Is the Journeymen coming true? Pt 4

 The Journeymen is fiction, a figment of my imagination, but elements of it provide some sort of explanation for events around us.  Let's take a fanciful look at some of the real people in real life and speculate where they should fit in with the Journeyman concept.  I'll start with the UK first, apologies to North American readers, you may have to Google some of these characters.

The Royal Family, the late Queen, the current King and the future King(s).  Absolutely the epitome of Colonists and protected, you might say insulated, from real life.  In the Journeymen story their sole purpose is to preserve and provide the DNA needed for the home planet.  In Journeymen II: Days of Reckoning this provides food for thought at the epilogue.

Now lets take a look at recent Prime Ministers of the UK, and to be fair we've had a few in a short term.  Let's start with David Cameron, a shoo-in for a Journeyman by most measures.  Privileged background, over-promoted to way beyond his natural capability in my opinion, he's the perfect example of someone who overtook better qualified candidates which, in my books, is one of the hallmarks of a Journeyman.

His successor, Theresa May, would appear to be more likely to be an IB.  That shouldn't be a surprise because although Prime Minister is one of the highest political positions, as we've experienced it's also one of the most fragile ones, too.  May was succeeded by Boris Johnson who has and had the aura of a Journeyman and definitely promoted above his ability.  His sense of entitlement would be consistent with the group.

I'm afraid my jury of one is out on Liz Truss.  Over-promoted? Absolutely.  Sense of entitlement?  In spades.  Journeyman?  Possibly, but I suspect she is an over-ambitious IB who got the top job over Rishi Sunak in major part because the group who voted her in is notoriously prejudiced.  Sunak, I suspect, is an ambitious IB who probably chose the wrong time to make his bid.

What about Keir Starmer? His father was a tool-maker, by the way.  I feel Starmer is pure IB.

The point is that the position of Prime Minister, powerful a position it is, is held by people guided by senior Civil Servants and hundreds of years of precedent.  Those senior Civil Servants not only exert enormous influence on the PM but crucially provide the continuity for the Journeyman project.  The Senior Civil Servants are the puppeteers, not the puppets.  Many, probably not all, will be Journeymen.

What about the US?  Are there any Colonists in the US?  Officially not in power, the Constitution was clear on that, but the US has long been a safe haven for people who would qualify as Colonists - exiled Kings, for example.  The UK might have an example or two living there now, although the bloodline might not be pure Colonist anymore.

The current President would appear to be a perfect candidate as a Journeyman, fulfilling the role but I suspect he has the ambition to be a Colonist.  Unfortunately, the way my story is written, you can't just 'become' a Colonist.

What about other World leaders?  Putin, for example?  Possibly Journeyman, possibly a Son.  Although he appears more interested in consolidating his own power, he could either be using force to promote the project or to disrupt it.  To make your mind up you will need to read both Journeymen books, and even then I would probably have to agree to disagree.

To end this short series of discussions on the background to the Journeymen I'd like to reiterate it is fiction, made up by me.  I'm not suggesting it is 'really real', or that my evaluation of where the characters above should sit in the fictional hierarchy should be taken as fact.  Far from it, but if you immerse yourself in the story then you may well find yourself looking at bosses, colleagues and politicians and wondering where they fit in the scheme of things.

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Random thoughts on random Covid 19 testing

Back on my current hobby horse - the corona virus pandemic. I've been reading lots of various views around the world today (and the last few days) and there is a consensus forming as far as I can tell.  Apart from the fact that most places aren't testing anywhere near as necessary, which I bleated about a couple of times already, the testing isn't helping anywhere near as much as it should.

OK, many countries are choosing their own way of testing, that's their prerogative in the absence of an international standard.  Although the World Health Organisation has stated test, test and test again, and I don't think you could get a bigger nudge towards standardisation than that, it's a little light on direction.

Statisticians are now claiming that the methods used up to now are not suitable, and the arguments I'm hearing are compelling.  We had, in the UK, the herd immunity argument that suggested that by voluntarily socially distancing people you could flatten the now famous curve and save the health care system from imploding, while getting the majority of relatively fit people exposed and presumably immune for the short haul.  Completely isolating the vulnerable - and that means identifying them and ensuring they have a suitable support network for the twelve weeks that seems to be the common standard - while the rest of us get the disease, shrug it off in the main, treat the few that react badly sounds like a plan.  However the numbers of deaths started to stack up, and the simple requests around social distancing to allow the herd immunity to develop in a controlled manner wasn't being followed by a significant number of people.  If it helps, I followed it as far as my employer let me - cramming 22 students into classrooms designed for 18 at a push and rotating them from classroom to classroom every hour and a half didn't help.

