Christmas Roundup

OK.  Christmas is done for another year.  Here's how I spent mine.

Christmas Eve - a coach to Oxfordshire, carols around a village Christmas tree in the early evening and the midnight service in a church that I'm pretty sure is a couple of hundred years old.  It was an Anglican service, and if you don't ever go to church outside of marriages or funerals and so forth, that means a bit of ritual, a lot of singing and a workout for your knees.  I went to pretty much the same service (with the same hard working staff, but at a different church) the next morning.  It was my second time in church in 24 hours, the vicar's fourth.

Christmas Day was all about family.  This year, we did a Secret Santa thing and I got a gorgeous carved Rhino from Kenya.  It's a beautiful, tactile piece of carving and I love it.  We ate, we drank, we played some games, we sang carols, we sat around making things and talking to each other.  No one did anything to excess, no one had a row and the whole thing was really, really fun.  I learned to play Irish Snap, and worked on my poker face with a couple of rounds of Cheat.

All of this was with the In-Laws, who have been gradually teaching me all of the important things about Christmas.

I've also read some books.  Pocket reviews ahoy!

Ya Gotta Read

The Martian by Andy Weir

Quick guide: man stranded on Mars attempts to survive.

My verdict: Awesome book. I couldn't stop reading it.  Funny, intelligent, engaging, fascinating.

You should read it because: You'll learn a lot.

I'm Currently Ploughing Through

Sniper One by Dan Mills

Quick Guide: True story of sniper operations in Iraq.

My Verdict: I am a total sucker for this kind of writing and this sort of real life story.  I'm fascinated, but unless you like books written by soldiers about their experiences, you might not.

You should read it because: you've got a yen to learn about the British Army.

Optional Reads

Closure, Limited by Max Brooks

Quick Guide: more Zombie stories by the man who brought us World War Z.

My Verdict: Mmmm.  It was okay.

You should read it because: you're a Max Brooks fan or completist.

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A Sword into Darkness by Thomas A. Mays

I've always had a soft spot for military SF.  I blame Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for this. The Mote in God's Eye and Footfall are still two of my favourite books, even though my tastes in literature have moved on.  Whatever your general preferences, reading those two books, and the novels of Tom Clancy if your tastes run to more real world fiction, you run into stories that catch you up in their narrative and pull you along with them no matter where they go.

It's been a while since I read any military SF, but Thomas Mays took part in The Writer's Arena and his story was thoroughly interesting.  I wanted to read more, he seemed very proud of his book and it was available on Amazon for the Kindle.  I bought it assuming I'd be taking a trip through some well worn tropes and treading a familiar path.  I wasn't entirely correct.

The story has a strong narrative.  It's a story you want to read and want to get to the end of.  You want to know what happens to the characters, even if you think you know at the outset.  Then you get grabbed by the author's intelligence and almost palpable joy at playing with fringe science concepts and, dammit, his enthusiasm is infectious.  This is the sort of science fiction you give to people when you want them to come to you later saying things like "so, how far are we away from a pebble bed reactor, exactly?"

That's a kind of fun you can only have with science fiction.  If books like this make people go and investigate what we're currently capable of or nearly capable of, you've got a book that inspires.  It's something that only science fiction does.  I love the work of Nick Hornby but his books have never once made me wish I was better at maths or less colour blind.

Are there down sides to the book?  Yeah, kinda, sorta.  It might be a bit gung ho American for a sensitive European audience, but frankly we see worse from Hollywood and since the main characters are American and more than a few are serving in the various Armed Forces you should expect a bit of respect for the flag and some patriotism.  Is it in many ways a bit of cheerleading for good old American rugged individualism and know how?  Yeah, kinda.  It doesn't get in the way of the story and the book doesn't lecture (although there were a couple of dialogue exchanges where a european lefty part of my brain started sighing and rolling it's eyes, I told it to shut up and let me get on with the narrative).

There are a couple of decent female characters - I'm sort of fond of Kris Munoz, even if she is the kind of brilliantly intelligent alternative lifestyle female engineer that we've seen quite a bit of in NCIS and Criminal Minds.  She seems like a well drawn character and is actually a lot more rounded than some of the men.  I think the author made an effort to ensure she wasn't just someone's love interest and, as a reader I appreciate that kind of thinking.

There are aliens, and they are impressive.  Their motivation is interesting and I'm not going to talk about it because I want you to go read the book.

For me, the big thrill of the book is that the author knows what he's talking about and can transfer that interest and enthusiasm to the page.  This is the same buzz that I get from Charles Stross, Ben Bova, Niven and Pournelle and half a dozen others.  I want to see more from Mr. Mays, because even though A Sword into Darkness treads familiar ground it does so with a lightness of step, a disarming grin and is excellent company on the journey.  Recommended.

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New Phone

I'm a fan of Android phones.  I've used an HTC and a Samsung Galaxy S3, and enjoyed both of them.  At upgrade time this year, I thought my choice was probably between the HTC M8 or the Samsung S5.

I was surprised to find that I went for a Windows phone.  The Nokia Lumia 930, in fact.

The phone itself is an improvement on the S3.  It feels heavier, which is oddly reassuring.  The design and construction shows almost Apple levels of attention to detail, to the point where although I have the phone in a protective case I'm finding reasons to remove the casing so I can enjoy the build quality.

Windows 8.1 works well.  It's noticably faster than the last edition of Android I used, but that's because the technology in the phone is beefier too.  The interface is nice - the live tiles finally make sense! - and it's simple to navigate.  So far, so good.

My biggest concern is the number of Apps that I thought I couldn't live without and which don't have an equivalent in the Windows store.  As it turns out, there are just two Apps I'm missing: a good Gmail client -  because I've got used to the way Gmail filters incoming mails into Personal, Social and Promotions - and an App I used to store e-tickets for the local bus company.

The mail client that comes with the phone is fine.  It's done a good job of repogramming me out of the notion that any old spam is perfectly acceptable because Google hides it away in the Promotions tab, which I can ignore.  I'm now evaluating which companies I really want to hear from.

Of course there are Gmail clients available, but I'm actually pretty happy with the native client on the phone now.  It's a nice, clean interface that I've rapidly adapted to.

