Books theme for Win 7

Anyone who loves books and writing might like the desktop theme on Windows 7 that I've just discovered.  It's probably been available for ages, but then I haven't checked for new themes for ages, so hadn't realised it was there.

There are thirteen different pictures of beautiful old books and architecturally stunning libraries from around the world.

It's in the 'Art (Photographic)' category and is called, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Beauty of Books.

Now, if I could just find a writing-themed template for my blog that was anything like as attractive, I'd be a happy bunny.

Pill Hill Press closes

Last week I noticed that my link to Pill Hill Press no longer worked, and that their website appeared to have been removed from the internet altogether.  Further investigation revealed that the press actually closed its doors back in January, although unfortunately nobody had told me.

I had a number of stories in Pill Hill Press anthologies: The Other Side of Silence in their 'There Was a Crooked House' collection; and four separate flash stories in 'Daily Flash 2012'.  So I wrote to ask for clarification on what was happening with rights, sales and the like. 

Normally when a publisher goes under, all rights automatically revert to the relevant authors.  All digital and POD sales cease immediately (or at least as immediately as the owners can let the various distributors know); and print copies only continue to be sold until existing stocks run out.  But when I checked my point of sale links, I found both books appear to still be available in a variety of formats, which isn't ideal.

The owners assure me that all the books will be removed from Amazon and the like in the next 'month or so' - on top of the five months since the press formally ceased trading - and obviously I'll be keeping an eye on things to make sure that happens.  In the meantime, if you happen to see a copy of either book for sale anywhere, might I respectfully request that you don't buy it?  I wouldn't be getting any financial reward and it could well be in breach of contract...

Sunday afternoon stroll

One of the nice things about moving to a more rural area is being able to go for long country walks quite literally from the doorstep.

Yesterday we went for a lovely Sunday afternoon stroll without even touching the car, and hit open countryside after less than ten minutes of street slog.  And what countryside!  It might not be the high fells, but the scenery is a stunning mix of woodland and fields, heath and open fellside, criss-crossed by streams, stone walls and ancient tracks.  The path meanders up and down; there are farms with fascinating names like Matson Ground and Old Droomer, and less than two miles from the town you could be in the middle of nowhere.

As to the wildlife, it was pretty spectacular too.  Loads of flowers at last - the warm weather a week or so ago seems to have brought everything out at once.  But also signs of some less common creatures: a raven flapping and croaking overhead; deer tracks by the tarn at Matson Ground; and a strange animal scent nearby that put us in mind, rather forcibly, of big cats in zoos.  There've been tales in the past about a big cat roaming the countryside at the back of Bowness; could this have been proof?  Or just otters in the tarn?  We'll probably never know, but it made for added interest on the walk.

We covered about four miles in just under two hours with frequent photo stops.  The picture here isn't one of mine (I'm still waiting to download my SD card) but shows Old Droomer farmhouse - a perfect example of a seventeenth century Lakeland farmhouse hidden in the back lanes behind Windermere.  Sadly, the farm it used to be attached to is now derelict and it's pretty much surrounded by a modern council estate, but still retains its charm.  If anyone knows where the name comes from, I would love to find out!

Ask us a question

You might remember I posted a few days back about the revamped Britwriters Blog.  Now fellow British author Sharon Bidwell has added a new feature to that blog - a page where people can ask us questions about Britain and the British way of life.

As Sharon says, "Want to know about everyday life, our towns, our countryside, our petrol prices, whether tea is as popular here as the jokes would have you believe? Which side of the street we drive on, or what dialects are spoken around the country?"  If so, ask away on the Ask Us a Question page at the blog.  No question is taboo... as long as it's legal, decent, honest and truthful *grin* and we'll always do our best to answer.  Writers basing books in the UK may find this feature especially helpful, but we're happy to answer anyone else's burning questions as well.

You can find the Ask Us a Question page here.

Newts, herbs and water wheels

The weather has been far too nice lately to hang around indoors.  Saturday was brilliant from start to finish and we took one look at the chores, shrugged, got the car out and headed up the motorway in the general direction of Penrith instead.  Once there we turned off into a maze of country lanes in the most gorgeous countryside in the Eden valley, and finally ended up at Acorn Bank garden.

This is another National Trust property but unlike most of theirs round here I'd never actually been, and all the pictures looked idyllic.  Sure enough, there was a 'big house' in lovely old red sandstone basking in the sunshine, surrounded by immensely pretty gardens.  The first area included an old garden pond which was absolutely swarming with newts - something I haven't seen for years - and a sprawling rockery.

