A stroll through the stars…coming soon. To order, please use the contact form on the website. Just £10 for a gentle guide to observational astronomy.
Space books for sale
If you have found this website having seen the books advertised in All About Space, the books are available from Amazon.
…space info within stories :-)
Beyond the Horizon contains lots of info within fun space adventure stories with Danny, Lucy and Peter.
Aliens
Enjoying having time to work on the latest Peter, Danny and Lucy space adventure. This time they are exploring a planet where alien life thrives…
Christmas gifts…
Chris Hadfield is to visit Monmouth for a book signing of his new children’s story… Why not visit Amazon to get hold of a Beyond the Horizon (or available in print form from me) in which there are no aliens, just stories sprinkled with information and facts about the Moon and the planets in our solar system.
Space adventures…
Following Tim Peake’s adventures in space there seems to be a pent up demand for space adventure stories with realism. Two of my books are on AmazonKindle although it is difficult to publicise them effectively. I am a writer, nearly full-time worker not a publicist! It is disappointing to receive a rejection from an agent for my latest story, about Planet Earth. Need to have a deep think…
….audience enthralled!
My talk about the history of the Norman Lockyer Observatory and a brief biography of Norman himself was very well received by an audience of about 15 in my local library. I also gave them some astronomy highlights such as the flyby of Jupiter, sizes of stars and some info about the Moon. One member of the audience actually put the Lockyer telescope back together in the 1990s and has a box of minutes relating to the period. I encouraged him to take these to John Ponsford. He said he would bring them to the Astronomy Fair on 13 August. Many friendly faces were in the audience – a nice lady from church and who sees me at the Mint in my Reception role plus two others from U3A, Sue from Tuesday Fellowship (who would like me to give a talk), Iryna from Stella Maris Trio and Roy with Gareth and Amy. Plus Dad and a Daughter from church who is a space enthusiast. Great time. Exhausted….
Squid
Well, life imitates art, is that what they say? A couple of weeks’ ago I sent off my new adventure story containing an episode with a creature who had an enormous eye…and my daughter produced a delightful painting of a giant squid to accompany the text. The characters had an interlude in Iceland and I used my own photograph of the geysir Strokkur about to erupt…and Iceland is all over the place having won a football game. Now, it just needs those pesky publishers to see the potential… 🙂
Library talk
Preview of brand new story…
Extract 1
His eyes kept being drawn to the terrible eyeball at the window…what a size the creature must be to have an eye that size. He prepared himself for the long slow haul up to the surface. Hopefully, he would see other, less terrible, creatures on the way back up. He had no wish to go any further down – it was claustrophobic apart from him not wishing to be a meal for some odd creature who relished the dark depths of this mysterious abyss. He had no wish to return empty handed though and prepared his camera for the work ahead.
Extract 2
The silence hit Lucy as she stepped outside the little Research Station. Total silence. Total whiteness. Total isolation. There was nowhere to go outside of the comfort zone of the confines of the base for the research scientists. Nowhere that is except for more snow covered land. Lucy hugged herself in excitement as she caught a glimpse of movement in the distance. Penguins! All sorts of types and shapes and sizes. There were thousands of them. Peter shouted over to her to join them on the sled. There was no sound of huskies barking excitedly in these days of motorised sleds. She trudged as quickly as she could in her thick boots over to where Peter was waiting. Grinning in excitement, Peter helped her onto the sled and they sped over the lumpy snow towards the penguins. Slowing down as they neared them, they stopped the machines and edged their way forward on foot scarcely daring to breathe. Peter slowly and carefully lifted his camera to his eyes and took a long distance view of the spectacular scene in front of them. He then adjusted the lens and continued moving towards the incredibly noisy, increasingly smelly, and unbelievably exciting crowd of creatures huddled in groups ahead of them. It was just before the time when the young ones would waddle to the sea, arms akimbo for balance, and swim for their lives. They had enjoyed a precious few weeks being fed before it was time for them to fend for themselves.