My favourite feature is Cortana.  The Windows digital assistant might officially be in Beta, but it's already an important part of the phone for me.  Cortana has already worked out where I live and where I work, so I can ask her to set alerts and reminders for those locations.  The search results are from Bing, but Cortana seems to be pretty good at sorting those by relevance and location, which makes any results I get more immediately useful.  I can also allow Cortana to handle calls and texts for me when I set the phone to Quiet Time.  If I can work out how to set Quiet Time for any time I'm at work, I'll be delighted but it's not exactly burdensome to switch it on manually.

I've never used Siri, so I can't compare them directly, but I was speaking with a couple of iPhone users this week and they told me that Siri has a distinctly passive aggressive streak, which Cortana seems not to display.  Cortana's notebook is also accessible to me so I can find out and ammend what the assistant has learned about me.  So far, I'm using Cortana a lot more than my Apple based colleagues use Siri and this is earning me some envious looks.

Something else I'm really pleased with is the power management feature.  I've managed to keep the battery life on the phone to around 50% for a day - double what I was getting from the S3 which needed charging by late evening.  I suspect I could get two days out of a charge if I really needed to.  I've installed things like WhatsApp, which normally kills a battery, but told the phone that WhatsApp can check for new messages when I turn it on rather than when it wants to and this seems to have curbed it's energy appetite.

The switch from the Samsung to the Nokia was less problematic than my original switch from an HTC to the Samsung, and a lot of the two years I had with the S3 I spent trying to make it behave like the HTC had.  With the Lumia 930, I feel like I've got my first properly grown up smartphone.  A large part of that is that I'm actually using the digital assistant for stuff other than cracking jokes and finding easter eggs, and haven't bothered installing any games.  If that persists, I can see myself sticking with Windows phones for the next few upgrades.  Obviously, a lot of that depends on what happens to HTC and how Windows fares, but I'm already hearing good things about Windows 10.

But, look, back in the day I read scifi stories about people talking to technology and having it do useful stuff.  I'm living that now.  No, it's not solving any world problems and yes, there are some real issues to deal with.  Countless issues, in fact.  But just for right now, I'm living in a science fiction story and that's got to be worth celebrating even if it's just for a minute.

Right?

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Celebrity Photo Leak/Hack

This hasn't been a good week to be a female celebrity.

I've been thinking quite hard about all of the things that have been said about it this week and here's the conclusion I came to:

The whole thing is about consent.  None of the women who had their content shared consented for that to happen.  And that makes looking at the pictures distinctly creepy.  I do not want to be that kind of man.

In the extremely unlikely event that any of those women were to decide to send me a picture of themselves, they've consented to me seeing it and that is the bit that makes it sexy/erotic.  Without that level of permission, I might as well be a peeping tom.  That would be enough to put me on some kind of offenders register, which is also not the sort of man I want to be.

Yes, lessons learned about cloud storage.  No, that doesn't really matter as much as some people think it does.  Yes, it's an issue, but it's a secondary one.

Let's deal with it: nothing people build is perfect.  There's generally a way into everything if you look hard enough and are prepared to dedicate time to it.  We trust the things we trust because we kind of have to.

People, on the other hand, have a choice about how they behave.

Side note: I kind of got a little bent out of shape recently when I heard, for the eleventy billionth time, a fellow straight white male being described as a CIS-Shitlord.  I didn't say anything, because I'm trying to be better at social media and that means thinking about responses instead of just posting.  I eventually decided that while describing ALL CIS white males as Shitlords is unfair, it might be justified in specific cases.  It turns out that, after this week, there are an awful lot more of those people than I thought and I am deeply unhappy with the way my gender has represented itself.  

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Current Projects

My current To-Do list is the same as my previous To Do list, which isn't great, but I am at least making some progress.

A quick run down:

• Fairy Story
• Doctor Who Fic
• porting things over to Wordpress
• Fiction as a controlled substance
• SciFi noir story

But also, an idea occurred to me.

I'm spending a little time each week talking about, reading and voting on stuff that happens at The Writers Arena.

Why?  Simple.  The thing that writers need, that they need over and above everything else, is an audience.  We need readers, and it's not easy to get them.  The other writers who appear on that site are contributing to the creation of a community, drawing in readers to see the work of struggling amateurs.  That's worthwhile doing.  It's an all win proposition for readers: you get new stories each week, each one easily got through in a lunchtime at work, and you get to leave feedback, and you get to make a writer feel better about his efforts.

So go, read, vote.

I've contributed once, and hope to do so again.  

It's not an easy thing, writing for that competition.  Ten days to do four thousand words on a prompt that you don't select yourself (well, around 4k words anyway) is a tough gig, and that - from my point of view - makes every story that gets written a bit of a triumph.  Think about it like this: given the time constraints and the deadline, what you're seeing is a second or third draft.  It's possible the writers could polish more, but you get what you get.  It's pretty close to a live gig with writers.

I've decided to practice.  I'm going to go back through their previous prompts and produce my take on each one, which I'll park over on Wordpress if the result is any good.  I need the practice, I like the prompts and it'll push me to work more in long form because as fun as Reddit writing prompts are, they're flash fiction really.

And we'll see how I do.

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...and so I went home wearing the wrong head!

BOOKS!

The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross.  I was not ready for the feels.  I was definitely ready for a Laundry novel, which are to me as crack is to people who smoke crack.  I could tell Mr. Stross this, I could find him on Twitter and tell him that I think his books are marvellous, but mostly what I want is for him to write another book.  Lots of other books.  It's only been a day and the cravings have started already.

TELEVISION!

I've sort of drifted into watching Arrow this week.  It's basically Batman.  You can tell they wanted to tell the Year One story but then along came Mr. Nolan and his trilogy.  For all that, it's good stuff so far.  More on the Batman stuff later.

I've also been watching Penny Dreadful and holy *&£$ it's fun.  Fun in a gory, dirty, unpleasant and metaphysical way that I can't quite stop watching.  I love the performances.  When I've seen the whole thing, I might write more about it.

Hannibal is the best thing on TV at the moment.  It's beautiful, and that makes it haunting and strange.  The writing is...

...I think this is the closest I'll get to understanding Jazz.  The writing allows a lot of space for the actors to showcase their art and there are several very different styles of performance going on which don't slot together so much as harmonise.  The images are complemented by the music, which is harsh and difficult and entirely appropriate.  This is TV being art while still reaching out to the audience, and I have no doubt that people find it difficult and unsettling, but I love it.

