DANE DARE #3: OPERATION SATURN - Book review

 

This is the third deluxe collector’s facsimile edition of Operation Saturn featured in the Eagle comic from February 1953 to May 1954.

Certainly, Dan Dare wasn’t the first comic-strip space hero: there were Buck Rogers (1929) and Flash Gordon (1934) among others...

It’s the year 2001. A number of Earth’s spaceships are being attacked by robotic remote-controlled projectiles – nicknamed ‘black cats’. Apparently, they originate from Saturn. [The ‘black cats’ reminded me of a similar invasion of a swarm of small metal ships in the movie Star Trek Beyond (2016)].

Dare, Digby and their pals take Dr Blasco on the special starship Valiant to investigate. It transpires that Blasco is in league with the high lords of Saturnia: they intend to invade Earth and Blasco will be a puppet ruler! Dan and Digby escape while the rest of the crew are captured by Blasco and his agents...

However, landing safely on the planet, Dan and Digby befriend one of the alien natives, Nikki, a short blue guy, who proves a valuable guide and introduction to Tharl, the leader of a planned rebellion. Indeed, the evil Vora who rules at present is in for a shock... 

Yet again Dan encounters colourful creatures, some deadly, others serving as vehicles, and there are plenty of alien cities and buildings in glorious colour too.

We’re in pre-Star Trek territory where a teleporter is a tele-sender; the video is a teleblower; at one point Dan is tortured by the zesto-ray that ‘causes intense pain throughout the nerve centres without leaving marks (p97). Of course Dan does not reveal anything about the rebels; so Blasco and Vora decide to torture Professor Jocelyn Peabody instead...!

It’s action all the way. Perhaps still too wordy, but enjoyable all the same.

There is also an 8-page adventure from the 1953 Eagle Annual.

ABANDONATI - Book review

Garry Kilworth’s 1988 dystopian novel Abandonati is a slim volume but it packs a powerful punch.

The abandonati are the street people, homeless or mentally ill, with no place to go – the abandoned ones, unwanted castaways from our society.

The blurb inside describes it as a funny and moving fable. And it is that.

Some unspecified apocalypse has left groups of people, mostly dazed and without purpose, save scavenging for food – and hopefully, booze – in a deserted and seriously damaged vast city.

Guppy is one of the scavengers and he is not particularly bright – he didn’t even know he was named after a fish – and he is an alcoholic. ‘You just forgot things. You been boozin’ so long it’s made your brain soft. That don’t mean you’re stupid, do it? Stupid is when you pretend to know everything, and don’t...’ (p32)

He soon encounters a little but cocky guy called Rupert and a big yet docile black fellow Trader.

Rupert is convinced that the rich people have escaped to another planet, leaving the ‘dregs’ behind. He is determined to construct a space ship to follow them.

There are two short italicised sequences. One shows two spacemen landing on a planet with breathable air. They walk on purple springy grass – which is spooky for me, as many years ago when our daughter was small I made up a bedtime story about a boy called Jack who had many adventures, among them walking on purple springy grass! The other sequence again features two men, army officers in a bunker, who appear to be still fighting a war... I’m not sure whether these inserts explain the apocalypse, or are flashback vignettes; to my mind they seemed out-of-place, interrupting the flow of the trio’s journey. A minor quibble.

Before long, the reader is wrapped up with trio’s quest through the devastated city, confronting violent gangs and also a friendly bunch of folk who have found a secret cache of wine in the crypt of a church. Another group they meet are travellers – and one of their women takes a shine to Guppy with amusing consequences.

All three are endearing in their own way.

Rupert has a tendency to swear – not a lot – but it is remarked upon by the gentle giant Trader: ‘You do too much swearing. It doesn’t mean anything if you do too much’ (p67) – which is so true!