The real problem, well two problems actually, are that many people didn't take the sensible measures to avoid mass contamination seriously and on top of that there wasn't any apparent plan to identify the vulnerable and support them.  They're working on that now, but only because we're in lockdown and I'm hearing anecdotal reports of clearly vulnerable people not being on the database the government has compiled.

But testing as it stands is way below useful.  As a minimum the NHS staff need to be tested - and by the way there are 1.2 million of them.  Not all doctors and nurses, of course, but receptionists, cooks, cleaners, admin staff all working in close proximity and interacting with the front line guys and gals.  And one test each is only a start as someone could be given the all-clear and pick up the virus fuelling up on the way home.

But the real challenge is knowing where the country is in relation to infection rates.  The current process of only testing people who are showing signs of the illness is going to give a fairly high success rate, if determining someone is suffering from Covid 19 can be called success. It makes the hazard rate appear larger than it is, for one thing, and fails to tell us anything about how prevalent the disease is.  An analogy I'm going to steal here is one I read online a day or so ago:

Suppose you wanted to know how popular Ford cars are in your area.  One way is to pop over to your local Ford main dealer and ask everyone who walks through the door during a determined period of time, say one day, what make of car they drive.  Many will say Ford, because many of us are creatures of habit.  That is what the testing has been like in the UK, testing those exhibiting signs of CV.  Alternatively pop over to your local Asda (Walmart for US readers) car park and count how many Fords there are and also how many non-Ford cars there are.  Don't advertise it, choose a day at random, and you'll get a pretty good idea of how popular Ford cars are in your locality.  There should be random testing in supermarkets - there would need to be legislation and the government would need to provide strong guarantees that the data will only be used for CV testing purposes as they would need to know who provided the sample.  They would need to provide assurances that persons tested wouldn't have DNA information provided to the police, because that would provide people reasonable excuse to not participate.

That way we would have a better picture of the distribution of CV in society.  It would have been useful to have known where it was before lockdown, but we can't go back there.

I for one wouldn't have any objections, and would happily share my DNA if it was for a useful purpose.  In another world, maybe, I might be more circumspect - if you've read the Journeymen, and especially its sequel Journey Men II: Day of Reckoning you might wonder if the information was being used for other, nefarious reasons.  But right now I'd like to think that sorting CV 19 out is our main priority.

You can access my books on Amazon using the links provided on this blog post.  Stay safe and follow the rules, please.

Nurturing Nature

It's a long established debate - are we born or made the person we are? The Nature versus Nurture argument has taxed the finest minds for generations and quite a few of the more modest intellects around, to put it politely.

The Nature argument supposes that genetics deals us our hand to deal with life. To be sure, there's a compelling view to the notion that the gene pool we were dipped in determines our potential. It certainly reinforces the views of some prejudiced individuals - who are quick to dismiss people because of their parents' achievements (or lack of). Conversely it can be used to provide certain offspring with opportunities based on a perception of the parental potential. It's probably true in many cases that the offspring of rocket scientists will be academically gifted, however it isn't a given. On the other hand the children of manual workers often percolate to the top of the academic pot. Of course, just because your parents were blue collar workers it doesn't necessarily follow that they didn't have academic potential, just fewer breaks.

Which brings us to the Nurture argument. This says that your background and environment determines your likelihood of succeeding in life. It certainly seems that some people get to the top regardless of ability. We've all worked for bosses that have lived what seems a charmed life and it just has to be that they are getting promoted above better, more talented contemporaries. If you've read The Journeymen and its sequel, Day of Reckoning, then you'll know I have explored this aspect in fiction in some detail. It may be fiction, but there's a lot of real life observation in there that just seems to feel like it fits.  Perhaps I'm just a born cynic - back to Nature, then.

But writing a Sci-Fi novel underpinned by an unproven conspiracy theory is no more scientific than any other lay opinion. Most people today believe that both Nature and Nurture play a part in our lives, especially the developmental part of it. The tricky part is working out the division of responsibility between Nature and Nurture. A major recent study has moved the argument forward.

Over two thousand pairs of twins have been evaluated to see whether the genetic mix they share or the environment they were raised influenced their eventual academic results. They came from diverse backgrounds, hence had a wide variety of environmental influences to help or maybe hinder their progress. There was also a mix of identical and non identical twins in the study. The variety of backgrounds has the effect of smoothing out the Nurture impact, leaving the results based on identical versus non-identical twins to compare the impact of Nature.