Gotham is the Batman story, it's going to be a slicker, darker Smallville in which we see the events that shape the city and the people who will eventually form the Rogues Gallery for Batman.  One of the production team said "How bad does a city have to be that it sees a vigilante who dresses as a bat as a viable alternative?  How did it get this bad?"  I'm very much looking forward to finding out.  We already kind of know the ending, because eventually Bruce Wayne is going to decide that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot and the best way to avenge his parents is...well, I think everyone knows that by now. 

I'd like to see them pick up on Bruce learning to be a detective, as well as picking up all the other skills it took him a lifetime to acquire.  It takes Arrow five years on an island, but Bruce Wayne is supposed to educate himself thoroughly in all the arts he feels he needs in order to fight crime.  In many ways, actually...in practically every way, Bruce's education is the same as that of Sherlock Holmes.  I wonder if it has the same odd gaps?

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Books. New Bloggery. Things. Stuff.

I read books!

Namely, "Apache" by Ed Macy, "The Moon's a Balloon" by David Niven and "The Reluctant Jester" by Micheal Bentine.  Well, it was a quiet weekend.

Apache is the real account of an Apache gunship pilot's time in Afghanistan.  As ever with books by Brit veterans, it's written in an unfussy, direct and clear style that either means Mr. Macy had the same ghost writer as Andy McNab or the UK's Armed Forces have a house style.  It is an excellent book, and a challenging read.  If you disagree with the various wars we've been embroiled in, read this book.  If you're a supporter of our Armed Forces, read this book.  Just read the book.  We have a lot to learn from the people who were there.

For me, it reinforced the notion that we're sending some excellent people overseas and we're not getting them all back.

The Moon's a Balloon is the first of David Niven's autobiographical books about his early life and time in Hollywood.  I don't know if David Niven ever played Bertie Wooster, but he should have.  His book, which is as warts and all self critical as Stephen Fry's "Moab is my Washpot", covers his assorted trials and tribulations in and out of Hollywood in the Golden Era.

Why read it?  Quite apart from the nostalgia value, or the historical value, Niven is an excellent raconteur and it's all too easy to spend hours lost in his company marvelling at his good fortune or commiserating with his bad fortune.  

The Reluctant Jester is another autobiography, this time from Michael Bentine who was one of the original Goons but who went on to have fair success in other arenas.  Bentine was a very funny, very original thinker and garnered a reputation for being a fantasist, a teller of tall tales and a bare faced liar.  If this isn't the case he was a contender for Most Fascinating Man on Earth.  If he was a teller of untruths, he did it with considerable panache and style and could have become an unstoppable conman.  I may never find out, but his books are another window onto that period of the mid 20th century that we don't seem to be able to move past.

New Bloggery: I decided to move the writing to WordPress because I can turn that into a storehouse for fiction and go pro with stuff and...err...

So the new URL for fiction is: http://dococcupant.wordpress.com/

Things.  Stuff.  I may have lied about there being things and stuff.

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Upcoming Projects

This is my To Do list.

1: Finish the Time War Fan Fic.
I rarely write fic, and this was something I started tinkering with aaaaages ago and now need to finish because it has grown into a collection of short stories connected to Doctor Who.  Stephen Moffat came along and wrote some stuff that, effectively, Jossed the finale. I'm going to finish it anyway.

2: Finish the Fairy Story.
I was tinkering with a take on Red Riding Hood, which needs to be re-written because I've missed some important things and done a lot of telling, not showing.

3: Finish the Fiction Is A Controlled Substance story.
This was knocking around Reddit as A Drug Deal of Books.  It needs expansion and an ending.  When I left it last, the protagonist had done something awful and wasn't in a position to get away with it.  Good for drama, bad for me writing myself out of a corner.

4: Finish the Scifi Noir Detective Story.
This has a plot and everything!  I've just made a major decision about the protagonist - who until this week had no name, and who still has no name but now I know why.

5: Write the three Molly Thrice(somethingorother) stories I have knocking around in my head.  
Molly is supposed to be an engineer in a pseudomedieval fantasy world.  She, and the King, have very vocal characters who keep demanding to be written and keep suggesting that they should take part in stories based on Reddit writing prompts.

6: Time Detectives Bloke and Geezer.
I have no idea what I want to do with these two temporal cliches, but they're also being loud about being used for another story some time soon.

As you can see, there's a lot of writing to do and a lot of finishing things.  I have a weekend more or less to myself this weekend, I can devote some time to getting all of these projects into Scrivener, plotting them out and getting them finished.  Then I have a nice cycle of writing a re-writing to do until all of these things are good.

Damn.  That's a lot of stuff.

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The Writer's Arena 2

Yesterday was a sort of nuts and bolts overview during which I shilled for Scrivener but didn't actually link to them.  So now that's done.

The idea itself: who sells their soul to the devil?  Traditionally, it's people who can't have what they want.  It's people who have a desire that exceeds their reach.  I was interested in the idea that, if you looked at people who are currently famous, you might be able to work out who'd taken on that sort of a deal. A couple of names suggested themselves.  People who were inexplicably famous or successful no matter what they seemed to do or how badly they missed the boat.

One name in particular knocked quite loudly on my imagination, and he's the one I picked.  Read the story, tell me if you know who I'm talking about.

What I didn't want to do was end with the protagonist going to Hell, or escaping Hell.  I think I've managed to achieve both, more or less by accident, because I kept coming back to the notion that the payment for the deal is inevitable and you can't do anything about it.  Supernatural did something like this in the first couple of seasons, I wanted something a lot more downbeat.

I also wanted a reminder that dealing with the Devil is a really bad idea.  Dealing with him as a character for a moment, the Devil is full of pride and arrogance but has the ability to recognize that in other people and is more than happy to exploit it to his own ends.  He's a representation of temptation and the darker side of our natures, he's that little voice telling you that everyone does it, or that no one will ever know.

A couple of things didn't make it to the final draft.  One was a lunch with a couple of famous faces.  Another was Joan.

Joan is the protagonist's ideal woman, and a couple of commenters have said they wanted her to be in the story.  Early on, I made the decision that she would be forever offpage and there are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, I was sort of latching onto the " 'er indoors" vibe; a couple of notorious TV wide boys have had an invisible wife - a rather dated and sexist notion, we can divine their presence only because of the terror they induce in their men.  

