The Lifeboat

I have finally completed the first draft of the third novel in the Skidian Chronicles series, tentatively titled; 'The Lifeboat'. This was supposed to the final novel in the series. However, there are some loose ends that I feel I need to tidy up, even if in doing so I am merely satisfying my own curiosity.

On the other hand I need to satisfy my growing audience as well.

I am going to start to post some excerpts from The Lifeboat in my blog and create a readers group to critique and provide feedback as I progress with the editing process. Let me know if you are interested in being a part of this team.

The Lifeboat.

Prologue

Far out on the dark, frozen perimeter of the solar system a comet reached the outward limit of its orbit about the sun and began to blaze a trail back towards the inner system. This particular comet had never been recorded in human history or detected by any of mankind’s increasingly sophisticated astronomical instruments as it swung along its path.

Eventually the comet did come to the notice of terrestrial astronomers and was given the designation 2013D4. Comet 2013D4’s course was projected more or less accurately, enough to suggest that it did not pose an immediate danger to earth along with a number of other celestial bodies. For a number of reasons, not least that people wanted to know whether the bodies posed a risk or not to planet earth, some of these bodies were higher on the list than others in terms of importance and scrutiny. Comet 2013D4 was well down that list and nobody noticed a couple of unusual course changes that on close inspection could not be easily explained.

For a long time nobody picked up on 2013D4’s exact trajectory and when they did there was some idle speculation between the groups of astronomers that were interested enough in the possible outcome to discuss its route as it sped toward, then possibly impacting one or more of the Jupiter Trojans.

Eventually Comet 2013D4 ploughed into an asteroid called Automedon, knocking the asteroid out of its orbit, before it blasted out the other side of the Jupiter Trojans and carried on its merry way.

This kind of impact wasn’t all that unusual and happened regularly enough that astronomers thought little of it at the time. Automedon bounced around like a big marble knocking other, smaller asteroids out of the way. Then somehow it was flung out of the Trojan field and was hurtling its way towards the centre of the solar system where it would either meet its end in a mighty collision with the sun or be flung outward again to begin a journey through the solar system until it hit something else or degraded away to nothing.

Every little bit helps

Suddenly I seem to be getting some attention in the big wide world. Book sales are steady if unspectacular and people keep following me on Twitter, even though I have little to tweet. The Command Authority, using my spare phone tweets for me more often than I do. Though it would be fair to say that this is more by accident than design.

To cap this off people at work keep downloading my book and or swapping hard copies around  between them and actually  seem to be enjoying the read. Either that or they are saying nice things about me on the hope of a free coffee.

All this helps to encourage me to spend more time on the third (I hesitate to say final) chapter in he Skidian Chronicles series. Not easy after a long day at work and there is more to life than work and the second job that costs far more in time and effort than any hope of return.

This intermittent blog is actually a good way to warm up to the process of writing and to provide some shameless self promotion. Pity it is now 9.20pm and it is almost my bedtime.

Some neat new reviews for the First Skidian Chronicle

If you really needed a reason to buy both novels

"Easy fun read. I didn't really like the ending at first, but the second book clears it all up."


and well what can a man say?

"It took me a while to pick this book up only because I'd promised Keith I'd be brutally honest and I didn't want to disappoint! Turned out to be a book that I was unable to put down this weekend and wished I had read it sooner!

A surprisingly good and easy read, Sue P'd me off a few times due to her lack of knowledge about farming, or anything hah! The love scenes were a bit quirky (thats all ill say about that), and the arrogance of the Skidians and how it affected Bruce was pretty comical. Not quite sure if this was sci fi enough for me if that makes sense but It's only the first so am looking forward to reading the second over the long weekend."

Winston for Prime Minister

Of Godzone that is.........

One of the things that I know I could and should do (far more of and more often) is to to write a regular blog to build readership for the great New Zild novels that I reckon I have already created and those that are swirling around in the back of my mind.

Of course it is never that easy. I have a job that I quite like and pays me petty well and  seems to take up a lot of my time and a Command Control Authority (CCA) that also keeps me in line.

For me writing is pretty much a hobby, I can dream that one day I will be able to write full time and be able to keep myself and the CCA living pretty much as we do today. Realistically, fat chance of that ever happening. The CCA wouldn't stand for it and I also want to buy a new motorbike later on in the year.

Now you maybe wondering what this has to do with the new MP for Northland.

Well quite a bit really. Well it did when I was having a beer and thinking about this and then deciding that I should write something. I'll keep tapping away and maybe it will come to me.

It shouldn't actually be a surprise to people that Winston won the Northland seat recently and that he is so popular in the region. After all, he is one of their (our) own and his redneck immigration policies aside (not too far down the track we are all immigrants after all) he stands for the middle road and. in Northland that is what the people want.

