Yes it has some science fiction in it, but this doesn’t become obvious until you’re some way into the story. It’s also very hard to sell SF. I’m therefore planning to follow advice and pitch the novel as ‘Young adult fiction’.

This extract is from about halfway through, and is a scene that contributes minimally to the overall novel. If a publisher wants the book shortened this bit will go.

Matt Shepherd is the main characterof the novel. He is 16, seriously bright, seriously weird. Matt’s home is in Leeds, UK. This scene deals with Thorburn Scott, a minor character. Call him Thor, everyone else does, but he don’t like it. He’s a sad and lonely geek who is extremely able in his own field of research. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. This extract (currently Chapter 51) is intended to emphasise and bring even more to life certain aspects of the atmosphere and surrounding events of the novel, which is set in the day after next year. A background plot is the deteriorating state of the world.

Comments, however critical, welcomed.

51 – Pressure

Thorburn’s apartment was on the fifth floor. The Shepherd kid would call it the fourth floor. Why did Brits number floors from zero? Not that the exact number had mattered these last thirty some hours.

The rooms were as drab as when he first moved in. Previous occupant had smoked heavily, and Thorburn was not a practical man. Not a painter and decorator. He had occasionally bought furniture with a warmer, more cheerful appearance. Each item had looked great in the shop. Together, well, the best he could say was that maybe the colours and styles didn’t quite go together.

He shivered.

The temperature was not unseasonal. It was just the dreary sub-zero you get when a high pressure region is stuck over the North Eastern States, drawing cold air down from the Arctic, and dispersing cloud cover. What little warmth the sun offered in the brief days was soon gone in the evenings. And then the gas pressure dropped, almost to nothing. And round here everywhere was heated by gas. The tenements had boilers in their basements, large, dirty, noisy things.

The papers had been full of it. But the best use for them would have been to start a fire. If only the apartment had had a fireplace. He’d been tempted to burn the TV too, the way it twittered on. Instead it had been more useful to wrap himself up in everything available and sit it out when he wasn’t at work. At least power had been on for the computer, but he’d been too late to get any kind of electric fire from the local shops. Panic buying. Stupid people. But typing is hard with gloves on. Thorburn had gone to bed fully clothed in a sleeping bag under the winter duvet under the summer duvet.

Then the tap water had stopped.

Well, it would.

At least carrying water up four flights of stairs had warmed him up. The trick had been to find somewhere with a working tap. Or pay the extortionate prices for bottled water.

But during the last couple of hours gas pressure must have risen above some threshold level. The basement heating system had allowed itself to be used again. Their caretaker had re-ignited the pilot light.  It was a good thing he’d not tampered with it any of the times it went out. Gas suddenly rushing through with no light – that could be a problem and a half. The apartment had started to warm, though it would be a long time before the brick walls caught up. It was a good thing

They were going to have to do something about how they heated homes in North America. They must know the figures. US oil production peaked in 1970, followed by natural gas in 1971. Of course, they’d obscured the truth for a couple more decades with a frenzy of exploration. But those in power had known. So how did they respond? They let the movers and shakers go on pushing gas as the way to heat your home. After all, you could always import it from Canada. That country had an infinite supply. They must do because we can’t live without gas. And we are the people who matter.

What you could not do is ship liquefied natural gas in from other countries without investing one helluva lot of money first. Gas was far less amenable to transportation than oil. Far more explosive because it vapourised so fast. Far less energy per gallon. And well over half of American homes required it in the winter. Could you ever ship it fast enough to feed that hunger? Helluva way to run a country. Helluva way to run a world.

Some days back demand had been tremendous. Pressure had fallen, and then fallen further. One by one swathes of New England found themselves effectively without gas.

He reached out a hand for the remote and turned on the TV.

At least this had been a manageable crisis. And not even as wide-reaching in impact as the electrical outage of 2003. That had cut off most communications, closed down  ATMs, prevented many credit card purchases, made it almost impossible to shop. And then there had been Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Be fair, Boston was not devastated and unliveable. People had just been hellish cold for a few days. Some had died. Probably not a bad way to go, hypothermia. At an early stage you’d stop thinking straight. Which might be nice.

For once the TV news had moved on from yesterday’s coup in Saudi Arabia. Gas pressure coming back on line in New England had more immediate journalistic value. Naturally. I mean, who actually knows where Saudi Arabia is?

