Still working on Fatal Invasion. It’s amazing looking back at how long I have lived with this story. No Escape, the short story that started the series, was published in 2017. Work on Fatal Shadow started later that year, so I have been working on the series for eight years. Back then, it was called The Knotted Man. Glad I changed it. Often my first draft titles change. The first draft of the Golden Rule Duology (A Bright Power Rising/The Unconquered Sun) was rather apt but very cumbersome The Two-Thumbed Hand. Fatal Shadow‘s sequel changed from Lesser Evil to Greater Evil, because I came to realise the latter had much better. Gilded Treason was Gilded Cage for a long time, but the original title, I felt at least, was a little too generic. It almost became Gilded Snare at one point. I try to pick titles that don’t bring up too many books by the same name. Obviously, if Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson picks one of my titles for their work, there’s nothing I do except chalk it up to bad luck.
Name changes can also happen to short stories. No Escape was originally called Prey. Hoard was called The Hoarder, but I changed it to move the focus on the main character rather than the villain. One Moonlit Night was called How to save the Earth? for a long time which was not really what the story is about. On the flip side, many of the other short stories had their names fixed from the first draft: The Fate Healer, Murder Seat, the Alienity stories and so on. I suppose it’s just easier to get to the heart of what a short story is about.
Still clutching the wet knife, she stood at the passage tomb’s silent heart, barely able to breathe in expectation of his waking as the grave’s own dead-cold breath sank through bloodstained clothes into her shivering flesh.
She yelped and almost dropped the knife as he threw off the stone slab before her like a blanket and inhaled the air still moist with staling blood. He rose, a man as tall and straight as the spear he carried, a mighty giant from a dim, misremembered past. The monks’ scribblings had not prepared her for the Formorian. His kind were the first inhabitants of this land, or rather the first to survive, almost gods who long ago returned to the sea and earth that birthed them. The scribes had written of them as either beautiful or monstrously ugly, but in truth, the one-eyed man perfectly embodied both states at once.
He spoke to her in a language she didn’t recognize. On and on, he intoned, a torrent of words she couldn’t comprehend that flooded the chamber with their mocking echoes.
Silence fell. Her lips trembled with the urge to speak, but wonder and awe had robbed her voice.
His hand reached so gracefully toward her the first she knew of it was its touch as soft as a dying breath against her lips. She flinched from it, but he had already drawn something out of her, a thread of her soul, perhaps.
“Why have you have woken me before the Winter has passed?” he asked in the language she spoke, her language.
“But it is mid-summer,” she said, pointing to the bright mouth of the shaft behind her. A shroud of gore covered the little bodies on the floor. Bloodstains on the spiral-covered walls mapped out the death-throes carved by her knife. She was so drenched in blood she might have been one of them herself. She had carried out the rite exactly as proscribed, to the last pitiless detail.
“Winter isn’t a time of year,” he said with the patience of someone explaining to an infant. “It isn’t the cold. It’s death, and death is due to stalk this land for many more centuries.”
“But we need you now!” she pleaded, suddenly aware she was alone with him in the chamber. Nobody else had dared to do what had to be done. “Invaders have come and bring our doom.” It was some of their fruit who lay dead and broken on the floor.
With a weary sigh, the giant drove his spear through her chest. He struck with such force and delicacy she didn’t feel her skewering, even as her lifeblood gushed from the wound.
“To me, you’re all invaders,” he said.
It was only then that she screamed, the passage’s echo taking up her last cry so that she screamed threefold.
Girl looking at the Moon through a telescope. My astronomy work.
Jen yawned as she stood in the back garden in the dark, while her father tinkered with his telescope. Astronomy was Dad’s obsession. Most clear nights, he was out here staring into his little, fat telescope, ignoring his family, but, now and then, guilt made him try to drag Jen outside in a feeble effort to interest her in his hobby.
When the weather didn’t save her, she dissuaded him with a range of excuses. She was tired. She had homework or housework to do. She had a cold. She had a headache. She just didn’t feel like it this particular night, but maybe next time… With any luck, it would be overcast. He never seemed too bothered when she declined. Sometimes, he looked relieved. But, on a rare occasion, looking back into those eyes aglow with boyish enthusiasm, she just couldn’t bring herself to refuse.
