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.
As trailed a couple of months back, the latest issue of online SF magazine Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show features a new story.
Called ‘Hard Times in Nuovo Genova’, this is the third of my ‘Way’ stories. It’s a story of love and loss in multiple versions of Chicago.
One of the things that always interests me about writing fiction is the way that you make stuff up and sometimes the characters and the ideas take on a life of their own. You think you’ve written something the way it should be, only to find that you have to go back and explore it some more.
A while back, I wrote a story about a young man called Siggy who meets a woman called Ellie. They fall in love, and she shares with him a fantastic secret: she has stumbled upon a mechanism for travelling 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.
That story–called Once There Was a Way*–ends sadly. Siggy has a wanderlust – showing him the Way is like giving him the keys to the sweetshop. He can’t resist using it on his own, 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 concept of the Way (which I don’t claim is especially original) obviously lends itself to a series of stories, and sure enough I wrote others. The story of Siggy and Ellie hadn’t been fully told. I left Siggy wandering the Multiverse, searching in vain for the Ellie he left behind. But what about Ellie?
That thought led to my story Sigmund Seventeen, the sad tale of what Ellie did after she lost Sigmund. That story is available online at Electric Spec magazine.
What both those stories show is a truth 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, Sigmund loses Ellie because he always wants to look around the next corner. He suspects the grass is greener, and so fails to see 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.
I’m thrilled that the latest Way story has been picked up by Intergalactic Medicine Show. Hard Times in Nuovo Genova doesn’t feature Ellie or Siggy. But it’s still basically a boy meets girl story. 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 new story also–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.
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*If you want to read, Once There Was a Way, it is included in the short story anthology Flicker, out now from Filles Vertes Publishing. Filles Vertes also published my new time-travel romance novel, Fifty-One, which is available now.
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.