Book Release: Cutting The Bloodline by Angeline Trevena

Today I'm happy to be interviewing Angeline Trevena, author of horror, fantasy and dystopian fiction. Angeline's new dystopian novella, Cutting The Bloodline, will be released on 12th May, and can now be pre-ordered from Amazon. If you haven't read any of Angeline's stories before, this is your chance, and I know you won't be disappointed.

Cutting The Bloodline is a vivid portrayal of a scarily real future, and the man who risks his life to expose the truth. Insightful, original, imaginative, and a great read.

In the words of the author:

Not everyone is born innocent.

A generation of defective children were abandoned. They grew up on the fringes, without rights, without a way to change their fate.

Journalist Kenton Hicks is driven to tell their stories, but these are not stories everyone wants told. As he digs deeper, he finds that the discovery of the criminal gene, the foundation of their crime-free utopia, isn’t quite the salvation it promised to be.

Armed with a book that could bring down the government, Kenton finds the country’s future in his hands.

Some see him as a saviour, others as a traitor. It’s time for him to choose which he will become.

Cutting the bloodline can be pre-ordered until 12th May, and purchased on or after that date. Either way, follow this link: http://authl.it/B00W3AP0VY

And so, on to the interview. I asked Angeline a few questions, and here are her answers...

1. What inspired you to write Cutting The Bloodline?

I came across an article, just randomly, about how someone had identified a criminal gene, and it got me thinking about the possible ramifications of that. We're a society that—no matter our spiritual beliefs—put a lot of faith in science. Since the dawn of modern medicine, we've repeatedly found ourselves pulled between our morals and our desire to move forward scientifically. The vaccination debate, animal testing, so-called designer babies, cloning. I wondered what might happen if we chose science over humanity.

Having previously worked in the justice system for several years, I hold absolutely no belief in a criminal gene. Your choices are your own, and it's people's situations that push them to break the law, their desperation, or their personal moral code. It's not genetics.

2. This story is about institutionalised abuse of genetic processes – Is this something that troubles you about our own society?

I think it's an issue which will become more and more relevant as we move forward. We're so lucky to have the NHS in this country, but there's still a huge difference between those who can afford medicine and those who can't: cancer patients forced to sell their homes, families fund raising to send their children abroad for life-saving treatment. I can see the gap between those who have, and those who haven't, widening. Who knows what will be available to those who can afford it in the future, but it won't be available to all.

There's so many great things that can be done through genetic research, so many inherited conditions that a lot of people would love to be eradicated. But where do you draw the line? And if you eradicate a certain condition, what are you saying about the people who have it? We can't advance medicine and science without needing to seriously re-evaluate our morals.

3. You originally wrote this story as a stage play – do you have plans to see it performed?

It would be lovely to see it performed, but it's not something I'm planning to pursue. Even as a novella, it still has a very theatrical feel, especially through the dialogue which the entire story is hung on.

4. As a dystopian author, how do you see our future shaping up?

The last few decades have seen connectivity leading everything, and I think that's something that will continue. We like to have internet access 24-7, have it on the go, be able to chat online wherever we are. But I love the thought that all it takes is one solar flare, one large asteroid, one random event, and all of that, all of our technology is gone. Mother Nature can devastate and, no matter how hard we try, we can't control her. I love wondering how humans would cope if they were suddenly thrown back to the stone-age. Me? I'd probably be dead in a few hours, but those with practical skills, initiative, problem-solvers, they'll thrive. Your university education, your bank balance, your exclusive golf club membership won't mean diddly-squat if you can't grow food to eat.

5. What do you have coming next? Will there be a sequel?

Cutting the Bloodline was very much an experiment, just to see if I could self-publish, to see if I enjoyed it. The learning curve is very steep, but it's been so much fun. At the moment, I have no plans for a sequel to this, but maybe Kenton isn't done yet. I originally wrote this five years ago, and I still love him as much as I did when I first created him. So I'll never say never.