Of course, being out here with Dad was like being away from him in the house—only colder and with less to do. She stood watching his head disappear behind his back as he bent down and stared into the eyepiece, mumbling to himself, scribbling down figures in his notebook. Jen shivered. She learned her lesson the last time she admitted her boredom.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll call it out and you jot it down,” he’d said, thrusting a notebook and pen at her. She’d tried her best, but he was so damn picky.
“No, no, no. The other column.”
“Orion doesn’t have a y, honey.”
“Is that a three or a five?”
“Do try to be neat.”
“Wrong column!”
“That’s not how you spell Betelgeuse.”
It had ended with her screaming as she fled into the house. Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. At least some part of her was warm.
“Come look at this,” Dad said. He stood away from the telescope and pointed at the sky. “It’s that star there.”
Which one was it? It didn’t matter. “Oh, right.” Jen sighed quietly as she looked into the eyepiece. It looked like a star, only slightly bigger. It wasn’t even a binary.
“Lovely,” she said, stepping away.
Dad looked troubled. He obviously saw through her fake smile.
“How about we look at the Moon for a while,” he said. “You always like the moon.”
“Great!” Now, the Moon was interesting. It wasn’t just some blurry spot of light. It was another world, with craters and mountains and valleys and basalt seas. Another world on Earth’s doorstep.
Dad swung the telescope toward the moon, fiddled with the adjustment knobs, peered into the eyepiece, fiddled with the knobs again. He put both thumbs up. “We’re ready.” “Dan, Jenny, come quick!” Mum roared from the back door.
Just when things were getting interesting.
“What’s wrong?” Dad yelled, his head swivelling toward the house.
“You wouldn’t believe me. On the television. Come quick. Both of you now. Please.”
Dad shook his head. “We had better go in.” He stomped toward the house.
Jen sighed and followed.
“Quick! Quick!” Mum cried hysterically.
Dad broke into a run. Jen jogged after him.
“What’s happened?” Dad panted as he bent over and leaned one arm against the frame of the back door.
“Into the living room! Quick!” Mum cried, disappearing into the hall. Dad followed her. Jen hesitated. This was completely out of character for Mum, and a bit frightening.
“Jen!” Dad called. “Where are you?”
She hurried down the hall and into the sitting room. Her parents were standing in front of the television. Dad had a perplexed frown.
“Are you sure that this isn’t some sort of film or an ad maybe?” he asked.
“It’s on the news channels,” Mum said. “I’ve checked them all.”
Jen pushed between them. Was that a man or woman on the screen? He (if he was male) had blue eyes, black skin, Asian eye-folds and frizzy red hair. Dad kept flicking the channels, but only the banners and tickers and logos changed. The odd-looking person was on every channel.
Who was he? What did this all mean?
Dad gave up on changing channels. Black words scrolled across a yellow background on the bottom of the screen. ALIEN SIGNAL FROM MOON. FIRST IMAGE OF NON-TERRESTRIAL LIFE FORM. NO INDICATION OF PURPOSE AS YET. Above it, in blazing white letters on a red strip, was the word EXCLUSIVE.
“There are indications that what we are seeing is not a static picture,” the newscaster squeaked excitedly. “However, the alien has yet to speak.”
The alien’s lips moved. “Hello, people of Earth.” The voice sounded human and friendly, even jovial, though it could have been male or female. “We are the Gyonmir Communion.” His faced lurched into a hideously stretched smile. “We don’t actually look like this. This construct was chosen to put you at ease. We are a Type II civilization on your Kardashev scale. As such, we feel it is our duty to help less developed worlds.”
“Wow,” Dad said. “They’re going to help us expand beyond this solar system. Who knows what technologies they might give us?”
