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The Twisted Road and Alien Encounters

The Twisted Road is a murder mystery and a political thriller. Its protagonist, Mab Winter, is an ex-cop and a refugee from Earth, hiding out on battered and anarchic Möbius Station while she battles her own demons. Reluctantly, however, she gets dragged back into her old life…

The book also a story about encountering an alien culture and fears of the other/the strange.

In the backstory for the book, Earth’s outward push into the galaxy has brought it into contact with the Ba’silions – tall, physically impressive bipedal aliens with shimmering, iridescent green skin. They are generally built much more massively than humans and possess ten long fingers on each hand.

Encountering this race has had a profound effect on Earth – and Ba’silia. There are those on both sides who see hope in the two cultures learning from each other – but also those who fear the other. Relations between the two civilisations boiled up into the deadly Hard War for a time, but have now settled down into an uneasy Soft War. But this may be about to change…

Find out more about the book on my site or on the Elsewhen Press site.

The Twisted Road and Future Architecture

The book also plays with possible future space engineering architectures. Möbius Station itself is from the Escherist school of “impossible” constructions. The station is built in the form of a Möbius strip, then twisted again so that the station resembles an infinity symbol from the side.

None of this is random: the station was built at a time of enormous human optimism about expansion into the galaxy. The infinity symbolism suggests this, as does the fact that the main Strip within the station effectively goes on for ever. You can keep walking and never reach an end.

In engineering terms, though, it’s completely flawed. The whole station is at risk of depressurization should a breach occur. Its very design is a statement of (perhaps misplaced) optimism…

Find out more about the book on my site or on the Elsewhen Press site.

The Twisted Road and Identity

The book is also a story about identity and the roles we play. At the start of this book, Mab is, superficially, barely more than a cliché. After experiencing terrible things on Earth, she’s lost her sense of self and she’s lost all optimism for the future. She’s sometimes surprised at the words that come out of her own mouth, They’re words that sound like someone else: someone cynical, hardbitten and uncaring.

That isn’t her though; the real Mab is still in her, hiding away. As she gets dragged into the investigation that is central to the book, she starts to get in touch with her old self and her old drive.

Slowly, she stops playing the two-dimensional character she’s created for herself and rediscovers optimism and hope.

Find out more about the book on my site or on the Elsewhen Press site.

The Twisted Road Cover Reveal

Revealing the cover for The Twisted Road, my new sci/fi novel.

A MURDER ON TWISTED MÖBIUS STATION…

After nearly dying on Earth, ex-cop Mab Winter is hiding out on Möbius Station, a battered and anarchic platform in orbit around Mars. No one is supposed to know who she is. But then someone comes knocking on her door in the middle of the night, and it becomes clear that a lot of people know precisely who and what she is. She also learns there is much more taking place on the station than she first thought…

A murder mystery

A political thriller

A story about losing and regaining identity

The cover is a thing of beauty, isn’t it?. It was created by the excellent Alex Storer, who was a delight to work with. The station upon which much of the action takes place – Möbius – has a pretty unusual shape, and I always knew it would be a challenge to create a cover that portrays it, but Alex nailed it.

The book will be published as an eBook and in paperback on 27th March by Elsewhen Press. More details and preorder links here.

No AI Used

Like many people, I’ve been on a bit of a journey with AI. As a technology (or range of technolgies), it can clearly be put to many uses – some good, some bad. Fire can keep us warm or burn us, depending how we use it. There are, clearly, a lot of specialisms where a narrowly-focused and well-written AI can be more reliable and dependable than a human, which would surely make its use a good thing if it means lives can be saved.

But general AI seems to me to be shockingly bad. I’m no Luddite, but my attitudes have certainly hardened against it. For one thing, it’s wrong far too often. If I have to check everything it tells me, what’s the point of it? And when it comes to creating something human, a piece of fiction or a painting or whatever, I think AI is, at worst, actively malign, essentially taking work away from real people and giving more money and power to tech companies.

So, just for the avoidance of doubt, I have never and will never use AI in my writing, book covers etc. I did briefly experiment with AI audiobook generation, as discussed previously, but I found it really poor and I reverted to human-narration pretty quickly. We live and learn.

l have used several AIs in the writing of my current science fiction book, The Twisted Road. But you’ll be pleased to know they’re all entirely fictitious, their “output” lovingly crafted by a real human (me) as part of the story text. In my own small way I like to think I’m taking away jobs from AIs.

salt water

I’m an occasional poet. That’s a bit like being an occasional table, but arguably not as useful. In any case, I’ve written poetry for many years – and, in fact, the first piece of writing I ever got paid for was a poem. Which surprised me at the time. This was late last century. Since then I’ve occasionally produced new poetry – very often “literary” (whatever the fuck that means) in style, but sometimes fantastical or science fictional in subject matter too.

Poems are published and then, like ephemeroptera, disappear. Magazines come and go. So, I figured it was time to collect together all my published poems and put them out there in a single volume for posterity to ignore.

That collection is called salt water. I think it’s really good. It contains these poems:

‘
Walking the Himalaya
Unearthed
The Boy Who Climbed Trees
Blackberrying
Where The Water Rises
When We Were Giants
A Clock’s First Tick
Coalmining
Counting All The Bricks In Manchester
Replanting The Great Caledonian Forest
Autumnal
In the Peak Forest
Midwinter’s Day
Red Kite
A Buzzard, on Landing on Carrion
Safari Snaps
Standing Stones
The Botany Of The British Isles
Ephemeroptera
Crowhaunted
Sleeps Beneath The Streets
Dreadnought
Labbeastyrinth
Calliope On The Street Corner
Orpheus In The Underpass
Mid-Atlantic Depressions
Words Fail
The Bloody Coup
A Sudden Distance
A Bright Wind

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, the page for the book is here. Meanwhile, here’s the first poem in it. Enjoy. It means a lot to me.

‘

Curled up asleep there
as seraphic as
the furled e in serene.
Crossed feet for
perfectly drawn serifs,
your soft body
a rune of tightly cuddled limbs
as you revert to
the bliss of the huddled womb.
A quiet quotation mark
at the start of a life’s long speech,
the hushed susurrus
of a slowly drawn breath

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