However, Guppy is the core of the book, which, among other things, is about humanity surviving despite adversity. ‘Guppy was illiterate, but he could read people like books’ (p106). ‘Guppy couldn’t hold something in his mind for very long. Other thoughts kept coming in, day by day, and evicting the current owners. Guppy’s mind was not inhospitable to thoughts, but there was limited space and only one or two could remain in residence at any set time’ (p130). ‘You can’t help loving someone who makes you think you’re special’ (p131).

There are instances of gentle humour, distress, and even a poignant death – but Guppy manages to swim through it all. This is a very moving book whose characters tend to live on after the last page. Indeed, they are not abandoned. 

PS - The cover features artwork by Dave McKean. He came to prominence with covers for DC comics. My failing, but his artwork - and this cover - do not appeal to me.

THE NIGHT OF KADAR - Book review

 

Garry Kilworth’s second novel The Night of Kadar was published in 1978.

It’s a fascinating novel based on the generation starship concept. It begins in the vast spaceship that had been travelling for a thousand years and is finally nearing its inhabitable planetary destination. Embryos are activated in their tanks and grown rapidly, while being educated. Unfortunately, the ship’s designers did not plan for a subtle minute alien incursion that sabotages the intelligence units irreparably; ‘One of their manipulative interests was ecology – a natural area of study for a static race’ (p177).

The ship lands on an island in a sea of quicksand. The enigma of their purpose remains a mystery, doubtless lost in the wiped tapes. ‘We, the ship’s people. Born of a machine; an engine. But what is a planet, the planet Earth, if not an engine, a large beautiful engine that turns in space, and manufactures life?’ (p93).

The main character is Othman, who was born at the age of thirty Earthyears. Others emerge from the ship, including a pre-programmed wife Silandi. It seems that about half of the complement of settlers were born mentally impaired, referred to as morons; this was due to the malfunction in the circuitry. Inevitably, conflict between individuals arises, causing tension and even rebellion…

The ship automatically constructs tools and machines from its own huge carcass.

The senders, the people who launched the ship were of the Islamic faith; however, no Koran is supplied and their knowledge is bereft of any religion. As time goes by, they recall a childhood they never lived but was imprinted: these ‘false memory’ interludes are detailed in Arabic settings, coloured by the author’s time living and working in the Middle East. ‘She knew these questions could only remain questions. Earth could only be the somewhere of her simulated childhood – a place she had never physically touched’ (p86).

Othman becomes their natural leader and is determined to search for their destiny, their reason for being on this planet. To that end, he enforces the construction of a bridge across the expanse of quicksand to the mainland beyond. This is not always a popular decision, as the number of the island’s trees is depleted: ‘Man is an artist at destruction, even though his intentions may seem pure. Ten, a hundred, a thousand years to grow a tree, and ten minutes to bring it to the ground’ (p41).

The book’s title is from the Koran: ‘Better is the Night of Kadar (Glory) than a thousand months…’ ‘On the night of Kadar, the night he died, he would like to go to those stars, perhaps become one of them’ (p159).

Kilworth’s prose is always good and often eloquent: ‘the crisp salt of their bodies mingling as the wetness flows from their skin, the iron in their blood forming tight wires to jerking muscles, the smell of oxygen burning, circuit fusing in their veins as they reach out to touch the innumerable corners of the universe’ (p99).

Some later scenes are quite horrific. For this planet is no Garden of Eden. And yet they are survivors and they grow as the generations move on. Quite an imaginative feat, this book.

Editorial comment:

When writing, Kilworth could not have imagined that mentioning computer tapes (p3) would be obsolete so quickly.

One of my pet annoyances: ‘Othman first thought privately to himself…’ (p124) ‘thought privately to himself’ is obsolete.

THE WANTING SEED - Book review - Adult content

 ADULT CONTENT

Anthony Burgess’s future fictional dystopia The Wanting Seed was published in 1962, the same year as his famous A Clockwork Orange.

