18 December
Plan the Play revisited
In 1996, Dave Huggett and I jointly wrote a bridge book on declarer play for intermediate players. It received quite a few favourable reviews at the time. But now it is the digital age, so with the help of Robin Khan, we have turned it into an e-book. Kindle versions are available at both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
18 November
Lucky for some
So Book Thirteen of The Wheel of Time has surfaced in paperback form. I accidentally wandered into a bookshop, and accidentally bought it. I hope it’s worth it, especially as I know nothing about Brandon Sanderson other than the fact that son no. 2 says he’s read some of his other offerings, and they have been ‘pretty good’. The trouble is, it’s... well, I don’t know how many years it’s been since The Wheel of Time started. It feels like a whole cycle of the Wheel has trundled by while we wait for each book. So I confess I can’t remember much about the early books, which I think were better than the later ones (I think the later ones became rather self indulgent and far too detailed). Anyway, the thing is that I think I’m going to have to read the previous twelve books before I try Brandon’s latest addition. So watch my books review section in, oh, about twelve months time. Perhaps by then I’ll be able to tell the world what I thought of Towers of Midnight.
21 October
Say it ain’t so
I’ve checked, and my insurance doesn’t cover shattered illusions. I was brought up on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Narnia books, followed by the Lord of the Rings, moulded my thoughts on what good fantasy is all about. So I am currently reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to six-year-old Dylan when - yes, you saw it coming - I found something that should have been picked up by a competent editor. A mistake. Small and unimportant, but a mistake nonetheless. It takes place in Chapter 7; A Day with the Beavers. At one point, as the children arrive at the Beaver residence, dear old Mrs Beaver says ‘...The potatoes are on boiling and the kettle’s singing and...’ Then there is a paragraph telling how the boys go off fishing with Mr Beaver. And then the very next paragraph begins ‘Meanwhile the girls were helping Mrs Beaver to fill the kettle...’ Oh dear! Do the Beavers have two kettles, then? One already singing, and one waiting to be filled? I don’t think so. Happily, Dylan is thoroughly enjoying the book and, with another six of them to go, I can see Narnia seeing us through winter.
26 September
Supernatural Tales #20
Supernatural Tales 20 is out. Or almost out. I am now its Assistant Editor (thank-you, David) so I suspect the couple of copies that dropped through my letterbox are probably advance copies. You can find out more about the magazine at Supernatural Tales, but I can tell you that issue 20 contains stories by Daniel Mills; Andrew Kolarik; Brian Day; Katherine Haynes; Philbampus and Michael Chislett. Why don’t you take out a subscription? Then you can vote for the best story in the magazine and the delighted winner will eventually receive the princely sum of £25.
24 August
Danksmead
Thirty second logic problems? Sudoko? Ppfff! I snap my fingers contemptuously. If you’d like to exercise your brain properly, try this numberword my uncle gave me thirty years ago. I’m glad to say that I managed to solve it then - goodness knows if I’d be able to do it again! I have the solution but I’m not going to put it online. If you get stuck, you’ll just have to email me.
07 August
Game of Thrones
I recently took the opportunity to sit through the recordings of Game of Thrones that my son had made on our Sky box. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but in the event I thought they were very well done and I’m looking forward to the next series. I read Game of Thrones ages ago and didn’t really remember much about the plot, but it’s fair to say that it all started to come back to me as I watched the adaptations. So it followed the plot quite closely, and the characters were very well cast. All of them looked more or less how I imagined them to be when I read the book, and now that I have seen them in the flesh, as it were, I’m going to find it difficult to imagine them any other way. My only criticism is that it felt a little claustrophobic - most of the scenes were shot either inside somewhere, or in an enclosed courtyard, that sort of thing. I haven’t yet got a sense of it being a huge, sprawling, pan-world adventure. But perhaps that will come. Now I’m wondering if I ought to re-read the books. Would that improve my enjoyment of the next series, or would it reduce it?
20 June
On rain
So we were walking up to work and school and (no surprise here in Scotland) it was raining. "When it rains a lot," I tell Dylan, "people say it’s raining cats and dogs." I was expecting the usual ‘why?’ response, which would probably have stumped me, but after thinking about it, he says "It’s not doing that now, it’s only raining ants and spiders." By the end of the High Street we had a new way of grading rain - take note BBC weather people. A tiny bit of rain which ordinary people would call spitting, is "raining ants and spiders". A bit heavier, such that you might call it light drizzle and think about putting up a hood or umbrella, is "raining slugs and worms". Heavier again, such that you would call it rain and probably not go out in the first place, is "raining rats and moles". And if it is really coming down, we all know it is "raining cats and dogs". I thought that would be the end of it, but no. Dylan thinks that in some countries it rains even heavier than it ever does here, and that would be "raining elephants". So, anybody reading this from overseas, does it ever rain elephants over there?