I'm planning an extensive dystopian series next. But that's all I'm going to say for now.

6. Tell us about some of the stories you've had published.

My first short story was published in January 2011, and it was actually a spin-off from Cutting the Bloodline. Entitled 'The Vincent Orphanage', it's a gothic ghost story, so quite different. Attendees of my book launch party will be able to download an updated version for free, and after that it will be exclusively available to my newsletter subscribers.

Most of my short stories are horror, I find it easier to write horror in the short form. It also gives me more scope to experiment, and to have fun, without a huge time commitment if it doesn't work out. This July, I have a story, 'Order Up', in the upcoming anthology 'Sunny With a Chance of Zombies' from KnightWatch Press. Everyone should look out for that one, it is set to be an amazing anthology, and I think this is the best short I've ever written. Despite being set during a zombie apocalypse, it's an incredibly tender, beautiful story.

7. As a work of dystopian fiction, do you see this appealing to a wider audience, such as contemporary fiction readers?

Absolutely. This is a story about people doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary situation. It's not heavy on the science-fiction, if anything, I worry that sci-fi fans picking it up will be disappointed! I think people will relate to the characters and their motivations, even if it is set 40 years into the future.

8. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what do you listen to?

Always. What I listen to depends very much on my intended style for what I'm writing at the time. When I write horror, I play much darker music; gothic rock, metal, something like that. But the band I play more than any other—and I think I probably listened to them through the entirety of this project—is Counting Crows. They've been my favourite band since I was 16, and the songs just inspire me so much.

9. As the mother of a young child, how do you balance writing with the other calls on your time?

I'm very lucky that I get to be a full-time mum and writer, and I'm even luckier that my son is a really, really good sleeper. He always has been. At more than two and a half years old, he still has long afternoon naps. I generally get up between 5am and 6am in the morning, and write until he gets up, then again in the afternoon. If I have any energy left, I'll write in the evening too, but more often than not, I simply drop onto the sofa and stare at the TV! But it does leave me with a lot of the day that I can't be tied to the computer, so I always have a notebook on hand for those ideas that crop up while I'm watching yet another episode of Peppa Pig!

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Angeline Trevena was born and bred in a rural corner of Devon, but now lives among the breweries and canals of central England. She is a horror and fantasy writer, poet and journalist. Cutting the Bloodline is her debut novella, and she has several short stories published in various anthologies and magazines.

In 2003 she graduated from Edge Hill University, Lancashire, with a BA Hons degree in Drama and Writing. During this time she decided that her future lay in writing words rather than performing them.

The most unlikely of horror writers, Angeline is scared of just about everything, and still can't sleep in a fully dark room. She goes weak at the sight of blood, can't share a room with a spider, but does have a streak of evil in her somewhere.

Some years ago she worked at an antique auction house and religiously checked every wardrobe that came in to see if Narnia was in the back of it. She's still not given up looking for it.

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Here's that purchase link again in case you want to get on over to Amazon and pre-order or buy a copy of Cutting The Bloodline: http://authl.it/B00W3AP0VY

You can run, You can hide: Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse

Have you ever wondered what your chances of survival might be during a Zombie apocalypse? A team from the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at Cornell University have published a paper that might help you answer that question.

You can see their paper, entitled “You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies” on Arxiv at arxiv.org/abs/1503.01104

Zombies, the authors say, “form a wonderful model system to illustrate modern epidemiological tools drawn from statistical mechanics, computational chemistry, and mathematical modeling.”

So what does this mean for you and me – people who just want to know our chances? If you read the paper, you'll see they perform an in-depth analysis, developing models for the potential spread of a Zombie invasion, then they apply those models to a hypothetical Zombie outbreak in the USA.

One of the factors they take into account is that the outcome changes depending on what model you use and what starting parameters you choose. These starting parameters are such things as the likelihood of being infected if you encounter a Zombie, where and with how many Zombies does the outbreak start, how likely you are to kill the Zombie, and other relevant factors.

