Simon Brading

April 2025

HiReader!

It's time for this month's newsletter!

It's a short one this month because with Easter in the middle of everything not much has been happening.

As always, if you no longer wish to receive it there is a button at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe. I'll be sorry to see you go, but completely understand!

A little bit about me... part 2

My passion is science fiction, but I will write whatever story inspires me. For example, being in Barcelona for the independence referendum inspired me to write Public Enemy and I used my own experiences as a ballet dancer to write the Twin Ambitions series.

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The Inspiration Behind the Displacers series

There was a TV series I remember watching as a very young child. Essentially, the main character would go into a fancy dress shop, try on a costume, like that of a knight, or an astronaut, then come out of the changing room and have an adventure as whatever he was dressed up as.

The original concept I had for the Displacers series was much the same, but instead of dressing up my character would have a shower or get stuck in the rain, water would get in his eyes, and when he opened them again he'd find himself in the past as a pirate, or detective or whatever. The idea evolved considerably from what was going to be a series of short stories for young children into what it is today, but that idea still forms the basis for what happens to Sam Vives (not his original name!) in The Time Traveller's Nephew.

The TV series was called Mr Benn and you can find episodes of it on YouTube if you're interested.

Writing Update

The first draft of Misfit Squadron 11, "The Invasion of Britain", is almost done and soon it will be editing time. The publication date is still months away, but in the next newsletter I hope I'll be able to share a little preview!

This month I have been concentrating on writing the climax of the book, with the Misfits in a life or death battle with the Crimson Barons, the likes of which they haven't seen since The Battle Over Britain, the first book in the series. I'm hoping that readers enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Did you know?

The text on the cover for "The Lifeboat at the End of the Universe", one of my earliest books, is a curious colour, a beige, which isn't a usual choice for the text on a book, of a very particular shade called "cosmic latte", of all things. I chose it because that colour was the result of a calculation by scientists of the average colour of the light from all the stars and galaxies across the observable universe.

Which I thought was rather appropriate!