Jilly Paddock's Blog: Firebird and Brimstone

I see that it's been five years since my last post. I'm still writing but I haven't published anything since The Beauty of Our Weapons. The fifth volume of the Anna and Zenni saga is ready to go, only waiting on a cover. That's what slows me down, as I can't do artwork and it's hard to find and keep suitable artists.
For Cathaven Press I've learnt how to format print and e-books. We publish Occult Detective Magazine - we took it over at #6 and have now reached #10, plus two Mythos Specials. We also put out The Angry Dead by Rosemary Pardoe, a collection of ghost stories about a church art restorer, A Solemn Curfew and Other Dark Tales by Bev Allen, a collection of cosy weird horror, and Mischief in the Wood by Tina Rath, a YA urban fairytale. ODM #11 is in the pipeline, and we will be doing more of Bev's and Tina's books.

So it's 2020. Sounds very futuristic, doesn't it? Still waiting for my flying car, although my new VW Golf which I've now had for about nine months is so high tech it scares me - not sure I could cope if it could fly.
There are now four books out in the Anna & Zenni SF espionage/thriller series - To Die a Stranger, With Amber Tears, Starchild and The Beauty of our Weapons - and two in the Afton & Jerome SF detective fiction series, The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone and Dead Men Rise Up Never. All of those are published by Pro Se Press.
I still have two self-published books on Kindle, The Dragon, Fly, a collection of short fiction, and No Earthly Shore, an SF first contact novella.
My latest book, Warbird, is a big space opera and we published it under the Cathaven Press imprint. I did the formatting and I'm pretty pleased at how it turned out.
Cathaven Press has also just produced Occult Detective Magazine #6, available in print and soon to be released as an e-book. It's a renamed continuation of Occult Detective Quarterly, which was published by Ulthar Press, and contains the same mix of fiction, reviews and non-fiction articles. We picked up production after the death of the previous publisher, Sam Gafford, and issue#6 is dedicated to him. More issues are planned.
I'll be attending Stokercon in Scarborough in April, and Novacon50 in Nottingham in November. Might get to a few other cons, but that depends on finances and energy levels.
I wish all of my readers a happy and healthy 2020!

To Die A Stranger has just appeared in paperback from Pro Se Press. It can be found on Amazon US but the Amazon UK link isn't live yet.
It's the first time I've had a physical book out and I shall be ordering some copies as soon as I can. It's been a long time coming - I started writing the Anna & Zenni stories way back in the last century. Hope this first one sells well, as there are lots more books in the series. Volumes 2 to 4 are just about ready to go.

When I visit my goodreads homepage and I see that I have a new message, why do you have to bounce me to the log-in screen and make me enter my password EVERY FRIGGING TIME? It pisses me off, and I often just swear and click away to another site without bothering to read the message (which is usually just spam).

I'm re-reading the James White Sector General books, having found the omnibus editions. I first read these when they were short stories in New Writings in SF edited by John Carnell in the 70s - I'd buy each book as it came out and devour the latest offering in the saga. I remembered Hospital Station and Major Operation pretty well, but Star Surgeon hardly at all.
For those of you who haven't read them they're about a vast hospital that caters for all the intelligent lifeforms in the galaxy, from water-breathers and sentient plants to beings that exist in frozen methane or eat hard radiation. The central character is Dr Conway, a human who prefers the company of ETs to that of his own kind and has a talent for solving the strange medical problems that get dropped in his lap, from teaching a brontosaurus to fly to curing a continent-sized being of skin cancer. One of the joys of the books is the four letter classification system used to describe the aliens - humans are DBDG, which indicates oxygen breathers and describes the arrangement of limbs, sensory organs, etc. There's a cast of recurring characters, some human, some not, and each tale has a medical mystery to be solved.
James White has a clear, concise style, but I sometimes wish for more description. He was working in a very confined medium - short stories at that time were usually very short - and there are chunks of repeated text to help new readers understand the hospital and how it works, but I don't mind that. The tech level is interesting; the early stories were written long before personal computers and mobile phones, and communication within Sector General is by landline-style phones wired to the wall, and path reports and files are printed on paper. I'm on the fourth book in the series, Ambulance Ship, and people have just begun to talk to each other on screens.
I still love these books and I'm very fond of characters like Prilicla, the fragile, insectile empath and Thornastor, the six-legged, elephantine Tralthan who's head of Pathology. I can see that the tales of Sector General were a big influence on my own writing, colouring the way I deal with aliens in my own books.
I met James White once, at an SF Worldcon in Brighton. I remember being red-faced and tongue-tied, blurting out how much I loved his books and thanking him for them. He was professional enough to smile and be kind - a lovely man, whose work doesn't get as much appreciation as it ought to these days. I wish they'd make Sector General into a film or TV series. With current CGI they could do a spectacular job.

Haven't posted much lately, here or on my other blogs. I'm not well, and waiting for an outpatient appointment to see if I can be fixed. Also, my last cat died at the end of June - that's him in the avatar. After thirty years of owning cats, the house is empty. Have to say that life seems very bleak and pointless at the moment, and I'm unable to write or even care much about the books.

Slow going with sales of the novel, but it has had one borrow in the Kindle Lending Library. No reviews on Amazon yet - it's hard to be patient and give folks a chance to read it!
I'm planning on offering ten free reading copies in return for reviews, which would be easy if it was on Smashwords and I could give out coupons or if Amazon UK supported gifting copies (they don't). I'll have to send the book out as an e-mail attachment. If anyone's interested, send me a message.

Well, it happened. I was waiting for my first one star rating/bad review, and here it is. Just a random single star for No Earthly Shore, with no comment to explain why. Judging from the books on the reader's shelf, they were expecting S-F romance, and my book probably lacked the appropriate amount of sex. Never mind. As they say, you can't please all of the people etc.
Is it raining in Patagonia?

They say March comes in like a lion, but I can't say that for this month's book sales. No Earthly Shore, also known as "the one that sells in the US" is managing one or two sales per day on Amazon US. Wish I knew how people are finding it or which particular tag or link is helping sales. If I knew, I'd work that magic on Spook/Spirit/Stone, which has sold just one this month. No sales at all in the UK - I'm starting to think that Amazon UK is broken!
I guess I need to do another freebie day or two, but I'm holding off until the novel is ready to launch.

I publish on Kindle under the name Cathaven Press.
The name was coined in 2001 when I printed a booklet of my poetry, Dreams and Habitations.
In 2002 three more booklets were produced, two S-F detective stories, The URLKing and Five of Humours: one of Melancholy: one of Honey and a novella, GSOH, which is now on Kindle as No Earthly Shore.
If I ever get famous these will be collectors' items, as only one of each was ever produced, although I think there may have been two copies of the poetry collection.
I plan to take my first novel into print after it comes out on Kindle, and I'll use Cathaven Press as the publisher.