The alien’s smile disappeared. “Earth is a beautiful world and yet so sick. It is riddled with a peculiar cancer—you. You are consuming your planet’s resources at an astounding rate, apparently oblivious to their ultimate finiteness. If your species does not expand beyond its home planet, you are ultimately doomed. And yet to allow such expansion might would turn a localised disease into a contagion.”
Dad clamped his hands to the sides of his face. “They’re going to kill us all.”
An electric shiver passed through Jen.
“Dan!” snapped Mum, flicking her head in Jen’s direction.
Dad glanced guiltily at Jen. “Oh, right. Sorry. Don’t mind me. Everything will be fine. I promise. I’m just…I can’t believe this is happening.”
Mum’s arm slipped around her. “Don’t mind your father. He’s always talking nonsense.” Jen attempted a smile. It did not feel particularly convincing.
The alien was still talking. “We put our best minds on the problem. No other sentient race displays your fecklessness. The flaw in your nature had to be down to some evolutionary quirk, but for a hundred years we have struggled to find it. And then, one day, we realised the answer had been staring us in the face all the time—the Moon.” The alien honked in some poor attempt at laughter. “That’s right—the Moon. No other life-sustaining planet has such a monstrously large satellite. The moon stabilises your planet’s tilt to an extraordinary degree. It keeps your climate relatively constant.”
He leaned in to the camera. “Other races evolved in more changeable environments. To survive, they had to learn to plan ahead with volatile seasons and prolonged extreme weather events. You, on the other hand, had relatively docile climates. You had only to plan for the expected in a given year. When the expected didn’t happen, many of you died and a few civilisations collapsed, but it was not enough for you to learn your lesson. Other sentient races had to be ready for the unexpected at any time to build a civilization in the first place. Evolution was too easy on you, and it shows.”
He shook his head sadly. “So many things about the Moon’s motion encourage mechanistic thinking. Even its size and position means that it fits almost perfectly over the sun during a full eclipse.”
His smile stretched wider. “So we have decided on a drastic solution. We are taking away your moon. Its departure will likely collapse your current global civilization, but at some time in the distant future, either your descendants or another sentient species will again reach for the stars, cured of your insanity, your lunacy, if you will.” He honked again. “Goodbye and good luck.”
The picture went blank except for the banners and channel logo. After a long pause, the news reader appeared. He looked so pale as he filled the silence with random fragments of sentences.
Dad seized Jen’s hand. He started pulling her and Mum toward the door. “Come outside with me. Now.”
What horrors might they see? “I don’t want to go!” Jen tried to tug her hand free, but Dad’s grip was too strong.
“Don’t be frightened, Jen. Your father knows what he is doing.” Mum’s soothing tone was reassuring, but the questioning glance she directed at him was not.
Jen shook her head, using her free hand to pull her other one free. “I’m not going out there.”
“But Jen…honey, this might be your last chance to see the Moon,” Dad pleaded. He stretched out an open hand. “Every moment we delay here, the Moon may be slipping away. Don’t worry. You’ll be with us. Trust us.”
Reluctantly, she laid her hand on his palm. His fingers gently closed around it and both hands slipped into a loose clasp.
“Good girl. No need to be afraid,” he said as he led them out of the room and down the hall.
“Do you really think that they can just take the Moon like that?” Mum asked as they passed through the kitchen.
They had left the back door open in their hurry. Flies and moths covered the ceiling. How would moths steer without the Moon?
“We’ll soon know,” Dad said. They plunged into the night.
The Moon was still in the sky, full and round and reassuring. Perhaps, the transmission was some sort of prank after all. The Moon was huge. The idea of an alien force being powerful enough to just take it away was ludicrous. And yet Jen was afraid to take her eyes off it in case it disappeared.
“I keep expecting some giant hand to reach out of the sky and grab it,” Dad said.
Mum mumbled something.
“Sorry,” Dad said. “Everything will be fine.”
The Moon was getting smaller. Or was Jen imagining it?
Mum gasped. “Oh, my Lord. The Moon is shrinking.”
Dad hugged Jen to him. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
But Jen couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look away from the retreating moon.
