some news, then some rambling

Exciting news! Day 115 on an Alien World is now up for pre-order on Amazon and Kobo - and all sorts of other places - if you have a favourite on-line bookstore it is probably there. Official release date is 2 April 2018.

It's been a surprising long journey writing this one, forcing me to learn a whole lot about story structure. It was painful as I ended up throwing out entire chunks of the story - but in the end, I think it was all worth it.

Since I'm rambling, I thought I'd share my original inspiration for the story. Long story short, I read The Martian (which I enjoyed greatly). It was the first science fiction I'd read in years and it set gears into motion in my head pondering my own fiction again - I'd stopped writing fiction a few years earlier. This time, I started taking notes. This is the scenario I started with:

You are in an atmospheric suit on an alien world and there’s a leak in it. Alarms are blaring as your bubble of breathable air is bleeding away. Slap a patch on the leak and you’d be good to go. Mark Watney managed it - but you’re not this lucky. What if the suit was also covered in mud? How would you find the leak then? Muddy gloves wouldn’t get far in cleaning the suit off. But it still could be worse, what if the mud was about to freeze? What if you’re completely alone?

Ideas flowed from there.