In his 1982 Foreword Burgess states: ‘The Wanting Seed tries to show … that the response to the prospect of overcrowding and starvation might well be a culture which favoured sterility by promoting homosexuality and rewarding self-castration. But, my instinct argued, nature might respond to human sterility with sterile patterns of its own, and the solution to the population problem could be more ruthless and more logical… I cannot foresee the highly schematic world of (the book) as ever coming to birth, but I think some aspects of it – the glorification of the homosexual, for instance – are already with us.’

No date is given for the world we enter. Certainly, overpopulation has become a global problem in this world of Burgess’s future. Harry Harrison’s novel Make room! Make room! on the same subject (and filmed as Soylent Green) was published in 1966. Interestingly, Burgess uses a similar phrase on p164: ‘ “No room, no room” fluted a thin donnish person…’

‘…planetary survival dependent on the balance of population and a scientifically calculated minimal food supply; tighten belts; win through; evil things they would be fighting; long live the King’ (p53).

It was ‘a near-vegetarian world, non-smoking, teetotal except for ale’ (p38). Later, there is a revolt against this restrictive life-style: ‘Man is a carnivore, just as man is a breeder. The two are cognate and the two have been suppressed’ (p165).

Religion is side-lined, taboo, even, the Pope’s ‘an old, old man on St Helena’ (p40): ‘We were right to throw God out and install Mr Livedog in his place. God’s a tragic conception’ (p42). They use odd phrases, such as Dognose for ‘God knows’… [This is a darkly comic novel, after all!]

Great Britain as we know it has altered radically: ‘Greater London had eaten further into Northern Province and Western Province; the new northern limit was a line running from Lowestoft to Birmingham… the old designations of Wales and Scotland no longer had any precise significance’ (p8). Their trains are nuclear-propelled (p95) – another reason to stop HS2?

The culinary arts are grim: ‘served him with a cutlet of reconstituted vegetable dehydrate cold… A nut was a ‘nutrition-unit, creation of the Ministry of Synthetic Food’ (p51). Tristram was trying to ‘eat a sort of paper cereal moistened with synthelac and… he found it very difficult to spoon down the wet fibrous horror: it was somehow like having to eat one’s words’ (p57). It isn’t just food that is compliant with the dictates of the authorities: ‘Bless their little cotton-substitute socks, the darlings…’ (p153).

The main protagonists are Beatrice-Joanna, her husband Tristram Foxe and his brother Derek. Recently the State Health Service had sent her dead child to the agriculture department for decomposition – ‘useful to the State as phosphorous’ (p4).

Derek is Beatrice’s secret lover, even though he pretends to be homosexual. Homos get priority for all the prime jobs in the Establishment. Tristram is informed that his expected promotion has been blocked in favour of ‘a castrato, a pretty strong candidate’ (p32). ‘… being homo, do you see, wipes out all other sins…’ (p77).

‘For generations people had lain on their backs in the darkness of their bedrooms, their eyes on  the blue watery square on the ceiling: mechanical stories about good people not having children and bad people having them, homos in love with each other, Origen-like heroes castrating themselves for the sake of global stability’ (p184).

And a new corps has been formed: Population Police; Peppol. Dressed in a black uniform, cap with shiny peak, badge and collar-dogs ashine with bursting bomb, which proved on closer inspection, to be a breaking egg’ (p60). And its first Metropolitan Commissioner is Derek – ‘brother, betrayer, lover’.

Assisting the Peppol were the auxiliaries, greys. There are certain telling scenes that send a chill, bearing in mind the prevalent gender activist issues: ‘ “Mind your own business. Woman,”’ (the grey) added with scorn… Very much a woman, mind her own business, socially and biologically, she shrugged…’ (p65).

Beatrice’s sister is married to Sonny, an outspoken God-fearing man living in the countryside, well away from the Peppol patrols. His wife says of him: ‘He may be sane, but sanity’s a handicap and a disability if you’re living in a mad world’ (p151).

By Part Four, things are not going well. ‘Electricity, like other public utilities seemed to have failed’ (p163). Maybe there is hope, however, as someone observes: ‘When the State withers, humanity flowers’ (p167).

