12 Reasons TO READ SAGRADA

If you like Shakespeare, Sagrada probably isn't your cup of tea. The language of Sagrada is not sophisticated. It's a colloquial south of England English.  I write like I speak. Well, mostly! Maybe not the crime investigation thread which is nothing like I speak! But the rest of it.

So if your brain wants to lose itself in a nice restful journey - like maybe you're commuting on your way home from work or you're on holiday or not awake enough to study that next chapter of derived demand economics - this could be your next novel. There's plenty going on. Technology, romance, murder mystery, resolving trauma, blue aliens. But all (well, mostly) written in ordinary everyday English.

And if you speak American English, no worries, the website has a glossary for you!  Words like A Levels, Sixth Former, Coffee or Bloke ... all nicely explained in the context of the Sagrada story. 

OK, let's be a bit more precise. "Music" is way too general. Zed and Charlie love classic rock from the 70s - bands like - Deep Purple, Wishbone Ash, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac and Hawkwind. They tend towards guitar solos but also seem to have a soft spot for rock bands starting with "The" - like The Kinks, The Stranglers, The Clash, The Police and the ultimate: The The! Dire Straits is of course another favourite, and fast forwarding a couple of decades there's Nightwish. And a few surprising entries like UB40, Ralph McTell and Johnny Mathis. And by the way, if you find Jaco Pastorius in there, that's Koren's music, not Zed's.

Of course, if you simply love music, you listen to the music. But sometimes when you're reading fiction it's so groovy connecting to the protagonist through a common taste in music. That's what I'm talking about when I say - a reason to read Sagrada is because you love music.

P.S. If listening to music is what you like, check out the Spotify playlist on the Songs page.

Especially Jaguars! Especially convertibles. E-Types, F-Types, XJS and even a 1959 Mark IX (not convertible of course). Or Corvette Stingrays – like C2 1963-1967. Big engines all the way! Petrol (or gasoline as some might say). Or memories of younger days when you used to drive a second-hand Renault 4 or Morris 1100. 

It's like I said about music, if you simply love cars, you drive cars! Although I hope you're not reading my novel at the same time as driving your car - the audiobook isn't out yet! It's that feeling of connection to the protagonist - roof down, wind in your hair (if you still have any!) - the sheer joy of the roar of that 5 litre V8 engine. You love it, Zed loves it! Or maybe you connect more to Julie driving her little Renault 4 through France taking her friends home in the university holidays. Maybe you had a car like that - maybe you still do.

And the challenge - after you've read the book - do you own, or did you own any of the cars in the book? Then send in your photos and we'll populate the website with readers cars! 

About a decade ago I lived two years in Fitzrovia, right on the edge of Soho. Grooviest place on Earth! Of course, Mayfair is very nice (if you can afford it!) but it's not groovy, not like Soho. After Fitzrovia I accidentally had another eight months with a kind of mini pied-a-terre in Soho, right on Wardour Street. Also very groovy, perfect if it's your second home, but for a primary home, Soho itself is just a little too busy. Fitzrovia is perfection. Wake up on a Sunday morning, take the dog for a walk up Tottenham Court Road, over to Russel Square or even along Oxford Street and it's so peaceful. Thursday evening, that well known "new Friday", cross over Oxford Street into Soho and it is BUZZING! There's nothing like it. For two years I didn't have a car, hardly even took public transport. From Soho there's nothing you could possibly need that isn't in walking distance! No doubt some of you would disagree with me on this ... of course you're entitled to your own opinion ... even if you're wrong!

Well maybe, but then again, I had three days in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Just three days. Staying in Plaza Real, right in the heart of the gothic quarter. Visited La Sagrada Familia ...wow! Three days, that's all. And arguably it's the grooviest place on earth. Well second to Fitzrovia/Soho borders West End, London, Earth.

Whichever wins - the science fiction novel, Sagrada is set between London's West End and Barcelona. So if you, like me, recognise these as the grooviest places on Earth, then you might enjoy some of the ambience of the novel.

And if you have an alternative "grooviest place on Earth", let me know. Maybe I can visit it and use it as a base for a future novel! 

This is science fiction, no question! I'd call it soft science fiction, gentle science fiction, maybe accessible science fiction. It's not hardcore, it has plenty of non-sciencey-fictiony things like romance, murder and how to position your beer glass when standing on the cobbled pavement outside the John Snow pub on Broadwick Street, Soho, London, England, Earth on a warm summer Thursday evening. Sure it has those things - that's what gives it the "soft" or "gentle", but there's no getting round it, for any of you science fiction fans out there, it's got aliens! Little blue aliens living just off Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain, Earth. And shimmery kaleidoscopic green aliens on their own planet a long way away!