They then run many different simulations for an outbreak in the USA, using the different models and

a selection of (what one might refer to as) credible starting parameters, and using a large collection of results they develop what they call a susceptibility map. Depending on where you live, what are your chances?

You'll have to see their maps to get the full answer, but I have to say, I wouldn't fancy my chances in Bakersfield, California. There's good news, though, for those of you who live in remote parts of Montana and Nevada. They found that after just one week, most of the population of the US would be infected, but four months later, remote parts of Montana and Nevada would still be Zombie-free!

Just watch those house prices go up when this hits the headlines.

The referenced article was written by Alexander A. Alemi, Matthew Bierbaum, Christopher R. Myers, James P. Sethna of the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. It is dated March 6th 2015. You can read it here: arxiv.org/abs/1503.01104

Book Review: The Sensorium of God by Stuart Clark

Sparks of Genius – The momentous clash of Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke.

This is the second in Stuart Clark's trilogy, including The Sky'sDark Labyrinth, The Sensorium of God and The Day Without Yesterday. Each takes a pivotal moment in the evolution of science and dramatises it in fiction.

From the back cover

It is the late seventeenth century and the movement of the planets remains a mystery despite the revolutionary work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Tycho Brahe almost a hundred years before.

Edmond Halley - dynamic adventurer and astronomer - seeks the help of Isaac Newton in unravelling the problem, but, though obsessed with understanding the orbits of the planets, Newton has problems of his own. The reclusive mathematician and alchemist has a guilty secret. He stole some of his ideas from Robert Hooke, and the quarrelsome experimentalist is demanding recognition.

While capable of contemplating the loftiest ideals and theories, the three men are just as quick to argue, and their grudges could derail the quest for scientific truth. The men's lives and work clash as Europe is pushed headlong towards the Age of the Enlightenment and science is catapulted into its next seismic collision with religion.

The Sensorium of God by Stuart Clark

Stuart Clark's effortless writing style and vivid period descriptions bring to life a story that is so often related in dusty, dry academic texts. The book is a joy to read. Stuart Clark's deep knowledge, not only of the historical setting, but of the underlying science and astronomy and the lives of the scientists involved, ensures that this story is not only engaging, but it is historically accurate. This is a book which carries a considerable promise, whether your background is in science or not. I am happy to say that Stuart Clark does not fail to deliver the goods.

This story focusses on the events surrounding Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley and Robert Hooke at the time when Newton was working on perhaps his most famous works, his Principia and Opticks. We also meet such notable characters as Gottfried Leibniz, John Flamsteed, Samuel Pepys, Christopher Wren and a veritable roll call of other well known people of the age.

It is a time when parliament and the crown are vying for power, much of which rested with the monarch, who used the church as a vehicle for control. We begin at the time of Charles II, and in short time, we see James II ascend to the throne, followed by William and Mary. Heresy was still a capital offence, and religious oppression was perpetrated by Catholics and Protestants alike. Along with the suppression of any religious views that conflicted with church doctrine, any scientific claims that could be – even at at stretch – considered out of line with church doctrine, could lead to accusations of heresy.

In these times of political and religious instability, prominent scientists such as Newton, Halley and Liebniz walked the fine line between provoking religious or political wrath, and becoming the victims of the deeds or misdeeds of others.

We see the fascinating relationship between Newton, his alchemy and his science, and his sexual curiosity about the young mathematician Fatio, as well as the unconventional relationship between the irascible Hooke and his niece, Grace.

Stuart Clarke weaves a compelling tale, with fascinating insights into the flawed characters of Newton, Halley and Hooke. He brings the people and locations to life so well that you can see them and smell them. This is fine writing and story-telling, which never loses its pace and depth, and with no shortage of action and intrigue.