Towards the end of the novel, Tristram is conscripted into the army. Annexe Island B6 was a ‘limited area anchored in the East Atlantic, intended originally to accommodate population overflow, now compactly holding a brigade’ (p227). Burgess’s time in the army seems reflected in many observations here. ‘Nobody sang, though. The fixed bayonets looked like a Birnam Wood of spikes’ (p251).

In conclusion, stating nothing that can’t be found in the book blurb: ‘We in Aylesbury are at least civilised cannibals. It makes all the difference if you get it out of a tin’ (172).  Even if the tins are supplied by China…

In this world there is no social media and no smartphones; they use wrist micro-radios (p44). ‘The new books were full of sex and death, perhaps the only materials for a writer’ (p270). Indeed, there is sex and death in this book – but, despite all, there is hope also.

The book’s title is a play on The Wanton Seed, a refrain from the folk-song of that name; Burgess states that the ambiguity is appropriate.

Editorial comment:

Burgess has a tendency to name-drop, possibly by scanning his book-shelves: there’s Linklater, Wilson (his real surname), Adler, Westcott, Asimov, Heinlein, Evans, Ross, Meldrum – and the playful Ann Onymous! A good number of them were science fiction writers: ‘what the old SF writers called a time-warp’ (p241). He was using the then accepted abbreviation, rather than the trendy sci-fi which superseded ‘SF’.

Leslie Thomas called Burgess a ‘writer’s writer’ and I can see why. Certainly, his vocabulary is vast – and dotted with four or five words I’d never before encountered!

THE DREAM MASTER - Book review

This 1966 Zelazny novel The Dream Master began life as the novella He Who Shapes (1964) which won the Nebula Award for Best Novella, tying with Aldiss’s The Saliva Tree. 

Zelazny, being one of the so-called ‘New Wave’ authors, delved into ‘inner space’ as much as the traditional outer space. The book is set in the future – and for example convincingly portrays driverless cars – where hunger has been abolished. ‘Physical welfare is now every person’s right, in excess.’ (p37). ‘A society, though, is made up of many things, and when these things are changed too rapidly the results are unpredictable.’ (p51)

Charles Render is a leader in his field of neuroparticipant therapy – a Shaper. His patients invariably suffer from persistent uncomfortable dreams or neuroses. Using complex apparatus, Render can effectively enter the patient’s mind and construct the dream world they psychically inhabit and destroy it or make it benign, as appropriate, and sooth or remove the underlying neuroses. He is also a widower, his wife Ruth and daughter Miranda having perished in a car wreck; he has a son Peter. Oh, and some dogs have been operated upon so that they can actually talk to their human owners! 

One telling phrase is surprisingly prophetic: ‘The power to hurt has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement.’ [q.v. our present-day anti-social media, for example].

A potential client is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry at State Psych. She is congenitally blind and wants Render to train her to become a Shaper like him. (p23). Since she has no visual sense, he feels that her goal is unattainable and therefore he is reluctant at first. Butt she convinces him it would be a scientific triumph when he succeeded. What he had not figured on is Eileen's overpowering hunger for visual stimulation… 

Eileen’s dog is called Sigmund. ‘An argument with a dog was about the most ludicrous thing he could imagine when sober.’ (p44) Some of the scenes between Render and Sigmund are quite amusing.

Zelazny has a leaning to poetic and visually arresting phrasing. (Render) ‘remembered her fingertips brushing over his face, like leaves or the bodies of insects, learning his appearance in the ancient manner of the blind. The memory was not altogether pleasant. He wondered why.’ (p39) 

Talking of poetry, Render quotes Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (p100) - and there’s no credit in the front of the book!

