Cliff Pratt

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About Cliff Pratt
Cliff Pratt is now retired, but was formerly in the Information Technology business. He is welcoming the leisure to write books, which he couldn't do while he was working in the IT business. He is still interested in technology, and runs Ubuntu Linux at home, not the more common Windows.
He has self-published three books. One is a novel, "The Last Beautiful Woman", about a woman who ages very slowly and hides away from the world in an isolated retreat. The second is a book which describes how he self-published the first book, and is boringly titled "How I Wrote and Self Published My First Book". The third book which he has just recently published is called "The Mage and The Boffin" and is about a couple who represent the disciplines of Science and Magic. He hopes one day to sell a copy of one of these books.
He lives in Wellington, New Zealand, the most southerly capital city in the world, a beautiful city, in a beautiful country at the end of the world.
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Blog postImage by Zeathiel. Downloaded from Freeimages When your body encounters a virus, any virus, the virus enters your body and starts to multiply. It multiplies fast. It does this by taking over the genetic systems of the cells, and so the cells can’t maintain themselves and die. When this happens the cells burst open and release many copies of the virus from each cell into your body. Each copy of the virus finds another cell to invade. This applies to all viral infections, not just Covid-19.4 months ago Read more
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Blog postPhoto by Niels Timmer from FreeImages I’m useless at self-promotion, so up until now, I’ve avoided asking for donations for my work. It’s partly because of the ‘imposter syndrome’, and it’s partly because the tools that were available were once difficult to use or expensive.
It’s the ‘imposter syndrome’ which really cripples me and causes me to hesitate to ask for money. Questions arise like ‘Am I being cheeky, asking for donations?’ or ‘Is my writing good enough to be asking for don8 months ago Read more -
Blog postPhoto by eddmun from FreeImages Some wag, way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, once commented that homosexuality is a self-limiting problem. I assume that he (or for that matter, maybe, she) meant that homosexuals don’t breed, so they can’t produce more little homosexuals. Of course there’s many things wrong with this comment, not the least of which is that homosexuality is somehow a ‘problem’.
The writer of the comment assumes that homosexuality has a genetic component. That is,9 months ago Read more -
Blog postPhoto by miguel ugalde from FreeImages I’ve been bad! I’ve not been keeping my website and my Facebook Author page up to date, but I have been writing some short stories. I’ve created a new page to contain the links to these new stories, and I hope that you will drop by and have a look at them.
I’m always interested in reflecting on my creative processes, and one thing that I have discovered is that I am much more interested in writing the stories than I am in publicising them. I sus10 months ago Read more -
Blog postPhoto by Wojtek Piekutoszczak from FreeImages
I’m constantly fascinated by the creative process, at least in so far as it applies to my writing.
I constantly read articles about how to write stories or even novels. The secret, apparently is to plan everything out, usually based on some scheme or template. You have to develop your characters, maybe give them a backstory, a history. Then there must be a problem, an issue, or a difficulty, otherwise there is no story of course. <11 months ago Read more -
Blog postI just realised that I’ve not posted any of my stories for a while. In fact I’ve not posted much at all! I’ve still been writing stories, but most of the time I’ve been polishing ones that I’ve already written.
The stories that I am posting below are ones which I’ve not posted before, but when I’ve figured out how to update files on this site I will update some of the older ones. I’ve not substantially changed them though. I’ve just changed a few sentences, corrected some grammar and1 year ago Read more -
Blog postThe Mage and the Boffin I’ve been reviewing and updating my earlier stories, and I’ve removed a few spelling and grammar errors, and tidied up the language a bit here and there. I’ve not radically changed them, but I thought that I’d package them as a PDF and make the new package available on my website. So, if you want to have all my early stories in a convenient package, please download it from here.
If you want my stories in a different format, a MOBI file for a Kindle, for exampl1 year ago Read more -
Blog postPhoto by Krzysztof (Kriss) Szkurlatowski from FreeImages Every modern word processing program comes with a feature, usually called ‘styles’, which allows you to control the look of your final document. Microsoft Word does. LibreOffice and OpenOffice do. I’d be surprised if there was a major program word processing program that doesn’t.
A style is a collection attributes, such as font, font size, indentation, alignment, colour, and many other attributes that describe an element in a d2 years ago Read more -
Blog postA Dark and Stormy Night I use LibreOffice Writer for writing my stories and for other similar writing tasks. It’s free and it runs on Linux, and it does everything that Microsoft Word does and probably more.