About Dr. Stuart Clark, from his website:

Image courtesy: Simon Wallace,

www.meltingpotpictures.co.uk

Stuart Clark is a widely read astronomy journalist. His career is devoted to presenting the complex world of astronomy to the general public. Stuart holds a first class honours degree and a PhD in astrophysics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a former Vice Chair of the Association of British Science Writers. On 9 August 2000, UK daily newspaper The Independent placed him alongside Stephen Hawking and the Astronomer Royal, Professor Sir Martin Rees, as one of the ‘stars’ of British astrophysics teaching.

Currently he divides his time between writing books and, in his capacity of cosmology consultant, writing articles for New Scientist. He is a consultant and writes for the European Space Agency where he was Senior Editor for Space Science for some time. Over the years Stuart has written for amongst others: BBC Sky at Night, BBC Focus, The Times, The Guardian, The Economist, The Times Higher Education Supplement, Daily Express, Astronomy Now, Sky and Telescope and Astronomy. He has written text for an issue of stamps for the Royal Mail. He writes an online blog for the Guardian called Across the Universe, read all around the world.

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Stuart Clark's website is www.stuartclark.com, where you will find more information about his writing, fiction and non-fiction, his journalism and much more.

Francesca's Bookshelf: Percy's Reliques

“Consisting of old heroic ballads, songs and other pieces of our earlier poets together with some few of later date”

Francesca loves her ballads and songs, and with plenty of spare time and little else to spend her money on, she has assembled a formidable collection of old books, many of them containing ancient collections of ballads. She is pleased to find a copy of the three volume set of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, a collection put together by the Rev. Thomas Percy in the 18^th Century, and commonly known as Percy's Reliques. The full three volume set is hard to find, and she pays a high price for the set.

We owe Percy a lot, as the inspiration for subsequent generations of collectors and singers. Without his work, fewer of these old ballads and songs would be available to us today, and artists such as Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and many others would have had a poorer access to our traditional songs and ballads.

This collection, first published in 1765, was one of the earliest published collections of ballads, and at a time when ballads were popularly thought of as vulgar street songs, it shone a new light on the form, providing future generations with a window into the past of these wonderful gems. Indeed, his work provided inspiration for future collectors such as Child, Scott, Jamieson, Motherwell and Buchan to name but a few. Notably, the Rev. R. A Willmott produced a single “handy volume” revision of the Reliques in 1857, entitled Percy's Reliques, in which he cleared away all Percy's essays and prefaces, and added annotation of his own.

Henry B. Wheatley, edited the 1885 three volume edition photographed above (this copy is a 1927 reprint). According to Wheatley, Thomas Percy was born in 1729 in Bridgenorth in Shropshire. He matriculated at Christ Church College, Oxford in 1746 and achieved his Masters degree in 1750. In 1753, at the age of 24, he was made rector of Easton Maudit in Northampton. As a young man he came into possession of an unbound manuscript in poor condition. Of it, he said, “I saw it lying dirty on the floor, under a bureau in ye parlour: being used by the maids to light the fire …” Happily he was able to rescue the manuscript, and this, along with other collections, printed broadsides and other sources, provided the material from which he derived the Reliques. Percy's precious rescued manuscript itself was probably written shortly before 1650, and was used extensively by Child more than a hundred years later.

Percy died in 1811 at the ripe old age of 83.

On the left is Willmott's "handy volume" edition. Percy's Reliques. This copy is not dated by the publisher or printer, but the inscription in the front is as a prize, given in 1879.

This edition contains a small number of illustrations, like the one shown here.

As an interesting footnote, I should add that, although Percy titled his work "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry", the collection does not contain only English poetry! As an example, some ballads such as Sir Patrik Spence, and Edward, Edward are Scottish, as he states in the text.