Secondly, I wanted Joan to be to Adam what Helen was to Faust, and although he achieves her I wanted him to never feel quite worthy of her.

In retrospect, I needed to find a way to make that last idea a lot more obvious.  However, I have to say that Adam isn't doing anything for Joan specifically.  He seals the deal because he's scared of her Dad, and also because he wants to succeed even though he doesn't think he can.  Adam is weak, or just quite human, which is why he doesn't think about his deal for so long.  I like to think that after 40 years of marriage, which is where I had them by the end of the story, his attitude has changed a lot, but to start with Joan is another symbol of success.

It becomes clear that I needed to have done one more draft.  I'm happy with the story as it stands, but in the light of feedback, I think one more draft would have helped bring these elements further forward.

It was still the most fun I've had in a while, and I would take on another challenge like it in a heartbeat.

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The Writer's Arena

A while back, I volunteered to take part in something fun.  A guy on Reddit was shilling his new site, where two writers were supposed to create a story based on the same prompt and the best story would win.  This sounded like fun, and sort of like a grown up version of the old e-wrestling stuff I used to do, so I put my name forward.

There was silence, which didn't surprise me.  Something like that was bound to be popular.  

Then a week ago, Tony Southcotte contacted me and asked if I'd be a last minute sub for a writer who had dropped out.  Of course I said yes.  I have been training myself to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself and it's finally started to sink in.  A day later, Tony sent me the prompt and some restrictions.

4500 words or less.  Set no later than the 1960s.  And it must feature someone selling their soul to the Devil.

The prompt could have been made for me, and Tony also said some nice things about my writing style, so I started out on a bit of a high.  Working on Reddit writing prompts is definitely toning up my creative muscles, because within a few minutes of getting the prompt, an idea arrived more or less fully formed and about half an hour after that I had a very basic outline of what I wanted to write.  Which was just as well since I had until Friday 6th June to get it written, edited, re-written and out to the organiser.

I love a deadline for writing.  I'm not always the best at keeping to them - my mammoth failure to produce anything useful during NatNoWriMo two years ago demonstrates that - but they do at least give me targets and goals.  Armed with my basic idea, I started up Scrivener and created a new project.  

One of the many useful features of Scrivener is the ability to create index cards so you can organise scenes, characters and locations. My first evening was spent sorting those things out with the intention of writing out the scenes on each index card at the rate of one a day, leaving me a day or so for editing and re-writes.

That actually worked out, too.  Scrivener has already demonstrated it's useful and able to keep me to a deadline.  I'm considering whether or not to round up my unfinished projects and give them all the Scrivener treatment so that I can complete them and start the re-write process on all of them.  But back to the battle.

Editing turned out to be a breeze; I could very quickly tell what needed to stay and what needed to go, but even so I handed Draft 1 over to a Beta reader (the always awesome Becca) for a fresh pair of eyes and she convinced me to cut more, change lots and generally improve the story no end.

Even though I struggled a bit, because there were sections that I wanted to keep because I loved them just a little, the old adage "kill your darlings" proved true and useful, curse it.  Having butchered my darlings and sacrificed a few other odds and ends the story came in under the word count and is something I'm proud of.  If you want to read it, go to The Writer's Arena and have a look.  While you're there, vote.  And read some of the other fiction posted there, because based on first impressions it's going to be a tough fight.

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Writing Prompt: A mundane action has prompted a visit from the Time Travel Police

I caught the egg.

It dropped out of thin air and into my hand like I was waiting for it to arrive.  Catching apported eggs is not something I normally do when I'm grocery shopping, so three things happened in quick succession:

•  - I was momentarily impressed by my own reflexes.   Like a boss  I thought.
•  - I was then immediately curious about the airborne egg, and looked up.
•  - A hand arrived on my shoulder and a gruff male voice with a North London accent said "You're nicked, son".