The telescope! She ran to it and peered in the eyepiece. The surface of the Moon looked as it always had. No telltale glimmers gave away the aliens’ activity. But the Moon was definitely getting smaller.
Big hands pressed lightly on her shoulders. “What do you see?” Dad asked.
Her mumbled reply meant nothing to her. She was too busy to speak. She had to sear every pock and pimple on that surface into her memory before it slipped away. It was so beautiful. To think they would lose it forever. Dad would miss it the most. He had spent so many nights staring at it.
She moved away from the telescope. “Dad, you look.”
Dad refused with a wave.
“You might spot something, some clue I wouldn’t notice.”
Taking a deep breath, he bent over the eyepiece. “Hmm.” It was merely an absent-minded murmur.
Jen glanced back and forth between the dwindling satellite and her father. She had done the right thing, the kind thing, the daughterly thing. That nagging pang of regret was best ignored.
Dad shook his head as he straightened his back. “I can’t see anything unusual. Except that it’s getting smaller. Helen, do you want a look?”
“I’m fine,” Mum said. “Let Jen look.”
“Yes. Jenny, you can look now. I’ve had my whole life to look at it.” His voice thickened to a rasp.
Jen peered into the eyepiece. Even through the telescope, the moon was small. The detail on its surface melted into a blur and it became a small white disc.
“Can you still see anything?” Dad asked.
“Can you still see anything?” Dad asked.
“Just about,” Jen said. The Moon was a tiny point of white now, no different from a star.
It dimmed. “You take a look.” She stepped out of her father’s way.
He looked in the eyepiece, then shook his head. “It’s gone. The Moon is gone.”
Trapped in his chrysalis of waterproof fabric, Frater Yory could do little except read the slim pamphlet he had brought over and over, until every word, every syllable, had been stamped into his consciousness. The mournful poetry of the exiled Rhumgadian poet, Versifer, captured his own melancholy perfectly. Here he was, clinging to a dragon’s tail ten thousand leagues from the golden halls of the Panatheneum, risking his life for another book and the knowledge it contained.
In between readings, he fell into the habit of staring at his wrist attracton, a wondrous gizmo, about twice the size of a Nosteran ducat, that told not the time but the location of its wearer in the huge void between worlds known as the Crevast. Yory had begun to despair that it had malfunctioned when the shrill ring of its alarm filled the tent. Turning it off, he strapped on the slim backpack holding his folded glider and the belt containing the tools of his trade. He threw a cloak over his matte black armor and slipped on his mask. He tucked the poetry book into a bag on his belt. It didn’t feel right to abandon a book, no matter how common and well read.
The wind ripped away the tent as soon as Yory cut through it. He watched it dance and writhe on the breeze until it shrank into the inky distance, then turned his attention to the black, hulking edifice standing before him. Its tens of slits flickered invitingly, but it was no inn. It was the sterncastle of a saddledeck and the scaly hillock on which it stood was the back portion of a dragon, the Baleful Shade. Yory stepped toward it, careful to hook his boots into the creature’s scales to avoid following his tent into the void. Beyond the dragon, villages lit up the curtain of cliffs at the brink of the continental shard of Magmel. Ahead lay the fabled city of Shamta, gleaming like a cluster of blue-white crystals. Yory had to recover the book and escape before the dragon reached it.
Reaching the sterncastle, he gently lifted one of its gunport flaps and peered inside. Two of the crew lay facedown on the deck. Another was draped over a cannon. Surely they couldn’t have passed out from drink. They emitted not the slightest hint of a snore, which was unusual and slightly alarming.
The port was too small for him to enter, so he used the gunports to climb up to the top deck of the structure. More unconscious crew littered saddledeck. Loose and torn sails billowed in the breeze and whipped about unsecured ropes. If pyrates had attacked the dragon, Yory surely would have noticed.
He crouched beside the nearest insensate man and turned him over. The draker was cold to the touch, but showed no sign of injury.
Whatever had happened, it made Yory’s recovery of the book even more urgent. He located the open hatch to the hold and descended the ladder.
He found the door of the chamber where the book was stored ajar. A metal pick protruded from the chest’s lock.