There's far more to the garden than flowers, though, because it's known as a nationally important collection of herbs and medicinal plants, containing over 300 different varieties.  We saw a sign to the herb garden and thought 'oh yes, parsley and thyme', but there were plants from every corner of the globe, many of which we'd never even heard of, let alone seen growing in this country.  The collection is divided into sections depending on the part of the body they treat (head, heart, skin etc) and it was fascinating to see Medieval childbirth remedies cheek-by-jowl with plants used in ultra-modern chemotherapy drugs.

We could have wandered round the garden (which also included old orchards, beehives, wild-flower
meadows etc) for hours but after a nice salad lunch in the tea room we set off through the woods to the old watermill on the banks of the delightfully-named Crowdundle Beck.  There's been a mill here since about the twelfth century (the original is believed to have been owned by the Knights Templar) although the current building and workings date from about 200 years ago.  While we were there the volunteer miller opened the sluice on the mill leat, diverted water along the newly refurbished chute, and got the waterwheel working so we could see the machinery turning.  Originally there were three separate wheels, each connected to different workings with a different job to do, but only one remains.  It was still fascinating, though, listening to the clunk-creak as it span lazily round, and imagining how it would all have looked and sounded a century or so ago when they still used the building regularly to grind corn.  Swallows buzzed in and out of the windows just above our heads, chickens pecked and scratched in the farm yard at the back, and it was all so Yesterday's Rural Idyll it practically hurt.

Lovely place, though, and well worth a visit.

Gleams is award finalist

I'm even more delighted to announce that the judges at the Bisexual Book Awards included Gleams of a Remoter World in their list of finalists.

The winners were announced on Sunday and Gleams didn't quite make the grade on the night, but I'm not entirely surprised.  One of the main judging criteria (along with quality of writing) was 'quantity of bisexual content' and if I'm brutally honest, the main character's sexuality is only referred to a handful of times, so it's hardly a wonder if the judges felt other books had a stronger claim to the award.

I'm still glowing, though, because being an award finalist makes all the hard work worth while.  Many thanks to the Bi Writers Association for selecting the book and including me.

The Boyfriend From Hell

A fun title for a fun new short story.  The Boyfriend From Hell is a tongue-in-cheek romp involving aliens and tentacles which has just been accepted by British micro-press Fox Spirit for their new Shapeshifters anthology.

The collection forms part of their Fox Pockets range, a set of themed anthologies designed to introduce readers to the scope and style of their work.

No word yet on a release date as the stories have only just gone into the editing mill, but I'll post more details as soon as I have them.  In the meantime, you can see the full contents list here.

Award nomination for Gleams

I'm delighted to announce that Gleams of a Remoter World has been nominated for a writing award.  The book has been entered in the Best Bisexual Speculative Fiction category at the inaugural Bisexual Book Awards, organised by the Bi Writers Association.

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony/dinner in New York on 2 June, so I'll be keeping everything crossed until then.

Wish me luck!  (And if you'd like to buy the book to see what all the fuss is about, then feel free to visit my webpage to find out more.)

Islands and, er, intrigue

Forgive the long silence but we're just back from a week-long cruise around some of the wilder parts of Scotland and the northern coast of Ireland, operated by National Trust for Scotland (NTS).  For some reason this was billed as 'Islands and Intrigue'; the first bit is fair enough since we visited three separate Hebridean islands (and would have gone to a fourth if the weather had been kinder) but we're still scratching our heads over the 'intrigue'.  Never mind, it was a super break and allowed us to get to some remote and stunning places that we'd never otherwise have seen:

Greencastle, a small village on the Inishowen peninsular on the north coast of the Republic of Ireland.  This is mostly a stopping-off point for bigger attractions such as the city of Derry/Londonderry, and the Giant's Causeway.  Given that it bucketed down all day, we decided against sitting on a coach in the rain for four hours and stayed local, pottering round the Maritime Museum (a delightfully quirky collection of bits and bobs including whale bones, boats and amateur rockets) and then walked as far as the ruined castle on the edge of the village.  Getting on and off the ship's tenders in a force eight gale was, um, interesting, and some of the passengers had a really hairy time of it, but we made it safely and enjoyed a quieter day.