I haven’t got anything against the current version of MS Word. It’s a very good program, but it isn’t free, it doesn’t run on Linux, and I’m not keen on the interface, as it is, in my opinion, needlessly complex. But then again, I’ve not used it much.
I have used MS Word2 years ago Read more -
Blog postPhoto by Jeremy Menking from FreeImages I’ve written before about my somewhat chaotic writing process. I like to consider myself to be logical, and fairly rational, but it is rare that I proceed from idea to story in a logical way.
Often my stories seem to possess a life of their own, and while I might start with an idea and intend to take it this way, it instead heads off in that direction. That’s not a bad thing – after all a story is being told, even if it wasn’t the one that I th2 years ago Read more
Titles By Cliff Pratt
“Mmm, you mean someone has written about us?” said the Boffin.
“You know they have. Many people have over the years. They’ve called us by different names, it’s true.”
“Well, I’m a scientist, hence ‘the Boffin’, and my powers are the powers of Science. It’s obvious isn’t it?”
“What about me?”
“Your field is magic, hence ‘the Mage’ Your powers are based in Magic.”
“Yes. Always the obvious answer! Is that all?”
“What do you mean? I’m a scientist and you’re a magician. That’s true, isn’t it? But you aren’t so interested in theories as I am. You’re more interested in connections, relationships, the mind and consciousness, and that sort of stuff. We are both highly logical people, but I thought that you weren’t when we met. That was just plain prejudice, though, because we were on opposite sides in a war! I’m interested in analysis, you’re interested in synthesis. I’m interested in objects, you’re interested in feelings. I talk in terms of neurons, and you talk about motives and intentions. We have much the same interests, but we look at things differently. I’m generalising, of course.”
“What sort of stories should be written about us, dear?” she asked.
“’What sort of stories’? We go back a long time, so the older stories will seem strange to people these days, if they are told exactly how they happened. People trapped by spells in trees and so on. So stories from the earlier times might best be written like folk-tales or fairy stories. But the stories from more modern times can be written in a more modern style. It doesn’t make a lot of difference, though, so long as they tell the stories properly.”
“That’s true. But what about us personally? Our looks?”
“Well, you’re a tall, handsome man. You wear ordinary slacks and shirts most times these days, but sometimes you wear the full regalia, the long robes, and carry a rod or wand. You rarely wear a hat but sometimes have a hood. You have long sensitive fingers and have a full beard and tend to wear your hair longish. Your skin is light brown, a bit lighter than mine, and your eyes are deep, deep brown. And I love you dearly. What about me?”
“You are the glow of a sunrise, the tinkle of water in a stream, and the warmth of a fire in winter, and I love you dearly.”
She gave him a look, and he sighed.
“OK, OK! For the record! You are a beautiful brown skinned woman, quite slender, with long brown hair (usually!). You generally wear shirts and slacks like me. On rare occasions, you wear a dress and scrub up quite well!”
“Hey!” she interjected.
“Sometimes you wear a white coat and I’ve known you wear eye glasses for effect. You are marvellous with kids, especially babies, and at one time we were barely ever without one around. Ours or someone else's! In spite of your calling you are emotional and caring, and more than a little impetuous. However, if you are deep in the throes of an experiment or serious study, you can be extremely uncommunicative and distracted, to the point of being antisocial.”
She thought about objecting, but in the end she just nodded and sighed. He put his arm round her, and she leant against him. She curled her legs up on the sofa, and the two of them stayed there like that for some time.
Then, for no particular reason, I started to write more stuff, and lo and behold, I finished writing something, a novel. I felt a tremendous sense of achievement, but still had the feeling that I hadn’t finished.
I decided that I would have a go at publishing my novel, but I didn’t know how. This is the story of my writing and publishing journey, from the first few words, to the point where I have my novel self published in several places, both as eBooks and also as a paperback.
Although she is physically isolated, she still communicates extensively with other people. She has a few loyal staff in her retreat, and a number of others around the world. She has enormous global influence and talks to the leaders of the nations and other powerful people around the world by videoconference and videophone almost every day.
She is reconsidering the reasons for her isolation, and wonders whether those reasons still apply. How did she come to be living in isolation. Is it time for the isolation to end?
She sees in an article by a newspaper reporter an indication that, perhaps, her affect on society has not been completely positive. She decides to ask the newspaper reporter to visit her to discuss his views, but she underestimates the effect of this break in one hundred years of tradition. George, the reporter, and his friends are sucked into a whirlwind of global interest.
Their lives will never be the same again.