Splat.

A water drop struck the cabinet his TV rested on.

Frozen condensation warmed up? The water pipes would be thawing now. Wow. A long, hot shower would be incredible. Incredible.

Another drop splattered on the imitation wood surface by the TV.

He looked up.

It didn’t look like thawing condensation. There was a discoloured patch of wet ceiling plaster the size of a jellyfish. What could be causing that? Should he go and check with the tenant above him? The guy must have spilt his beer. Or maybe just give the caretaker a ring? This was what they paid him to sort out.

There was no warning.

From somewhere outside came the rib-shaking boom of an explosion. It was followed by a rapid series of muted thumps and a rumbling and a clattering.

Broken glass sprayed past him from the window, a pressure wave picking his newspaper off the coffee table and flinging it across the room.

Some glass embedded itself in his face and hand. Thank God he’d been looking away from the window. He reached up and felt blood neither oozing nor dripping, but flowing.

What the hell?

He staggered to the window. Icy wind numbed his face. Shards of glass, skewed inwards, clung to the edges of the frame. The street was littered with debris.

Further down, where smoke and dust billowed, he could just make out a jagged gap in the line of tenements. At least one car was ablaze. He turned from the window before anything else exploded. His head was aching. His left ear and left hand stung like fury. Spikes of glass clotted the back of the hand. Do you pull them out? How do you clean wounds without water? How do you stop the blood running down your neck into your clothing? Why do abused ears hurt so much?

He collapsed back into his arm chair and began to shiver in earnest.

The drops of water were coming faster now. They would soon merge into a dribble, and then a stream. How long would it be before the ceiling plaster, already bulging downwards, collapsed completely drenching both the plasma screen and the surround sound system?

The TV and the lights went out.

[This extract is copyright (c) Nigel Leech 2011. e-mail me if you'd like to reproduce any part of it.]

Share on Facebook

16th July 1945, Alamogordo, New Mexico, just 16 milliseconds after Trinity was triggered. The really explosive stuff started the size of an apple. This fireball is already the size of an Olympic stadium.

There’s been a lot of international concern recently about Iran and North Korea possibly building their own atomic bombs. The latest worry is Iran’s creation of a second ‘uranium enrichment’ plant. Why is there so much fuss about what sounds like just one trivial stage in doing something the world has known how to do for over sixty years?

Amongst other projects, I’m working on ‘Subversive Ramblings 2′ which is an off the wall look at algebra. The obvious starting point was Einstein’s most famous whatever it’s called:

e = mc²

This is illustrated by looking at our first ever nuclear explosion, Trinity. Why? Because it’s more interesting than how school text books introduce algebra.

Naturally I couldn’t leave it there, so one of the Extra Bits (aka appendices) is called ‘Build Your Own Atomic Bomb’. I’ve put part of it below, taking you as far as uranium enrichment. Hopefully this will give you helpful and interesting background to current international concerns. Obviously the pictures/cartoon haven’t been included yet. Comments welcomed.

There are people in the world who swing into a blind panic whenever they hear something like this is on the web, so three points need to be made. Firstly all if this is already on the web, and very very easy to find. Secondly I admit it, this would work. Thirdly the article has a point. If it makes you panic then you’ve missed that point. Feel free to e-mail me and ask.

I’m bunging this extract straight in as a cut and paste from Word so the footnotes come through with it. (In the final book they’ll be sideboxes rather than footnotes). If your browser scrambles this up and you’d like access to a downloadable pdf version just let me know.

Extract from first draft of ‘Subversive Ramblings 2′ (copyright (c) Nigel Leech 2009) :

Extra bit B: Build Your Own Atomic Bomb

Important: if you are under the age of 18 please be sure to get permission from a parent or guardian before attempting this at home.

 This is really quite straightforward. Just follow these simple steps:

• find some uranium ore,

• mine it,

• get the uranium out of the ore,

• get rid of as much of the wrong type of uranium as possible,

• put two large chunks at either end of a gun barrel and wham them together hard enough that they don’t just fizzle.

I should add that the procedures suggested here are probably the simplest approach. For some reason people are awfully secretive about the details of modern ways of doing this, so I’ve picked methods that will require the least experimentation. 

