Another review of The Empathy Effect

This review is by Terry Grimwood of Exaggeratedpress and I'm so pleased to say it is yet another favourable one, some of what he says:

There is a hint of Michael Dibdin’s Dirty Tricks here, and a distinct nod towards Leslie Thomas’s Dangerous Davies. But Cooper Jones most definitely Bob Lock’s own excellent creation. It is a bright, satisfying meld of thriller and comedy. Cooper is amiably disreputable and hapless. I can see this working as a one-off television film, the pace and plot construction lends itself beautifully to the visual medium.

Woot! now I've not only been mentioned in the same sentence as Dean Koontz but Michael Dibdin and Leslie Thomas as well! COOL! He goes on to say:

The Empathy Effect then, great , brooding cover art, a neat twist-and-turn plot, murders, psychopaths, nasty abductions, edge of the seat cliff-hangers and compelling characters , what else could you possibly need?

Full review can be found here: REVIEW

200th Post and the first of 2011

Well 2010 has been and gone and I can't say I'm sorry to see it go. It wasn't a very happy year, especially the last of it. However, 2011 has arrived bearing glad tidings and I hope it is an omen of good things to come.
Two reviews of my work have made me extremely happy, the first is in Grim Reviews and it picks Null Immortalis as being in its top three supernatural books of 2010 and says of my story:

Bob Lock's "Haven't You Ever Wondered?" stars D.F. Lewis himself and Null Immortalis as meta-fictional constructs threatened by inter-dimensional interlopers. This is an inspired and unusual sci-fi story that is especially pleasing to longtime Nemonymous devotees.

Full review here>
http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/nemonymous-ten-null-immortalis-reviewed.html

Second review is of The Empathy Effect and can be found over at the Morpheus Tales website where the reviewer actually says:

Lock’s book rivals Koontz’s Odd Thomas and provides a wonderfully subtle and engaging story, and with Cooper Jones, a unique voice and a character you can’t help but love, along with the irresistible Alby (The General), creating a winning formula. . This story definitely deserves a sequel.

Wow! To be mentioned in the same sentence as Dean Koontz is one thing but to be compared to him is the highest of praise, I'm blushing :)
NB The Morpheus review does contain many spoilers.

Many thanks to both reviewers :)

My lovely dog, Nia, died today.

Nia's heart finally beat its last today at about 12.30pm and she died as she lived, quietly with no fuss or bother and with a dignity that I find hard to explain. She was only about nine, quite young for a dog, but she had an enlarged heart which only manifested itself last spring when after returning from a walk she had a very bad coughing fit. I thought she'd swallowed something but upon visiting the vet's the under-lying problem was discovered. Part of her heart wasn't functioning at all well and blood was backing up and pooling in her stomach area causing her to not breathe properly. For many months she managed to cope pretty well on the drugs that were prescribed but eventually they began to have little effect and this morning she died in my arms. She was such a lovely dog, never growled at anyone, never bared her teeth, very rarely barked and was always obedient and full of love for everyone in the family, even for Sheba our other dog who used to pester her and tended to want to rule the roost, even though she was a third of Nia's size.
This is the last photo taken of her on Christmas Day 2010. I can't begin to tell you how sad I'm feeling today, I know, she was only a dog, but WHAT a dog.

Christmas Estronomicon 2010

Steve Upham of Screamingdreams has just released his Christmas Estronomicon 2010, a free on-line magazine of horror/fantasy/sf which is in both pdf format and Issuu format which is quite neat, a page-flipping version and can be found here and on page 60 you'll find my contribution which is called 'Ecstasy' hope you get the time to take a look.

Merry Christmas 2010!

Best wishes to you all this Christmas 2010

The Empathy Effect Review In Black Static

Black Static (what a great name for a magazine) is a sister-magazine to the world famous Science Fiction publication, Interzone and the December issue (No.20) features an in-depth review of my latest offering, The Empathy Effect.
The reviewer is Stephen Theaker (he of Theaker's Quarterly & Paperbacks) a well-established ezine and one I've had some work featured in.
Stephen's review is quite favourable and he's treated me kindly over-all (thanks Stephen), it's always scary picking up a review of your work and reading whether or not the reviewer enjoyed your tale or not!
Copies of The Empathy Effect can be ordered from Screamingdreams or you could just pop over to the website and read the first chapter for free.

I'm entry number four in Interzone's Advent Calender

This time of year it is always a treat to visit the Interzone website where they host a free advent calender of short stories. Each story has been previously published somewhere and features main-stream writers and 'little' writers like myself that have contributed to their forum over the years. I'm pleased to say that I am day number four (today 4th December 2010) and my story is entitled: 'A Zombie Is For Life, Not Just For Christmas' and can be found here: ADVENT I hope you enjoy it and take the time to read the other offerings.