At which point, my hand closed on the egg and there was a crunchy noise and the ooze of raw egg, slimey and cold, through my fingers.
"You, you slag, are being arrested on suspicion of 'aving given Causality a right kicking.  You do not have to say anyfing, but it may 'arm your defence if you don't mention, when questioned, summink you later rely on in court.  D'you unnerstan'?"
There were two of them.  Middle aged men with greying hair and beer bellies wearing off the peg suits that were valiantly denying the existence of the beer bellies whilst at the same time drawing massive attention to them.  Both men were holding out wallets with warrant cards in them.
"What?" I said.  Eloquent under stress, that's me.  The man on my right, in a navy blue suit, rolled his eyes and looked pained.  The man on my left, wearing a grey suit with stains on the jacket lapel, sighed.
"You've been nicked, son.  I have nicked you.  Nicking is what is taking place at this time.  And you are the nickee.  On account of me being Detective Inspector Bloke of the Temporal Flying Squad, and him being Detective Sergeant Geezer.  Any questions?"
I blinked several times.
"Yes, many.  Can we start with you confirming for me whether or not you're having a laugh or not?  I'd then like to find out what kind of idiot you take me for and then, to round this off for for the moment, I'd like to know which of the many picturesque local villages is currently missing it's idiot."
D.I. Bloke seemed to think this over.  Standing in the hard and slightly flickering light of my local budget supermarket he had a hallucinatory quality and I might have passed him off as a bad dream had I not been able to smell him; cigarettes, coffee, something with sandalwood in it that might have been aftershave.  
"No," he said eventually "I am not 'avin' a laugh.  I don't take you for an idiot, I take you for a existential fret to the 'ole 'kin cosmos an' if you must know I'm from Pinner!  Now, are you comin' quietly or do I get to slap you about a bit first?"
I shrugged.
"Whatever.  I know there's no such thing as the Temporal Flying Squad, and I know there's no way I can be a threat to the cosmos.  This is some stupid TV show bollocks, so reveal the cameras and jog on."
Bloke turned to Geezer.
"Sergeant, taze this gobby bastard until 'ee wets 'isself and the slap the cuffs on him."
I was just about to protest when Geezer spoke up.
"No, Guv.  Think it through.  If he wets himself, we have to ride home with that.  Isn't today going badly enough?"
When he didn't get an answer, Geezer turned to me.
"Look, pal, you did it.  We saw you.  You caught an egg that hadn't been thrown.  Do you have a post graduate degree in temporal physics, physics, mathmatics or philosophy?"
"No!"
"Then you'll have to take my word for most of this," said Geezer "but it goes something like this: if you violate causality, even a little bit, it starts to unravel.  By the time you reach our era, the range of possibilities is absurd.  Time travel is possible, for example.  Literally, the only thing holding the universe together is the observer effect and that has some unpleasant side effects."
Despite myself, I was fascinated.
"Like what?"
Bloke leaned into my field of vision.
"Like the fact that D.S. Geezer here was born in Mumbai, but when he joined the TFS he slowly became a white middle aged Londoner. There is a strata of the popular consciousness which expects coppers in a Flying Squad to behave and look a certain way.  Even our names have changed."
"Under normal circumstances, I can't even speak English" said Geezer.
I dropped the remains of the egg, the better to wave my arms around helplessly and to no great effect.
"I don't understand!  This all sounds like bollocks!"
"Yes!  It is!" Geezer siezed me by the shirt and pulled me down to his eye level "And that's how the universe works now!  Do you want to know what our time machine looks like?  It's a phone box!  Because people expect time machines to look like phone boxes!  And that's not even how the Observer Effect is meant to work!  But there are nine billion people with ready access to the sum total of human entertainment and only low quality higher education reinforcing it!"
I tried to imagine what might happen to a world where nine billion people were imprinting it with their expectations instead of observations, but large parts of my imagination recoiled from the idea in utter horror and sat gibbering in a corner.  I work in tech support, so my opinion of people isn't exactly high.  If I was called on to give a "humanity has such potential" speech to visiting aliens, I wouldn't be able to say anything for laughing.
"All of this because I caught an egg that hadn't been thrown?" I asked, siezing on the one thing that still seemed concrete.  And you can tell how not concrete the day had become if an unthrown egg is your sole source of certainty.
"Yep" said Bloke.
At which point, I had an idea.
"If the egg wasn't thrown, but was caught, surely all we have to do is throw the egg?"
Bloke glared at me.
"The one you crushed?" he said.
"Yes," I said, "the one I crushed.  But the one which wasn't crushed when I took it out of the egg carton."
I walked over to the stack of cartons and picked one at random.  The space in the row at the front told me I'd picked correctly.
"But you didn't take it out of the carton," said Bloke "that's the problem."
"No, but I will have," I explained "when you use your time machine to pop us back so I can take the egg from the carton and throw it into the air."
Bloke seemed unconvinced.
"Look," I said, "it works, honestly.  I was waiting with my hand out to catch the egg.  I can't have known what was going to happen, but apparently I did.  And it would also explain why you two didn't have to come and find me.  You were right here the moment the egg arrived, as if you'd been waiting.  I should have heard you approach, but didn't!  Don't you see?  This is a predestination paradox!"
The two coppers frowned.
"Even if it is," said Geezer hesitantly "how will that help?"
"Judo" i said, and then had to explain.
I was proposing to use the problem against itself.  Based on what the Police had explained, causality had failed and the universe was being shored up by a sort of "continuity" based, in large part, on popular myth and ignorance.  The universe did what people expected it to do.  That effect started here, now, and must therefore be in action here and now.  
"Which means," I concluded "that if my expectation is that the completion of a loop is, in effect, a reset switch that resolves a paradox rather than perpetuating it, that's what the universe will do!".
They thought about it.
"Worth a try" said Bloke.
Time travel is weird.  As you do it, the experience of it unravels from your memory leaving you with the strong impression that someone has popped open your skull and licked your brain.
I stood in the supermarket and flicked open the carton.  I took the egg out, stood where I remembered standing before (or, rather, later) and took a deep breath.

I threw the egg.

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Writing Prompt: Adam and Eve want to make children but have no idea how to get started.

First of all, for those of you reading this because there's potential sex will be sadly disappointed.  There isn't any.  I did some research and it turns out, according to Genesis, that Adam and Eve don't get it on until after they've been kicked out of Eden.

In fact, it looks like they didn't have time to do much of anything before the Serpent persuaded Eve to eat the apple.  We can discuss the plot holes in Eden story another time. For now, here's my take on what happened next:


