And the first book is...

The brand new public library in Birmingham is getting ready to open its doors later this year and staff have already started transferring the contents from old to new building.  It's a Herculean task - apparently they will be moving over 1,000 crates of books, papers, journals, cds, maps and gawd knows what else across every single day for the next three months.

It's an exciting time all round, and to involve the public a little more, the library ran a poll to choose the first book to be reshelved.  There were some interesting choices on the top ten including, unsurprisingly, The King James Bible, as well as classics like Alice in Wonderland, 1984, and Paradise Lost.

But the book that won, and that was carefully placed on a shelf all by itself by council leader Albert Bore, was Tolkien's The Hobbit.  It's particularly fitting - not only is it a great book that appeals to adults and children alike, but the author had strong links with Birmingham for much of his life.

I just wish the new library building was as endearing, or likely to prove as popular for future generations.  I can only think of concertina wire whenever I look at it.

Town walls and tulips

We've just got back from a trip away to the Netherlands.  Dave had business meetings out there and for once I went with him, as a colleague offered to put us both up for a few nights.

We had a smashing time.  The colleague's apartment is in Brielle, a small town on the coast just south of Rotterdam.  The surroundings are a little lunar and industrial - mile after mile of refineries and docks - but the town itself is old, pretty, and fascinating.  It's mostly built inside an old 'star fort', with high town walls and a network of moats and canals, and many of the buildings date back to the 15th century or even earlier.  There's a colossal church, an arsenal, a windmill (well, this is the Netherlands) and lots of very pretty houses, shops and restaurants.  The picture above shows the main square, with The Hooftwacht restaurant where we had a wonderful meal, and made friends with the local cat, one night.

I had great fun poking about while Dave was at work, and then on Tuesday came a real treat, as another colleague's wife was also visiting and also kicking around on her own.  The two of us jumped in a car and drove over to the world-famous gardens at Keukenhof, and boy, was it worth the effort.  On the way we passed some of the famous tulip fields, where vast swathes of countryside are lit up in improbable shades of pink, yellow and blue as the bulbs come into flower.  And the gardens themselves are magnificent, with acres of bulbs, woodland, water features, and pavilions stuffed with what looks like every known variety of tulip in the world.  We spent a couple of hours wandering around on a lovely sunny afternoon, treated ourselves to coffee and cake and even sat outside to eat it. 

I took simply heaps of photos at the gardens (some of which even came out) and a few more around the streets of Brielle.  I'll try to post a few of the best on here in the next few days, so watch this space.

Broadband wobbles

A quick word of warning that I may go off air rather suddenly, and not come back for a day or so.  This is the week that we're finally swapping internet providers, and although it all sounds straightforward enough, my betting is it won't be.  One, the new router needs to arrive.  Two, Sky will switch off the old service... sometime... during the day... with no advance warning of when.  Three, the old router needs to be unplugged and replaced with the new one, with all the right wires in all the right sockets.  And four, BT will then switch on our shiny new service... sometime... during the day... with no advance warning of when.

And Dave's away.

I foresee difficulties - the router won't have turned up, or Sky will kill the old service at midnight and BT not set theirs up until 11pm, or I won't be able to get the new router to work.

So if I do suddenly vanish mid-post, it'll be because of that, and not because I've just been kidnapped by aliens.  On balance, the aliens might be less trouble...

How much??

Every now and again I check availability on some of my older book titles, just to be sure the links aren't broken and I'm not leading readers up the garden path.

Imagine my surprise earlier this week when I checked Amazon for 'Men of Mystery', the anthology containing my short story Any Means Necessary, only to find the hardcover version listed at a staggering $9,999.63.  Yes.  That really is nearly ten thousand dollars.  It's not a typo or a misprint. 

I'm not even sure the book was ever available in hardcover, so what the heck is going on?  The answer, rather surprisingly, turned up in a back copy of Dave's New Scientist magazine.  Apparently sellers on Amazon use software to track and out-price their rivals, often on a daily basis.  Seller A spots that seller B is offering a book at a slightly higher price than s/he is, so uses the software to set a higher price accordingly.  Seller B's software then raises his/her price, so seller A has to raise his/her price again, and so it goes on.  Readers of New Scientist had come across books, apparently legitimately for sale at quite ridiculous prices.  One copy of Recent Advances in Epilepsy, for instance, clocked in at a whopping $59,780,802,831,736.00 - which according to New Scientist is "...nearly four times the US national debt".

I'm pleased to see that no countries will have to bankrupt themselves to buy a hardcover copy of 'Men of Mystery', but for any readers out there tempted to try to order it, I'd have to say I advise against it...

Gleams on special offer

STOP PRESS - Riptide Publishing are holding a massive spring backlist sale to celebrate, well, spring.  All the books on their catalogue that are more than three months old are discounted by between 30-50%, and that includes Gleams of a Remoter World.