The Empathy Effect gets a good review :)

I'm so chuffed with this review of The Empathy Effect from the celebrated SF author Neal Asher :)

REVIEW

Mother, please don't cry for me

Mother, please don't cry for me, for I have gone
My pain's embrace has left, though you feel it still
Turn your anguish to joy, for I am at peace
In our trench's arms I lie; a sweet release

And softly the tender rain falls like blood
Upon our upturned faces that see no more
Lovingly sweeps the red mud from sightless eye
With purest tears wrought from God's own summer sky

And our trench fills with a profuse torrent then
Carries remains of its hopeless protection
Earthen walls, sandbags and bodies, everyone
Seeks to escape the carnage we have become

We're but empty vessels of our former selves
The flow that seeks to wash away our remains
Blushes as it turns an even redder hue
Shamed witness of those, who know not what they do

Mother, the foe were like us; all someone's child
No malice in their hearts; there was none in ours
Around their feet I beg you let no blame pool
Cheap were our brief lives; sent here by those who rule

We were as but leaves on a great tree grown old
But as the leaves fall, so shall the strong oak too
Weakened, helpless to stand against folly wind
Roots consumed from within by men who have sinned

Leaders who knew the cost in our blood and lives
At their spotless boots must all blame be now piled
Vain, they called the piper, but bade us pay the tune
In granite should their shame be forever hewn

So... to grave we go; I hope for the best cause
As symbols of the imprudence of conflict
Peacefully safe with our friends, our enemies, men, brave and true
War, that took so many...

... Begun, by so few...

Bob Lock

Poppy photo:

Halloween, unlucky for some?

An insistent little kid turned up twice tonight, tricking and treating. I got fed-up and closed the door abruptly, on his foot. He went down screaming so we had to help him inside and let him sit down while we checked his foot. One of our dogs took an instant dislike to him and started barking. The kid, instead of keeping still, tried to hobble out of the house, the dog bit him on the arse.
When we finally managed to separate the two and calmed the kid down we thought it prudent to stock him up with a few lollipops to shut him up. It worked better than I thought, he choked on one of them and we are now trying to bury him under a rose bush in the garden whilst it is still dark,

but don’t tell anyone....

Back to the grindstone!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was short-listed in The Golden Blasters' Script Competition which was part of Octocon 2010 (The National Irish Science Fiction Convention) that took place last weekend. Unfortunately I didn't win however, but it was a buzz being one of the final nominees. The winner was American screenwriter Stuart Creque (well done Stuart) for his script 'He Knows', here are the short-listed scripts:

1) The Special By Ruairi Moore

2) An Other Woman by Alexander Major

3) He Knows by Stuart Creque

4) City of Vampires by Niall Byrne

5) Meeting Amadeus by Bob Lock

6) The King of Nowhere by Thomas Mulhall

Oh well, no fame and fortune, no option to buy 'Meeting Amadeus' by Spielberg or Ridley Scott, back to the grindstone then... hehe

Other news:
Had a great review of one of my short stories that is in DF Lewis's Null Immortalis. My story is called 'Haven't You Ever Wondered?' and Peter Tennant of Black Static and Interzone said:

Bob Lock knows how to
pander to the vanity of editors, with not
only Tullis but Lewis himself as a character
in ‘Haven’t You Ever Wondered?’ and the
whole Nemonymous project reified as a
matter of multiversal importance in a witty
and cheekily audacious story that delights
with its playfulness.

Meet The Author - Alastair Reynolds

I attended a 'Meet The Author' night tonight at Pontardawe Library and met Alastair Reynolds who gave a talk on SF in general, his work and how it all began.
At one point Alastair handed around a folded notebook made from A4 paper upon which was written (in felt tip) his first ever SF story. It was also illustrated by him too and when one of the audience asked how old he was when he wrote it I was very tempted to shout out 'twenty-five!' for a bit of a laugh but managed to control myself :) I was only twenty years out, he wrote it when he was five!
He spoke of how he was first published and I wasn't surprised to learn that the first story he ever sold for 'good' money was to Interzone, something he was very proud of and went on to say that:

Of all the SF magazines around, Interzone is designed by someone who has a clue about what they are doing

After the talk I managed to get him to sign two books of his that I have in my collection, get a photo done with him and pick his brains about a problem I have in a SF novel I'm writing about folding space and wormholes. He was very patient and helpful and the evening was an enjoyable one.
He said he'd be attending BristolCon in November and hopefully I'll be able to have a chat with him again (unless he sees me first and does a runner!) hehe :)

The Steam-Powered Singularity

Charles Babbage was the first to translate himself into the vast Matrioshka Brain that enclosed the young star in its ironclad Dyson sphere grip. The giant leap in computing power required for this happened accidentally when his Difference Engine was left running un-supervised over the weekend. It had overheated, and had somehow spewed out the blueprints for a Mark Two version of itself. Enthralled with this accidental discovery Babbage tried to duplicate the action by purposefully running the Mark Two Engine beyond its safe working parameters.
It worked.
Exponentially.
Time and time again.
He started thinking about the possibility of creating a Singularity.

