News 2025/6

Influences / Some Favourite Authors 

These are in no particular order and obviously there are many more:

Frantz Fanon Tolstoy Isaac Azimov

Robert Ludlum Shakespeare John Wyndham

Maya Angelou JRR Tolkien Buchi Emecheta

Frank Herbert Lewis Carroll Jane Austen

Phllis Wheatley C S Lewis Homer

Ralph Ellison William Blake Charles Dickens

George Orwell Balzac Irvin D Yalom

Saul Tanpepper Virgil Frederick W Hickling

Loads more Poets and Writers

NEWS

So I am currently in the process of sorting my creative life and hopefully get more active despite the seasonal change.  We're in solar maximum so who knows what the weather may bring over coming months.  I am definitely in a 'process of change' of necessity so will be updating as I navigate all sorts.

Had an over-indulgent birthday week that started on the 21st and still has a few days to go as I catch up with folks.  Bear with me ... 💝😍🌞

Blessings

Here's a short story I started writing on City of Stories (2018) at a session in the sci/fantasy genre - started as a brief 150 words?  But now expanded a touch!  Above AI generated image.

THE RETRIEVAL

He struggled over the top of the dune to a vista of golden grains, rippling for miles under a blazing sun.  Maybe his mind was playing tricks, knowing he was short on fluids, legs weakening.  He wiped his streaming brow, the disguise now disintegrating in the merciless heat.  His ship’s location hidden somewhere in this vast monotonous sea, sensor would soon bring it in range.  He slid down the dune, unintentionally his motion caused a resounding boom, which had the effect of energising his reaction as he couldn’t slow his descent.  Never occurred to him, the sound might be picked up by sensitive drones in search even from a distance. 

           Reaching the base, he blinked on the embedded optic tracker to scan the area.  A schematic popped up, a green blip pointed east of his position.  Their sun would soon start to set, another nine hundred metres and he could safely call his shielded ship, consigning this adventure to retrieve the device a mitigating success.  The natives couldn’t possibly have known the significance of the object discovered near that cave where the unit had lost it a thousand years prior.  In the midst of a crisis that team was summoned for an urgent mission, having to hurriedly seal the cave.  A recent seismic disturbance had allowed humans to find the small treasure not meant for them, thought to be a trinket of some value, it had activated but not in sequence.  This is how Vrusk had tracked it down, had simply switched it with a replica he gave those desert tribesmen when he examined the original in front of them.  They were none the wiser.

His tracker pulsed red, signalling military drones approaching.  He turned it off, spun himself into the sand, deriving the immediate benefit of cooling.   Why drones were searching the area he was unsure, having taken all required precautions.  Above his tracks disappeared, a simple pulse caused a ripple that covered them. 

 Who would have thought humans would have made such progress?  They were but children in a universe they could scarce understand, playing with disaster, not caring about consequences.  Their imaginations outstripped any capacity for tempered wisdom and had to be contained for their own sake and that of the Potentials, or none would survive.  His keen ears heard the drones above until they were gone.  Vrusk rose from the sand, brushed himself off and summoned his cloaked ship.  A cone of blue light raised him from the sand.  Seconds later he was in outer space, the mothership stationed off Pluto awaited his return to which he would take a leisurely 98.6-hour system tour by choice.  Time enough to check the relic device, to enter the chamber to reconstruct his natural form, rid himself of the uncomfortable human disguise.  To humans he would be totally unrecognisable.  Time to recalibrate, prepare for the debrief, check non-urgent messages.  A simple retrieval job which had required just one operative.  No sweat.