The right level of government support where it is required for the people that need it and a reasonably level playing field for business to do it's thing and get stuff done. Nothing more and nothing less. A version of the great egalitarian Kiwi view of life that not too long ago was the way we viewed ourselves.

And yes, here is that little nugget that I was searching for. It was going to be something along the lines of don't leave it until too late to do the things on your bucket list.

But actually, the little nugget is that it is never too late to do the right thing.

You could start here by buying the great New Zild novel and then support NZild First.

Fill your boots and starve the oxygen thieves.

NZ Labour Party struggles for a clear purpose in the modern world

This week Prime Minister John Key announced the date of the next election. Predictably the NZ Labour Party led by David Cunliffe came out swinging in the belief that they are the still the main opposition party in New Zealand and have some kind of divine right to rule the country. Prepare yourself for a great leap backwards if the Labour Party is elected.

The NZ Labour Party was born out of a need to provide a voice for the working man in the bad old days and the party implemented a number of policies that we take for granted today.  But the world has moved on since the party was established in 1916 and the Labour Party seems to be struggling with establishing a clear place for itself in this modern world.

While there are always exceptions, the days of  big business and the rich as exploiters of the poor and the working man are almost behind us as the more enlightened leaders of business focus on engagement and treating their staff as partners rather than objects to exploit mercilessly in the pursuit of a buck. Unfortunately the last vestiges of Trade Union movement are populated with figures that perpetuate these antediluvian attitudes.

In general we are all far better educated today than our forbears were when the Labour movement was at it's height and our aspirations and expectations have changed as our lives have got richer. No longer will we stand for employers who do not treat us with dignity and respect but nor will we stand for a bunch of dogmatic Labour and Trades Union leaders telling us what is good for us when we can quite clearly see that they simply have their own self interests at heart. There are clear examples today where the sun is setting on some industries but the unions still want to maintain jobs that the rest of us would have to subsidise.

A clear sign of the identity struggle that Labour has is that the champion of the working class has elected someone as their leader who inhabits a world far removed from that of the people that he seeks to represent. Of more concern is that the political wing of the party has been highjacked by extremists from the party backrooms so if by chance the party is elected to power the country won't actually be governed by the elected members alone but by an uneasy coalition of the elected members, party members and Trade Unions.

The other challenge for Labour is that other parties have taken positions that they previously covered. The Green Party has siphoned off some of the intellectual capital that Labour has enjoyed in the past and NZFirst has become the home of the rednecks and interventionists.

Labour can't be the green champion because somebody else fills that space. National  fills the space of personal and fiscal responsibility and looking after those less fortunate.  All that is left for Labour is the role of leader of the Nanny State and most of use realise that, that isn't the right path for a modern progressive democracy.

Whichever way you look at it the NZ Labour Party is struggling for a clear purpose in the modern world and seems hellbent on taking us along a Great Leap backwards to the good old days because they have no clear vision of what a modern progressive democracy should look like.

Hopefully they'll kill themselves off after the next election.

The Second Coming-Media release

Media release for the Second Coming
Local Author Publishes Second Skidian Chronicle Sci Fi Novel on Amazon Kindle 

Auckland NZ, December 29 12 2013 – Auckland writer, Keith Fenwick, has released the second Kiwi themed satirical science fiction novel in the Skidian Chronicles trilogy; The Second Coming. This is Keith Fenwick’s second novel.

In his first novel “Skid - The First Chronicle” Keith Fenwick takes us to a highly sophisticated world where civilization is about to fall apart in a spectacular fashion. A world whose leader’s arrogantly assume that they can do no wrong in the face of the dangerous signs of a disintegrating world around them.

In the Second Coming Skid has undergone the apocalypse signaled in the first novel, now revealed to be the work of the malfunctioning computer intelligence charged with maintaining Skidian society as the most powerful and sophisticated in the known universe.

The Second Coming follows the main human characters, now back on planet earth, grappling with a gap in their lives they cannot explain and details the almost complete disintegration of a once powerful and sophisticated society. Skid once had a population that numbered in the hundreds of millions. By the time the story returns to the planet Skid after a short and eventful interlude on planet earth where a new pivotal Skidian character emerges and treats the locals with complete disdain, the population has dwindled to several thousand Skidians eking out a basic living as best they can.

The Second Coming reminds us how fragile a flower intelligent life is in our universe and how close we all are individually and collectively from disaster that threatens our way of life. One drunken miss step, one line of rogue code, one random, unprecedented incident on top of an unfolding disaster and it could be the end of most of us.

Reviewer Andrew Baker says, ‘I found the book quite fun, especially when I got to the meat of it. It's quite comical and some of the adventure and action made it so I had to keep reading on past my bed time. The Second Coming turned out to be a fun and funny read and I would recommend it to anyone that has the endurance for longer, slower adult science fiction novels.