I particularly liked this scene: Eileen is looking at herself in her compact. ‘Her thirtieth birthday, like a huge black cloud, filled an April… She touched her quizzical lips with colour, dusted more powder over her mole, and locked the expression within her compact for future use.’ (p117) 

The scene with young Peter touring a space exploration exhibition reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s The Silver Locusts: ‘Almost imperceptibly, it had lifted itself above the ground. Now, though, the movement could be noted. Suddenly, with a great gushing of flame, it was high in the air, darting against the grey. It was a bonfire in the sky, then a flare; then it was a star, rushing away from them. “There’s nothing quite like a rocket in flight”.’ (p94)

In this case, I suspect the shorter version should have been left alone. I felt that there were too many stream-of-consciousness paragraphs where very many literary and artistic allusions were shoe-horned in, providing padding to get to novel length. Even the scene at the exhibition with his son Peter was not notably relevant. 

Still, I’m glad I finally got round to reading this ‘classic’ science fiction novel, and enjoyed several aspects of it.

More Than Human - book review

 

Theodore Sturgeon’s classic science fiction novel More Than Human was published in 1953 and won the International Fantasy and Science Fiction Award (1954). It comprises three connected stories – ‘The Fabulous Idiot’, ‘Baby is Three’ and ‘Morality’; the middle story was previously published as a standalone in Galaxy magazine in 1952; the book-end tales were written for the so-called fix-up novel.

The book concerns five beings – two little black girls with a speech impediment yet with the ability to teleport, an introspective girl whose mother was of easy virtue, one seemingly mentally impaired baby who can absorb and transmit thoughts, and a so-called idiot who is anything but and adopts the name Lone.

With intense psychological understanding, Sturgeon weaves the lives of these apparent ‘freaks’ and shows how over time they evolve into a single entity, a gestalt. The new human, perhaps? And he poses the question: would they be feared or embraced. We know the answer, of course. So this gestalt is secret, hidden from ordinary humans.

I don’t know but I can imagine Stephen King, among others, read this book and was influenced by its concepts and characters. There are definite similarities: the telepathic child, the dysfunctional characters, the underlying mystery and threat. And there are inchoate elements of the X-Men here too.

Sturgeon’s writing is colourful, imaginative and mindful of the human condition, and at times can pack a powerful punch.

More Than Human is still thought-provoking, even after all these years.

Mystery Weekly Magazine - June 2018

Six crime stories, all varied in setting, characterisation and period, from a Canadian publisher, available on Amazon for under a fiver.   

The cover story ‘Lady Dick’ by Tony Parker is set in the 1950s, when two post-war OSS female operatives are working as private eyes. Present tense relating to the past – ‘We ranged through occupied Europe like angels of death. We owned the night.’ Some great lines, quite slick. 

Next up is a switch, ‘A Ship called Pandora’ by Melodie Campbell, a science fiction outing, a Witness Protection system run by two hard cases, transporting their human cargo to the outer reaches of space for their protection. A nice twist ending. 

‘Mop Jockey’ by Michael Ayoob is a raw tale told in first and third person about a cleaner with a deadly difference.   

John H. Dromey’s ‘A Detour down Memory Lane’ is a lighthearted investigation into a John Doe’s death. I liked the line ‘a snot rag of prevarications’ meaning ‘a tissue of lies’. [The editor in me will forgive the use of ‘pouring’ instead of ‘poring’ – ‘pouring over a dusty ledger’ (p50)]. A likeable team, lawyer Stephanie and investigator Molly. 

The story ‘Stars’ by Peter W.J. Hayes is a hard-nosed gangster tale where the anti-hero Tank learns that good or bad, lives are transient. 

I found the last story highly enjoyable: ‘The Motor Court’ by Jennifer Collins Moore, where a body is found in a dumpster and two women, usually at loggerheads, reluctantly combine forces to discover the perpetrator. Good dynamic between octogenarian Betty and the owner of the motor court, Eleanor.

If you like crime shorts, try this magazine. Contrary to its title, it's monthly...