Islay:  One of the inner Hebrides, this is best known for its whisky distilleries, of which there are still about 8 or 9 operational on one small island.  Dave is a big fan of Scotch whisky, so we walked the two miles from Port Ellen to Lagavulin, one of the oldest distilleries in Scotland, for a fascinating guided tour.  Unfortunately there were absolutely no refreshments on offer (I even had to beg a glass of water) and part way back my blood sugar began to suffer.  Luckily a guardian angel, in the shape of Fabian, a young German we'd befriended during the guided tour, came to the rescue as he gave us a somewhat illegal lift back in his car - Dave on the front seat and me on Dave's lap!

St Kilda.  This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site twice over (almost unheard-of) as well as being a National Nature Reserve.  It's now owned by the NTS and almost uninhabited since the original inhabitants asked to be re-housed on the mainland in the 1930s.  The old village, much of which lies in ruins, stretches in a crescent just above the main bay with volcanic peaks at its back, and apart from a small army base and some NTS scientists and rangers, the only inhabitants are rare Soay sheep and thousands upon thousands of sea birds.  I don't think I've ever seen such breath-taking scenery and we were lucky enough to get ashore, explore the village, buy a teddy in the tiny gift shop, take about six million photos, and then have a circumnavigation of the islands in the ship once we were back on board.  A truly magical experience.

The Isle of Lewis.  The biggest of the Hebrides (as far as my geography takes me, anyway) and an intriguing if somewhat bleak landscape of dark moorland and inland lochs.  We joined an organised tour by coach to the famous prehistoric stone circle at Callanish (very atmospheric) and an early medieval stone tower, or broch, at Carloway.  This was the only time we ventured on a tour on the whole holiday and we were glad we had, since the only other option was to trudge round the dull streets of Stornoway, the main town on the island.  As it was, we saw more of the island, and had a fascinating talk by a tour guide who really knew her stuff since she was a qualified archaeologist.  I've wanted to see Callanish for years so this was a real treat for me.

Inverie, a tiny village on the ultra-remote Knoydart peninsular on the coast of Scotland.  The whole of this peninsular is cut off from the mainland road system; the only way to reach it is by boat, or by a sixteen-mile slog across some very difficult terrain.  I was expecting the village to be primitive to say the least but actually it was a glorious surprise - pretty, welcoming, and set like a jewel in the most amazing surroundings of mountains, woodland and coast.  We did a 'Knoydart in a Knutshell' walk from a leaflet, around two and a half miles taking in some of the varied elements of the area, then had a really nice lunch in the local tea shop, before setting off for another two mile hike along the coast, dodging frequent heavy showers of sleet.  The icing on the cake was hearing several cuckoos trying to out-cuckoo each other in the surrounding woods.

Rum.  The last day should have involved a trip to the island of Rum, one of the so-called Small Isles.  Sadly the weather had deteriorated hugely with a Force Nine gale, lashing sleet and snow showers, and a heavy swell on the sea.  The captain tried to moor and launch one of the tenders but was beaten back, and every other port he tried was the same story.  Even places that are normally dependent on (desperate for) tourists told him to stay away, so in the end he chose a route for the most scenic sailing tour he could find, including a circumnavigation of Rum itself, a sail-by of Fingal's Cave on Staffa, and a cruise up Loch Linnhe as far as Oban.  The latter was quite sentimental for us since that's where we spent our honeymoon, but we'd never seen it from the sea before.

All in all a wonderful experience and one we'd quite happily repeat.

The Britwriters Blog

Several years ago now a group of British writers, including yours truly, set up The Britwriters Blog as a place to showcase Britain, the British way of life, and (of course) British writers.  Gradually we all got busy with other things and the blog lapsed, but given the recent boost in interest in all things British after last year's Jubilee and Olympics festivities, we've decided to try to resuscitate it again.

After much messing about with defibrillators and the kiss of life, there are now some new posts on the site.  So, if you'd like to read more about all things British, as well as finding out about us and our books, then pop over to The Britwriters and feel free to poke about in the archives and leave a comment.  Topics range wildly from Tolkien to M.I.5 so hopefully there's something of interest for everyone!

Beating writers' block

There was an amusing article in The Guardian yesterday about how writers get past writers' block.  It was less a 'how to' manual, and more a look at the weirder methods employed by some well-known writers.  Dan Brown, apparently, hangs upside down on a special frame while wearing gravity boots.  When I told one of my friends, she said it explained a lot.  I'd better not comment on that one, except to say that if I tried hanging upside down I'd either get a headache or fall off and break my neck.  Neither of which is all that conducive to writing.

