Saturday 23 January 2016

Called Out Of Darkness: finished at last

Over at my other blog, "The Calling", I posted that I have finished the third book in the story of Valin Derojan, a desert nomad who gets caught up in a galactic-scale struggle of Light and Darkness. 

Called Out Of Darkness took me months to write in my spare time. Now my sons have read the draft pdf copy on their tablets and offered quite a few suggestions and spotted several typos. It helps so much to have another pair of eyes see what has emerged from my brain.

A few of the 'typos' were actually a character speaking bad grammar, an aged alien called Fin. And yes, before anybody suggests otherwise, I did think up this character and name long before a certain sequel came charging onto the movie screen. I don't think he resembles the deserting Stormtrooper in the slightest. My Fin was named Finjan in Book Two, but I shortened it partly because I realised it sounded too much like another character's name. Maybe my sons didn't do their job so well on Book Two! No, I take full responsibility. 

Actually Finjan Snufik is one of my favourites in both books in which he appears. His name actually originates from my memories of reading Tove Jansen's Fin Family Moomintroll long ago as a child, and enjoying most of all the character named Snufkin, who was a homeless wanderer who occasionally turned up to help the Moomintrolls out of a tight spot, or just walk and talk with them awhile. All his possessions (as I remember) were contained in the backpack he carried, and he would pitch his tent wherever he pleased each night, and sleep under the stars. The little flag poking up from his tent was something like this:


When asked what the flag was about, he replied, "There's the green forest below, and the open blue sky above, and a road along in between. And the dot on the road is me!"

It sounded like an ideal existence to a ten-year-old, or however old I was when reading it. I wanted to be that dot! The younger Fin in Book II carries a little of that foot-loose wanderer, and probably a bit of Peter Pan or the young Tarzan, while in Book III Fin is much older and - wait, you'd better read it yourself to see.

Before I can release Called Out Of Darkness on Amazon and CreateSpace, I will need a thorough editing over the space of a few weeks, and I will need to find a good cover image. Any artists out there?

The OTHER Red Planet Cafe!

It looks like someone else has started a cafe just down the road...
No, wait a moment, this one's on the east coast of the U.S.A. It's at the Cradle Of Aviation Museum in Nassau County, which appears to be on Long Island, NY.



Cradle Of Aviation - Red Planet Cafe



Here's how they advertise themselves:

Come to the Red Planet Cafe and enjoy your first meal on Mars! You will be transported to a Space Station on Mars in the year 2040. Look out on the beautiful Martian landscape while enjoying authentic Martian cuisine.The cafe is open from 11:00 AM-3:30 PMAuthentic Martian cuisine includes stellar wraps, salads and sandwiches, fruit, yogurt, vege-burgers and soups, hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken fingers, pizza, grilled cheese and last but not least, the favorite amongst little Martians - curly fries!

Yum yum , can't wait to visit. I'm especially looking forward to trying the hamburgers and asking the staff what they could possibly be made of - because as we know, the cost of freighting real meat up out of Earth's gravity well makes it almost unaffordable. Wait, is that the bill? Oh my, I'd better take a mortgage out on that.


Or maybe they have perfected the art of growing meat in some sort of vat. Or maybe there is life on Mars, and I'm eating it!