Want a treat but sick of chocolate after one too many Easter eggs?  Then why not buy yourself the e-book at only $3.49 - at that price you've got no excuse not to!  Print versions are discounted too.  To get your sticky mitts on one, hurry along to the Riptide catalogue before the offer ends.

Time Team petition

Time Team has long been one of my favourite programmes on television.  Over the years they've made some remarkable discoveries, and been realistic and brave enough to admit it when they haven't.  So it was with great sadness that I heard a few weeks ago now that Channel 4 wouldn't be showing any more episodes, after a wonderful thirteen years.

It seems lots of other fans of the programme feel the same way, and some of them have set up an online petition to save the programme, either by encouraging another channel to pick the series up, or at the very least have all episodes released on dvd (something I didn't realise hadn't already been done).

If, like me,  you're passionate about archaeology and think Time Team was easily the most intelligent, down-to-earth programme about the subject on television, you might want to add your name to the growing list (nearly 4,500 when I signed a few minutes ago).

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/time-team-should-continue-on-tv.html

Amazon buys Goodreads

Or should that be 'Amazon buys English'?

There's been a lot of media coverage the last few days about the news that Amazon have just acquired social networking/review site Goodreads.  Most of the coverage is pretty negative - readers worried they'll lose their ability to post impartial reviews, authors concerned that poor or misinformed reviews will now follow them onto Amazon.  But amongst all the soul-searching there was one spark of humour, in this brilliant bit of sarcasm/satire by Michael Bourne on The Millions.  It gave me a much-needed lift and I'm still giggling at the ending. 

Many thanks to Sharon for passing it on.

Easter shivers

Easter Day can be a bit deadly if you're not particularly religious - everywhere shuts and there aren't even any Christmas presents to open.  The last couple of years we've been badly caught out, deciding to go somewhere only to be greeted by locked gates or car parks with their barriers down.  So this year we prepared a little better, and came up with a shortlist of local places to choose from.  On Sunday, we picked one at random and popped out for the afternoon to Coughton Court.  It's a spectacular Elizabethan manor house, owned by the National Trust, which we hadn't visited for years.  In fact, the last time we went I'd been seriously ill and was creeping round like an elderly sloth.  We thought it would be nice to see it properly and enjoy it more.

If only it had worked out like that.  Of course, National Trust properties are pretty much the only places open on Easter Sunday, so half the West Midlands had descended on the place. We got one of the last overspill parking spaces (muddy field, glad of the 4x4), then had to queue for ten minutes in a draughty shed for a 'ticket' even though we're members.  Then they told us there was an hour and a half wait to get into the house.   That's fine, we said.  We'll find something to do while we wait.  Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea.  The shop was packed, the second hand book stall was packed, the restaurant was so packed people were practically sitting on each other's laps, and the only other thing to do was walk round the gardens and grounds.  In a temperature of 3 degrees celsius.

We tried, we really did. We went all round the garden twice, then found a woodland walk and a riverside walk and plodded along those, then went in the little estate church. And there was still over an hour to kill, and we were frozen to the marrow and a bit fed up. There wasn't even much to look at in the garden because all the plants are so far behind. So I'm afraid we told the staff we'd had an urgent phone call, surrendered our tickets, got back in the car and came home again.  So much for Easter Sunday out.  Next year I think we'll give up and go abroad!

Tolkien quiz

Yesterday was Tolkien Day, apparently, and to celebrate The Guardian ran a fun Lord of the Rings quiz.  All you have to do is read the selected passages and decide where the characters were at the time or what was about to happen to them.

I'm amazed to say I got eight out of ten right which must earn me the right to swank.  Then again, I've been reading Tolkien since I was ten years old and can still quote chunks from Lord of the Rings, so I'd have been embarrassed if I'd got any less than that!

You can find the quiz here - good luck.

What happened to spring?

The official first day of spring was a couple of days ago now.  According to the weather reporters, it was three whole weeks ago.  And yet winter keeps on keeping on.

The forecast for overnight and today was terrible - four inches of snow, strong winds, blizzards on the hills, even the motorways struggling to cope, let alone the ordinary roads.  In the event, it isn't quite as bad as predicted... or at least, not yet; but it's not exactly pleasant.  It's been snowing since the early hours, and has settled in parts.  Some of the high-level routes in the county are already closed.  It's blowing a gale which is sweeping the fallen snow into drifts.  And it's 1 degree celcius.  At the end of March.  (As a useful comparison, a year ago the temperatures got up to 20 degrees.)

As I type the snow is intensifying and starting to settle more.  I've got a feeling that before it gets better it's going to get much, much worse.  Luckily the house is warm and I've got enough food in to survive for several days, even if the town gets cut off.  It would be nice to see even a glimmer of sun, though, or go outdoors without seven layers of clothing and heavy boots.  It would be nice if spring were just, well, spring.