So how do I find inspiration?  Well, sometimes a soak in the bath helps.  I'm not sure why, unless it's the total relaxation that frees up my brain from all those little everyday worries.  Other than that, it's just a case of plodding along.  I'll leave the hanging about to the bats.

Sutra

Not the 'kama' one but something very different.  Last night we went with our friends to Birmingham Hippodrome to see the dance troupe Sutra perform.  Sutra are the brainchild of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and feature set designs by Anthony Gormley (of Angel of the North fame) and seventeen ShaoLin buddhist monks.

At its most basic level you could say the performance was a bunch of men pushing wooden crates around a stage to some rather discordant modern music.  In reality it was so much more than that.  The boxes created patterns, objects, even stories (men jumping from a cliff into a boat; a lotus flower opening) whilst the monks' mixture of kung fu and tai chi was awe-inspiring - by turns graceful and explosive.  There were even some lovely touches of humour.

The performance only lasted a little over an hour but the level of physical effort involved in lugging the boxes round the stage and doing martial arts in, around and over them was so extreme that we really couldn't have asked for more.

An unusual evening but a very rewarding one.

At a glance I can't find a website for Sutra but you can see more details at the Birmingham Hippodrome webpage here.

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...

The Swimming Lesson

This is the title of my latest short story, which has just gone 'live' over at Shotgun Honey.

The story was inspired by a photo I saw, of a man standing up to his knees in a beautiful blue sea, and beckoning.  It (the photo) was probably meant to be enticing but to me it looked ever-so-slightly unnerving.  Who was this man?  Who was he beckoning at, and why?  Perhaps I've seen Death in Venice one too many times, but it started a few things whirring in my mind and this story is the result.

You can read The Swimming Lesson (for free) here.  It's quite dark and twisted, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. 

QueeredFiction bites the dust

I've just popped over to the QueeredFiction website to check on something, and found the following brief and rather unhelpful message:

"QueeredFiction Press is closed. We thank you for being part of the QueeredFiction Press journey. "

And that's all.  There's no mention of the books and stories published by QF over the years, or whether the rights have reverted to the authors, or what's happened to any royalties that might be owing.  It's all a little unsatisfactory, and directly affects me because I had a story in their Queer Dimensions anthology.  Presumably, that's no longer available so I'll have to remove mention of it from my website.

It's a real shame the press has struggled the last few years and now closed, because the quality of the books they produced was very high, both in terms of formatting and in terms of the writing.  The stories in Queer Dimensions were mostly an absolute joy, and the editor was a thoroughly professional and pleasant chap.  However, small presses do tend to fail with monotonous regularity so I suppose it's no surprise this has gone the way of so many others...

How not to get published

Lists of do's and don'ts on getting published, finding an agent or annoying your editor do the rounds all the time, but this one is slightly different because it's based on genuine comments from editors and agents.

Recently a group of them got together and held a 'mass tweet' publicising some of the dafter author queries and pitches they'd received, and explaining why these were rejected, and what writers should be doing instead.  The result is this helpful list of what to do and what to avoid, and this amusing article in The Guardian which reveals one or two of the wilder pitches.  (I particularly liked the divine mandate.)

I've read in the past about writers doing extraordinary things, like filling their query envelopes with glitter so that it would fall out all over the agent and thus be remembered.  Well, remembered it certainly would be, but I wouldn't rate their chances of engaging said agent to act on their behalf all that high.

The fact that agents are still complaining shows authors never learn.  Which is depressing in some ways, but gives those of us who can put a business letter together a modicum of hope, and the rest of us a jolly good laugh.

Wild ride

Dave's been hankering after a new pair of 'back-up' boots ready for a long-distance walk later in the year.  He'd seen some advertised that looked suitable, so we hurtled round the lake to Hawkshead, to the huge outdoor clothing emporium called, appropriately enough, Hawkshead.

As a shopping trip, it was successful.  He tried three pairs on, quickly whittled them down to one, and bought them on the spot.  We also had a sandwich, in a chilly and slightly unwelcoming cafe in the store.

