It was only after I started writing the Exodus Sequence series that I discovered that collections of connected short stories were already in existence.  Even Wikipedia has a page on this, calling them a short story cycle.  My reason for using this format was that there were too many characters over too vast a range of time and any kind of novel I could write would be clumsy and too long.  I liked the idea of focusing on a single moment in a character’s life in a story that seemed complete, that could stand alone, while having a thousand threads connecting it to other stories that seemed quite diverse.

The overall connecting idea is that all the stories have something to do – often indirectly – with the loss of Atlantis.  It isn’t obvious at first what is meant by Atlantis since there is no referral to Plato’s account nor the usual accepted myths and legends that have since been developed.  For me, Atlantis wasn’t a society that existed ten thousand years ago, nor do I regard it as some kind of marvellous utopia.  I don’t think there is a shred of evidence of it ever having existed – not because it didn’t exist but because it existed so long ago.  There is no miraculous building that can stay up for millions of years – and, for me, this is when the Atlantians* walked on this planet.  That there are no bones to find is because there are no bones.  (*Though I never call them Atlantians or Atlanteans, or whatever).

Many of the stories are set in the near or distant future, fewer in the present or past.  The connections are subtle, sometimes even unintentional.  Characters appear more than once but are not always recognisable.  These differences go beyond simple name changes – it’s often entire lives that change.  Mars is a strong connector as is various aspects of a war fought in the future.  The name Miranda crops up often but it isn’t always obvious who she is or was.  Later in the first volume, the Golden Queen thread picks up, a story-line I have already developed fully – the notes for this series are unintentionally copious.

The stories are arranged in trilogies, with three trilogies per volume.  Each trilogy also has its connections:  for example, in the first trilogy, attention is drawn to a mysterious alien and there is evidence of a war ended (Wired), a war begun (Reflected) and a war that is still current (Walked).  In the second trilogy, the connection is actually not revealed at all and won’t be until the second volume!  Many mysteries are created which are only unlocked in later stories, revelations which serve to unmask characters as much as Atlantis itself.

Some of the connections are immediately apparent:  the revelation in Spooked is discussed openly in Crashed.  The prison scenario is echoed in the first and last stories of the first volume, and again in the central trilogy.  Mars crops up in several stories, referenced or actually visited.  But it’s the themed connections that appeal to me the most:  the meaning of the title Reflected isn’t really understood until Caged.  Apparent immortality, lightly touched on in the first trilogy, is developed in Suicided and explained in Woken in great detail.

It should be understood, though, that the stories are not linear.  Nor have I written them in order of publication.  I’ve had to work out the best way to reveal information without signposting spoilers.  Despite this, the stories could be read in any order as they are stand-alone:  each one is complete within itself.  One short story, titled Sacrificed, went on for rather a long time and ended up being near-novel length.  So I wrote another rather long story, cobbled it on the end, believing it would make a novel.  It didn’t.  It was disastrous.  A single scene was rescued from Sacrificed and became Spooked, while the violence that opened the second story became Suicided.  The rest will appear – eventually – in stories yet to be written.  Sacrificed will, eventually, become the story that connects Spooked to Woken.

Work has already begun on Volume Two, with the first short story published as an ebook and in paperback.  It's an extremely long short story, so long in fact that it's actually a novella, coming in at over 45 000 words.  None of the stories are under 10 000, which is how I came to call them "substantials" - longer than a short story but not quite novella-length, they are thus substantial short stories!

You will find Shattered here and the first volume of The Exodus Sequence here.

I will be the first to admit that my book covers are not the best.  With a zero budget, no required degree in design, and working within the sadly limited choices of KDP, my book covers have not turned out the way I would like. 
I can SEE gorgeous covers in my head and KNOW what I want – but don’t have the wherewithal nor skills to produce them.  Neither can I afford the sort of people who can.  By squeezing my monthly budget even tighter than it already is (this is why I never go on holiday), I’ve decided to start investing teeny tiny amounts in marketing. 
Since visibility is vital, the best place to start was with improving my book covers.  I decided to use my most recently published novella, SHATTERED, as an experiment.  I had already published it as an ebook with a truly woeful cover.  What I REALLY wanted was an image of a shattered moon.  I couldn’t find one anywhere – at least, not one that would work as a book cover. 
The next step up from (a) something you cobbled together yourself and (b) something you cobbled together on KDP – is the pre-made book cover.  The next step up from that would be a commissioned cover, something I can’t – yet – afford.  I spent months looking for something I liked.  I looked at many websites offering their services.  It only takes a moment to work out whether an artist is going to work for you.  Aside from style and genre, the biggest problem I had was that almost all pre-mades include PEOPLE.  Who would buy these covers???  What are the chances that the characters you’ve invented will actually fit the random renditions??  Or do authors go, mmm, yes, I like this cover, I’ll just quickly write a book that fits the person on the front.  Finding a cover that vaguely fit the story I’d written AND had no stupid people on it was immensely hard.
I kept coming back to The Cover Collection.  The sci-fi covers seemed particularly rich and colourful and the art is attractive.  The cover I finally selected, after days and days of scrolling and thinking and debating, has, at least a moon on it.  But no people.  Working The Cover Collection was very easy.  Once I’d bought the cover for £60, I was sent 5 covers to choose from.  I selected one and asked for the author name to be slightly shorter (it’s a very tall font) and bolder. 
The cover is not perfect, nor did I expect it to be.  But it’s a million times better than the sad covered I cobbled together.  The colours positively GLEAM at you and the genre is immediately obvious.  I was so thrilled that the cover now features on the home page of my website.
 