1. Find a source of uranium ore

It shouldn’t take you long on the internet to find where most of the known locations are. Of course some people may have found deposits they’re keeping quiet about. Then again you could send out your own team of geologists looking for somewhere new to mine. People say uranium is rare but actually it is more common in the earth’s crust than silver or gold.

If like me you live in the UK your best bet is Orkney¹, but even Margaret Thatcher couldn’t persuade the environmentalists to allow mining there.

Here is a picture of a chunk of uranium ore. It doesn’t always look like this, so either study geology or hire in an expert. 

2. Get the ore out of the ground

You have some choices here but probably the simplest is to dig it out. Of course there is the risk of rock fall, and uranium ore is a bit radioactive. You might want to pay someone else to do this for you.

Depending on how good the ore is you’ll need between 800 and 8,000 tons of it. I would recommend you do not store it in your garden shed.

Here is a picture of a very small part of the Shinkolobwe uranium mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s alleged that Iran has been buying uranium from this mine. Maybe. How else are the locals going to make enough to stay alive? 

3. Mill the uranium out of the ore

Uranium doesn’t occur naturally as just uranium, which is probably just as well. The ore you now have probably contains uranium as one of its oxides (compounds² with oxygen), and this will be a very small percentage of the total rock you’ve had dug up. You’ll need to have it ground down to a fine powder and chemically treated³ to separate out the uranium from the junk. What you’ll get is called ‘yellowcake’ but will probably not be yellow. You should end up with under a hundred tons of this stuff. It’ll only be about 90% pure, and only about 7 parts in a thousand of the pure bit are what you really want.

Be careful. Yellowcake is rather more radioactive than the rock it came from. At this point definitely pay someone else to do the close work.

4. Strain out the wrong type of uranium

This is the tricky bit and what causes the most fuss internationally, so try not to let too many people know you’re doing this.

The second Iraq war was in part motivated by the belief that Saddam Hussein’s government were doing this in order to, well, do what you’re trying to do: build an atomic bomb.

Some countries have been hassling Iran and North Korea because they are doing this. Iran says yes but you have to do this in order to have nuclear power stations, and obviously they have no intention of taking the process far enough to produce anything suitable for a weapon. This may be true, although it’s also true that you can run some types of nuclear reactor with just the uranium mix in yellowcake. As I understand it North Korea have responded by asking what we think we can do about it.

The problem you face is that yellowcake contains two types (isotopes⁴) of uranium, and only one of them is useful for our purposes: uranium-235 which has 235 particles in its nucleus⁵ (92 protons and 143 neutrons). Most of the uranium will be uranium-238 (92 protons and 146 neutrons – do the addition). How do you separate two types of virtually identical atoms which mainly differ in that the one you want is very very very slightly lighter than the other? With some difficulty.

What follows isn’t the cheapest or most efficient method, but it is the one you’re most likely to be able to make work unless you’re prepared to employ a network of skilled spies.

Design a membrane with microscopic holes in it just the right size. Be sure to get this right. Jabbing plastic sheeting with a needle will give you holes that are way too large.

Convert your yellowcake into the gas uranium hexafluoride. Under exactly the right amount of pressure, shove this gas through the membrane. Because the 238 particles (molecules) are ever so slightly heavier than the 235 ones you want, what comes through will have just a smidgeon more of the 235.

How big is a smidgeon?

Typically the gas is shoved through several thousand membranes in succession. You may find it best to hire an industrial park to install the mass of tubing and filters. Give consideration to disguising it.

The result from the first run is then shoved through a second time. The process is repeated again and again. It’s called cascading. You have many tons of gas to be repeatedly cascaded. This will take you quite a long time and will be fairly expensive, but don’t stint on it. You need to increase the proportion⁶ of 235 in the gas by something like 120 times, so stick with it. If you don’t then obviously your bomb won’t work, although you could use the uranium you get for fuel in a nuclear power station. The great advantage to the length of this process is you can tell your neighbours it’s okay, you’re only enriching the uranium enough for power station use.

Handle the final output with great care⁷.

Share on Facebook

The solution can be simple (unless there are major other factors such as clinical depression). Just do it badly.

Let me give an example. Currently I’m writing the novelette file-named Ted. It’ll be about 30,000 words. Some days I just feel I’ve no idea what to write next, and anyway if I did write it would be rubbish. I’ve managed to get myself into a routine which solves the problem, based on the mantra: it doesn’t matter how bad it is. The policy is to write at least 500 words a day, six days a week. At that rate it’ll take 60 days, which is 10 weeks (with one day to recover each week). And I’m just writing, not editing, not rereading, not worrying how good it is just so long as I finish. Then I can think about improving it. No matter how good it is I’ll be able to improve it.