But the journey there and back was incredible.  The snow has almost completely gone now, but has left in its wake the sort of debris and destruction you'd expection after a minor hurricane.  There are stone walls collapsing into roads.  There are huge branches and even whole trees down across the roads.  There is water absolutely everywhere, to the point where the roads no longer resemble roads, but a series of lakes connected by streams.  The fields are flowing; the streams look like raging torrents; and the rivers are quite frankly frightening.  And the whole time we were out, it was bucketing down again.

In a 4x4 it was interesting, bordering on hairy where we had to dodge the larger branches or whoosh through huge areas of standing water.  In anything less than a 4x4 I reckon it would be dangerous.  And if it doesn't stop raining soon, we're going to get floods again...

Snow!

We'd managed remarkably well with the weather this year, avoiding the worst of one snowstorm after another.  Until Friday.

It started to snow before 9.00 am, and came on really heavily about 3.00 pm, after which we had nightmare conditions until at least 11.00 pm when I looked out just before going to bed, to find it was still thumping down.  For a while it was so bad that we couldn't get a satellite signal for the tv, and had to open the back upstairs window very wide, lean out at a precarious angle clutching an old roll of wallpaper, and poke the worst of the snow off the satellite dish.

By Saturday morning we'd had somewhere between 6 and 8 inches and for a while at least, until they got the snow ploughs through mid-morning, Windermere was cut off.  Although we drive a 4x4 now, we took one look at the roads and said "Oh, bugger that,", and set off on foot.  The pavements were horrible; lots of people had had the same idea so they were already well-trodden, compacted and very, very slippery.  But we made it down the hill as far as our favourite cafe, called in for a coffee, and trudged back again.

By Sunday it was thawing fast, so we risked a trip to the supermarket in Kendal.  On the way, the main road was littered with cars which had simply been left, some of them slewed across the road where they'd obviously lost all traction, or all patience, or both.  I've since heard that over a hundred cars were abandoned in the ten mile stretch between Windermere and Kendal; someone joked that "most of them were BMWs".

It's all gone now, thank goodness, and we're back to normal for the region - sloshing rain on Saturday night and more forecast, plus gales, for later on today.

Cover art vote

I promised to remind everyone when voting opened in the You Gotta Read Reviews cover art contest, which features Necessity's Door.

Voting opened today, so ::poke:: please consider this a reminder, and think about voting for the book.  The process is easy - simply follow this link to You Gotta Read, then click on the first part of the first line in red where it says "Click Here for Poll".  (Please ignore the second part of the link for "Online Survey" which seems to have tagged along for the ride and leads somewhere else!)

Voting is open until Saturday (26th January).  Don't forget, a vote for Necessity's Door isn't so much a vote for me, as a vote for my talented cover artist LC Chase, who spent ages juggling the various elements until she had the perfect cover.

Death of the bookstore revisited

You might remember I posted about the death of local bookstores back in the autumn.  If you didn't see it and would like to, you can find the original post here, but basically the owner of our local book shop wasn't taking new stock because he was struggling to make ends meet in the current digital age/economic climate.

The situation has moved on.  Last time I walked past the shop I noticed big printed signs in the windows, and assumed the worst.  However, further investigation revealed that he isn't (yet) closing his shop, or at least not permanently.  He's closing for a short period of refurbishment, after which he'll re-open as a gift shop where you can order books you've seen on the internet, or pick up books you've ordered via the internet.

This hasn't happened yet, so I'm slightly in the dark about how it will all work.  I do wish him well, though, and take my hat off to him for at least trying to keep up with modern trends.  Whether I'll be able to use his shop to buy books (or sell mine, come to that) is another matter...

One hundred and twenty five words

That's how much I wrote yesterday.  Doesn't sound like much, does it?  It doesn't feel like much, either, but it does represent progress because they're the first words I've written, on anything, since before Christmas.

I always find it hard to concentrate on work over the holiday season, what with all the preparations, shopping, travelling, and spending time with friends and family.  This year has been even worse as I've had not one but two nasty bugs to contend with, and haven't felt like working for weeks.  So although it doesn't sound like much, I'm actually quite pleased to be scribbling again.

The current project is a noir romp (if that isn't a contradiction in terms), which I'm hoping to submit to a publisher in Italy once it's finished.  Wish me luck, and here's hoping I'll be writing a bit more than 125 words a day from now on.  Two hundred would be nice...

Cover art contest

A while ago now I entered the Necessity's Door cover art into a contest run on a regular basis by the blog You Gotta Read Reviews.  I then forgot clean about it, but had a very nice reminder the other day to say that the cover has been entered into the January 2013 contest, is now available for viewing, and will be open for voting between 21st and 26th January.