I have scanned some pages from Wheatley's 3 volume set for your delight. What follows is a ballad entitled On Thomas Lord Cromwell, from the second volume. I chose this because Thomas Cromwell is currently being depicted in the media in a television dramatisation of Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall. Percy prefaces the ballad with a brief essay, and this is followed by [in square brackets] Wheatley's own comments. The ballad is written in archaic language, which makes it a challenge to read if you're not used to it, but it's worth the effort. Just click on the images to enlarge them.

I hope you've enjoyed this little trip into the life of Thomas Percy.

Francesca is one of the two main characters in An Accident Of Birth, by Tony Benson

A Signed Book Is The Perfect Christmas Gift - Special Offer

How about getting somebody a signed book as a Christmas gift this year…

Get a signed paperback copy of An Accident Of Birth for only £5.50 + £2.80 UK p&p. (For overseas postage, please contact me)

If you'd like me to dedicate the book to someone special, please just let me know their name, and I'll be happy to oblige.

Make someone happy this Christmas. Give them a book to read.


Twenty-year-old Francesca was born with a rare gift – fertility. In a polluted society, the government imprisons and forces her to breed children for the infertile masses. She has waited four long years for her boyfriend Dominic to rescue her. Now desperate, he hires a black market rescuer, Baron Craig Drake, a fertile who has escaped the government's clutches and thrives on exploiting others. Unbeknownst to Dominic, Drake has his own plans for Francesca. When Dominic attempts to free her from the government's prison, he finds himself struggling to keep her from becoming another victim of the ruthless Baron… and to free the woman he loves once and for all.

Touchdown! Rosetta's Success Story and the Philae Lander

Image courtesy ESA

Huge congratulations to the ESA Rosetta mission team! They have done what some said was impossible. The image above is a photo taken by the Rosetta craft of the Philae lander shortly after it was released for its descent onto comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Seven hours later, this afternoon at 1603 GMT, the signal was received confirming that the Philae lander has touched down on the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

This success paves the way for ground-breaking research. The Philae lander is equipped to take images of the comet's surface, but it can do much more than that. If its battery remains serviceable and the Philae lander remains anchored to the comet, it will analyse the composition of the surface, drill for samples, and send back an analysis. It will use radio signals to probe the comet's structure, and all in all, it will provide a wealth of data about the comet.

So... why do we care?

Comets and asteroids are considered interesting because scientists believe that they are the leftover remnants from the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. Comets are particularly interesting because they ended up in the outer reaches of the solar system, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. These places are cold - about 50 degrees above absolute zero, and because of this extremely low temperature, the composition of comets has changed little since they were formed.

Comets are well known for being made up of dust, rock and frozen gasses, including water ice. There is evidence that the water in comets could be the source of water on Earth, and this is particularly interesting because those very same comets contain a wealth of organic molecules - the building blocks of amino acids, protein, and hence, life itself.

So what we see when we get up close and personal with a comet such as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a window into the past. So far in the past that we gain clues to the processes that took place during the very formation of the solar system. This in its turn gives us clues about our own past.

The Rosetta mission, and particularly the Philae lander, can teach us much about the early years of the solar system, and even give us clues about the formation of the Sun itself.

For so many reasons this success is a source of excitement, not only for the scientific community, but for everybody.

Congratulations to the ESA Rosetta mission team. May your successes continue and your data be plentiful.

A Big Day for the Rosetta Team

Today is a big day for the Rosetta team. This morning, in Darmstadt, the ESA flight team gave the go-ahead to release the Philae lander on its way for an historic landing on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

This mission, which was first conceived in the 1980s, has been many years in the making. It was launched on 2nd March 2004 with the objective of visiting this comet. Over a period of ten years, Rosetta navigated a complex series of ever increasing orbits of the sun, until on 6th August this year it achieved a successful rendezvous with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Rosetta is the first craft to have made a rendezvous with a comet, and the success of the Philae lander is by no means certain. What happens today will be a complex and difficult landing, and the eyes of the world will be on the live feeds.

I want to wish the team success with this bold endeavour.


Image, courtesy ESA