Later on there'll be a post about the pseudo-science end of science fiction, but today we're talking about the fantasy edges of science fiction. There are hints that the blue humanoids might be descended from the same origins as humans. After all apart from colour and size they're about as identical to human as you can get. But the kaleidoscopic green ones. No! They are totally alien. Could easily have stepped straight out of Star Trek! Then we have the fact that the little blue humanoids live in Barcelona apparently completely unnoticed by the droves of tourists around them! Put disbelief on hold and come and enjoy the ride! 

Varying degrees of childhood trauma impact our characters as adults. Yes, this is a story of science fiction with a touch of murder, romance and political satire, but there is also a touch of psychology. If you look carefully, you're going to notice changes in the way a person talks and communicates. They are in denial. They talk of past bad experiences in a completely unemotional matter of fact way. As though it didn't affect them. It's like they have become comfortably numb. Like they have numbed themselves to everything, so nothing hurts again. But then bit by bit, events in adult life trigger those memories from the past and they begin to feel the pain, or sometimes the relief, and their emotions start to open up. Denial gives way to acknowledgement and their language grows in emotional depth.

Centre stage is a story of people developing technology and society to found a new colony on a distant terraformed planet, but in the wings and the side stage, there are nuggets of life experience. This is no psychology textbook, but if you've experienced childhood pain on any level, been through counselling or studied psychotherapy, I think you might unearth these hidden gems. 

Unresolved pain from the past is a major contributor to character and behaviour in later life. I wonder if this could be part of the reason for the escape to planet Sagrada. Perhaps they felt "Any world that I'm welcomed to is better than the one I come from"? Would it have been cheaper maybe to go through ten sessions of therapy instead of space travel? Just saying.

PS - for those looking for musical references: Pink Floyd, DC Collard, Steely Dan.

Happy reading.

You can't have science fiction without a bit of pseudo-science or pseudo-engineering thrown in. It's gotta be fiction, but it's gotta feel plausible. Of course that's not easy since the cutting edge of real science already reaches the borders of plausibility. Sagrada has plenty of it. Some twist on how the energy generation and storage activities of mitochondria can be made to continue outside the body. There's some materials engineering thrown in. It's four decades since I studied any of that at university, but still kind of fun! And Newton's laws of motion appear everywhere. Sometimes for their exact intended purpose - to describe physical motion - but sometimes morphed into an illustration of psycho-history. Which in itself is also pure fiction, but when you read Asimov, you think you're reading real science half the time anyway, just set in the future.

The science of the Mediocrats doesn't claim to be as sophisticated as Asimov's, but I had an awful lot of fun making it up! Hope you enjoy reading it.

Happy Reading.

Zawadi is not talking about the speed restrictions around schools, he's talking about those ludicrous limits on dual carriage ways with no pedestrians in sight and no houses around. Roads that could easily tolerate 60 mph but could reasonably be constrained to 40 mph. Understandably nobody wants congestion with cars sitting there idling. Take New York. Admittedly Manhattan is congested - at least the Streets, although you can drive surprisingly freely up and down some of the Avenues. But getting in and out of Manhattan there are plenty of Freeways that move insanely fast given the crazy population density of the region. Then there is Singapore where they keep the roads moving but apply crazy taxes on car ownership. But people just pay the taxes and drive anyway. And then you look at the English approach, at least around London. You have a dual carriage way with a speed limit of 40 mph. There's a lot of cars using it and it gets congested and there's a lot of frustration. One idea would be construction. The road obviously needs more lanes. Chances are you can't build sideways, but you could build highways right over the top of the city or under it! Imagine Epsom to Enfield in 32 minutes straight over the top of London. That would be so groovy. But no! That's not what we do in England. Instead, we take that congested dual carriage way, drop the speed limit to 20 mph, convert one lane into a cycle lane, leaving it as a single lane road, and add some speed bumps or narrow restrictions with high pavements that wreck your alloys. The entire purpose of this is to make driving as unpleasant as possible so that people will give up their cars because apparently, we hate motorists.

So, what is a "motorist". Well in the UK there are about 41 million motor vehicles. There are about 40 million adults in the range 18-64. On average that is near enough one vehicle per person of driving age. 

So, on average every person who is of driving age is a motorist. A "motorist" then is a "person". So, a war on "motorists" means a war on "people". At least that's how Zawadi sees it. 