Adam sat near the fire and sighed.
"Look, all I said was He commanded us to be fruitful, and if we want to get back in His good books we should probably do that."
Eve threw another twig on the small fire and stared at him.
"Oh, NOW you're interested in doing what God said.  I like these sudden impulses of yours.  Like that sudden impulse to stand up for me when we were being thrown out?"
"I didn't have a..."
"I KNOW!"
There was silence.  The wood popped and squeaked as the fire consumed it.  Around them, the night seemed full of movement and small, disconcerting sounds.  Back in the Garden everything had been simpler and the animals had at least been polite.
"So much for all that 'Your desire shall be for your Husband' business" Adam muttered.
"It is" snapped Eve "and very inconvenient that is, too.  I mean, you're literally the only man in the world so it's not like I can leave you and take up with someone who has an actual backbone or anything."
Adam sighed.
"I'm sorry," he said "it's been a really trying day.  I don't need to tell you that. This morning when the sun came up everything was so simple.  Now look at us."
"And you blame me?"
Adam shook his head, staring out into the darkness.
"No.  If the serpent had come to me, I would have done exactly the same thing.  It might have taken longer for me to give in, but that's only because I've spent more time around God and I'm more used to obeying Him.  This is our fault, collectively. I'm just sorry it happened."
Eve shrugged, brushing her hair away from her face.
"And I'm sorry I've reacted so defensively.  It's just that...He said I'd bear children in pain.  I'm not looking forward to that.  And one thing kind of leads to the other."
She paused, hiding behind her hair again.
"Also," she said "we've never done...that...before and I'm really not sure how it all works.  Will it hurt?"
Adam grinned.  Finally, he could help.
"It's not painful at all," he said "actually, it feels really good.  You'll enjoy it, I promise."
Eve peered at him from behind her hair.
"How do you know?" she asked quietly.  Adam, warming to his subject, moved closer.
"Well, my first wife really liked it, so we did it a lot."
There was silence.  Adam, about to put his arm around Eve, sensed the temperature around the fire drop quite substantially.  He moved his arm away.
"First wife?" asked Eve.
"I've mentioned Lilith before, surely?" said Adam "I'm sure I've spoken to you about Lilith.  She was...come on!  Lilith!  She got kicked out because she wanted to be in charge and be on top all the time!  I'm always talking about Lilith!"
"First I've heard about her," said Eve quietly "first I've heard about Lilith the domineering sex maniac. Wow.  Sounds like you two had a really good time.  And God kicked her out, you say?"
Adam nodded, was about to speak, caught sight of Eve's expression in the firelight and closed his mouth.
"If only," said Eve "if only we'd had even an inkling that God's typical punishment for transgression was exile.  If only we'd known that, if things didn't go His way, He'd kick us out.  That might have been really useful information to have at some point prior to us eating that apple.  
"That," she said "would have been *really* useful to know, ADAM."
"Granted," said Adam "and you know what, I feel pretty bad about not telling you, but frankly I only realised that I'd done the wrong thing after we ate the apple, but what with the sudden need to make clothes because we're suddenly aware it's bad to be naked and then the pressing business of God's Judgement followed shortly by being told I'll have to be a farmer all my life - and let me tell you, I have no idea what that means or what a farmer is, I expect you'll be asking me to work that out starting tomorrow morning because we've got nothing to eat.  So, you know, with God not being exactly forthcoming with instructions, all I know is that I'll be eating food farmered with the sweat of my face!  Like that makes any sense!
"So, yeah, Lilith slipped my mind!  I would imagine that, if you'd had much of a past, bits of that might have slipped your mind today too!  But no! Not Eve!  Eve was created by God as the perfect companion for me after he'd worked out how to get you right.  He didn't make any mistakes with you, did he?"
He became aware that he was standing, and sat slowly back down.
"Sorry," he said "this is ridiculous.  You're the last person I should be angry at.  The worst of it is, I'm not.  I'm angry at Him.  But you're the only other person in the world that I can talk to.  Can we forgive each other and start again tomorrow?"
Eve thought about it for a few moments.
"Can we forgive each other and start again tonight?" she asked.  Adam nodded slowly.
"Yes.  I'm sorry for losing my temper with you, sorry I didn't tell you everything up front...I think I was just really excited to meet you at first, and then later I didn't want to think about anyone else...and, well, then we got thrown out of Paradise."
Eve smiled.
"I'm sorry I was angry at you.  Everything is new, and scary, and I don't know what's supposed to happen next.  I thought God loved us, and I thought we could trust the Serpent, and everything's gone horribly wrong, and it feels like it's my fault."
Adam sat next to her, put his arm around her shoulder and held her.  She leaned against him, just for a moment enjoying the way she could relax and let his body take her weight...and curiously impressed that he seemed to be able to support her with no sign of effort.
They sat together for a time, body against body, sharing the warmth of the fire and a companionable silence.  She rested her head against his shoulder.
"Is that how forgiveness works?" she asked.  Adam looked at her sideways.
"How do you mean?"
"Is that all there is to it?"
He threw another stick on the fire.
"I don't know," he said "maybe.  And maybe we get to decide how it works.  Do you want to make it more complicated?"
"Not more complicated..." said Eve "...just...thinking about, you know, my desire being for my husband."
"Oh" said Adam.
"And if it's as much fun as you say, maybe it's a good way to show we're not angry at each other?"
"Yeah!" said Adam "I think...good plan!"
"So," said Eve "show me how that works?"  
They wrapped arms around one another, drew closer and decided to worry about farmering, and childbirth, and everything else, in the morning.

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Writing Prompt: Letter from the former President of the USA

So, today I got a comment from a reader saying he liked my work.

This about made my day.  To celebrate, some writing prompt fiction.  As usual, these come from my output on Reddit and r/writingprompts.

The Prompt: The outgoing President of the United States has written a letter to the newly inaugurated President. Instead of friendly advice, that letter contains the horrible truth that the public doesn't know about. Write that letter.

Hello, Mr. President.

If you're anything like I was in the first few weeks of my presidency, you'll be getting into everything and looking for answers to all the wacky questions you can think of. I now know where Hoffa is buried, who killed Kennedy, who performed the sex change on Norma Jean Baker, what's going on at Area 51 and a dozen other things.

It's all good fun, and your staff will brief you on whatever you want for any reason at all.

Trust me on this, though, none of it is as fun as it sounds before you know the truth.
The real surprises are about the things you'll never think to ask. This one blew me away.

The USA does not have a nuclear deterrent.

In fact, no one has The Bomb. It's not possible to make one. We've been lying about this since Hiroshima. The Soviet Union were lying. The UK and France are also lying. It is no longer possible to build nuclear weapons.

It was possible, thanks to a synthetic element fabricated by the Manhattan Project, but the scientists who created it used all of it at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were then not able to make any more. We still have no idea why it worked and why it doesn't. Our best brains think Oppenheimer and Einstein cooked something up between them to end the war with Japan but to prevent the USA and USSR mass producing weapons.

Nations that discover the truth end up on the UN Security Council. We collectively bribe them to silence, although some leaders are smart enough to figure out what would happen if some nations found out our ability to turn them into glass parking lots was entirely fictional.

We have faked every test, spent millions and millions of dollars finding a reliable way to give people cancer, the whole bit. We even fake up reactor disasters, just to keep people on their toes. It's all a lie. But it's a lie that has prevented the start of another world war for over fifty years and we think it'll be good for another fifty.

Quite a lot of your presidency is going to be taken up with finding convincing reasons why we can't just nuke the crap out of some rogue nation so I strongly recommend you ignore that Kennedy crap and get serious briefings done on the geopolitical situation around the world. You need to have your game face on 24/7 in case someone figures out the Big Lie. This is why presidents in office age so damn fast.

Good luck.

You're going to need it.

Best,

The Former President of the United States.

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Writing Prompt 3: Fred Phelps has died. The Afterlife turns out to be a little different to what he imagined.

What follows is me being satirical:

Fred stared.

Slowly, he closed his eyes. He counted to ten. He opened them again.

Nope. No harps, no halos, no hosannas. 

Quite a lot of pumping techno.

"Oh sweetie," said Saint Peter with a small smile, "it's all in the Bible. God surrounds Himself with beautiful and largely naked male or androgynous figures, He sends His one son- who also surrounds himself with exclusively male company but who has a lot of sympathy for the plight of women- to spread the word that the only way into His house is to love, and the sign of His covenant with mankind is a Rainbow. Seriously, honey, you can't say you weren't informed up front."

Fred stared. His jaw began to wobble. Saint Peter slid his arm around the poor man's shoulders.

"I know," he said "but you'll get used to it. After all, this is your eternal reward."