06 June
Kindle Versions of the Within Trilogy
The Within Trilogy, consisting of two children’s books (Search for the Sage and its sequel Tunnel at World’s End) and their adult continuation The Key, are available on Amazon as Kindle editions. You can find out more about the books in the Writing section of this website. If you want to zip off to get hold of a Kindle edition, here are the relevant links: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
30 May
Supernatural Tales on Kindle
As David Longhorn writes in his Supernatural Tales blog, Supernatural Tales 19 is now available for download as an e-book on Kindle. That’s the one that has my story The Ticket Collector in it, so naturally I think you should go there forthwith and buy a copy. Here’s a link to Amazon to speed you on your way.
30 May
Why They Win e-published
I received an extremely nice compliment on the Guestbook page about the bridge book I co-wrote with David Huggett. When I had a chat with Dave, he recommended putting our books onto Amazon and Apple platforms as e-books, because he had done quite well with his own publications that way. Well, that may or may not happen, as I am waiting for a response from Orion books regarding the return of our rights for our books. But in the meantime I wondered about putting Why They Win onto Amazon as an e-book. I contacted Robin Khan, who did the techy stuff for Dave Huggett, and he said he would help. So, many hours of work later (mainly his!), Why They Win is now available as an e-book on Amazon.co.uk and on Amazon.com, and will be available on the Apple iBookstore soon. Dave Huggett has kindly put his name to the Foreword, and I have written out to countless folk to ask them to spread the word. No doubt Justin will do the same. So if you have an interest in contract bridge, check out the blurb on the Amazon site.
07 May
More on The Ticket Collector
Supernatural Tales has been reviewed on a website called HorrorWorld. The reviewer lists the stories in ascending order of preference... out of modesty I can scarcely say which one ended up last on his list. You can check it out here and see for yourself!
10 April
Supernatural Tales
Supernatural Tales #19 is out, with yours truly having a story therein. There’s also an advert in there for my proofreading - sadly undermined a little because during the printing my centred text has uncentred itself. Speaking of which, I proofread the stories while they were still in original format, and take no responsibility for rogue blank lines or missing indentations. Sorry David! All that said, there are some good stories to be read (and one in particuler, heh). Why not purchase a subscription?
02 April
Our Caring Police
So we were on our way to school and work (Dylan to school, me to work, in case you were wondering), and he says: "A policeman came to see us at school." "Oh yes. What for?" "Can’t remember." "When did he visit?" "Can’t remember." "A memorable visit, then." "What?" (A discussion of what "memorable" means.) "I do remember, he showed us his handmuffs." "What?" "Handmuffs, Dad. He had some keys for them. Ruby tried them on but her hands were too small!" Hysterical laughter from Dylan. Muffled hysterical laughter from me. Pedestrians probably thought the pair of us should have been handcuffed - sorry, handmuffed - and locked securely away.
28 February
SfEP course on web editing
Last Friday I traipsed up to Glasgow to attend the SfEP course "Introduction to web editorial skills". It was good fun and I enjoyed meeting up with (mainly local) fellow SfEP members, some of whom I already knew and some I didn’t. I’m not sure I learned too much on the course. As I noted in my feedback form, it appeared to concentrate more on "Introduction to the nature of websites" rather than on how to edit them. But I picked up a few points; in particular, the group took a look at cashmoreeditorial.com and made some very pertinent suggestions. So pretty much as soon as I’ve made this post, I’ll nip over to cashmoreeditorial and start fiddling around with some of the pages there.
27 January
Pen name competition
So I was down in London over the weekend, with Liz Williams. On Saturday there was only me & one other - on Sunday just me, so I took the opportunity of asking about marketing and getting some query letters and target agents in place for… um, the things I want to market. In summary, and excluding the stuff specific to my own work: a) always submit short stories to publishers/magazines direct. Make sure right format used, blah (mine were OK). Use Duotrope and Ralan to search for markets. In Liz’s opinion, those two sites are sufficient in themselves. Don’t send out short stories to more than one publisher/magazine at the same time; b) always submit novels to agents. American agents seem to prefer the style "Dear Mr X. George died in a place he shouldn’t have been, and afterwards blah blah. My novel Ghosts is xx words long and blah". That is, they like to have an immediate short synopsis, maybe preceded with a logline, before the boring stuff. UK agents prefer the more traditional boring stuff in the letter, with synopsis attached. It’s okay to submit to more than one agent simultaneously. Liz was very helpful, and went the extra mile by emailing some people she knew for information, and even has a small press in mind for one of my masterpieces. I’m not holding my breath but watch this space. One thing she strongly recommended was that I should have a pen name for books in different genres. So, I need a pen name for my erotic novel, which is called Love on the Line. Any suggestions? The winning respondent will, of course, get a signed copy of the published book. :-)