Tweet With the advent of Text to AI generated images, I though and try and produce some images for my Books from the Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester. A number of free websites exist for generating images and a list of some of the can be found on ZNET. After experimenting with a few, I eventually decided on NightCafe. NightCafe is very simple to use, and provides a large number of artistic styles and artists to help you generate an image. And is Free. Text to Image To obtain AI Generated images in NightCafe, a descriptive text is entered. The order of the words is ..read more

Tweet Here is a cautionary tale about using ChatGPT to provide a synopsis of a book. I asked ChatGPT to provide a synopsis of my books from the Time Travel Diaries of James Urquahart & Elizabeth Bicester. Here are 3 versions it provided. Version 1 “The Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester” by Bruce Macfarlane is a science fiction novel that follows the adventures of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester as they travel through time. James and Elizabeth are from different time periods – James is from the 19th century, while Elizabeth is from the 21st century. They me ..read more

Tweet My short story, “The Waves on Mars are Really High,” drew inspiration from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travells, published in 1726, and his Voyage to Laputa; an island floating in the sky, propelled by the mythical material adamant. The attraction was his great attention to detail on how the astronomers of Laputa navigated their island, their obsession with their impending doom from a comet, and the lengths to which he went to portray the voyage as a real event. Here are some examples. The Voyage to Laputa Gulliver, who was Ship’s Surgeon on the voyage claimed to be the cousin of Will ..read more

Tweet It is recorded that Professor Rolleston discovered the Time Travel Diaries in the attic of Elizabeth Bicester’s house at Hamgreen. He is a shadowy figure who appears briefly now and then to guide the Time Travellers through their journeys. He is thought to be guardian of the diaries. And has an intimate knowledge of the activities of the Martians and their portals which connect Mars to Earth. He had spent much of his life collecting the myths and legends of the fairy folk of Britain. And it was possibly this that led to his interest in the Martians, who were, in many ways, fa ..read more

Tweet My original intention was to write a story by someone in the distant future who finds two diaries locked together in an old box. One written by a James Urquhart from 2015 and the other by an Elizabeth Bicester, a Victorian lady of means. At first the finder of the diaries believes they are some form of hoax for which the meaning is not clear. However, in the process of reading the story and analysis of the diary material he is led to the conclusion that they were written by two lovers who had actually lived a hundred years apart and if that was true demonstrated that time travel was pos ..read more

Tweet This is an experiment to use Chat OpenAI to generate poems from the stories of the Time Travel Diaries of JamesUrquhart & Elizabeth Bicester. I have taken examples from the first chapters of the books and asked Chat OpenAI to regenerate them in the style of W. B. Yates and Tennyson. This poem is taken from the opening scene in the short story, Beware of Fairies bearing Gifts. And is the style of W.B Yates. NOTE that Chat OpenAI took less than 10 seconds to generate the poem from the text. I have enclosed the prose version from the book below the poem for comparison A Time Travel Dia ..read more

Tweet A Short Story from The Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester Avaialble on Amazon Kindle From February 2023 Beware of Fairies Bearing Gifts is a short story from the Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester which I wrote just before Christmas 2022. In summer, the veranda of Elizabeth’s house at Hamgreen in West Sussex is a perfect place for weary time-travellers to relax and watch the Martian sunset. It was also perfect place for James to ask a question of Elizabeth which he had not got round to asking, Who was her mother? If only he had rea ..read more

Tweet For readers who might be interested in the places and people I’ve used in my stories in the Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester, I’ve compiled a small list below. Choosing locations and characters With the exception of Mars, I’ve based my stories in areas where I have lived and know reasonably well in the North East of England and West Sussex. This, I think makes it easier to write description of a place naturally. I have heard of authors who have constructed detailed maps of places they have never visited, possibly assisted by Google StreetView, in the hope of ..read more

Tweet A lot of strange things have been attached to Nikola Tesla on the internet including time travel and communications with Mars. The most famous is in a New York Herald in March 1895 Tesla, while conducting an experiment, was nearly electrocuted and had an “Out of time” experience where he could see a little way into the future and the past. A New York Herald reporter wrote on March 13 that he came across the inventor in a small café, shortly afterwards, looking shaken after being hit by 3.5 million volts, “I am afraid,” said Tesla, “that you won’t find me a pleasant companion tonight. Th ..read more

Tweet I’ve been selling my books of the The Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester on Amazon Kindle since 2015. So, I thougt it might be worth looking at how well I’ve done on sales. Luckily this isn’t my day job! Advertising the Time Travel Diaries Firstly I haven’t spent a penny on advertising, publishing or graphics on KINDLE. And apart from advertising on Facebook Groups and Twitter, the only other incentive to buy has been to give them away FREE on AMAZON KDP SELECT. However, I’ve created an Authors Page on Amazon (FREE) and put all my books on Goodreads. This “exce ..read more