You can see my entry here, or check out all the entries for the month here.

I'll post a reminder once voting opens (presumably once all the entries for the month have been posted) but do please consider popping along and putting a tick in the box for Necessity's Door.  You won't just be voting for me, and the book, but more importantly for my cover artist LC Chase, who spent many hours fiddling with the various elements to get the overall look just right.  She deserves all the credit she can get for that!

Unclean, unclean...

::Tinkle::  I really need one of those little bells that medieval lepers and plague-carriers carted about with themselves to warn the rest of the population they were approaching. 

When I wished everyone a happy and healthy New Year, I must have forgotten to pass that wish on to ourselves, because Dave and I have been absolutely clobbered by flu.  I'm finally sitting up again after two days under a duvet on the sofa hugging a toy sheep, but am still far from well so am just popping in briefly to say 'happy new year' to everyone.  Then I'm heading back to the medicine cabinet, and bed.

I'm sure you'll be able to hear me coming.

::Cough::  ::Tinkle::  ::Cough::

Merry Christmas!

I'd hoped to update this blog a little more in the week leading up to Christmas but simply haven't had time in the welter of running around, packing, gift wrapping, getting stuck to the ceiling with sellotape, shopping, shopping and more shopping.

I finally seem to have finished all the preparations now, though, so have time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, a good relaxing break, and a happy, healthy and peaceful new year.

I'll be back in a day or two, once I've finished stuffing myself stupid, snoozing on the sofa, and watching terrible old films on tv.  Well, it is Christmas...

National (theme) park

You'll remember my posts about the Lake District National Park and their love for chopping things down over the past few months.  Well, it seems as though I'm not alone in being less-than-impressed with their methods.  This is the somewhat caustic response from the Westmorland Gazette's resident cartoonist, Colin Shelbourne.  I should warn you that following the link is likely to damage your computer screen and keyboard when you spray coffee on them.

Making Plans for Brockhole

My own favourite of the collection is the one about invading Brantwood, which was so completely unexpected it made me shout with laughter - so loud that Dave came scurrying downstairs to see what all the fuss was about.

It would be nice to think that the powers that be at the LDNPA would listen to nice people like Mr Shelbourne poking fun at them, but somehow I doubt it.  They appear to be on a Mission From God to turn the Lake District into a giant theme park.  A depressing thought.

Instagram photo sharing

A quick word of warning to anyone who uses Instagram, the photo sharing arm of Facebook.  Facebook are looking to use it to sell users' photos to advertisers, without warning, and may also sell on other information such as cookies, log-on data etc, following a big change to their privacy contract.

You can see the whole story here, but this paragraph is particularly worrying:

"Facebook's photo-sharing site Instagram has updated its privacy policy giving it the right to sell users' photos to advertisers without notification.  Unless users delete their Instagram accounts by a deadline of 16 January, they cannot opt out."

In other words, if you're away or taking it easy over the holiday period and don't switch on your computer, you're likely to miss the deadline.  So, unless you want your private photos to be sold to companies you know nothing about, and used for purposes you might not even approve of, I suggest you opt out now.  And please pass the information on to anyone you know who uses Facebook.

Slippers, lilies and mince pies

The other day I wrapped up in several extra layers of clothing and braved the arctic blast to attend a talk by local author Deborah Swift at Windermere library.

Ms Swift writes historical novels set in the seventeenth century, and has had two published to date - The Lady's Slipper and The Gilded Lily.  Unlike many other historical novelists, she writes about ordinary people rather than royalty/aristocracy, and her books have been partly or wholly set in the Lake District, which is why I wanted to go along and hear more.

The talk, which concentrated on research and the processes of writing the books rather than the books themselves, lived up to my expectations and more.  It was fascinating to hear about the differences between researching daily life in London and Cumbria in the seventeenth century, for instance.  Apparently, although there are far more records for London, that in itself is limiting because everything is already known, so there's less scope to shoe-horn new characters, events or places in.  In Cumbria, which was very rural and had far fewer records, there's more space for artistic licence.

It was also fun to learn the differences between British and American readers' perceptions of book covers.  Britain prefers warm, vibrant colours, lots of gilt, and large script that stands out on the shelf, but all of those things spell 'trashy' to American readers who expect small fonts and dull colourson the covers of any books percieved to be 'literary'.