***

Sometime later, in the cold, hard vacuum of space.

Huge plumes of superheated steam crystallized into diamond droplets of water immediately upon being expelled into space from the city-sized vents as the furnace, deep within the Singularity’s centre, chugged-away happily consuming the star’s inexhaustible power.
A vast improvement upon the prototype coal version, Babbage thought.
However, as the last human being on Earth was finally uploaded, and the ravaged planet, which the uncontrollable landslide into the Industrial and Technological Age had generated, was finally returned to Nature, no-one was left to notice that the Niagara Falls-sized water tube (which showed the boiler’s water level) was not as full as it seemed. The gargantuan glass was stained at the full mark by the oxides in the water. The tube was actually empty and the boiler was burning unabated. Yet another overheating problem that the genius had overlooked. The last thing that went through Charles Babbage’s virtual mind before the Matrioshka Brain went supernova was:

‘Is it hot in here... or is just me?

By Bob Lock

The Empathy Effect - Audio Taster

Here is the first couple of chapters of The Empathy Effect, narrated by yours truly. It will take a minute or two to download, just enough time to get the cotton-wool :)



If you don't have the Apple Quicktime Plugin then try this, it should allow you to either download the mp3 file or select a media player of your choice:


The Empathy Effect



Warning: Contains bad language

Hoping to 'Kindle' some sales!

Messing about on Amazon a couple of days ago I managed to upload 'A Cloud Of Madness' to the Kindle zone of both Amazon UK and Com. It is £2.93 (cheap as chips!) and is a SF novella with robots/a nasty virus/a comet/a post apocalyptic Earth and Native American Indians :) and can be bought here:
LINK

Coming Soon! - The Empathy Effect

"Cooper Jones is an alcoholic with a super-power,
he is an Empath, almost able to read minds... almost!
He's also a Swansea traffic warden and doesn't have
to read minds to know what people think of him.
However, he had no idea how hated he was until
he was bound to Mumbles Pier and left to drown."

Based in Swansea, Dylan Thomas' 'lovely, ugly town', The Empathy Effect is an urban fantasy that will be in print soon and can be purchased from my publisher
SCREAMING DREAMS
and probably Amazon and Barnes and Noble,
and who knows, perhaps from a bookshop near you!

Cover photograph 'Hands' by Christer Austad
End photograph of Consitution Hill by Bob Lock
Cover designed by Steve Upham.

"Allow Bob Lock to turn the key in the lock of imagination
and throw wide the gates of wonder -- if you pass through you'll find the journey
more than worthwhile!"
Rhys Hughes

Happy 10,000 to me!

Just checked my blog and I've had 10,000 visitors since its creation, who'd have thunk it eh?

Null Immortalis Lives!

Today I received my complimentary copy of D.F.Lewis's Nemonymous 10 - 'Null Immortalis' -, his last anthology and I'm really pleased to say that I'm in it with a little story entitled 'Haven't you ever wondered?' There are about twenty-six short stories in this tome and if they turn out to be as good as previous Nemos then they'll be a real treat to read.

Copies can be bought here: NULL IMMORTALIS so get ordering and be part of an end of an era!

An elf and a vampire walk into a bar...

Just a quick script:

‘So, you’re an elf?’

‘Yes, Elvin’s the name, and you?’

‘Vladimir.’

‘Foreign are you?’

‘Not in the country I was born in.’

‘But here you are. You don’t look like an elf. Really tall and your skin, it’s so white. You an albino?’

‘No, not an albino but I suppose my skin is rather white. ’

‘So, what’s up?’

‘Out for a drink. You? What’s a plump little elf doing out alone?’

‘Just up to mischief, usual stuff. What sort of drink are you after?’

‘Oh, a short seems preferable.’

‘I don’t drink spirits.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘But you just said...’

‘I know.’

‘... am I really plump?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps I need to slim down.’

‘I can help with that.’

‘Oh? How?’

‘Let me see your neck...’

I'm in Null Immortalis!

I'm so pleased to announce that my short story 'Haven't You Ever Wondered?' has been accepted by D.F.Lewis for inclusion in his last ever Nemonymous anthology
- NULL IMMORTALIS -
It sadly brings to an end a run of ten anthologies that have broken the mould in many, many ways.
Des' Nemonymous series will be remembered as the world's very first multi-authored anthology specifically collected as anonymous stories. However, Null Immortalis will end the run with all the authors having their by-line alongside their stories, they will not be anonymous.

This last edition is scheduled to be published this September.