Even my daffodils have got snow on their heads!

Sweating blood

Just how can something so short be so difficult?  The other day I spotted a call for submissions for a 'pen portrait' - a description of a particular type of character in around 200 words.  The piece needed to be in either second or third person point of view and the subject of this particular call was 'hypochondria'.

Most of my family have been obsessive about their health one way or another, so it seemed like a rich seam to mine.  I recalled one particular incident, which was brief but quite dramatic and illustrated the theme quite well, and managed to reproduce it in just under 200 words.  And thought I was happy.

This morning I've had another look, and have come to the conclusion that it isn't in second person point of view at all.  That particular style is notoriously difficult to pull off, and clearly I haven't pulled.  What I seem to have done is wandered into first person point of view, but addressed to 'you' as the other character.  So I decided to shift it into third person, which is at least easier to use, and work from there.

And even that hasn't worked!  It's in third person, but parts of it are still from another character's point of view and I can't seem to shift it.  I'm going to have to think very hard about this one, because the magazine I want to send it to is pretty picky and I need to get it right.  You wouldn't think 200 words could be so tricky...

Sky broadband update

You might remember a couple of weeks ago I was grumbling about our terrible broadband service under Sky Connect, and the fact that they'd secretly applied 'traffic management' (ie slower download speeds) to us at busy times.

Well, we've switched providers!

BT have been widely advertising their new 'Totally Unlimited' service (almost certainly in response to news and/or grumbles about Sky's policy) so today Dave phoned them and said, could they absolutely guarantee that they would never apply traffic management to the service, even by invoking some loophole in the small print.

And they said yes, they absolutely could guarantee it. Under no circumstances whatsoever will they limit our broadband service, operate traffic management at busy periods, or do anything else that will adversely affect our download speeds. So we've gone with them. It'll take a few weeks to set everything up, but by mid-April we'll be shot of Sky and hopefully have decent full-speed broadband in the evenings and at weekends.

Sky really aren't doing themselves any favours with this one...

Password aggravation

I'm on so many different sites these days, all with different passwords and log-in details, that I've completely lost track and can't remember *any* of them.

Last week I thought up a really good new password, totally personal to me (but without the usual birthdays or husband's names etc), that nobody would ever be able to guess in a month of Sundays. Today I thought I'd set about changing one or two of the odder ones to this new one.

Talk about frustrating. So far I've tried two. Google (for this blog and various other sites) wouldn't accept it because it was 7 digits and they insist on 8. I had to add something silly to get it to accept it, so now I probably won't be able to remember it any more than the old one.

Then I tried Wordpress and they were even worse. They didn't mind the 7 digits, but refused utterly to accept the new password because it was 'too weak' even though it's already a mix of letters and numbers. Kept telling me I *had* to have a mix of upper and lower case letters. In the end I gave in and made one of the letters upper case, even though that would have been harder to remember again. It came back with more red stuff on the screen, saying it was *still* too weak and I had to have 'special characters' (like ? or £). It simply will not accept anything without. I had to give up in the end, and keep my old password, which is also 'weak' by their new definition, and much easier to hack or guess than my new one would have been.

It seems utterly mad that you can't now change your own password to something that you, yourself, will be able to remember and re-use. Make it too weird and you simply have to write it down somewhere to memorise - and where's the security in that?

Sheer brilliance on a screen

Every now and again something comes up on tv that takes your breath away.  Some of the 'Scandi noir' series, especially The Bridge and The Killing II, had that effect, as did the BBC spy drama The Shadow Line from a couple of years ago.

All this week we've been glued to the screen by the latest example of brilliance - a dark drama called Mayday.  Set in a fictional southern village, it shows the impact on a small community of the disapperance of a young girl on her way to be crowned as the May Queen.

Everything about the series was magical, in both senses of the word.  Writing, direction, cinematography and above all acting combined into one well-crafted whole.  The series had attracted some big names - Peter Firth, Lesley Manville - but no one actor took over and dominated, in the way they sometimes can.  Instead we were treated to the best ensemble performance I've seen for a long time.  Even the less well known 'faces' shone. 

The characters all had their own secrets and flaws, yet none was unrealistic.  Even the unsympathetic characters had their own reasons for their actions, their own moments of grace, which makes a refreshing change from all those two-dimensional baddies that turn up in tv shows and films with monotonous regularity.  These were real people, with real hang-ups and problems, and real misunderstandings. 

