone else’s interests at heart, or even any coherent policies.
Didn’t Bleed Red 11
New York
The paper no longer had staff in China, relying on subcontractors and pool reports. It was an unreliable way to get news, but the saving looked good to the owner’s accountants, so that was that.
Harrison had read the last month’s pool reports out of Beijing, trying to find anything that hinted, however subtly, at the policy Albunov had alluded to. He had found nothing, as he had expected. It wasn’t something that would be referred to aloud, anyway, so he had been looking for guarded official comments on positions that would have been the opposite of destroying the ship off Hong Kong. Not committing to its protection would have been a way for the Chinese government to leave the explosive option open.
It didn’t help that he wasn’t an expert on Chinese politics and the intricacies of the country’s internal power struggles. He was good at politics as it played out between the diplomats in Manhattan, but those too often had the tenor of petty domestic disputes, rather than important policy decisions. And there was no-one else on staff who could give him the crash course he would need to be able to spot the nuanced language that meant more than it said out loud.
There were even more stories about the country that were filed from outside China. They had to be even less insightful than the ones coming from inside, but Harrison was compelled to read at least a few of them.
With a bottle of craft lager to hand, he moved from the home office to the leather armchair in the lounge that swallowed him up and softly cocooned him. He could rest the refashioned reading slope on the arms, and only have to move to tap the screen of his tablet and turn a page. This was probably going to be another of those nights where he fell asleep halfway through an opinion piece and dreamt that its author was shouting bad advice at him.
Three hours later, he was convinced he had made an important discovery. He wasn’t sure what it meant, yet, and doubted it was the one Albunov had been steering him toward, but he needed to delve deeper.
At first, he had thought he was getting confused about people with similar names. He could have been getting excited about shoddy translations, so he had to do some extra research. Slowly, he was convinced that he had something.
The names that intrigued him started turning up just before the invasion, junior ministers abruptly promoted to important posts, with little or no background to justify the move. In a bureaucracy that more often rewarded longevity, these newcomers were particularly surprising.
After the invasion, the names started appearing more often, usually with an associated further increase in rank and responsibility. There weren’t enough of them to constitute a takeover, but they could certainly exert a lot of influence. Somehow, Harrison was sure that this group would be revealed as the source of Albunov’s alluded to destruction order.
But proving that was going to be impossible with the limited access that had sent him to the article morgue in the first place.
It was a dead end, for now. If he could soak some more information from the Russian, perhaps he could get a story out of this strangeness. Until then, it was a loss.
He was getting another bottle of lager from the refrigerator when a follow up thought hit him. Perhaps China wasn’t the only country to see such a reshuffle. Countries that weren’t so closed to outside scrutiny. Perhaps even ones where the paper had correspondents.
Didn’t Bleed Red 10
This content is from my Patreon page. You can support it for as little as £1 a month.
Unlock with PatreonDidn’t Bleed Red
I’m trying something different for the serialisation of my current work in progress. Didn’t Bleed Red is being serialised at Tapas, a comics and prose platform for mobile and web readers. As usual, supporters on Patreon get to see episodes around a month before they’re generally available.
Here’s the prologue-
The ships appeared from nowhere, or so it seemed. The world’s governments had known there was something coming for a month, but no-one could tell them what it was. They were as surprised as everyone else by the shapes that arrived in orbit. Simple platonic solids from a distance, up close the scoring of heat dissipation trenches and hangar doors, and the dimpling of sensor arrays and weaponry became clear.
They hung over the planet for half a day, visible from the ground as they caught the sun. Then the smaller ships arrived, and the attack began.
Space Force lasted seconds, its satellites swatted away before the order had been given to release their nuclear payloads. Conventional forces fared better. In the air, fighter pilots became aces as they met the first wave of the attack. But the alien ships kept on coming, and were joined by larger, tougher vessels. Despite mounting losses, the air forces of Earth kept on downing invaders, but could not hold the mass of them back.
On the ground, as the landing craft disgorged all manner of armed creatures, infantry and armoured divisions fought as bravely as their comrades in the air. The aliens had more powerful weapons, and were heavily armoured. But they weren’t invulnerable. If they could be made to bleed, then there would be a way to kill them. Many did die, but they took at least as many human soldiers with them, and were soon replaced.
Earth was losing the war of attrition. Prime Ministers, Presidents and dictators around the world considered launching nuclear weapons at the key landing spots. It seemed their only means of rebalancing the battle on the ground. Hopefully it would be a harsh enough blow that their remaining forces could repulse the attack.
The decision was made. A timetable was hurriedly agreed, and fingers hovered over the launch buttons.
Just then, the invasion fleet started to drop from the sky. The gigantic ships in orbit went dark. The spherical one had a bite taken out of it by a huge explosion. On the ground, the menagerie of troops fell into disarray. Many collapsed, or froze in place, trapped inside the armour that had protected them moments before. Some threw down their weapons and cowered in surrender. Others turned their guns and blades on creatures which had, moments before, been their comrades. A number fought on, but their depleted and confused ranks were soon bested. A large number fled, and a significant number of them have yet to be tracked down.
A disc shaped ship, smallest of the first arrivals, dropped from orbit and tumbled into the Western Pacific. Belly flopping into the ocean, it drove a minor tsunami toward the Chinese coastline. It floats in international waters, a new island of exotic alloys and unknown technologies, circled by ships from all the world’s navies, awaiting investigation.
No-one in power knows why the invasion came to such an abrupt end, though many want to take credit for it. Supercomputers and intelligence analysts are working hard to crack even the slightest bit of the spike in communications amongst the aliens that presaged the collapse. It must have some bearing upon what happened, but they can’t yet tell what. Everyone awaits the rebooting of the orbiting platonics, a second wave of fighters and troop carriers, or some other terror that they cannot imagine. Something must be set to happen.
Until it does, the clean up must go on. Rubble is being cleared, plans are being made for cities to be rebuilt. Refugees are being found shelter, and provided with food and water. Elsewhere, dead aliens are being dissected, and live ones are being examined. Their languages are being learnt, where possible, and they are being questioned. Their craft and weapons are being gathered up and dismantled. Reverse engineered and reworked, some of their equipment will be used against them, should they try again.
As yet, the question of where the fleet came from has not been answered. The reason for the invasion is unknown, the wide array of differing morphologies and biologies of their army unexplained. But humanity defeated them once, surely it can resolve all of these questions in time.
Meanwhile, a tiny group knows some of the secrets of the invaders. They, with help, were the ones who halted the invasion and saved the planet. But they dare not reveal themselves, because they also know that the aliens arrived years before, and have implanted their agents, and cultivated traitors, at the highest levels of Earth’s governments.
They must lay low until they can be sure they and the world are truly safe, avoiding the alien and human forces hunting them down. And they have to help a friend who is no longer completely human, and is fearful of losing her identity, but who could hold the key to the ultimate safety of the planet.
This is their story.