If you have time to read something over a cup of coffee or lunch one day, here is a short story of 2,000 words that you might enjoy. It is called "The Leaving of the Bear" and is about the separation of a family, in particular, a grandfather and his granddaughter, There is also an environmental message thrown in as well for good measure. To get maximum effect from the story, have "Romance of the Telescope" by OMD ready to play on your music streaming service when you get to the end. This will make sense when you read the story. Hope you enjoy it

Deity Creation by first time Galway author Paul Mee is a mix of sci-fi and historical fiction, one that looks at the history of Christianity/Judaism and the story of Jesus Christ, and asks: What if one of the world’s largest religions was a social engineering experiment by an alien race?

Reviewed for Galway Daily by Briain Kelly, February 22, 2021

I didn't start writing properly until 2013 when the urge to write a book could no longer be resisted. I had the bones of a trilogy in my head for many years and, in 2013, I started writing the first one. When I finished it in 2016, I realized that I had inadvertently written the second book in the series first. An idea for a book set before the one I had written came into my head and I started to write "Deity Creation". I am a big fan of "Life of Brian" and it was a major influence on the book. Thank you John Cleese, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam. The book was also inspired by the writing and ideas of Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry and Philip Pullman.

I finished the book at the beginning of 2020 and it took 10 further months, not helped by Covid 19, before the book was published. I self published through Tribes Press.

Having written the second book in the series first, I don't have the pressure of writing a second one! The second book is provisionally entitled "Creation Revelation" and is set in the near future. The story arch of the Deusi/Santu conflict carries over into the second book albeit that it is set over 2,000 years after the events described in Deity Creation. All being well, the second book will be released in October 2021 with some extracts released before then.