Gary Gibson

Heard someone talk about it being hard to get traction for their new book. I often pick up books after seeing a review on social media, so if you like a book and think other people would too, then, you know, tell us.

In my own case, i just started 'High' by Adam Roberts, a 120 page ebook novella.

Been flattened by flu since the New Year, but seeing Europa Deep finally broke 1500 ratings/reviews on Amazon makes up for it while I'm hard at work on Echogenesis Books Two and Three.

www.amazon.co.uk/Europa-Deep-...

Would actually make a great Youtube channel as well, although without the budget to actually buy wood, do carpentry and travel very far, could still visit people's book collections (bigger the better) and talk to them about it. I'd watch it.

Haven't finished it yet, but it's the definition of mindfuck by quantum physics. Deep explorations of the very structure of reality. Really don't know how it's going to end, but so far it's great.

Can never think what the hell to say that remotely connects with my writing day job (zero probs posting about cycling), so maybe I'll talk about what I've been reading: Observer by Nancy Kress, in collab with Robert Lanza, a leading medical physicist. The glittering diamond-tipped blade of hard sf.

YouTube video by Laurence Mason Dave Brubeck - Golden Brown

Came across this nearly half a decade late, but it's still worth it. Stellar work. youtu.be/2Qs1J612nZs?...

Scare your health CEO with this one, simple trick: send them some Monopoly money.

When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.

Well, there’s a story.

Very occasionally I’ll get a reviewer comment about one of my books (hard sf/space opera) having a touch of ‘woo’. I’m guessing none of them have read up on what quantum physics has to say about human consciousness, or about the nature of reality being a construct formed through consensus.

Funny thing is, he said my Scottish accent 'wasn't quite as strong' as his friends. Funny, because back in Scotland I was occasionally accused of sounding 'insufficiently Scottish' to the point I'd be asked if I was English. ENGLISH. "Yurr no' frae aroond here", etc.

Chatted with an American English teacher here in Taiwan and he mentioned a former work acquaintance from Scotland who had to receive special phonics lessons before he could even attempt to speak Chinese without a heavy accent that left everyone baffled. The struggle is real, people.

70% OFF Echogenesis An alien world teeming with deadly life. And fifteen strangers with no memory of how they came to be there. From the moment Sam Newman and fourteen others awaken inside metal coffins next to the bu...

It's nearly Christmas, there are sales, so...the audiobook of Echogenesis is 70% off? Non-DRM, if that helps.

www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...

That actually gave me a headache.

Should hit 50k on the first draft on the second of Echogenesis's two sequels later today. Now thinking I'll have complete first drafts of both books sometime late January. Hope I'm not overestimating my abilities by thinking I can edit an estimated likely total of 200,000 words by August.

The trick is to never let it out of your sight. Not even for one second.

It's like climbing up a wall. Not going that specific way again.

In case anyone's interested, the bike is a custom-built, titanium frame road bike built by a local company called Performer who, I think, also make bikes for Trigon.

I'm thinking of doing a couple of short multi-day trips next year, but I won't be going that far, or that hard, on each day: based on recent experience, fifty to sixty miles a day is easily achievable, unless there's a lot of climbing involved. And if the way is flat, further yet.

After that, all I had to do was follow my usual route back south, fuelling myself with onigiri rice snacks and a Coke from a vending machine. The good thing about all this from my perspective is it's given me a sense of how much I can achieve in a single day where cycling is concerned.

By this point, I'd passed beyond mere fatigue and into some other realm where all that mattered was keeping the wheels turning: my whole world became reduced to a constantly undulating highway that felt like it stretched out forever--at least, until I got to Beitou, to the north of Taipei.

It was only a mile and a half, but still. After a bit of cursing I managed to turn around, and at least had the wind at my back. I followed the road all the way west, past the lighthouse that marks one of Taiwan's northernmost points, and then south.

Eventually I hit the coast and mostly turned west. I say 'mostly', because after a brief pit stop at a 7-11, I found myself wondering why the sea was suddenly on my left rather than my right...which is when I realised I was cycling the wrong way.

I was directed to a small, outdoors dining area on the opposite side of the road, where I found myself surrounded by large soft toys and pink seating. After all that, I pretty much flew up the remaining ascent before the eventual descent.

So now you know: if you're up that way and fancy a bit of fish, you're sorted. I don't know why, but I seem to come across a lot of fish restaurants in the oddest of places when I'm out cycling.

I came to this conclusion because the owner excitedly showed me pictures of cooked fish on her phone: she wanted me, I think, to tell everyone I knew about the fish, and that they should go to her restaurant to eat it.

On the way past a middle-of-nowhere restaurant some time around 11am, a woman yelled out 'coffee', so I stopped and had one along with a Taiwanese egg tart, which are small, yellow pastries. As far as I could tell, though, it was mainly a fish restaurant.

That's where the climbing got ridiculous. But once I reached Zhongfu Rd, the scenery got pretty spectacular. There's a reason a lot of people like to cycle and hike up there.

Once out of Taipei, the route took me north-east, past the Palace Museum and along Zhishan Road before heading up Route 28-2 and thereby cutting straight through the mountain range to get to the other side.

They were all, reader, coming from the other direction: meaning the hill I was ascending was a hill everyone else would much rather descend.

I spent a lot more time pushing my bike up some of those hills than riding them. I've found one quick clue to whether or not you've bitten off more than you can chew is whether other cyclists are going the same way as you, or if they're all coming from the other direction.