Audible Brigitte / Free book / Spaaaaace / UK Triv

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LISTEN TO THE BOOK…

Exciting news: Audible UK has picked up audiobook rights for the first two Brigitte Sharp novels, THE EXPHORIA CODE and THE TEMPUS PROJECT, to be read by the wonderful Yolanda Kettle.

(Something I’d never considered before with audiobooks is that you effectively have to produce a pronunciation guide. I spent half an hour on the phone with the Audible producer explaining the pronunciation of ‘bofh’, debating how to say Newsgroup abbreviations like u.l.g-n, and a whole lot more. It wasn’t until presented with this list that I realised just how many abbreviations, acronyms, and technical terms I use in the Brigitte books. Whoops)

EXPHORIA will be out in April, with TEMPUS following in May (alongside the paperback & ebook publication from Lightning Books). You can pre-order both of them right now.
THE EXPHORIA CODE: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B084Q9GMH3 THE TEMPUS PROJECT: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B084QGL2Z1

…OR, GET THE BOOK FOR (SORT OF) FREE

The third episode of WRITING AND BREATHING, featuring novelist and podcaster Dan Moren, is now out for your discerning ears at http://WritingAndBreathing.com. And, as it seems we’re all about to spend a lot more time indoors, I’ve decided to change things up a bit on the Patreon.

I’m now adding a FREE BOOK BONUS for premium ‘Manuscript’ level patrons. Everyone who supports the show at that level before March 31, and maintains that support through June, will get a signed copy of THE TEMPUS PROJECT in paperback directly from me.

Yes, that includes shipping; no, it doesn’t account for the potential collapse of postal services in the wake of C-19. There’s only so much I can do 😅

Remember, premium supporters also get access to future episodes before they’re released to the public (the current patron-exclusive advance ep is with bestselling crime writer Vaseem Khan, including a fascinating discussion about his ‘rules for series’); and they get to take part in Q&A episodes, the first of which I’m now taking questions for.
Make a pledge: Patreon.com/WritingAndBreathing

BARREL, GUN BARREL

Brilliant compilation of every ‘gunbarrel sequence’ to date from the James Bond films — including the very first, which didn’t actually feature Sean Connery at all, but a stuntman recruited by original titles designer Maurice Binder.

We think of the gunbarrel as the same sequence every time, with the same music, but it turns out that’s absolutely not the case. It’s also interesting to note that Daniel Craig is the only Bond to have recorded a new gunbarrel for each one of his films.

(To my mind the best, and iconic, version is latter-period Roger Moore, with that classic flared silhouette. I acknowledge that’s age and nostalgia talking, but I also know I’m right.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTyMkQLAREY

THESE ARE THE VOYAGE(R)S

First of a couple of great spaaaaaaace news bits. In late January, Voyager 2 went offline after a power safety switch tripped — but engineers managed to get it back online, through a series of commands that each took 17 hours to reach V2.

I love the Voyager program. These are things we made, decades ago, that are still functioning — now billions of miles away from us and continuing to beam back information. But at the same time, even after decades of travelling at immense, unfathomable speeds… they’re only a few billion miles away. Voyager 2 hasn’t yet travelled 0.2% of a single light year (which is 5.88 trillion miles).

Space is biiiiiiiig.
https://www.inverse.com/science/nasa-brings-voyager-2-fully-back-online-11.5-billion-miles-from-earth

DEAD STARS STILL BURN

This is a great piece on the life and death of stars, centred around the strange behaviour of a dying binary star which is ejecting massive amounts of gas in weird ways.

The whole thing is worth reading, but what gets me most of all is the massive, mind-bending size of the gas ejections these events generate. The hourglass clouds in the second illustration, showing the SN 1987A supernova, are probably wider than our entire solar system…!
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/hd-101584-a-binary-star-casts-out-a-bizarre-hourglass-of-gas

UK TRIV VII: ‘THE MURDER EDITION’

Sometimes, the cards are good to players… and sometimes, they just want to remind you of your fragile existence by pummelling you with questions about death, destruction, slaughter, and a bit more death. That’s what happened on the latest UK TRIV game show, in which I once again baffle North American friends with questions from an old British edition of Trivial Pursuit, with… darkly hilarious consequences.
https://www.theincomparable.com/gameshow/126

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