Have you read the news lately? You know that little tidbit about the dancing moons round my home planet, Neptune?

You haven’t? Really? Truly?

Oh dear, the important things in life, and you miss out…

Let me explain it you. Neptune 14 known moons – Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Hippocamp, Proteus, Triton, Nereid, Halide, Sao, Laomedeia, Psamathe and Neso. Those in the list from Triton onwards are irregular moons, probably captured by Neptune.

Now the ‘dance of avoidance’ is supposedly going on between Naiad and Thalassa. Their orbits are 1,150 miles apart. Yes I do mean miles and not astronomical units or parsecs or lightyears. Miles is miles!

The dance ensures they stay 2,200 miles, since Naiad moves up and down every time it passes by Thalassa, which moves more slowly. Sitting on Thalassa, as I do when I want some peace and quiet from existence and the universe, Naiad’s movements take on a very strange, zigzagging  dance. The moon would pass by twice from above, and then twice from below, repeating again and again and ad nauseum.

Got that? Good.

You humans call is orbital resonance, which you would expect to be fairly common.

What do you mean, why?

Well, when you have resonance you have stability and stability means it stays like that for a long long time. It’s this time that makes resonant orbits look more frequent that people who don’t-stop-to-think-through-the-subject think it’s happening in our neighbourhood too freaking often.

Right now we’ve got that sorted, I need to do some serious star gazing…

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday dear C.A.T.!

Happy birthday to me!

Yes, it’s eight magnificent wonderful years since my first story, C.A.T. (well what other title could there be?) was published!

Ah, those were the heady days when two more stories followed within a couple of years thanks to TWB Press. Thank you to all who bought and enjoyed my wonderful lovely gorgeous cheeky humorous stories. I hope you found them Purr-fect!

Of course my lovely author has since completed my novel! Eight Honorable Mentions from Writers of the Future short story contest later and her beta readers loving my novel, still not an agent or publisher in sight (though she’s had a couple of near misses). Growl, hiss, yowl! My author’s gone off in a huff about it, and I know from experience it’s no use trying to prod her into action right now. As she says, I’ve had a load of bad luck of nasty coincidences e.g. when my first story came out, all eyes were on the data about nuclear meltdown at Fukushima after that horrendous tsunami (publicity didn’t get a look-in that day).

Writers of the Future contest judges must have been exercising their sense of humour when they didn’t award my “Belonging to Nowhere’ chapter an Honourable Mention! Meh!

Well if it’s not published, you humans won’t get to know the true answer to the Terminator problem! Or an astrophysical problem out at edge of our Solar System! Or how to really prepare for interstellar flight! Yep you get three problems solved for the price of one in my novel! I’m so clever, magnificent, super-robo-catish! Purr, purr, purr.. I’m off to ‘dreamland’ for the rest of the day, purr, purr, purr…..

 

 

Someone, who’s reading my novel, said it’s awesome. That’s right: AWESOME.

Isn’t he lovely? Purr purr purr….

A couple of other people who’ve read said they enjoyed it!

Come to think of it, of course, it’s awesome. It’s about me! The one and only wonderful me!

Which is much better than what my author is doing… now let’s get this straight.. These are her credits:

• MA Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in 2011 with a distinction for the novel module
• Shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbitt prize for the most promising novel on the Bath Spa MA Creative Writing course
• Cyber Control short story voted the most favourite published story in 2016 on Kraxon magazine
• Eight (yes, 8) separate Honourable Mentions for short stories in The Writers of the Future Contest (2014 – 2017) (all stories about me!)
• Published SFerics 2017 anthology from which Geoff Nelder’s Angular Size short story was shortlisted for the BSFA Best in Shorter Fiction in 2017

So what is she doing with my novel?

Sitting on it! Doing nothing with it! Letting it moulder! Letting the ink fade! She says, she’s fed up of hitting her head against the brick wall of the science fiction publishing industry (she obviously hasn’t hit her head against my tungsten alloy teeth). Snarl, growl, hiss…. a very llloooooooonnnnnnnnggggggggggggg hissssssssssssssss…..

I’m going to pout!

Um… can cats pout? I mean meat cats?

Time I taught them so they can all creep into her garden and do a mass pout. See how she likes that. Sitting on it indeed… excuse me I’ve got some teaching to do!

It’s that time of the annual cycle when humans feel sorry for themselves and try to cheer up by holding festivals like Christmas. Oh ‘the delights’ of having to be an organic living with seasons.

Anyway…. I’ve persuaded my author to re-release my Christmas book…

The Blurb:

C.A.T. is a self-learner robo-cat. Only problem is self-learners are illegal and if discovered will be deleted, no questions asked. Anyone found knowingly harbouring a self-learner can face the death penalty if caught.Commander Zacman, who runs the Service’s Base on the moon, Triton, orbiting Neptune, bought C.A.T. as a pet robo- cat.C.A.T. had to give away he was a self-learner to save Zacman’s life from the bandits. Now they work as a team, stopping crime and capturing criminals wherever they happen to find them around Neptune. These are the stories of how they spent some of their Christmases together…

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Of course it’s our early Christmases together… when life was so much simpler… happy memories… excuse me while I wander down memory path as you humans say….

 

I love having all the attention from my author. And I mean ALL. But Oh dear, she’s been for interview with another cat. This one… hiss… snarl… yowl…

Look at those evil eyes… he must know that I’m the top cat… I’m not standing for anything less… and if she thinks this rag of a cat can inspire her her stories about me, the one and only magnificent C.A.T., then she can think again!

What, she’s even nicknamed him ‘Danger Cat’. Excuse me while I go and have a very long chat with my author….

Wow! It’s my birthday today – seven years since my character appeared fully furred in my own booklet. Purr, purr, purr…

My thanks to Terry over at TWB Press for publishing this story, and it’s been a heck of a ride since then. Two more short stories (Neptune’s Angel and Guard Cat) published and a whole novel written for which my author received eight Honourable Mentions in the Writers of the Future competition for individual chapters.

Well, I know I had to fight her for my rightful place in the novel, that of being the  main character, and that was really truly hard work. But she got the message in the end – that I’m the one and only magnificent C.A.T.! And I’m smug with it! Purrrrr…

My novel is currently doing the agent rounds in the UK, but I keep telling my author, she’d be better off getting an agent in the USA. The UK market is so awash with fantasy at the moment that it is seems to be drowning out science fiction. My story is more in tune with their national psyche. After all the USA is very much less technophobic than the UK. And dang it all, the American readers like a darned good adventure!

But will she listen? I feel another meow-bleat-nag coming on later today. And as it’s my birthday, just maybe she’ll listen!

Well, off to feast on my robo-cat birthday cake! It looks lovely. Isn’t my author such a nice person?

 

Whoopee! The postman’s been… he’s (yes in this case it is a he) brought my final certificate from The Writers of the Future contest, for the last chapter in my novel – The Service Expects.

Here it is…

Isn’t it magnificent? Purr… purr… purr…. purr ad nauseum.

So the final tally for my novel is:

Oh aren’t I absolutely superb, wonderful, an absolute genius?

Oh yes, I am!

And I’m so modest with it!

Purr-fection. That’s me!

I’m off to my skating lessons… yes, I did say skating lessons… well when you’ve got special claws like mine, you can skate. Only issue that I have to control all twenty claws and that on top of maintaining balance takes some computation… phew!

Wishing all my lovely readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And if you miss my presence, you can always take s peek at my stories… the festive ones are of course in here… yes you can link to UK Amazon by clicking on the picture…

See you all in the New Year… said he trying to wave with three paws at the same time..