Just so we're clear, here, my Christian friends remind me all the time that Christ teaches us to love and care for one another as we would want to be loved and cared for.  So, you know, we should all be nice to each other.

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Writing Prompt 2: Arrested for a crime I certainly committed but the Cops have their facts wrong.

Interview rooms. You see them all the time on TV, but I'd never been in one until today. Without the ability to change camera angles and points of view they really are dull.

Other things in the room which are dull include Detective Constable Ross and Detective Sergeant Patel, two first class examples of real police officers who have not one quirk or eccentricity between them.

We sit and listen to the tape squeal for a few seconds and then D.C. Ross introduces everyone, all for the benefit of the tape. I'm not actually under arrest for the murder of my wealthy uncle at this point, but I'm clearly a suspect. Quite right, too, because I killed him. I stand to inherit a house and enough money to allow me to never work again. Frankly, in today's economic climate, it would be madness to have let the man live. If you need more justification than that I suppose I could tell you that he beat his wife and had a thing for children...or goats...but really my motive was entirely financial.

Not that I'll be telling the Plods this.

We establish that I had not seen my Uncle in ten years, thanks to me working in another part of the country and his being a bit Persona Non Grata at family get-togethers, after what he said to my Mum's friend Shirley. I think there's more than friendship going on there, to be honest, and Uncle as much as said so, which became his Get Out of Weddings Free card. I'm getting sidetracked.

The Brothers Plod churn through my movements over the days either side of the murder and, of course, I have an alibi for the time they believe he was killed. It's watertight. I can also attest that I had no idea that I was the sole beneficiary of his will. He wrote Aunty out of it when she left him - the beatings, remember? - and it's just chance that he left all his money to the oldest surviving unmarried male in the family (which would have been Great Uncle Charlie, until his entirely accidental death last year).

We go over the details three times. Then we go over them again in reverse order, but I'm aware of that trick and I've been practicing.

At that point, D.S. Patel leaves and he's replaced by a tall, thin, angular man in an expensive coat.

"For the benefit of the tape," the D.C. says "We've been joined by..." some consultant with an unlikely name. He looks like he might be clever, so I try to remain calm and unconcerned. The police don't employ consultants, so unless he's a trained interrogator or a profiler, I should be fine. I'm feeling good, calm, untroubled, so I don't bother listening to his name or what he consults about.

And for a consultant, he doesn't ask many questions. He's doing a LOT of talking, so I pay attention.

"Your suit isn't cheap but it is off the peg, it's important to you to look smart but you can't afford bespoke. You're in a professional environment, but you yourself are not qualified in that profession. The wear patterns on your cuffs and elbows indicates a lot of work at a desk, using a computer..."

Ah, it turns out that I was able to use my research skills to find out about my Uncle's predilection for young people - apparently he was on Facebook and making posts about exotic holidays that he was planning, and about how he wanted to learn about Thailand - and he goes from there to tell me how he knows I was present at Uncle's house the night he died. It's amazing, and the method I used was complicated and left not a trace, apparently.

According to this consultant bloke, I've been looking for revenge for the molestation I suffered at my Uncle's hands as a child. Apparently this is why I can't form lasting relationships with women and have an overwhelming fear of the opposite sex.

Now I'm surrounded by pitying eyes. I'm just a poor buggered boy who wanted my filthy Uncle dead before he could shag his way around the kindergartens of Thailand, apparently. Now they're all sorry for me being a heterosexual virgin. At my age. This consultant is talking rubbish, so I tell him.

Aunty didn't leave because of the beatings - there were no beatings (oh come on, I've killed three people. Did you think I was going to be honest with you? What makes you so special?), and she left because of his on-again off-again relationship with Raymond, a man he met at bath house and who he couldn't get his trousers off quickly enough for.

Uncle didn't like little boys or little girls, he liked pretty men. He had a particular thing for olive skinned men, which is why I made sure he met Luca. Luca needed a sugar daddy, and I made sure he knew Uncle was loaded. But I was careful to make sure Luca delayed Uncle's gratification for a while, and then I introduced Luca to a technique that I suggested would produce certain amazing sexual side effects...it's basically a series of breathing exercises that, when performed the right way and allowed to culminate in a bear hug, collapse the lungs.

Of course, Luca came running to me and I quietly poisoned him. No one's looking for Luca because he was here illegally in the first place. And it really was all about the money. The reason I've never had a prolonged relationship with a woman is that all the women I've met have either not fancied me or been incredibly dull. Also, when you're planning a triple murder - Great Uncle Charlie, Luca, Uncle - it isn't helpful to have someone around who might go through your phone or computer and trip over something suspicious...like my having created Uncle's Facebook page, or researching tasteless and fast acting poisons that you can slip into a cup of tea.

I tell him all this, ticking off points on my fingers as I work through them, and I am rewarded with a look of complete surprise from the consultant. He's speechless.

D.S. Patel, on the other hand, isn't. When did he re-enter the room? He reads me my rights and arrests me for my Uncle's murder. Which I've just confessed to.

On tape.

In front of two policemen.

Oh shit.

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Writing Prompt:You meet the Devil and he's not what you expected.

Originally posted on Reddit, where r/writingpromts has been keeping me amused.

One of the few luxuries you have when you're tied to an enormous pentacle, or maybe pentagram, is that you can review your most recent mistakes with huge clarity. I have come to the conclusion that I will never again accept a ride from someone with a panel van no matter how wet or cold I am.

I turn my head and cough politely to the man guarding me. He's got the most intimidating haircut I've ever seen and it's in competition with a collection of gruesome tattoos and piercings. I'm so scared that the only thing I can think of is how difficult it must be for him to board aircraft.

"Excuse me..?"

He offers me a glare.

"I just want you to be aware that, despite appearances, I'm not a virgin."

He nods, apparently considering this carefully.

"Can you bleed?" he asks. Before I can stop myself, I nod. He smiles. "Good," he says "that's the only qualification you need."

There are quite a few people in the congregation. Clothing appears to be optional. There's quite a lot of hedonism happening, judging by the noises some people are making, and there's quite a lot of sweet smoke in the atmosphere. I'm new to being sacrificed, so I'm not sure what's going on.

"Excuse me..?"

Another glare.

"Sorry to ask, very embarrassing and everything, but are you Wiccan types supposed to sacrifice people?"