Too often the ending spoils an otherwise good series.  Even The Shadow Line was marred by an outbreak of last-minute melodrama, while the end of the last The Killing series was quite frankly bonkers!  But here, I think the writers got it just right.  We knew enough to satisfy our main questions - who killed Hattie and why - and there were delicious hints of a final, unstoppable justice from beyond the grave.  Other threads were left dangling, but then real life is like that - not everything can be explained by the detective in the library afterwards - and it's even possible the show's creators were leaving a few things open for a second series.  I rather hope so, because if it's as good as this was, then I can't wait.

Amazon and book series

If you're an author with several books published in one series, either on your own or with a co-author, then it might be worth your while checking how Amazon are listing your books.  Word is spreading around the net that they may be lumping all books in a series together into a single listing, in the misguided belief that it's all the same book!

For once this doesn't affect me since I don't write series (or even sequels, much) but I still thought it was worth passing the word on.

First daffodil

I think spring might be just around the corner.  The weather has been slightly less horrible this past week.  We've had some sunshine, and although the temperature hasn't been what you could call warm, it's been mild enough to sit out in the sun for brief periods.

Yesterday I saw catkins for the first time, on the trees by the banks of Mill Beck.

And now the first daffodil has burst into a glorious blaze of yellow in the back garden.  It's only a miniature one so the flower is very small, but manages to look cheerful and utterly defiant in the face of morning frosts and a keen wind.  Daffodils are my favourite flowers for just that reason.  It's lovely to see them shouting their wares from the tattered winter flower-beds again.

Buying your own bestseller

I'd often wondered about those two little words on the front cover of so many new books, irrespective of genre, author 'clout', or even, dare I say it, quality.  Not only that, but books are often released with 'bestseller' already on the cover, which made me think the publishers were either clairvoyant, or insanely optimistic.

This fascinating blog post at The Passive Voice explains all.  The whole thing is based on pre-orders, and on the services of marketing companies who specialise in purchasing, or arranging the purchase of, enough copies of a book to send it straight into the bestseller lists once it's released.

It sounds dodgy, but apparently it goes on all the time, and seems to benefit everyone who takes part.  On the one hand, it's depressing that yet another aspect of the publishing industry (like awards and inclusion on Richard & Judy's lists) is governed by pounds and dollars.  On the other hand, it's perhaps encouraging that with a bit of palm-greasing, you too could be on the next bestseller list.  Assuming you can afford to spray that kind of money around, of course...

Isle of Arts

Looking for something madly cultural (but fun) to do in April?  Then why not clear a space in your diaries for the Isle of Arts festival, based on the Isle of Wight?

The festival, now in its third year, is a multi-arts event including music, art, comedy and literature and usually features a wide range of events, concerts, lectures, and themed walks.  I have to admit I'm not entirely unbiased since my uncle is one of the main organisers; however, he and his colleagues seem to have a knack for attracting some top level 'guest stars'.  Last year they snaffled Lesley Garrett while this year's acts include Alan Davies, Stuart Maconie and Femi Temowo.  They're even running a Doctor Who writing competition!

If you're interested, the event runs from 19-21 April 2013 in Ventnor, Isle of Wight.  Which is a jolly nice place to visit on its own account with spectacular cliffs, sea views, and a quaint town centre.  It's also a great base for exploring the rest of the island, a green and pleasant place with a distinct whiff of seaside holidays of the past.

Further details here: http://artsisle.org/

Sky Connect traffic management

A quick word of warning for any customers of the Sky Connect broadband service, who might have noticed their broadband download speeds plummeting recently.  Apparently Sky now use 'traffic management' at peak times - basically all evening on weekdays - for customers who either download a lot, or breach the terms of their contract.

Since the terms of said contract are woolly at best, and since Sky themselves decide what constitutes 'a lot', it's highly likely that large numbers of customers are being penalised, possibly unfairly.  We found our download speeds had been reduced from the advertised 8 Megs a second to something under half a Meg a second.  When we phoned to complain, we were told we were 'high users'.  However, when we checked the terms and conditions of our contract, high users were defined as downloading more than 1.3 gigabytes a day, a vast figure that we honestly don't think we could ever get close to.

If you are noticing delays, slow downloads and the like, it's worth checking your own contract and phoning customer support to find out if 'traffic management' has been applied to you.  If so, you might want to complain.  We have, and haven't even received a reply, but the more customers who say they're unhappy with this discrimination, the more likely Sky are to do something about it.

Or, of course, you could just find another provider.  We're already looking...

Framing marvellous...

I'm feeling absurdly pleased with myself.  The other day I found a spare clip-frame kicking about in a drawer.  Rather than use it elsewhere in the house, I printed off an A4 sized copy of the cover art from Gleams of a Remoter World, popped that in the frame, and have hung it over the desk in my study.  It's a little wonky (the wall is solid slate and I can never bang the nails in far enough) but it looks surprisingly good and is a great way of providing a little instant inspiration when work isn't going terribly well.  And LC Chase's stunning cover art looks even better in a frame...