So, if 20 mph speed limits on dual carriage ways sometimes irritate you, then maybe you will relate to Zawadi.

Happy reading!

Find the influences! When I set up my Amazon Author Central, there's a place where you can say what books have influenced you the most. Dune and Lord of the Rings are two of my big influences, I mean like going back to early 1970s I read these. And definitely I can see the influence from them in Sagrada. Catcher in the Rye was another massive influence on me. At school I learned how you're supposed to write written English. "Do not" instead of "don't". All that kind of thing. And of course the software keeps grammar and spell checking for you. But what J.D.Salinger taught me is you don't have to do what you have to do. Be yourself, enjoy life, be free, write how you want to write! This frees up your style so much! Some people will enjoy this. Others won't! So be it!

But reading back over Sagrada I can see all sorts of other influences. Agatha Christie was one of my favourite authors. And of course there's a murder mystery. Also, Asimov's Caves of Steel is science fiction with murder and Asimov is another of my all-time favourites. More surprisingly I find the writing style of St Paul creeping in. I must have read St Paul's epistles dozens of times and it's his way of heading down a line of argument and then getting totally excited and distracted and digressing onto something else. This shows up in Sagrada. This is why in the middle of a story about spaceships heading out into the galaxy you get diversions into Thursday night in Soho or the rating system for uber drives. I find it kind of fun. Some people will enjoy it. Others won't. So be it!

There's also movies, TV and records in there too. The TV series Yellowstone influenced book two. There's bits of Peter Cook or Monty Python in places. 

It makes me wonder if influences have found their way subliminally into my writing. Even if I'm not aware of them. Maybe some of my favourite thriller writers like Alistair MacLean or Helen MacInnes. Or novels like The Far Pavillions, Shogun or Father Brown. 

It makes you feel all very philosophical. We are the sum total of all that came before us. Who I am today is the sum total of all my life so far and all the inputs from other people's lives spanning the ages. Kinda groovy, as Zed would say.

Happy reading.  

This is science fiction as you know. But there's plenty more. There's murder. There's a detective trying to solve the crime. There's romance. There's political satire and digs at corporate culture. There's tons of observations of ordinary every day life. At least ordinary English life. And by the way it's unashamedly English. So much so I even added a glossary to the website to understand some of the language.

This is what the twelve reasons are about. We have to pidgeon hole books into categaries because digitalisation demands it, but many novels span multiple genres. This is one of them!

Happy Reading!

This isn't everyone's cup of tea. If you don't ever read fiction this probably isn't the book for you! But if you do, here's what some other people had to say: 

OUTSTANDING

"If this book had been written by one of the SciFi greats it would be lauded to the heavens. As a first novel it is remarkable. The scale and scope is breathtaking, but unlike many SciFi novels this one spends most of its time on Earth, with references to places I know, have stayed at, restaurants I have eaten in. Oh, and cars I would love to drive. Frequent references to music will have those of us of a certain age reaching for a vinyl! ... "

TOUCHED MY SOUL

"I loved this book and didn’t want it to end! Thankfully there is a sequel to look forward to.

There were many things that touched my soul ..."

BRILLIANT

""It's OK to be OK" is the message in this brilliant new sci-fi lite offering from Richard G Abrahams. I say sci-fi 'lite' because I'm no science fiction fan but I was absorbed into Abrahams idealistic world from the start. Yet there is enough 'science' to satisfy even the staunchest sci-fi devotee ..."

WHAT A JOY

"What a joy of a book to read! A great book that balances the disco age of London with the futures of space travel. Can’t wait for the next book to be released!"

It was never meant to be. For a long time, this was a four part trilogy. Sagrada is the events leading up to year zero. Esperanza is the first few decades on the new planet. Sonja comes one to two centuries later. And Lagertha is a whopping thousand years later and comes to a dramatic finale.

But it seems that Zed keeps remembering more and more stuff and I'm hearing that a book five may be appearing too - set 10,000 years into the future. 

You may be wondering how Zed can remember that far ahead. Well, you'll have to read Esperanza to find that out, but sneak preview ... there is no time travel.

So the thing is, if you enjoy Sagrada there is more to come. And now I think about it, if you like to binge read, you might even want to wait till Sonja comes out (maybe next year) and read three books in a row. Then you'll make sense of some of the questions left open in Sagrada. Or you could just get started now!

Oh, and did I mention? There seems to be an additional short story developing about Tala's life growing up in the Pelkyn region of Rholin, along with a whole load of description of Planet Verditia. So, you can see there's five and a bit parts, and I bet there'll be more to come!

Happy reading!