Saturday Story - 'The Reluctant Killer'

                                                                              

THE RELUCTANT KILLER

 

Nik Morton

 

Landfall + 1

Pam's resting peacefully; lapsed into a deep sleep of exhaustion after our first foray into the virgin sands of Sirius IV.  We began reconnoitering as dawn blazed its reds and yellows and greens.  Instrument readings declared that probe's sensors were not mistaken before it crashed: atmosphere is viable.  Disembarkation on a new world is always a thrill: this is our third.  Flora was terran in appearance, exotic like the old history tapes.  No sign of life, though bio-sensors indicate there is an abundance.  Brought plants back to the ship for study by Pam in the lab.  She's intrigued by the cell-structure, and worked on the plant most of the day while I prospected for igneous rocks and set up the monitoring base overlooking the seashore. Pam relaxed later, taking the plunge in the violet sea; it looked cold, so I was happy to watch.

Landfall + 2

Pam's been violently sick all night.  Convulsions.  All the signs of poisoning. Bio-scan reveals microscopic foreign matter in her lungs, spreading at an alarming rate.  It could be the plant - or the sea; everything else we've shared, and I'm okay.  Later: dehydration is a problem for her.  Schedule for experiments terminated.  I've reported back to Fleet Command, now awaiting instructions: thought the response message will take 2 days using sub-space comms. Physical aid'll take weeks - unless there's a nearby transporter... Supply of pain-killers adequate; but I'm getting worried, finding it difficult to sleep.

Landfall + 3

 
Pam's very weak. I've seen incredible things, all manner of extra-terrestrials.  But this accelerated aging is beyond my experience.  Earlier as I anxiously paced the ship, I glanced in at the lab.  The plant she'd been dissecting had sprouted, had tapped roots into the steel bench and was flowering as I watched. Small spore pods hung from the fresh stalks: I wanted to rush in and destroy it, forgetting my scientific detachment, but I held back.  It probably wanted me to do just that - and then it would explode its spores against me: I'd heard of space adventurers who'd become living fertilizer for alien plant-life.  As the plant blossoms, the opposite is happening to Pam: she's wilting.

Landfall + 4

 
Pam's breathing is shallow.  I looked out the window, at the planets reflecting in the beautiful deep purple sea.  She's lost weight in these few days.  I'm reluctant to kill her, but I can't bear to see her wasting away, and in so much pain.  I walked into the moonlit surf, my wife docile, trusting in my arms.  I immersed us both, Pam completely, myself up to my chin.  I discovered that tears burn.  Suddenly, she shuddered in my arms and forced her head out of the water, coughing in great, terrible spasms.  She seemed to be disgorging her lungs, the attack was so violent.  I pulled her out, overjoyed to learn that the sea, the amniotic fluid of the universe's life, was rapidly healing her, voiding the vile intrusions into her metabolism.  She's not very strong, but she's alive. Report ends.

***

 

This was an attempt to write a piece of flash fiction of 500 words, using only four paragraphs.

Sometimes, repetition is justified: I deliberately began each paragraph with 'Pam' to convey that her fate is uppermost in the narrator's mind.

 

Previously published in WORKS magazine, 1989

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014

 

If you enjoyed this story, you might like Spanish Eye,

my short story collection featuring Leon Cazador, private eye in 22 cases

published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

http://www.crookedcatbooks.com/

US: http://amazon.com/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Canada: http://amazon.ca/dp/B00GXK5C6S
UK: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GXK5C6S
France: http://amazon.fr/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Germany: http://amazon.de/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Austria: http://amazon.at/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Italy: http://amazon.it/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Spain: http://amazon.es/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Japan: http://amazon.jp/dp/B00GXK5C6S

 

 

 

 

The Writing Process

I was asked to take part in The Writing Process Blog Tour by Lorraine Mace, a multi-talented novelist and journalist whose latest work, Call It Pretending was published through Crooked Cat in January; the third in a series. I reviewed the first, Bad Moon Rising here.

The idea of the tour is that all the writers who take part answer the same four questions about their work and their writing process, and together they form a great electronic blogging chain in the ether!

You can read Lorraine’s blog (and find out more about her writing) here.