If Nurture is the predominant parameter in this study then the identical versus non-identical results shouldn't vary much. If nature is predominant, then there will be a difference between the two types of twins. The reason for this is that non-identical twins are like any other sibling pairs with perhaps one difference; their environmental influences should be more or less the same, no older brother gets more attention than younger sister situations. Identical twins should, in the main, share the same academic abilities and environmental opportunities. Given that both Nature and Nurture are expected to contribute to some degree there wouldn't be an absolute result, just potentially a bias or not.

So, what did the study find? Well, identical twins scored the same (give or take) 60% of the time in science, mathematical and language subjects but the non-identical twins scored about a 40% correlation. The split is less defined in artistic disciplines, apparently. This suggests that although the environment can hold back or propel individuals in a disproportionate way, the genetic mix we are born with is the predominant element. If we're dealt a weak hand, then that's our lot, by and large. But if we're dealt a reasonable hand, as long as we're not artificially held back we have the same chance to succeed as anyone else, in principle.

Of course this result, while a major indication that nature has the upper hand, demonstrates that Nurture, or society, has the potential to hold capable people back or push the wrong people forward.  So maybe The Journeymen might not be that far off the mark after all.  Or, if you take a look at another of my books, Digital Life Form, you'll learn that one of the only two rules in life that matter is that life ain't fair.

The other rule covers all other eventualities, for twins, identical or not and the rest of us.  Shit happens!

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Tripped up by Amazon, Saved by Smashwords, Free Book To All

Although I can see there is a fair amount of interest in Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning from the Amazon listings, there is a glaring oversight on the page - the eBook isn't being listed!

I've had an email from Amazon stating that the book is live in all regions and they also sent me a link to the page it's on - the page exists somewhere in Amazon and the link opens it, but there is no pricing information so I suspect there's been a hitch there.  I've emailed them so the book should appear soon, I hope.

In the meantime can I suggest you check the book out on Smashwords, instead?  I've broken with convention and ignored Smashwords' ruling that if there is adult content then to indicate it - there are profanities, lots of violence and the merest suggestion of sex if you're averse to those topics, but looking at the content that removing the 'prude filter' reveals shows me that actually, there is a lot worse on Smashwords.  It has become a bit of a dumping ground for - ahem - explicit erotica.  I've previously tended to list my books as containing adult content and I know a lot of people struggle to find them on Smashwords as a result, but not this baby!

Anyway, here's a link to Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning

And here's a reason to go there today. XY33F     This code, when used when purchasing a copy of the book, will render the price to zero.  That's right, for a limited period I'm giving the eBook version away.  But not for long, so you'll need to act fast.

Feel free to share this link with your friends.

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Journeymen II is Published

The publishing process gets, I guess, easier each and every time I do it, yet paradoxically makes me feel it could be slicker than it is.  Anyway, as I mentioned in my last posting I did this the opposite way to my previous attempts, starting with CreateSpace.  That went better than I thought possible and despite my assumption that I'd have to wait until the week started before the book would be reviewed it was up on CreateSpace's website for sale within a couple of hours and by Sunday UK time it was on Amazon.

One feature I haven't looked at previously is the one on CreateSpace that lets you publish on the Kindle using the same files and images.  It's not that I don't think it's a good idea, it's just that until this attempt, I'd done all that before going to CreateSpace.  Well, part of the routine doesn't seem to work in that it implies that when you push the button your file will whizz off to Amazon and will appear as a formatted eBook in due course.  Perhaps it will, but I'm not that patient.  But what it does do on that particular page, probably always has done and I've just not noticed it before, is that it allows you to download an 'Kindle ready' copy of your book which actually looks a heck of lot like the CreateSpace ready version I uploaded to them including page numbers that you wouldn't expect in an eBook and it lets you download a copy of the CreateSpace book cover for use on your Kindle submission.

Now for aspiring self publishers, this is a really useful feature, especially since Apple and Amazon upped the requirements for book images in the last year or so.  As long as you can make a cover you're happy with using the CreateSpace tools then you can re-use it across Amazon and Smashwords, and therefore Apple, B&N, Sony etc.  I've just used it not only for Journeymen II but also for a couple of my other books to standardise my images.  The downside is that CreateSpace haven't improved the range of images and features in the last two years.  This really is one area that they could look at improving, but perhaps that's the idea as I kept tripping over offers to produce book covers starting at 'only' $299.

But the long and short is that it is worth looking at publishing with CreateSpace before the eBook versions just to get a cover you can use.  After that it's your choice whether you work on the Kindle version or the Smashwords version.  As usual Smashwords is pickier than Amazon, but to be fair Amazon only has the one version to worry about, Smashwords tries to accommodate all formats at once.  Hence if you look at my Smashwords version you'll notice I don't have a first line indent, but on Amazon I do.  I prefer the first line indent, but Smashwords aren't keen and although they say it can be achieved, it ain't easy.