A thud behind Yory made him turn around. The bald, thin man standing before him was accoutered in similar fashion to Yory, except the stranger hadn’t bothered to wear a mask. He must have supposed he didn’t need one, having murdered any witnesses.
“It’s rather dangerous to leave the chest’s lock in that state,” Yory said, trying to sound casual. “The lock is booby-trapped. What department are you?”
The man’s sneer deepened. “Pyratical Studies.”
“I’m Pre-Cataclysm,” Yory said, doing his best to wring the tremble from his voice. “The book falls under my department’s remit.”
“Nonsense,” the stranger said. Metal quills protruded between his fingers like claws, each sharpened nib containing whatever toxin he had used to massacre the crew. “The tome is a copy of a Pre-Cataclysm original. It was part of the Emperor of the Void’s library and, as such, is the rightful property of my department.”
“I can’t believe any member of the Panatheneum would massacre the crew of a dragon for a book, no matter how precious.” Yory knew even as he spoke, it was a mistake, but anger had gotten the better of him.
“I’m Pater Viliber. You may have heard of me.”
Yory had. Pater Viliber was famed across the Panatheneum for his exploits. He had retrieved many rare tomes, often in the most challenging circumstances.
“You have, I see,” Viliber said. “Well, I spilled much blood to earn that reputation. I have killed hundreds, thousands, in the service of the Panatheneum. Your squeamishness is why you’re doomed to fail. You don’t want it enough. You must be a silly little frater on his first mission. Why do you think your mentors trained you to kill? We’re fighting a war to preserve knowledge and wars have casualties. The lives on board this dragon are inconsequential compared to the survival of this book. Besides, I only killed the crew of the saddledeck, not the cinchdeck or the headstall. I’m getting out of here before the dragon perches. I suggest you do the same.”
It was the dismissive way he turned his back that spurred Yory to draw his knife and lunge at him. “That book is my department’s, you thief!”
An array of glinting nibs jabbed at his face, forcing him to jerk his head back. A kick to the stomach sent Yory sprawling backward against the chest. As he tried to rise, Viliber pounced on him, his quills aimed at Yory’s eyes.
“I tried being collegial and letting you live, and this is how you repay my generosity,” Viliber said.
Yory forced himself to look from the nibs and stare into Viliber’s cruel eyes. “You said I needed to toughen up. You were right. I never imagined I could ever kill people in cold blood like you. Teach me. I’m a librarian already. Accept me into your department and I will do my best to be worthy of your trust.”
The nibs wavered as Viliber cogitated, no doubt calculating if Yory was worth the effort. “I’m sorry, Frat. I work alone.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Yory said, yanking the pick from the chest lock. The booby-trap exploded, punching a hole in Viliber’s side. Yory crawled from under the groaning man, thankful his foe’s deadly quills lay scattered on the surrounding floor. Flinging open what remained of the chest’s lid, he grabbed the book wrapped in cerulean silk from its resting place and raced out the door.
Viliber loped after him, listing to one side as he pressed a bloody cloth to his wound. “I’ve changed my mind. Your gumption has impressed me. Give me back that book and I’ll arrange your transfer to Pyratical Studies as a pater.”
Several loud thumps came from the deck above, followed by the thud and scuff of boots against the boards. Yory paused at the bottom of the ladder to the saddledeck, glimpsed the distant belly of a dragon through the open hatch. The Baleful Shade’s headstall must have signaled Shamta that its saddledeck was under attack, spurring the city to dispatch a boarding party to investigate.
As Yory dithered over what he should do, a humming ball of metal rolled between his feet. Viliber’s distant horselaugh mocked him as he raced away from the bomb. It exploded with a blinding flash, its loud boom knocking Yory to the floor. As the rain of wood fragments subsided, Yory glanced behind him. The ladder was gone and in its place, an enormous hole had been gouged in the decks. From somewhere above came panicked and angry shouts.
“You could have damaged the book,” Yory whispered to Viliber who stood on the opposite side of the hole.
“Take it as a sign of my confidence in your abilities, little Frater. It’s a pity your glider is busted.”
