Writer of science fiction and fantasy and other stuff
As I mentioned last month, the sad demise of Filles Vertes Publishing left my time-travel adventure, Fifty-One, out of print.
Well, I’m pleased to say it’s now back on sale. Options are:
Amazon: paperback and e-book available here
The book is also available through the Independent Publishing Network, so you should be able to get it through bookstores too.
Finally, you can still snap up one of the remaining signed copies of the first edition, from me or ebay! Details here.
My science fiction novel, Fifty-One, was published in 2018 by US Indie, Filles Vertes Publishing. Sadly, FVP has gone out of business.
This means that Fifty-One is currently unavailable, which of course sucks (but more on that below). That’s the bad news.
As for the good news – it means I am now the lucky owner of the total UK stock of the first edition of Fifty-One. If you don’t have it yet, and want to get your hands on a signed copy of what will obviously one day be a collector’s item (possibly), all you need to do is:
I’m also planning to reissue the book as a second edition – paperback and ebook. News on that very soon, so watch this space.
It’s a little late, but at this time of year it’s customary to pull together a list of work published in the previous year (which may -ahem! – be eligible for various awards). There has been some fantastic fiction published in 2018, and it’s daunting presuming to be in that company. But I’ll just put here what I’ve had out in 2018.
After a long and winding road to publication, my time travel romance novel came out in 2018, from small press with a big heart, Filles Vertes Publishing.
If you haven’t read it, treat yourself here. Interzone said it was better plotted than Connie Willis! There’s a love triangle, time travel, and flying bombs.
By coincidence, my three new stories published this year were part of a series. I wrote about the ‘Way’ stories back in August, when the third one was published. All the stories are concerned with the consequences for people who stumble upon a mechanism for traveling between different versions of reality, between worlds that are subtly or dramatically different from our own, depending on how far you go along a mysterious path called the Way.
All stories are eligible for British and international awards, should anyone think them worthy.
In order of writing (but not strictly the order of publication), the three stories were:
Once There Was a Way (published in anthology, Flicker: Stories of Inner Flame, Filles Vertes Publishing, September 2018)Siggy meets Ellie. They fall in love, and she shares with him a fantastic secret: she has stumbled upon a mechanism for traveling between different versions of reality, along the Way.
Siggy has a wanderlust, and showing him the Way is like giving him the keys to the sweetshop. He can’t resist using it without Ellie, only to get lost in parallel worlds, forever searching for the version of reality he left behind, the one with his lover in it.
The Flicker anthology is available here. Or from Amazon.
Something told me that ‘Once There Was a Way’ was not the whole story. I left Siggy wandering the Multiverse, searching in vain for the Ellie he left behind. But what about Ellie?
That thought led to Sigmund Seventeen, the sad tale of what Ellie did after she lost Siggy.
As I said in this Electric Spec blog post, both stories have a theme that lies at the heart of much science fiction: whatever the powers and possibilities that become available to us, through technology or otherwise, our fate is often determined by the flaws that lie within us. In Once There Was a Way, Siggy loses Ellie because he always wants to look around the next corner and suspects the grass is greener, and so fails to see that what he already has. In Sigmund Seventeen, Ellie risks wasting the endless possibilities available to her in a doomed search to replace the man who got away.
Sigmund Seventeen is available free at Electric Spec.
Hard Times doesn’t feature Ellie or Siggy. But it’s still basically a boy meets girl story, set in multiple versions of Chicago. Except the girl has the power to travel at will between alternative universes, and the boy doesn’t. Surely a recipe for relationship trouble!
This story–like all my stories set on the Way–is at heart about this truth: what we get out of life is largely determined by what we are able to bring to it. There’s no magical or technological fix that can make us what we are not.
You can subscribe to Intergalactic Medicine Show – which I heartily recommend – here.
And finally, two stories that were not new came out in audio form in 2018. Both remain available for free if you want to check them out. They are:
Ghosts and tricky aliens afflict a stranded astronaut on Titan – available in Starship Sofa, episode 534, narrated by Gareth Stack
Shaun comes back from the Far East with some kind of fever, and takes to his bed, with increasingly disturbing consequences for his housemates. Available free in Tales to Terrify, episode 336, ably narrated by Matt Dovey.
It seems a long time ago now (been a bit busy!), but the UK book launch for Fifty-One was such great fun that I can’t neglect to post about it.
We were hosted by Blackheath Bookshop, who do a fantastic job promoting local authors and books with local connections. The venue was apt because (as those of you who have read it know) a large part of Fifty-One takes place in Blackheath and neighbouring parts of south London, both in the 1940s, when London was at war, and in the 2040s, from whence my time travelling protagonist comes.
The shop very kindly laid on drinks and snacks, and pretty much handed over the whole shop to us for our event. The net result was a crowded and happy bookshop on a lovely summer evening, with lots of books signed and sold and (I confess) many of us ending up in somewhat ‘cheerful’ condition in a local pub!
It was lovely to see so many friends and book-lovers, and I was immensely honoured that our fantastic newly-elected Mayor, Damien Egan, came along to say a few words – particularly praising the bookshop for their support for local writers.
Damien also referred to my double life – as local councillor and writer. It is a strange existence: a lot of the time, I operate in a world where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fantasy; where no one can be certain that the rules of reality apply; and where people can choose to believe the most unlikely things.
The rest of the time, I write science fiction.
(Missed the book launch? Never mind, you can still buy Fifty-One, including here. )
Excitement rising Chez Barnham as we look forward to the official UK launch of Fifty-One this coming Friday 22nd June.
Thanks to the generosity of the Blackheath Bookshop – who are hosting – we’ll be launching the book right where a lot of the story is set, in Blackheath Village.
The fun starts at 6pm, with drinks and nibbles. If you’re in the area (and in a book-buying mood) come along.
The address is 34 Tranquil Vale, Blackheath, London SE3 0AX.
Fifty-One is of course available through various channels – Google Play, Amazon Kindle, and so on.
But I’ve found that I’m embarrassingly old-school: it’s only when I see the actual, physical book – preferably in an actual, physical bookstore, among other lovely books – that I admit to myself the book properly exists.
So I’m really pleased that the book is now properly available in paperback in UK bookshops.
A reminder of what the book’s about:
Jacob Wesson is a timecop from 2040, sent back to 2nd World War London to stop the assassination of Winston Churchill. The assignment plays out with apparent ease, but the jump home goes wrong, stranding Jake in war-ravaged 1944. Jake’s team, including his long-time girlfriend, is desperate to trace him before something else goes wrong.
Stuck in the past, Jake must pull from his training and blend in. He clings to the one familiar face he can find, Amy Jenkins, a war widow whose life he saved during the assignment. Drawn to each other by their loneliness and thrown together amid the terror of war, Jake and Amy look to a future together.
But Jake’s future cannot let him go. And when his bosses finally find him in 1944, Jake faces a terrible choice: risk unraveling the modern world, or let Amy die.
To celebrate this moment when Fifty-One becomes fully available in the non-digital realm in the UK, I thought I’d bring together in one place all the ways you can now get it, should you choose to do so. Take your pick below:
Amazon UK (Kindle or paperback)
Amazon US (Kindle or paperback)
Google Play (ebook)
Waterstones (paperback)
(And, if you’re in the USA, consider doing independent publishing a favour, and ordering from … Filles Vertes Publishing ebook and paperback)
For me, there’s no substitute for finding books in bookstores, so I’ll be giving a plug on here to any stores where I spot it on sale. And look out for a launch event, coming soon, appropriately in a place that features in the story.