About that story with the cat in it

In November 2016 I started work on a new story. I gave it a working title of “Dimensions and Parallel Universes with Jack” but after sharing it with my fellow writers at Thanet Creative Writers Tea and Chat it has become known as “that story with the cat in it“.

I was pretty happy with it to start with but I have made a fair few changes over the last couple of months. There were a few jokes in there that did not work, some spelling mistakes (I make a lot of those) and some bits that just needed work. Now, however, I am pretty pleased with it and have posted it for you to read.

Chapter one is now available for you to read. It is called “The New Housemate” and it features the cat in question. Chapter two will be available sometime soon so come back and check for it.

I will be posting this and other stories serially using a plugin called WriteShare which seems to be great for sharing writing. WriteShare is one of the features available for all blogs on the Author Buzz network but I will blog more about that on the dev blog soon.

What is “that story with the cat in it” about?

The story was written with the primary intention of having fun. I have a “serious” novel that I am working on but NaNoWriMo had come around and I wanted to join in.

I decided that as I was going to have fun I would revel in all the sort of cheesy soft-sci stuff that I love. Wormholes, monsters, talking animals, parallel universes, time travel, robots, mad science, etc.. I had in mind a scene with a person and kitten and that was about it. So I started with the one thing I had in mind and a list of characters.

Yes, I pantsed the entire thing. Normally I plan but this I just made it up as I went along and enjoyed myself. That seems to have worked because everyone I have shown this to has also enjoyed it. Two entirely different writers that I respect have, without ever meeting each other, favourably compared this work to that of Douglas Adams (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). As a huge Adams fan, this made my day. Twice.

I hope that you enjoy “The New Housemate” and come back to read more.

Matt.