One of the folded wings hung limply from its backpack, broken and tattered. In disgust, Yory hit the release catch where the straps crisscrossed his heart and let it drop to the floor.
“Have no fear,” Viliber said, gesturing with his hand. “Your efforts are not in vain. My glider is in working order. Just give me the book and I will safely take it away from here.”
A rope dropped from above. At any moment, the boarding party would ascend.
“No time to wait,” Viliber insisted. “Give me the book.”
Yory leaped at the rope, grabbed it, drawing gasps and astonished cries from the soldiers above. As it swung near the far side, he let go, depending on his momentum would carry him across the gap. He rolled across the floor, slammed into Viliber and punched the clasp on his foe’s glider pack. Yory reached for the falling pack but abandoned it to block Viliber’s dagger as it swept toward him. While the two rivals grappled, more ropes descended. Soldiers armed with springbows slid down them. As they took aim, Yory seized Viliber and spun him into the path of their weapons. Several bolts dinged against Viliber’s armor, but one struck the back of his head, leaving a look of utter shock on his face and a triangular point peeping out of his slack jaw.
Yory used the dead man as a shield against a second volley while he slipped on the glider pack and grabbed a bomb in Viliber’s belt. As the soldiers struggled to prime their weapons for a third time, he dashed into the nearest compartment, and, yanking the pin from the bomb, tossed it against the wall with too much force. As it rolled back in his direction, he threw himself clear of its path. It passed through the doorway, eliciting cries from pursuing soldiers, only to reverse course with a whack back into the room.
As it rolled over to the outer wall, Yory covered his head with arms. The pulverizing force of the explosion reverberated through him. The air was thick with dust and splinters. Something heavy fell on top of him. Raindrops dampening his face helped him shake off his daze, and he crawled from under the fragment of wall or roof—he couldn’t tell which. The outer wall had been ripped away and nothing lay beyond except black, rainy void. Still clinging to the book, he released the unfolding mechanism of his glider and its wings spread out behind him. It didn’t look damaged, but could he be certain he could rely on it?
“Don’t move!”
Yory didn’t wait to find out who had shouted or what they were aiming at him. He leaped into the slobbery darkness. A great wing rose in front of him like a tsunami of leather, forcing him to bank hard to the right. He squeezed through the narrow gap between the saddle and the wing until the latter fell away. As he glided away from the Baleful Shade, he glimpsed the holes punched in its saddle by Viliber’s bombs. The lights of its headstall and saddledeck blinked urgently at each other, while the headstall of the second dragon flying by its side no doubt observed the conversation. At any moment, one or both of the dragons might pursue him.
Yory steered for Magmel—it didn’t matter where. He hadn’t enough lift to reach the top of the cliffs, so he picked a broad ledge to land on. As he drew closer, he realized it was wider than he had imagined. There were several irrigated fields where he could safely land. As soon as he touched down, he unwrapped the book’s blood-spattered silk cocoon with trembling hands and sighed with relief. The ancient cookbook was undamaged.
Edit: This issue has since been resolved, thankfully.
Hi all. Just a quick warning that some of my books appear to be currently duplicated on the site. I priced them the same as all the other stores. Three of them are free (No Escape, The Fate Healer and The Parting Gift) while one of them (The Murder Seat) is at €0.99. The duplicates are at €5.33.
While I certainly think they might be worth that :), I have never charged that much for them. I’ve sent a query to Kobo about this and hopefully, this situation will be resolved soon. In the meantime, here are the correct links:
It was all so simple. I had an idea for a story—an alien invasion story with a twist. It would be the first story in a second Alienity collection. But then I had an idea for a sequel, a continuation. It was easier to write than the original story, so I wrote it while the other matured.
I finished it. It was good. I wrote the second. I had an idea for a third. So, now I’m thinking instead of another Alienity, I’ll write a collection set in this particular world. I could see ideas sprouting around it. There were at least a couple of other stories that I might pursue. They weren’t outlined. I couldn’t put them neatly into sentences. They were more intriguing whispers.