I have to downgrade the last two looks I was given, because this is a glare. His brows are so furrowed some of his piercings are in danger of becoming interlinked.

"Oh that's just typical, that is, " he says "honestly, if I had a pound for every time someone confused us with that bunch of namby-pamby vegetarian reiki practitioners..."

I'm sure he would have explained further but that's the moment the high priest decides to make his entrance. There's music, and burning torches, and the hedonism stops - apart from one group in a corner who are probably too invested in what they're doing to pay attention - and then in he sweeps wearing a flowing red robe and a mask with horns. He's accompanied by two women wearing an awful lot less than he is - basically just masks- but they have those swingy things that the Catholic church burns incense in. They also have incense and this, combined with all the other sorts of smoke in the air, makes me sneeze.

Fortunately for everyone else, the High Priest is a professional and doesn't let my sudden violent sneezing fit and subsequent mucus production throw him off his game. The next few minutes scoot past with him making gestures with a huge knife that I'm trying very hard not to look at or think about, shouting in Latin, and getting responses from the crowd. I would have paid more attention but the presence of the knife has me entirely focussed on trying to remember the parts of my life that I'm pleased with or proud of. There aren't enough of them, and I'm very definitely getting stabbed, or slashed, or both in the next few minutes and I really, really don't want to be. Panic is just starting to set in when the crowd starts to chant various names. The first one out of the gate is "Satan". I can't move and I can't breathe properly and he's going to take that knife and...

...and then there's light everywhere.

A voice says "I heard you the first time."

The light fades and I open my eyes. There's a man standing in front of the altar. I could tell you what he looks like with two words - he's beautiful- but that doesn't really cover it. He...look, imagine this:

At least one of your friends can sort of draw. He, she, has just enough grasp of perspective and shading to make everything they draw look like the work of an enthusiastic eight year old who has no talent for art but lots of passion for it. Take that person and give them a box of crayons. Make them low quality crayons. Make most of them brown. Now have that artist with his or her dull and ugly tools draw everything in the world. Everything in the world is now a sort of muddy or contents of the toilet bowl brown. None of the lines are straight. None of the curves flow, nothing meets where it should and everything seems flat.

Have all the actual people drawn by someone slightly less talented than your friend, but using the same tools.

To this milieu, this dull and drab palette, add one person. One actual three dimensional human being. Make him one you find irresistibly attractive. Not necessary in a sexual way, just someone you'd really enjoy looking at, one who draws your attention away from everything else just by being in the room.

That's pretty much what's happening: everyone is looking at him and everything that isn't him appears to be made of mud and twigs and depression.

The High Priest is rather flustered.

"But...but...we haven't even sacrificed in your name yet!"

"You called me. I answered. Isn't that what you wanted?". Even his voice is gorgeous. It has the same effect - the High Priest sounds like a whining child and all the other sounds I can hear seem either muted and dull or scratchy and distorted in comparison. I just don't want to listen to anything else, ever.

"Well...yes...but..."

"Oh, Kevin," he says and the disappointment in his voice makes me feel completely worthless even though I'm not Kevin, "did you just want to kill someone? Is all this just the justification for you getting to play dress up so you can have sex and make people bleed?"

"Huh? No, well, I mean, of course not....all in Your Name....glorying you!" flails Kevin the High Priest.

"Is that just an excuse, Kevin?"

Kevin writhes on the hook.

"It is just an excuse, I know it's just an excuse and I know this, Kevin, because I have never once asked anyone to do anything to anyone else in my name. No matter which one you use. Not once. Do you know why?"

The atmosphere has changed quite a bit. Every single one of us feels like we've just been whispering with our friends at the back of the class and the teacher has unexpectedly asked us a question, and now in front of the entire school, we're going to look really stupid. Props to Kevin, though, for having balls enough to try an answer.

"We always thought, you know, it was implied in that thing about it being better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven?"

You know how people sometimes say that the temperature in the room drops and it's a metaphorical way of saying that someone has taken offense but is still being polite or diplomatic about it? I don't think Lucifer does metaphors. I can see my breath in front of my face. I'm also looking at a room full of gooseflesh and shrinkage. Not fun.

"That's Dante," says Lucifer, "that's fiction, Kevin." The red wine in the ornate chalice thing on the Altar in front of me freezes as I watch it. "I can see I'm going to have to take this back to the very basics."

The wine thaws, people's teeth stop chattering and the room warms. Lucifer leans against the altar as if he were propping up the bar.

"Please allow me to introduce myself," says Lucifer (turning momentarily to flash me a huge wink, very much to my surprise) "I'm a man of wealth and taste. My name is Lucifer Morningstar and my job title is Satan. If any of you had paid attention at school, you might know this term means 'Adversary'. What you might not know is that it's a legal term. I am, by profession, a lawyer."

He waits, for a moment, and seems pleased that no one feels the need to say anything about lawyers and evil being inextricably linked.

"My job is not to punish the sinful or the wicked, my job is not to torture the damned or to swan about the place being evil, promoting evil or revelling in evil. I am not responsible for the things that you do and I have most assuredly not got time to go about telling random human beings to murder one another. But you will definitely see me on Judgement Day, and you'll be glad I'm there.

Officially, I'm the counsel for the defence. Your defence. Individually. When you face God, with the account of your lives in his hands, before he passes final judgement."

Quite a few people seem confused about this. The ones who get it are crying.

"Yes, Mrs. Lockwood, " says Lucifer, pointing an exquisite finger at one particularly unhappy woman, "I'm preparing the case for your defense. And between you and me, it's not looking good."

He pushes himself away from the altar and gazes around the room.

"As your legal counsel, I advise you all to be very, very concerned" he says "If I were in your position I'd stop all this macabre nonsense and get involved in a bit of volunteering. Working with the elderly always goes over well. Although, given your history Mrs Lockwood, perhaps you should stick to working with animals...no, sorry...perhaps you could just help out at a charity shop."

He waits while people come to terms with what he's saying. There's some resistance. His voice rises over the hubbub.

"I'm saying you all need to go home, look long and hard at yourselves and start making better life choices. I'm saying you need to do this now, and without further delay, and you can start by taking this poor man down from the big star shaped thing on the wall."

It's nice to be remembered.

Lucifer favours me with another smile and I can feel my position on the Kinsey scale shifting.

"Be seeing you," he says "be good."

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