Publisher Jim Brown of LL-Publications tells me that the final and third book of the ARIA Trilogy entitled Abandoned Luggage is to be released on July 1st 2014.

If you want to place an advance order just let me know but I’ll be telling EVERYONE at the time too.

A reminder of what happened in the first two books follows.

ENCAPSULATION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE ARIA TRILOGY.

In 2015, a case found in the struts of the International Space Station is brought to Earth. It releases a virus, giving people amnesia. They lose their memory at the rate of a year’s worth every week. No one is immune. Infectious amnesia is unheard of. Industry breaks down as people forget where they work and how to perform their duties. People die as they forget their medication and production ceases along with food, water supply and energy. A few small groups realise what is happening in time and find isolated refuges. Ryder takes a group to a secluded Welsh valley. Biologists call the virus ARIA: Alien Retrograde Infectious Amnesia. He communicates with orbiting astronauts, who find a second case and bring it with them to Wales. The second case has a counter-virus that stops the amnesia. Unfortunately, it turns the astronaut doctor, Antonio, into a sociopath. Ryder’s group fly possibly the world’s last operating airplane to a larger, uninfected group on a South Pacific island. As if hypnotised, a few humans with ARIA assemble large domes in France and Canada. Antonio is used by telepathic aliens to coordinate the Canadian construction—he becomes more egotistical. Alien prisoners are brought from a distant star system, Zadok, and are put to work cultivating a strange plant. A third case is robotically brought from orbit to a French group, who plant it with explosives on an alien ship returning to Zadok. Antonio believes he’s thwarted the French and hides on a different ship returning to Zadok.

Cover art is by the talented award-winning Andy Bigwood

And an advance peep at the acknowledgments and dedication pages too:

Acknowledgements for ARIA: Abandoned Luggage

Once again, I have enjoyed the combined literary wisdom of the Orbiter 7 novel critique group of the British Science Fiction Association. In particular, Mark Iles, James Odell, Chris Riley and the overall Orbiter coordinator, Terry Jackman, have nit-picked, brow-beaten, lacerated and improved my manuscript no end. Even so, any faults are all down to my wackiness and not theirs’.

I am the first person I know who has received an email from space when Leroy Chiao gave me technical help and a 17,000 miles-per-hour wish of good luck – while he orbited Earth on the International Space Station!

My friend, Robert Blevins of Adventure Books of Seattle, gave me moral support as did Gladys Hobson, a fine British writer from Cumbria. The world expert on pleonasms and tight narrative, crime writer and agent, Allan Guthrie, gaveme valuable advice and encouragement.

During this time other novels and over fifty short stories had fled my fingers onto the world, so my style evolved, and is still developing. Perhaps it is in the bronze age now.

Bec Zugor for ensuring the mad Doctor Antonio Menzies curses and woos in appropriate Italian.

Thanks to those many wise readers who voted the first book, ARIA: Left Luggage as the best science fiction novel of 2012 in the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll.

My wife for putting up with looking at my back while I write, and the Chester Science Fiction Book Groups – yes there are two including The Esoteric Bibliophilia Society (TEBS). John Rennie of both groups offers me sound advice on aspects of the science in my stories (as does my physicist wife) and he, along with Professor Courtney Seligman, suggested ways in which a moon such as Zadik could be cooler than it should be.

The Chester Fantasy Writing Group meets monthly in the library and are brave writers who critique my experiments including a short piece of fan fiction of my own from ARIA where the flying creatures, Toks, have a story of their own.

International online game players like Paul Goodspeed, Steven Whitener, Professor Drucilla Ronchen, Marianne Boehlert, Mary Frances, Kerry Kaufman, and international entertainer, Martin Lamberti, have all bought my works and boosted my ego.

Now for something completely different. I have twitter friends not met elsewhere who actively support the ARIA Trilogy. It would take over 50 pages to mention them all but special thanks to Olga in Moscow @OllyGuseva and Chani @chani_isaacs in South Africa. Cynthia Denny @cgrendy3, Lisa Gillis @LiGillis, Paul J Rega @paulregabooks and Les Floyd @Lesism. Les Floyd is always an inspiration with his wit, philosophy and in boosting my twitter followship. Partly as a homage to him, a cat appears in books two and three of ARIA. He’ll understand.

Find them on my twitter @geoffnelder

My writer friend in Malta, John Bonello, is an inspiration with his own marvellous award-winning fantasy trilogy written in Maltese:Il-Logħba tal-Allat. (A Game Gods Play) Also my Irish pal, Aidan Lucid of the Zargothian Tales.

Award-winning artist, Andy Bigwood, conjures ARIA’s artistic covers. We traded ideas at FantasyCon and BristolCon and exchanged emails to come up with the stunning images you see.

I also acknowledge Jim and Zetta Brown of LL-Publications including editor, Billye Johnson, proofreaders and publicists for their support and encouragement.

Really, ARIA wasn’t written by me. I was merely a large cog in its creation machine.

Dedication

Gaynor, my wife, will not read ARIA, she says, in case she finds herself as a character. She isn’t and yet in some ways she is ARIA, for without her support and bemused tolerance this trilogy would not have been written. Dedicated also to son, Rob and daughter, Eleanor and to both their marvellous families.

Foreword

Not everyone has read ARIA: Left Luggage, the first in the trilogy. Logically, fewer have read its sequel, ARIA: Returning Left Luggage and yet it is mainly those readers who have urged me to finish writing the final volume – this one, Abandoned Luggage. Is it finished now? The sequence of events and lives of the survivors have, by the end of book 3, reached a conclusion beyond which the original and unique premise of infectious amnesia has been left behind. The perpetrators of the ARIA virus were not met until book 2, and in the final book we see their home – or at least what they called home until… you’ll see. It’s no spoiler to say that the universe has not been snuffed out by the end of this series but the infectious amnesia of the first changed Earth forever.

 

Quotes

Annette Gisby: With a thrilling plot and characters you really care about this book is an excellent read. Another surefire winner from Mr. Nelder.

Paul Goodspeed: Nelder’s dialogue is witty, snarky and fun.

Martin Lamberti (International circus entertainer): The plot thickens, of course. This is expected from an excellent author like Geoff Nelder. “Humor delightful, and drama suspenseful.” 5* review

Magdalena Ball (Owner of Compulsive Reader): ARIA mingles the most optimistic calculations from the Drake Equation with a distopian outcome, creating a read that is as intriguing as it is fun.

Kenyon Charboneaux: “If you like your scifi offbeat, original, and backed by science, you’re going to love ARIA.”

Ira Nayman at #Goodreads ARIA: a smart, entertaining gem.

“Without our memories, who are we?”: Kim McDougall of Blazing Trailers.

 

Now all you need to do is hold your breath until July 1st for your Kindle, Nook, paperback or whatever medium device you like!