Alas, I’m clearly a weak link in this chain as I’ve been unable to coerce, suborn or otherwise con any fellow writers into participating. To be fair, they’re all busy writing, it seems. So, the end of this entry will not link to other writers answering these 4 questions, after all. I will append several interesting blogs/websites you may care to visit, however.

1) What am I working on?

Having just finished a crime-thriller novel, the first in ‘The Cat series’, I’m now working on To Be King, a fantasy novel with Gordon Faulkner. He has created the fantasy world, its history and geography, and many of the main characters; I put meat and clothing etc on them, and inject additional sub-plots. This is a sequel to Wings of the Overlord which is being published by Knox Robinson in June, the first in a series entitled The Chronicles of Floreskand. It’s fun writing about a fantasy land, creating larger-than-life characters and threats. [Yesterday’s blog is about the launch – I got authorisation from the publisher yesterday to shout out about it.]

I’m also working on the second in ‘The Cat series’, Catacomb. I really enjoyed the first story, Catalyst, which ranged from London, Seahouses, Portsmouth, Barcelona and the Riviera [and hasn't been accepted yet...!]. Catacomb takes place mainly in Morocco.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Plenty of fantasy books are co-written. Yet if the world building is comprehensive, then it’s bound to be different. The characters are grounded in reality though supernatural and fantastic elements intrude. My crime-thriller books tend to be fast-paced, with strong female protagonists, and inhabit the real world, often going to places I’ve known.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I write in almost any genre maybe because I enjoy reading in most genres. Eclectic is doubtless the posh word for that... Some stories and characters lend themselves to a particular form.

I’m drawn mainly to the crime-thriller and westerns, I suppose, since I’ve written most in those categories. Of course westerns involve crime, romance, and thriller elements too! As I’ve travelled quite a bit (the Royal Navy helped there), I might be drawn to involve a foreign place I’ve visited; even then, I’d want to back up my reminiscences with research.

4) How does my writing process work?
As Anthony Burgess said, ‘I start at the beginning, go on to the end, and stop.’ Though of course it isn’t always so linear. I have a plot-plan, whether this is when writing my own books or a co-written one.
 
With the Floreskand series, the plot-plan is devised by Gordon, but there are plenty of blank sections that need filling. As Gordon lives in Scotland and I’m in Spain, it’s a distance thing, but thankfully with the Internet that doesn’t pose a great problem. I write, based on his plot-line, throwing him a few curved balls along the way, and he hits me with stuff I didn’t know about, maybe concerning a particular family’s history, and away we go...
 
For my crime-thrillers, I usually do research on the places the characters are going to visit; this often supplies me with additional plot devices.
 
And for my westerns, I think up the characters and plot first, then apply whatever research is necessary, whether that’s Civil War knowledge or the flora and fauna of South Dakota, for example.

I write most days. For each project I maintain a spread-sheet so I know how long I’ve spent on any book. This process is explained in greater detail in my book Write a Western in 30 Days - with plenty of bullet points! As the reviewers say, it's of use to writers of all genres, not only westerns. The day will be divided into attending to e-mails, social media and blog, shopping, gardening, other chores, and creative writing; the latter may be the WIP or a short story or article. No two days are alike. I may be ‘retired’ but I’m never bored!

 
Random selection of websites/blogs of interest:

David W. Robinson – crime novelist with over a dozen books to his name, now embarking on a supernatural series - http://www.dwrob.com/

Tom Rizzo – novelist, interviewer, really nice guy - http://www.tomrizzo.com/

Paul D. Brazill – Brit novelist and short story writer of noir crime who lives in Poland - http://pauldbrazill.com/

James Reasoner – multi-genre, prolific author - http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com.es/

The Rap Sheet - an essential resource for readers seeking information about what’s new and interesting in the world of crime fiction. It covers crime, mystery, and thriller fiction both recent and vintage, appearing in all media--print as well as broadcast. - http://therapsheet.blogspot.com.es/

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