The first two short stories came in at the 10k-12k range. I always write short. My stories always expand in editing. The second had the potential to expand, but that could wait. I had this third story to write. I had the exact ending already. It would probably come in around the same size as the others.
The third is now over twice that and still growing. It moves ahead like a rainbow. I go to where the finish appears to be, but it’s still teasing me in the distance. It could need another 10k words, maybe less, maybe more. I doubt it will reach novel length, but it could.
I tend to pants short stories. I instinctively know what I want. All I need to know is where I want to finish. But in this case, getting there is taking a lot longer than usual. The logistics of getting the characters where I want them conspires against brevity.
So, on one hand, I’m really intrigued by this story and at the same time I’m annoyed with it for being so long.
The big crunch is coming though. I am closing in on what I had intended to be the end. Do I finish there and continue the arc in another story, or do I keep this one going? My original ending was ideal for a short story, but as this story moves towards a long novella will it will it be sufficient? Does what would have been the next story become the next section of this one?
I guess I must write it to find out.
My fantasy novel series isn’t forgotten. I’m just leaving it alone for now so I can get some distance from them. In April I’ll start the second draft of the first one. Waiting until then is a chore, but it’s the right thing to do. I need to come back to them as a stranger, seeing them with fresh eyes.
I’ve come to the realisation that the best way to write a first draft is to assume everything written is either brilliant or can be fixed later, and not worry too much about the relative percentages of either. Cold, hard reality can wait for the second draft.
I published Alienity back at the end of July. The process of publishing went very smoothly as did the preparation of the paperback using Vellum. I’m not going to publish the paperback for a while until I have more paperbacks ready for publishing. In Ireland, copies have to be sent to the British Library, three other Libraries in the UK if they request them within a year, to Trinity College and several other university libraries across Ireland so the exercise can get pretty expensive.
I am very happy with the stories themselves, particularly The Chosen One. I wrote it from scratch three times from different perspectives, but it clicked together over the summer. I wrote my favorite line ever as part of the edit. I had an ending in my mind from the start, came to dislike it, sought something different, but in the end I gave the story the honest ending it deserved. The tension really adds to the story.
For me, publishing can be a type of release. These stories no longer flutter about the inside of my head, distracting me, demanding my attention, taunting me with their ephemerality. Now that they are released into the wild, my debt to them has been paid and I am finally free of them.
The other bit of news is I finished the first draft of Book Five of my five book fantasy series following on from my short story No Escape. It was really exciting to write those last couple of chapters. They had played out in my mind for so long. It’s the (first draft) culmination of a long writing journey (eighteen months). There was only one small problem. There were several threads left dangling that didn’t fit into the main arc but demanded on being brought to a proper conclusion. I think a reader will might feel cheated if I don’t resolve them so I am working a sixth book. This will actually be the fifth book in the series. The full first draft of this should be done by Christmas and then work on the second draft of the whole series will begin.
Here’s the blurb of my new collection of short stories.
H.G. Wells faces judgment by one of his creations. The Earth’s first tour guide for aliens encounters the planet’s worst ever tourist. The fate of Humanity lies in the hands of the most isolated man in its history. The Kefloins, having secured membership to the Galactic Congress for the Earth, now turn to the planet’s ambassador with their most terrible secret in the hope she can find a solution.
Four short stories about aliens ranging from humorous to deadly somber.
If you squint really hard you can possibly see me tottering at the top of that tower of books. I had a very busy first four months of the year. I finished the first draft of the Book 4 in the series about a week ahead of schedule. It came in about 62k words and was the probably the easiest to write since Book 1. I’m confident of finishing Book 5 by the scheduled date. I’m really looking forward to revealing the main villain. It is my concept of him that really transformed a standalone short story into the prequel of a five book series.
However, perhaps of more immediate interest, I am going publish a bundle of four short SF stories that I recently finished. It’s been a while since I published anything so I am really looking forward to releasing them. They range from humorous to quite dark, but they all center around aliens in some way. More detail to follow on the very near future.
Noel Coughlan's Blog 