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January 21, 2023
Watch the shadows.
Hello there, Reader.
I'm going to cut to the chase... I have a new book coming out!
'The Fairies Want Me Dead' will be available from February 1st.
As you'll know from the 'Fae News' portion of my newsletters, I've long had a fascination with the supernatural, the myths and legends we invent to try and explain the world around us. Even before I started work on the 'War of the Worlds' sequels, I had written a complete novel exploring a world in which the fairy tales we heard as children were entirely true, but they hid the truth of how nasty things really were... Think of all the most gruesome of the 'Brothers Grimm' tales, but those beasts are loose in England in our present.
The creatures Richard Williams remembers from childhood fairy tales are terrifying. So when he discovers they are stalking him, he is glad of the Fae Defence Society's help. But when a message from his late grandfather casts doubt on their motivations, he must decide who to trust and make strange alliances to prevent a devastating magical attack on the streets of Britain.
Please do note that it will be part of 'Kindle Unlimited' when it launches, so if you're already a user of that service then you can read it completely free!
If you're not, you can try it out free for a month - read as many books as you like - and then cancel. Or keep it going, since it's a very cost-effective way to keep a digital library at your fingertips.
Sign up for a free trial, on me. amzn.to
Not interested in Kindle Unlimited, but still want to read my book for nothing? Check the end of this newsletter for how you can do that and help me out at the same time!
Space News
Space is hard. Really hard. And nothing brings that home more clearly than a failed launch.
Virgin Orbit (yes, it's another billionaire spending his cash on space rockets) tried to be the first to launch satellites into orbit from the UK recently, and sadly it didn't go too well. Britain has only had one successful launch since the Space Race began, and that took off from Australia. So the idea of turning the UK into a competitive space-port is certainly very attractive, although the fact that every part of the rocket was made in the USA slightly reduces the opportunities for patriotic flag-waving.
There are some more details coming out day-by-day, but the cause of the problem does appear to be a relatively mundane instrument failure. Cold comfort to those who lost the satellites aboard the rocket, but it is to be hoped they had decent insurance against such an eventuality.
Virgin Orbit's 747-based launcher on the runway at SpacePort Cornwall.
Scott Manley has a great video detailing the history of this launch attempt, as well as some early analysis of the failure (and his stuff is always well worth watching, if you're not familiar with him already).
Pretty much everyone who's ever tried to launch a rocket has experienced failures - SpaceX, NASA, Blue Origin, RusCosmos, that drunk guy who didn't read the instructions on the fireworks properly - and it really is par for the course. But hopefully they can learn from this, rebuild and move forward soon.
Source: engadget.com
Other Books To Check Out
I've gathered a few great books from independent authors like me, I hope you'll check them out.
And let me know if you have any books to recommend! I'm particularly interested in indie authors, but anything you've read and loved would be awesome.
Beast Be Gone
Free
Terry Pratchett meets Ghostbusters in an RPG world
Beast Be Gone is a comedic fantasy fiction that follows Eric, a pest control agent in a fantasy world plagued by adventurers who are putting him out of a job.
A Fading Star
Free
Will humanity unite to save a dying Earth?
Earth is dying. Ravaged by disease, hunger, climate change and world wars. Can humanity unite to avoid extinction?
In 2153, cancer was cured. In 2189, AIDS. It seemed like humanity was headed for the stars.
Global population soared, surpassing 24 billion. Then came the floods, washing over Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Jakarta, Dhaka and New Orleans. Then a fourth world war, with 289 million casualties. Frequent droughts plague Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Mexico City, So Paulo, Stockholm, Vienna and Moscow. Now humanity teeters on the brink of extinction.
TBD
SFF Book Bonanza!
A selection of the finest speculative fiction, free for a limited time.
A Science Fiction and Fantasy giveaway, literally dozens of free books which means there's something here for everyone. It's neatly categorised too, so it's never been easier to find your idea read!
Pick up a couple today, and then drop the author a line, telling them what you think! Believe me, it really makes a writer's day when they get an email like that.
Strange News
Crows are even smarter than we thought.
Two crows at a water fountain.
I love crows. All the corvids are remarkably intelligent, and we've long known they're capable of not just using simple tools, but even tool creation - bending sticks to reach treats in a way that suggests spacial reasoning, forethought and planning. Now we can add recursion to the list.
What's recursion? From the article: It's the capacity to recognize paired elements in larger sequences - something that has been claimed as one of the key features of human symbolic competence. Consider this example: "The rat the cat chased ran." Although the phrase is a bit confusing, adult humans easily get that it was the rat that ran and the cat that chased. Recursion is exactly this: pairing the elements "rat" to "ran" and "cat" to "chased".
Obviously humans can do it. In 2020, a study showed that rhesus monkeys also have this ability, and so it might well be widespread in primates (probably due to our larger brains). But discovering that crows can do it is very surprising - and they scored just about as well as the monkeys, even without the training and practice that the monkeys received!
Source: beautyofplanet.com
Miscellany
A 'wildly theoretical' plan to build an asteroid city.
What sci-fi fan isn't going to love the idea of a city among the stars? Dive into the fascinating idea of an 'O'Neill Cylinder' - a mini-Ringworld that might well be much easier to construct than a giant space station.
Source: bigthink.com
Rare Green Comet to visit Earth
It's on a 50,000 year orbit, and we only spotted it when it was already inside the orbit of Jupiter. You'll need binoculars to see it, unless it gets much brighter than expected...
Source: blog.physics-astronomy.com
The darkest place on the moon
I'm sure we all know that the 'Dark Side of the Moon' only exists as a Pink Floyd album. Sunshine reaches the far side of the moon just as easily as it does the side we see most nights. But there are places where shadows are cast no matter where the moon sits in its orbit... So next time someone tells you to stick something where the sun doesn't shine, you'll know where to go!
Source: newscientist.com
And Finally
Still with me? Looking to help me out and read my new book for free?
Reviews are absolutely critical to an independent author like me. If someone visits an online store, the most important factor in whether they buy an item or not will be the reviews. Bunch of 4 and 5 star ratings? Sounds good, let's check it out.
So if you're willing to leave an honest review (and it needs to be honest, I'm not looking to cheat here) then you can grab a free copy of 'The Fairies Want Me Dead' to read and review. All you need to do is put a few words up, describing what you truly thought of it, and the book will be yours to keep!
Interested? Hop on over to
And you can read my new novel even before the paying public!
Right, next newsletter will be back to usual - much less self-publicity, and much more of the space and supernatural stuff you know and love.
Source: storyoriginapp.com