Radio 3 wins the prize for the Sounds of the Moon slow radio soundscape.  It begins with Neil, Buzz and Mike chatting while Debussy’s Clair de Lune rises in the background.  Just as Neil steps off onto the Moon for the first time, Brian Eno’s indescribably beautiful The Ending (Ascent) begins.  This has been, for several decades, one of my most favourite pieces of music.  Combining it with Neil Armstrong’s famous words, at one of the most stupendously wonderful moments of man’s accomplishments, reduced me to tears.  The Ending has been used many times, on many soundtracks, but never as effectively as here.  I don’t know the name of the last piece played but it was also immensely moving. 
The whole radio soundscape forms the most beautiful tribute.  Catch it before it disappears off BBC Sounds in a month’s time.
 
Listen to the soundscape here.  It begins at about 1:10.
 
Listen to Brian Eno here.  The Ending (Ascent)

I didn’t get to see the moon landings.  There was no television in Far Away Land and I don’t recall anyone mentioning it to me.  Such were the interesting people I grew up with.
In the last week, however, I’ve made up for this.  I’ve watched everything on TV and listened to everything on the radio.  I’ve heard Neil Armstrong say his famous lines about a hundred thousand times.  And it never stops being a thrill. 
It’s also unspeakably sad.  Fifty years ago today, two men climbed out of the smallest, flimsiest spacecraft imaginable onto the surface of an entirely new world.  And after a few years, no one cared anymore.  The whole adventure died.  The expense, the lack of incentive, the overwhelming social problems on our home world – these are the usual reasons given for the cancellation of the moon programme.
But I think it was something rather more obvious:  there’s nothing there.  The moon is an annihilated desert.  Its dust is so fine it’s like powder.  It’s bleak and lifeless and utterly void.  When it hangs in the sky, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.  It’s full moon glow;  it’s glorious colours;  it’s fading in and out of phase;  it’s constant presence, so often hidden by cloud or buildings or lack of view.  The moon is an inspiration.
Yet you wouldn’t really want to go there.  Setting up a moon base is going to be a monumental challenge.  That it will serve as practise for future missions to Mars is invaluable.  But let’s face it – would you want to go to Mars?  Equally inhospitable, life on Mars is just as it is on the Moon:  non-existent and overwhelmingly dangerous to the flesh bodies of Earth.  I’m wildly in favour of space exploration.  It’s just that the ultimate results are so disappointing.  There’s no life to be found.  The history of these worlds is long gone, obliterated by ancient wars that no one remembers.
I wish quite often that we weren’t such a solitary world;  that we had friendly neighbours or somewhere else to go in the solar system;  that wasn’t all so cold and distant and flooded with vacuum.  These thoughts – and others – led me to write Diamonds on the Moon.  It’s fantastical and impossible, science fiction based on magic.  Half way through, a very old astronaut turns up.  I never name him but I wanted it to be Neil Armstrong.  I wanted to give him something to go back to, something on the Moon more interesting than dust. 
When it starts, it feels like a slight tale:  something stirring on the moon, long after the last man has walked on its surface.  I ended up by addressing something huge.  It’s something I address often in my writing, but here it is a gift.  From dust, the future, phoenix-like, rises, rather like the inevitable rise of the moon in our skies.

Diamonds on the Moon
 
Best Apollo 11 50th Anniversary adaption:  Moon (BBC Radio 4)
 
Favourite Moon book:  Moondust by Andrew Smith
  
Favourite Moon:  Cold Moon (December)

My new website is done!  What a thrill! 
Weeks of hard work and it's all up and running with a very clear theme and much simplification.  My neck is killing me (all that peering closely at the screen to get the sizing right) but I’m delighted with the way it has worked out.  At last I feel as if I know what I'm doing.  I feel as if I’ve got some sort of recognisable brand going – not that I necessarily want to be branded, as it were, but trying to get noticed as a writer is a Big Thing.
Some tips and advice (that worked for me):

