So A Funny Thing Happened ... !

Hi Guys,

 

 

Yes, you guessed it - the Barton Villa bug grabbed me again! This is the problem with being a pantster - I never know what I'm going to write next.

But I'm really happy with this book. I'd missed that crazy island and it's characters, even after I had so successfully ended the previous trilogy by sending everyone off to Mars to live happily ever after. It's a little like that old sweat shirt you put away in the closet which you think you'll never wear again because it's a bit faded and maybe it's got a loose thread here and there. And then one day you find youself thinking about it and pulling it out because you really liked it.

So that's what happened to me. But as I swung into it again, I decided that I had to make a few changes. For a start I didn't want to bring Moncrief Jones out of retirement - I mean the man's been shot, beaten up, in a car crash and suffered numerous other horrid injuries. It's getting old. So I thought I should let him be. At least for now. (But who knows, there could be another good beating in his future!)

I also wanted it to be a harder, edgier sort of book. More a Sam Watson type story - and you know she's always ready with her gun - and it's trained on the bad guy's nuts!!!

The other thing I did was to go back to the racism theme I explored in book three. I don't know why exactly but something about all the Black Lives Matter protests and the police killing of George Floyd etc, has really got under my skin a little. You can't watch that horrible event and not think to yourself, just what the hell is he doing? It just goes on and on. Also the John Griffin story - Black Like Me - has stayed with me for a long time. Not just the experience of a white reporter medically altering himself to appear black and experience life as such, but the reaction he got after what he'd done was revealed. It really is a thought provoking story. So I returned to that and made the bad guys the white supremacists who had united into a world wide movement. (Something about that feels horribly close to the bone lately.)

The other thing I should mention is that us sci fi writers are supposed to pose questions about the future etc and of course various technological advances coming. The genetic manipulation needed to change a person's skin colour from white to black or any other colour of the rainbow, is probably only five to ten years away. The ethics involved in doing so however are light years beyond us!

So just think - what are you going to do when your son or your daughter comes to you one day and says - I want to be black / or white / or yellow? Makes you think, doesn't it!

Anyway that's where the book comes from, and I hope people enjoy it.

Cheers, Greg.

Gone has Gone!

 Hi Guys,

As some of you may know, Gone has just gone out a few days ago. It's another urban sci fi with UFO's and tropical islands. But it's not part of the Barton Villa series or world. It is however, just as unhinged! Undoubtedly it's all that sunshine that drives tropical islanders into the arms of insanity (he says while sitting in a freezing cold study, staring out at a dark grey sky and plenty of water falling down, and wondering when summer will finally arrive!).

Chy is still sitting on my computer, barely a couple of chapters away from completion, but hopefully due to be finished soon. I've just hit a bit of a road block with it and am waiting for inspiration to strike. The life of a writer!

Anyway, here's the blurb for Gone and I hope you're all safe and well:

 

GONE

Life on a tropical island in the Pacific was a blessing. Michigan Jennings loved it. He could go swimming or diving or just laze out in the sun all day. He could drink rum on the beaches, hang with his friends or play an exciting game of squid ball. And of course being a Jennings he didn't have to work.

Could things be any easier?

But then someone stole Bora Bora, and Mich's world turned upside down. People started trying to kill him! Aliens began floating around in their flying saucers! And an overly affectionate mountain lion kept trying to lick him to death!

What was a guy to do?

Of course there was only one thing to do. He had to get Bora Bora back, rescue his friends – and the girl – and save the world! Somehow! It should be simple really. He was a Doctor after all – of anthropology!

Cheers, Greg.