And it’s working. In the last five days I’ve written the following numbers of words (compared with target 500): 753, 844, day off, 535, 1315. Yesterday was weak. Really ill the night before, felt rough. Managed to get up to watch some early-evening TV, and decided to tap away at the notebook while watching. No idea if it’s any good, but I got the 500 done.

This method links in with what I said about brainstorming here, and about just starting, here.

Ted A 004a.docx is now 8172 words.

Share on Facebook

They know what their job is and how to do it. They have authors who consistently make them money. Taking on an unknown writer is a big risk.

So when a submissions editor reaches for the next unrequested manuscript they’re mainly looking for a reason, any reason, to reject it. And reject with as little time wasted as possible. It’s hardly surprising that some gems slip past unnoticed. One famous example of this is Joanne Rowling when her agent tried to sell the first Harry Potter novel to a publisher. Twelve rejected it. Later it was offered to Bloomsbury, and their shrewd chairman passed the first chapter to his eight year old daughter for comment. She promptly requested the next chapter. Good for her.

We are looking to publish non-fiction that is readable and in some ways fun, but has a point. We’ll be looking for material that has potential, but may well require significant editing in partnership with the writer. No doubt we’ll be offered stuff other publishers have rejected, and that’s fine. Hopefully some manuscripts will be sent to us first.

There is a publisher which already does this sort of thing for fiction. They’re not exactly what we want to be, but do show the way. They are called BeWrite Books and you can find them here.

In the previous post I mentioned getting involved with YouWriteOn (web site here) and as a result being contacted by Liza Granville, an up and coming author with considerable talent. She has three books published by BeWrite Books, and they’re working with her on editing a fourth. She referred me to their web site, and as a result I’ve been chatting a little by e-mail with a couple of their team. They’re warm and friendly, as we hope to be. Judging by the Liza Granville book I’ve bought and read they do an excellent job of production, including having a unique cover created – Liza got to work with her cover designer.

They do not offer any royalty advances. Actually other publishers are moving in that direction. Doubleday won the bidding war for Joanne Harris’ Chocolat partly by offering her £75,000 up front, which was enough for her to risk leaving her job as a French teacher. That kind of thing is happening less often, and it looks likely will become rare indeed. We authors need to get used to waiting for the book to sell before we get any financial return, and that’s the model BeWrite use. If they accept a book they work hard to create a high-quality product for the market place, but you’re paid a percentage on sales only after the sale.

However they have limitations, and are quick to point these out to authors browsing their site. As with all publishers launching most books, the publisher is not strong on publicity and promotion; the old model for launching a successful book is prohibitively expensive. BeWrite advise prospective clients to exhaust all mainstream possibilities first, which is an admirable thing for them to say. What they do, they do well. But they know their limitations. What an author gets is warm, friendly, professional help in refining the book, and then creating a final product available both online and to high-street bookshops. It is then up to the author, mainly, to promote the book.

That’s something most writers are ill-equipped to do. They need guidance, and someone to chat through with them what approaches suit them and their book.

We will be creating over a period of years a book of suggestions and advice to authors on what they should be doing at various stages of book development if they want to sell a reasonable quantity. And let’s be honest, that’s what we writers create for: people to read and enjoy our work. Mind you, some cash is not unwelcome.

I’m thinking we should make this publicity guide available to BeWrite’s authors as well as to our own. Of course, a bad book won’t sell. And a book with no real market won’t either. But that’s part of the job of the publisher: to find good books that are worth reading. We also plan to work with each author on how the author will be promoting their book.

BeWrite do not charge to publish your book. They are NOT a vanity publisher, they’re serious about what they publish. They’re highly selective. But check their limitations and submission instructions (on the web site) before sending off your opus.

In the next post I’ll be reviewing Liza’s book Until The Skies Fall.

Meanwhile I would value comments, particularly from any of the team at BeWrite.