The Second Coming Kindle version
http://www.amazon.com/Second-Coming-Skidian-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00F8A9FRGASIN: B00F8A9FRG

The Second Coming Print version
http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-coming-Chronicle-Chronicles/dp/1492742619ISBN-13: 978-1492742616

The First Chronicle
Kindle version http://www.amazon.com/Skid-Tasting-plant-ebook/dp/B009FIAMXS
Print version http://www.amazon.com/Skid-The-tasting-plant-Volume-1/dp/1479378844

Review -The Second Coming

A Review for the Second Coming 

The Second Coming by Keith Fenwick is a next-in-series title about several different people whose stories are in some way related, but if you are just coming in you don't quite know how. Sue and Bruce are normal, everyday Earthlings... mostly. Sue, who owns a travel agency, is somehow pregnant when she hasn't had a sexual partner in a very long time. Her best guess is immaculate conception. 

Bruce, on the other hand, is a bit of a foul mouthed, rugged loner living off the land. He feels that something is missing--a chunk of his life perhaps. 

On the other hand, Mitch, a third Earth personality (and the United States President), was experiencing no abnormality in his life before a spaceship landed in an American military airplane hangar after a little airspace encroachment, battle, and chase. The alien flying that craft is Myfair, the happenstance ruler of a mostly unknown planet, Skid--the most advanced planet in the universe.

In the wake of a mind-blowing apocalypse on his planet caused by a malfunctioning computer intelligence charged with making Skidian life as easy as possible, Myfair was simply traversing the deep, not looking for anything in particular, when he accidentally stumbled upon Earth, violating American airspace and instigating a dogfight in the process. The skirmish caused him to lose control and scrape his ship across a range of mountains, forcing him to find a place to land. A secured military base is as good a place as any, wouldn't you think?

To you and me it would seem like an insanely stupid idea; but to an intelligent life form that considers us a pitifully ill-advanced, backwater planet that can be easily handled, an air of arrogance keeps our intelligent thought process from rendering us dangerous to a Skidian, and even worthy of note. This is why Myfair was just fine with parking in a military hangar and taking a Sunday stroll around, checking out American war planes. His lack of realization that there could in fact be danger on such an inconsequential planet is just the reason he runs into Bruce, Sue, and President Mitch, which begins their journey together.

As a critique, it takes a lot of reading to get to this point. It could have easily been a hundred or more pages shorter. In addition some of the sexual description was weird, almost as though it hardly had a place in the book. I don't mean all of the sex in general, which was very little, but when it popped up unexpectedly--specifically from the main female character's perspective--it took me by surprise and seemingly without reason. On the upside, there are almost no instances of it. In fact, all such instances containing sex probably only amount to a single page, or less even. My final critique is that Bruce's mother added an almost irritating ingredient to the mixture that bothered me--not because it existed, but because it worked itself into this book so late. Perhaps Fenwick touches on this in the first book, which could make me wrong in thinking this was new, but it was bothersome none-the-less.

All in all though, I found the book quite fun, especially when I got to the meat of it. As the book follows Myfair and other Skidians and allows you to see what their arrogance and underestimation gets them into, it's hard not to laugh. Reading about the effect that Bruce and Mitch have on others is no different; it's quite comical and some of the adventure and action made it so I had to keep reading on past my bed time. The Second Comingturned out to be a fun and funny read and I would recommend it to anyone that has the endurance for longer, slower adult science fiction novels.

Behind every good author stands a great editor or spell checkers are great

I have only recently realised what a great benefit to the process of writing an editor is, My editor is just starting out but she is fully involved in helping me address the continuity issues and basic grammatical errors that I tend to to make. Spell checkers are great but bit nothing beats a well trained eye to sniff out those silly little errors.

For those of you that have read the Second Coming you should notice an improvement in continuity and structure as well as grammar and punctuation.

Despite good marks in English at school, and let's remember I went to school in the days when typing classes were for girls while boys did manly stuff like woodwork, correct grammar and punctuation are a bit of a mystery to me. I got caught up in the era where the precursors of the Green Party controlled education and decided that good grammar was not necessary to rite a good story. How wrong they were. And yes I wish I had learnt to type plopperly as, as you can imagine typing a full length novel is a bit of a mission with all the mistakes and backspacing.

I feel that my creative juices flow best when I write something long hand but it is also pretty pointless giving a manuscript to someone to type up as my handwriting is also atrocious. I bought a livescribe pen to convert my scrawl to text recently, unfortunately these pens are not designed with the likes of me in mind. They require neat and well formed script -which I haven't, so this experiment to truncate the editing process has only been partially successful.

But back to the editor. If you need editing assistance try these guys. http://styxpress.co.nz/

Finally found some gravel for the new toy. the first road I found had just been graded but I found a few others today that I could have a good fang down. Need to get the helmet camera out and take some video.