Introducing Fusion author John-Paul Cleary who lives
in the small town of Stonehaven in the North East of Scotland. John’s story
Afternoon Express appears in the Fusion anthology.
John-Paul is no stranger to publishing success. His
debut novel Convergent Space peaked at number 1 in the Space Opera charts on
Amazon UK in 2012 and has sold over 10,000 copies worldwide.
His sci-fi novella Eleven Town is also gathering a
crop of good reviews on Amazon.
Despite his success to date, John-Paul wasn’t sure
he had hit the right note with Afternoon Express. ‘I wasn’t confident at all
that my story would be included in the anthology. I wrote it especially for the
collection so it was a pleasant surprise when they liked it.’ He adds,
referring to the invited contributors, Stuart Aken and Danuta Reah, ‘It’s
always nice to be categorised alongside what I call ‘real’ writers. That
doesn’t mean I’m a fake. It just means
I’m not as good as them.’
And how did he find the editorial process and will
it have a lasting effect on his writing. He tells me ‘The Fantastic Books
Publishing editorial team gave me some invaluable editing tips.’ And on lasting
effects, he adds, ‘ I’m hoping my writing will need less editing since I now
hear their advice in my head as I write.
Actually it’s becoming a bit of a problem. I’ve tried counting down from five and
clicking my fingers but I just can’t snap out of it…’
Because Fusion spotlights science-fiction and
fantasy, we invited all our authors to become a space scout who has just
discovered Earth and learnt its history. John-Paul really threw himself into
the task and gave us a full-blown alien report.
***
See attached photos of the Grand Canyon, the
Pyramids, a whale and a plate of tangled up food they call spaghetti. Apart from that my trip to Earth was rather
dull I’m afraid. The dominant species on this planet call themselves the
People. They’ve mastered technology and even rudimentary space flight but at
heart they’re a dull lot, not at all the kind of aggressive ally we’re looking
for. They were getting somewhere at one
point with a group called the Romans and later during a time-period called the
20th Century but that’s all gone now. These days they’re constantly trying to bring
peace and avert wars. It’s really quite
sad.
Now if one of the other species on Earth had risen
to the top things might have been different, say the hilarious Chimpanzees or
the vicious Cat family. I’m certain the
Cats would have devised some weaponry worth writing home about. But it was not to be. Earth I’m afraid is stuck with these People
and as a precaution they keep the Cats locked up in their houses, never in more
than twos and threes.
Another odd thing about the People is their
language. They don’t realise that an efficient language – with the necessary
affixes, suffixes, infixes, prefixes and circumfixes - only needs 684 different
words. One of their languages called
English has hundreds of thousands of different words. No one even knows what they all mean!
A lot of the People spend their time finding
different ways to rearrange these thousands of words into what they call books,
which are like anecdotes but much longer. I got my hands on one called the
Night’s Dawn Trilogy. 1.2 million words. I won’t be reading that!
My advice about Earth – stay away. It’s dull and the weather is poor. They don’t
do good wars and the People spend most of their time reading books, talking, or
sending more words to each other in little messages called texts and tweets.
Earth won’t ever be a useful ally. Not until they get
rid of all these words and books, or alternatively until someone frees the
Cats!
***
John-Paul’s fans will be pleased to hear that he is
currently working on the second book in the Convergent Space series.
Convergent Space– An epic space opera where Earth is
a faded galactic power desperate to regain its former status.
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