[Ted update: v. A002d 2103 words]

Share on Facebook

Star image 1 (modified from an original photo by NASA)

When I’m writing I often create images to help me capture the mood I want. On the right is one such image created for the almost complete novel Sunken Star. It’s a modified section of a photo of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Does Europa feature in the novel? Yes, in a very minor role. This part of the photo has the appearance of lines radiating out from a central circular object, and changing colours has emphasised this. I’ll show you some other Star images in later posts.

Some time back I let several people read the first part of Star. Chris Walbank read the first 80,000 words and said he found it hard to put down, which is quite a compliment. He also suggested I split the story in two, saving the science fiction aspect for a separate novel. I know what he means, but without the relatively minor SF element I don’t have a plot, and I’m too lazy to go looking for one. Anyway I like SF of this type, the sort of stuff John Wyndham wrote, where there’s one basic new thing to accept but after that it’s all about the people, how the deal with the situation.

Technically this one thing calls for a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, but in the case of Star not remotely as much as in Lord of the Rings or Heroes. Actually I lead the reader fairly gently in to the oddest thing about the central character, Matt.

He’s 16 and weird. The psychologist who assessed him said he doesn’t quite match the criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome, so it must be something else. And like those other weirdos Newton and Einstein, Matt is brilliant. In his own way.

All of that is normal fiction, not SF.

My intention is that his other quirk feel reasonable once you reach it. Trouble is that although you know the novel is set in the year after tomorrow, it’s a long time before this key SF element is made clear. Some readers have complained the story is far too slow to get started. Well, I guess I’ve written something in that sense like some of Iain Banks’ novels, and people read him.

I put the first 130,000 words aside for over a year, feeling I needed some distance from it before doing a thorough edit, some rewriting, and then finally creating the climactic ending. Every novel needs a climactic ending.

Then, quite recently, I stumbled across the website youwriteon.com. It was set up with the help of an Arts Council grant, and is now used by prospective authors around the world. The premise is simple: if you want other writers to review your work then you have to review theirs – in a constructive way. The setup is clever and effective. You can upload between four and seven thousand words of a novel. After eight reviews you qualify for the charts, but you must have reviewed someone else’s work in the last ten days to be included.

I’m enjoying and learning from reviewing other people’s work, and it’s great that writers are far more willing to analyse and criticise than most other people who’ve read a draft. I uploaded the first 7,000 words, and have already made a number of changes in response to review comments. The novel is improving, and people aren’t just telling me how to make the sample better. I’m also learning more about effective fiction writing in general, which is great.

And there’s more.

Because I’ve made my e-mail address public a number of other writers have contacted me. It’s good to be able to chat with them, if only by e-mail. They are making valuable suggestions about my work. One is called Liza Granville, and has already published several novels. I’ll tell you about  one of them and her publishers in the next post.

Share on Facebook

Today I’ve been getting on with the second version of the Maths book, file name ‘TED’. It’s a bit slow, but taking shape. I have bits and pieces in my head which have one shape, though a bit skeletal. But when I start writing stuff down the shape shifts. Like Joanne H says, the characters develop lives of their own.

Looks like it’s going to be a short novel with a scattering of daft Maths and plenty of cartoons. Ted, the narrator and central character, seems to be seeing to that.

What I should do is sit down with loads of paper and brainstorm the plot, but I keep not having the energy. Just ambling along writing bits feels okay and quite satisfying, but it takes real effort to start brainstorming. Especially when you’ve got post-viral fatigue syndrome. That’s what the GP called it earlier this week. She said that tends to be shorter lived than full blown ME, and if she puts ME in my notes then other doctors might just classify any future symptoms as part of the ME. What does ME stand for? Must look it up. ‘Short lived’ has so far been sixteen months.

While we were away in North Yorkshire last week with the grandchildren (and their parents), Jenny and I were browsing a bookshop in Thirsk when I had this idea for Ted’s plot. What if his girl friend Jess disappears? No warning, no explanation, her parents refuse to speak to him, texts and e-mails go unanswered. But why?

Later that day we were sitting in The Golden Fleece waiting for our meal (‘We don’t do fast food, we prepare everything to order as fast as we can’ – yes it was good) I suggested to Jenny we brainstorm possible reasons why Jess might disappear. I thought it would be tough, but we came up with eight reasons worth keeping. Not bad for the end of a long day. Thank you Jenny.

But I still have to brainstorm the details of the plot.

When I have a good day.

Ted 001d.docx is 1,243 words. Loose target: 30,000.

Share on Facebook