Read all about it!
New release on Kindle ebook only because Dragut’s Divergence is two short stories with Malta as a theme.
When Gaynor and I were in Malta this year (2024) and the bus travelled past the beach that Admiral Rais Dragut supposedly landed in 1551, it made my warped brain flip. Suppose that instead of landing with his 150 corsair ships and attempt to capture Malta, he was washed up on a present-day Malta beach? I put myself in his head and examined what I saw: women in miniskirts, men in shorts and T-shirts, cars, buses, smooth tarmac for roads, mobile phones, buildings made of the same mellow, yellow limestone but with large flawless glass windows. Overhead wires, airplanes flying overhead and ships far bigger than anything he’d seen. Dragut was a highly intelligent man, well read, cultured even though a buccaneer and often violent. He would adapt quickly, yet cling to beliefs. That’s my premise and it was great fun to research and write.
Much help came from Maltese writer, John Bonello who pointed me to an ancient Muslem cemetery, the detention centre for illegal immigrants and other ideas. The extraordinary science fiction author Mark Iles critiqued my early draft as he did the accompanying short story, The Visit, which is stand alone but a kind of sequel to Vengeance Island.
I’d hoped that Dragut’s Divergence would be published as a Kindle ebook in time for Christmas and it was by a whole 24 hours! Haha.
Amazon Kindle link from any country
https://mybook.to/DragDiv
for the price of a cracker!
THE VISIT
…is a short story that I hoped is literary and it starts that way in La Voulte, France. This is a town that my family did a holiday swap to decades ago and its old town on a hill topped by a chateau intrigued me. The door at the old building is represented by the illustration of this ebook. The photo is one I took but of a building in Valetta, Malta, which is fine because the story goes there and to Gozo too.
Nelder News
The original title of my historical fantasy set on Gozo and Malta was Xaghra’s Revenge. It was revised and re-released as:
Vengeance Island http://mybook.to/VIsland
My most resent series is the science fiction novellas of Flying Crooked
Suppose We -science fiction space exploration • https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Falling Up http://mybook.to/FUPpaper
Kepler’s Son https://mybook.to/KeplersSon
Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle
Opi’s World to be published in2025