Pricing across the three media isn't consistent, which I know is considered a big no-no, but I can't do much about the cost of CreateSpace books, unfortunately.  Most of the price is split between them and Amazon, a few grains left over for the author.  Quite a bit like conventional book publishing, I guess.  Amazon have an irritating habit of forcing the price of eBooks up, which may surprise many newbie authors and general readers as I'm sure you know they have a lot of low price eBooks on sale.  But drop below $2.99 per book and they take 65% of the purchase price; make it $2.99 or more and they only take 30% of the price.  This forces authors to price higher, especially when they try to recall where Amazon were when they were struggling with a plot sequence.  Smashwords takes a trivial cut if readers buy direct from them and  you'll end up with about 60% as a worst case scenario through the channels they distribute to.  Hence authors can afford to market their books for less and not feel dirty after every purchase.

Anyway, if you want to take a look at Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning you'll find it on Amazon and Smashwords right now.  If you want to see it on Apple and the other eBook publishing sites then you'll have to wait a few days while Smashwords ports it across.  Take a look, I hope you enjoy the yarn.
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Journeymen II is on its way

I've reviewed the text until I'm cross-eyed and tweaked my tweaks until my eyes watered.  So now I've taken a deep breath and started the publication process.  In a break from tradition - well it is my seventh novel so I can claim to have established some sort of tradition by now - I've decided to go for the CreateSpace paperback form first.

In my previous books I've produced the eBook version first, then added the bits needed for a paperback.  This time around I've chosen to do the paperback first in part because converting for eBook format is largely subtractive from a paperback formatted document - I remove page numbers and blank pages that are there to format the book for print.  The other reason is that CreateSpace reckon that they will arrange for the book to be formatted as an eBook on Kindle automatically, transferring my book cover at the same time.  I've never tried this approach before and decided it was time I did if only to report back to the writers who follow this blog on how effective it is.

However I have to wait at least 24 hours for the print review, and as I submitted on a Saturday I'm expecting the reply to arrive early next week.  Assuming that my efforts are deemed acceptable then the paperback should be on Amazon and Createspace's own website by the end of the week.  It should, all being as advertised, be on the Kindle store in eBook format pretty soon after that..

I did try to upload a photo depicting London's cityscape for the book cover - the majority of the book takes place in London - but the cover designer didn't seem to like it.  It kept telling me that my upload was fine, that there were no errors in my submission, but it wouldn't let me complete with that picture. So I took a lazy approach and used the same image as I used for the original Journeymen paperback but changed the text background to brick red.  As this is the second Journeymen book I guess I now have a series, albeit a short one at present, so having a common cover with different colour schemes seems reasonable.

So for those who haven't read the original book - it's very accessible and a darned good read if you're interested - here's a potted explanation about who and what the Journeymen are.  I'll try not to spoil the first book and you can read the second book without reading the first or this potted description, but you may find yourself scratching your head over some of the terminology if you do.

The Journeymen are the descendants of aliens from a planet 9 light years away that have been walking the Earth for the last 6000 years or so.  They arrived with a group that has chosen to break away from them, now known as the Sons of Arlgon, or the Sons.  Same species, different attitudes, mortal enemies.  The Journeymen are here because their ancestors formed a settlement here tens of thousands of years before they pitched up.  Their journey, taking three generations aboard a spacecraft housed on a comet that circles both Earth and the home planet every two thousand years, was undertaken to secure the DNA of their ancestors to help redress the ravages of a terrible war sometime between the original Journeymen and the second batch.  Those original Journeymen are known as Colonists, and by the time the Journeymen arrived here 6000 years ago they had become the controlling entities on Earth.  Many think they still are.  The Journeymen undertook to help preserve the purity of the Colonist bloodlines while driving the technology on Earth to reach a state where it could be used to transport the Colonist DNA back to the home planet.  To do this they inserted themselves into the fabric of society, manipulating the human race so that it developed the technology needed while keeping a close eye on the Colonists.  To complete the naming convention, those humans who are not Journeymen, Sons or Colonists are named Interbreds, or IBs.  That's almost certainly you or me, by the way.

In Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning we find ourselves in the situation where robust DNA cultivating technology has been developed, as has deep space travel.  The Journeymen decide they don't need the Colonists anymore, but realise that the Sons won't want the Journeymen wielding any more power than they do right now.  Their solution is to take the Sons out in a mass cull, starting in the United Kingdom where one of the last truly influential Colonist lines still exists.  If you can't work out who I'm talking about, then send me a stamped addressed envelope.  But look at the stamp before you post it and you many work out who the Colonists are.