• Keep it simple.  I studied other authors’ websites and the best ones were very simple, particularly the home page.
• My home page has exactly three elements on it:  MY BOOKS, NEW and DIARY.  These form the core of the website.  MY BOOKS link takes you just exactly there:  to the main books page.  This is pretty much where you would expect someone arriving on your website to want to go.  NEW takes you to my latest book.  This image will change as time goes by, making the home page feel alive.  (More about the diary later).
• You are less important than your writing.  This is a grim reality to have to confront, but it’s true.  There is no bio on my website and no picture of me (if you want a pic, you’ll find it on social media).  There isn’t even the tiny bio on the home page (the one I use in all my novels).  I deleted them all, along with a variety of articles about writing.  Some of the better ones I’ll reblog at some point, so it’s not like I’m wasting anything.  They cluttered the website. 
• You don’t need a contact page.  What’s that about?!  I’m not a shop, nor likely to engage with anyone via my website.  It was a wasted page of links that appear elsewhere.  Both the Twitter and Facebook links appear in the header on every page.  Those are, to date, the only places I engage with other writers and readers, anyway.  Other links are all at the bottom of the home page and very pretty they look too!
• Books are key.  As an author, that’s all that matters.  There are only three links in the header on the home page:  HOME, BOOKS and DIARY.  The home page is a single page.  The diary page is my blog (about which more later).  There are no sub-headings under either.  But the BOOKS link is huge – it goes to all my books with sub-headings and sub-sub-headings.  I’ve tried to keep the same theme throughout so that it looks as professional as possible.  And on all the book pages, there are links to shops (Amazon, Smashwords, etc).
• My diary and blog are now linked.  In fact, they are the same thing.  I’d intended the website blog (Diary of a Bloomsbury Writer) to be more of a diary thing, the day to day life of an author, separate from my writer’s blog, but it was just too much hard work, particularly as I wanted to spend more of my time actually writing.  Also, you can’t follow the diary on the website, but a “follow” link takes you to the blog, which you can follow.

 
It’s not perfect.  I’m not a professional website building.  I can only work within the extreme confines of Weebly.  But I feel as if I’ve learnt something over the years.  A website that engages visitors and encourages books sales is about all you could ask for.  Let’s see how it goes.
 

​The Fleet Quintet began originally with Commences, at that time a novella.  My intention was to write something about the beginning of the universe – but not the physical universe:  the universe of beings or entities or spirits, people who looked like people but didn’t have bodies of flesh.  Non-corporeal entities have always intrigued me more than any other.

I wanted to fill Commences with impossible magic, most of which proved to be so impossible that I couldn’t find the words to describe it.  The result was a gloriously incomprehensible mess.

I followed this with a short story, Access Denied, about a mindwalker called Gomenzi.  Once I discovered that this ultra-cool spy turned out to be an ex-Fleet being and that Fleet space was called space alternate – or alter-space – the first whisper of the Fleet novels was born.  A very short story called Baby Doll wrapped up Gomenzi – permanently, it seemed.

Another novella followed, Flesh for Sale, and suddenly the entire Fleet Quintet appeared in front of my eyes:  I had the titles for all five novels, though not necessarily the stories.  At that time, I had no idea what the fifth one was to be about, only the terrible depravity it was to contain.

The Fleet Quintet became my Great Work:  it was something I was going to write one day when I was a real writer.  One day when I had enough confidence as a writer to pull it off.  One day when I was more mature.  I had no idea when that day was going to be or what it would entail for me to get there, but when the day finally arrived, I wasn’t expecting it.

By that time, I had dropped writing altogether, started a degree, had a baby, followed by my Eureka moment, then started writing screenplays.  I developed Access Denied into a screenplay that absolutely didn’t work – the story was enormous.  The characters had vast back stories.  And the story was sucking me in to a vast black space called alter-space and there was no escaping.  The time had come.  It was time to turn novellas and short stories into a five-novel series.  My Quintet was ready to be born –

... something of a stillbirth, it transpired, as my first attempt at turning Commences into a novel was a dismal failure.  But with Access Denied already developed, it proved to be wonderfully easy to get going with Gomenzi and Nigel and the far-off distant Fleet.  I worked on Flesh for Sale in the same way:  I developed it as a screenplay and turned it into a novel that proved to be my best ever.  I was on my way.  The Fleet Quintet was in full throttle.

Without taking breath, I continued with the fourth, V. Gomenzi.  An intensely dense novel that covered the impossible time frame of the first three, this novel took me twice as long as the others and by the time I was done, I was running on empty.

Realising by that time the weakness of Commences, it got a full rewrite.  The writing came from the bottom of a bottomless pit.  I was half-dead with exhaustion from V. Gomenzi and with my mother dying in the middle of it, it became the most gruelling task I have ever undertaken.  I also managed to have a veritable personality change just before the editing process – resulting in a novel more brutal than I could ever have hoped for.

But it was still too weird and after much consideration, I decided to make it the fourth Fleet novel as its tone followed more aptly that of V. Gomenzi.

The last Fleet novel remains – to date – unwritten but the story has become clear.  I know exactly what it’s about, which is a lot more than I knew in the late nineties when it all began.

Uncovering the complex plot of the Fleet Quintet has been like having tiny sections of a vast painting revealed to me because to see it all, all at once, would have been terrifying.  And it’s as if the painting was already done when I first began to uncover it.  The story was already told:  I just had to find a way to release it from the darkness into novels that people could actually read.