Book signing event + Paperback reveal!
I wrote the first draft for THE COSMONAUT WHO DIED TWICE at some point in 2023, and since then have been looking forward to it coming out in paperback.
Here it is at last.
The full story is 97 pages long. It’s a short novella about a cosmonaut called Galina Agafonov who finds herself tasked with doing some space archaeology on an alien tetrahedron discovered orbiting Jupiter.
Humans have never been that far before, but this discovery - of concrete proof of intelligent alien life - is so important that it kickstarts a new race to the distant fringes of the solar system.
The story starts at a critical point. The world’s governments have decided amongst themselves to keep this alien ship a secret, fearing its existence would cause mass panic. They band together, selecting their finest astronauts and engineers, and send them on their way to Jupiter, for what is framed as a bold new leap from Lunar missions.
According to the public, Galina’s mission is simply to loop once around Jupiter and return home, just to prove it can be done.
Galina says goodbye to Viktor, her son, and sets off.
Elsewhen, a frog alien (and Duran Duran fanboy) is looking for a new piece for his private museum - a real human corpse.
From here the story gets stranger and stranger, until Galina’s story is woven into a much larger galactic tale about the future of humanity.
This is a standalone sci-fi novella with some moments of humour, and one of the more emotional endings I have written.
And, for those among you who are already fans of my growing sci-fi universe, you might recognise the alien spaceship. This standalone story takes place in a wider narrative, which will be uncovered over the next few years.
So you can enjoy this story on its own, or click it into a bigger story.
Statement
And, I shouldn’t have to say this, but these posts sometimes escape this little space we built here, and more and more writers are becoming lazy these days, and I am not one of them.
So I will say it: I wrote this book myself. Using my brain.
I did not need to outsource the brain stuff to a random number generator.
I did not need to outsource the brain stuff to another human, either.
I used my microtubules, neurons, and various souls that I collected.
The stories you read here will always be 100% human.
Not because of some ideological aversion to Artificial Intelligence, but for one very simple reason instead:
Why have a robot go on an adventure on your behalf?
When I am writing, I am reading, I am having an adventure.
But most importantly, I am living.
If I let a robot live for me, I might as well lie down and die.
Same applies to humans as well, by the way.
No ghostwriters here.
Note
I am putting more of my time these days into finding comedy gigs, refining my work (both on stage and on page) and getting more books out there. I have no time to enter writing competitions, and find most of the paid ones to be a tax on hope anyway, so any and all sharing and talking about my posts you can do is incredibly important. Us outsiders are hard to market.
Book signing event
I’ll be signing ten copies of THE COSMONAUT WHO DIED TWICE at the Mega Geek Fayre in Manchester, on June 21 2025. I will also include a free art commission inside signed copies.
Hello Ginny, if you can see this!
Tickets to geek fayre are £2 on the door. Opens at 11am I think.
THE COSMONAUT WHO DIED TWICE will be somewhere between £8 and £10 at the event.
It’s available now in eBook and Paperback.
https://books2read.com/thecosmonaut
Amazon already has the paperback.
And if just one person votes on this poll, I will put signed copies on my Etsy, which now also hosts the weird comedy shirts I design under my Grumblebricks pseudonym.
I have a lot going on…