I still have to do the leg work for formatting for Smashwords so that I can get the book out to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, WH Smith etc and of course CreateSpace may not be 100% happy with my submission.  Either way, I'll keep you informed.

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Journeymen II is Completed

As reported in a recent posting, I've been finalising the sequel to The Journeymen, a book I wrote several years ago.  The second book in the series is now written and is undergoing the final reviews, the formatting for the various outlets, principally CreateSpace, Amazon and Smashwords, and I've got to produce the cover artwork.

This is the first time I've attempted to write a sequel.  Anyone who has read my books will know that I'm not afraid to kill the good guys if the story requires it and the one thing I don't do is compromise the ending to allow a convenient in for a follow on story.  However when I wrote the Journeymen I was aware that what I was writing was one episode in a long sequence of stories and wondered if I could plunder real history and retell it using the Journeymen back story.  That is still an option. 

But I realised nearly two years ago that there was actually an unfinished storyline from the original book that needed to be followed and 'Journeymen II: The Day of Reckoning' is the result.  If you've read the original book you will recognise some of the characters - John Markerson, the London based policeman who is also one of the Sons of Arlgon, and Alan Thomas, the Cheshire Police sergeant dragged into the Journeymen renegade plot that ended up at Jodrell Bank radio telescope.  Both men are reunited four years after that event, at a time when the Journeymen believe that they have completed their tasking to secure all of the Colonist DNA and push the planet to develop the technology to send it back to the Home Planet.  Now that job is done they no longer need the Colonists and can drop the pretence that the planet needs to be run by that particular elite - they want to step out of the shadows and rule Earth themselves, directly.

They know that the Sons of Arlgon are their greatest impediment to achieving this goal and to this end they have decided to organise a mass cull.  Against this backdrop we find Alan agreeing to work for the Sons to help reverse their fortunes in placing their people in positions of influence.  He also starts a relationship with Linda, who is unwittingly helping the Journeymen to prepare for their cull, and Alan is quickly drawn into a web of danger that surrounds a Journeyman Metropolitan policeman named Strong.  Ultimately, on the eve of the mass cull, Alan finds himself in a fight to the death with Strong with unexpected results.

One of the hardest parts of writing a sequel is to avoid the situation where you end up telling the original story again, perhaps a bit abridged like a Reader's Digest book, or you end up referring to people and events that only exist in your personal works of fiction so won't make any sense to readers who haven't read the first book.  It's a fine line and one I've worked hard at trying to get right.  If you end up reading Journeymen II: The Day of Reckoning then you'll find out the gist of the original Journeyman book and you'll pick up the salient protagonists: the Journeymen, the Sons, the Colonists and of course, the long suffering IBs.  You'll pick up on some of the events recorded in the original book where knowing them helps to understand what is going on in this book, but without spoiling the first book in the process.

I'm expecting to publish Journeymen II: The Day of Reckoning by early August so keep a look out on this blog for more information.

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Journeymen II - Coming Soon

Regular readers might have noticed that I haven't been posting much lately, in fact I haven't posted for about a week.  It isn't summer 'Flu or a dose of the dreaded lurgy - in fact I'm in rude health right now - but it's a case of the novel ending syndrome.

NES hits writers when their books reach a critical point and they find that writing the book is an all consuming affair.  I hit a couple of NES points over the last couple of years when DLF reached that point, as I did with Project: Evil a little later.  Project: Evil NES point could have been less obvious to most of you because I was posting it as I wrote it, apart from the problem that the postings had caught up with the story so far and I needed the time to finish it, hence my hiatus from posting a year ago.

Well I've reached the NES point with Journeymen II, a sequel I started writing over two years ago and has stopped and started several times.  But in the last week all the threads started to come together - I never know exactly how a book will end until I get to that point myself - and I've been writing every night since.  The ending, by the way, is fast moving and heart thumping action and I'm struggling to put it down myself.

At the rate of writing I should be ready to go through full read through in a fortnight or so, then I've got to write the blurb, design the cover, reformat the various versions - Amazon and Smashwords versions plus the CreateSpace edition, publish and, well, if the Journeymen read  it I'll be damned.

So apologies to the regular readers for stopping the postings for the time being - normal service may be resumed sometime soon, but there are two other books closing in on the NES point in my SkyDrive account so I can't absolutely promise you it will be.  But a darned good read is appearing in an internet bookshop near you real soon instead.

I'll keep you informed.

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