Today I'm delighted to welcome Hugh Duncan, the author of Life on Mars: The Viking are Coming to talk about his love of writing. You can also read an excerpt from his book.
Life on Mars: The Vikings are coming
Racing against time, Jade and
her friends must hide evidence of Life on Mars to stop the probes from Earth
finding them
Jade is on her way to meet up with her dad, Elvis, for her sixteen-millionth birthday (tortles live a long time in spite of the harsh conditions on Mars), when she gets side-tracked by a strange object that appears to have fallen from the sky. Elvis’ travelling companion Starkwood, an electrostatic plant, is hearing voices, claiming that “The Vikings Are Coming”, while their football-pitch-sized flying friend Fionix confirms the rumour: the Earth has sent two craft to look for life on Mars.
It then becomes a race against time to hide any evidence of such life before Earth destroys it for good. Can Jade and her friends succeed, with help from a Lung Whale, a liquid horse, some flying cats, the Hellas Angels, the Pyrites and a couple of House Martins from the South of France? Oh, and a quantum tunnelling worm – all while avoiding Zombie Vegetables and trouble with a Gravity Artist and the Physics Police?! A gentle and lightly humorous science fantasy adventure.Elsewhen: https://bit.ly/LifeOnMars-Vikings
The
main buy links are as follows:
https://Books2Read.com/LifeOnMars
eBook:
https://books.apple.com/gb/book/id6443120642
https://bit.ly/LifeOnMars-Google
https://bit.ly/LifeOnMars-Kobo
https://bit.ly/LifeOnMars-NookUS
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B61SSNVC
paperback:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Mars-Vikings-are-coming/dp/1915304024/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/life-on-mars-hugh-duncan/1141765229?ean=9781915304025
https://www.bookdepository.com/x/9781915304025
An excerpt from the book:
The four dimensional characters Turkan and Amelius
III are having a chat.
‘Amelius?’
said Turkan, having now placed all his chess pieces in what appeared to be a
random way along the ‘single file’ board, with some small gaps, large gaps,
three pieces in a row and some on the underside (though to Amelius they would
have looked to be on the top side in view of the 4 dimensional positioning, a
bit like a Mobius strip). ‘Amelius?’
‘Yes?’ he
said, now offering him some nuts, by extending his hand down below him and then
seeing his hand appear from the opposite direction above and in front of Turkan.
‘Thanks. Why
are you called Amelius the Third? Is
it because your father was Amelius the Second?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, well,
was your grandfather Amelius the Second and your father had a different name?’
‘No.’
‘So why are
you called Amelius the Third?’
‘Oh, because
two thirds of me is not here…’
Turkan did a
little double-take, then thought about it.
‘I’ll go
first,’ he said to Amelius and he picked up his first pawn by reaching to the
left and his hand came up from below to grab the white piece on the lower side
of the strip. He moved it to the top surface and placed it between two black
pawns. ‘Your turn…’
‘Ok,’ said
Amelius, then he looked thoughtful as he surveyed the placement of the pieces,
making out he knew how to play much better than he actually could.
‘So,’
continued Turkan, ‘where are the other two thirds?’
This third
of Amelius had picked up one of his black pawns and was fingering it
absentmindedly.
‘What?’
‘Well, if
only a third of you is here, where are the other two thirds of your body?’
‘Um, well
like you, I’m also on Mars.’
‘I know,’
said Turkan, ‘but that’s only a tiny bit. Where’s the rest?’
‘Oh, well,
my parents told me I have several holdings rolled up in those off shore hidden
dimensions.
‘You must be
huge!’ said Turkan, looking at his
friend and trying to consider the big picture.
‘Big boned
my mum said,’ replied Amelius, still toying with his first pawn.
‘Where are
they?’ Turkan asked.
‘What, my
bones?’
‘The rest of
you?’
‘Oh,’ he
thought then pointed using the pawn in his hand, ‘over there somewhere…’
Amelius’ arm
stretched off out of the right of the bubble, then came down from the ceiling
through the floor and came in and out several times, crisscrossing itself
around him and Turkan.
Turkan
tutted and shook his head four dimensionally, which looked odd as it grew and
shrunk and split into many parts like he was caught in a kaleidoscope.
‘No,’ he
corrected his friend, ‘that’s the way to Mars, where your rocky butt sticks
out!’
‘Ah,’
realised Amelius, retracting his arm, ‘then it’s in the opposite direction…’
As he was
about to indicate the hiding place of his missing mass, Turkan grabbed his
wrist and looked with concern.
‘Where’s the
pawn?!’
‘What?’
‘You were
holding your black pawn when you pointed. Your hand’s empty now!’
‘Oh,’ said
Amelius, examining it then looking in all his other hands in case he’d passed
it on.
‘You didn’t
let go of it did you?!’
‘Um I don’t
know, maybe it slipped out…’
‘This could
be serious,’ said Turkan.
‘But I saw
you had some spare pieces in the hypercuboid box where you got them from…’
‘No Amelius,’ said Turkan in a worried and
annoyed voice, ‘you rub anything from our world against the three dimensional
universe and there could be consequences. I told you this before!’
‘Sorry,’
said Amelius awkwardly, ‘but you did say the chance was very small.’
‘Yea, a
hundred million to one I know!’ said Turkan. ‘Let’s hope nothing comes from
this…’
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Now that you have had a little taster of the book, you might want to discover more about its author.
People will be interested in your writing
I have been a lifelong diary writer, but that, along with most creative writings before about age 30 I wouldn’t show to the public for fear of being ridiculed. If I don’t count my Dr Who book when I was aged six, my first completed science fantasy novel ‘Kessia 499’, was in 1978 when I was twenty, about two very different civilisations, cave man like and greek like and how a guy from the cultured crowd ends up stuck with the savages and I think I subconsciously stole part of the plot from One Million Years BC. Next I wrote ‘I want to be a machine’ about a young man who falls in love with his computer, obviously with a humorous slant. Then I wrote ‘Robots should be seen not heard’, about a time of too many robots and their unemployment problems. Douglas Adams must take some blame for that one.
The first full novel I sent off was called ‘Reproduce or Die’ about a genetic engineering team that designed a virus to stop the spread of killer bees, but the project was tampered with and there then follows a body swap type plot with the dark humour of Ben Elton rolled up with Michael Critchon’s intrigue. Suffice to say no one, not even Elsewhen Press, wanted it so I went and hid up Short Story Street.
I wrote a humorous weekly review for teachers that started out more like Private Eye but the regular parody story about the teachers being doctors and nurses and the student being the patients in a M*A*S*H like setting became the most popular item so I felt I had finally found my niche.
Enter now into the third millennium and with Discworld, Lord of the Rings films appearing and Harry Potter on the rise, I felt inspired to write a parody for the students. I created the Deskworld Stories with teachers and students being witches and wizards in a magical school. This ran for over a decade with several dozen short stories, until I got back to the Life on Mars Project, which had been on the back burner since 1976.
I love writing, whether it’s the diary, songs, poems, physics revision books, maths articles or fictions novels. I had never really stopped to ask myself why I like writing until it was posed to me for the blog tour. To be able to conjure up a tale, to be able to create a whole new world, a universe even, brings great personal joy. For other people to enjoy it too is the cherry on the cake. If that sounds too cheesy then I guess it must a cheese cake.
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