The whole event lasted for nearly two hours, and although the group was quite small, that made it all the more chatty and interesting, as the audience were able to participate - asking questions and comparing Ms Swift's experiences to our own - far more than if the room had been full.  And considering we got all that, plus tea/coffee and a mince pie, and an opportunity to buy books and have them autographed, all for the princely sum of £1, it was an afternoon of exception value and enjoyment.

Mmm... chocolate...

Christmas is fast approaching and as usual we seem to have left everything to the last minute, so on Saturday we drove into Kendal determined to make a start on the present-buying.  Needless to say, we couldn't find anything we wanted, and came away with three 2013 calendars for us, and nothing for anybody else.

It was bitterly cold out and after an hour we were so frozen we decided to call in somewhere for a coffee to thaw out.  There are simply masses of cafes and coffee shops in Kendal, and we trip over new ones every time we go.  This time we spotted a blackboard outside a wonderful old building on the steep lane leading out of the market place, which advertised tea, coffee and all manner of chocolate goodies.  Hardly surprising as the shop is called The 1657 Chocolate House and specialises in, well, chocolate.

Inside it positively creaked with character - squeaky floorboards, wonky walls, low ceilings and beams.  The coffee was lovely, and although we couldn't face chocolates or gateaux at half past ten in the morning, the aforementioned goodies looked very tempting.  I suspect we'll be back at tea time one of these days to sample some of their wares.

We're still puzzled by the name, though.  Reading a brief 'biography' on the back of the menu suggested the building dated from the 1630s, and the chocolate shop itself can't date from 1657 because it's had all sorts of other uses in the meantime.  So why 1657?  Answers on a postcard, please...

The tottering reading pile

I've just finished reading 'The Sparrow Conundrum' by Scottish crime author Bill Kirton.  I won the book as a prize a good few months ago now (ahem, probably last year) but I'm always slow to finish e-books because I'm not good at reading long passages on screen.  I really wish I'd read it sooner, though, because the book is tremendous fun.

Unlike the author's other works this is pure spoof, as a gaggle of gloriously inept secret agents bungle their way round Scotland inventing silly codes, shooting themselves in the feet, and generally failing to accomplish their missions in a quite spectacular way.  I don't think I've giggled as much in a very long time, and the postman and the exploding rose bed were pure magic.  I did guess the identity of the super-secret agent taking everybody and everything over, but it didn't detract at all from the mayhem or the entertainment.  This is definitely one to re-read, preferably on a miserable winter Sunday afternoon when I need cheering up.

New story accepted

I had some good news the other day as Shotgun Honey, the online crime/noir specialist magazine who published my short story Gran Torino last year, have now accepted another little tale.

The Swimming Lesson is a dark, even chilling tale of a holiday fling where all is most certainly not as it seems.  It was inspired in part by a photograph of a man standing up to his knees in a beautiful blue sea and beckoning to someone on the shore, but the twist at the end is the product of my own, er, twisted imagination.

The story should be appearing in the magazine in February next year, so I'll post a reminder and link nearer to the actual date.

Next Big Thing blog hop

The Next Big Thing blog hop has been proliferating over the internet like a measles epidemic lately and now it’s my turn to be suckered... oops, I mean tagged, by fellow British author Sharon M Bidwell. Thank, Sharon. I think.  Heh.

The questions are all aimed at discussing my latest work in progress, but I tend to prefer not to say too much about projects while I'm working on them. Partly this is to avoid tempting fate - gabble on endlessly about how exciting it all is and you can almost guarantee I grind to a sticky halt a few days later. Partly it’s also a little more selfish than that - the novel I’ve just started work on is rather unique and I’m reluctant to spill the beans too soon in case someone else nabs the idea! So, I’ve cheated. I’m going to talk about a novella I finished a couple of years ago instead. It’s not a complete cheat, mind you, since I have yet to find a publisher for the book, and in any case I suspect it needs more work. Which, um, makes it a work in progress, doesn’t it?

So, on with the questions:

What is the working title of your book?
"Got Ghosts?" after the name of the television programme featured in the book, where a film crew investigate a haunted house over a single weekend.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Watching some of those awful daytime tv programmes about haunted places, almost all of which are formulaic, filled with manufactured tension, histrionic mediums and screaming presenters, and obviously faked for the cameras.

What genre does your book fall under?
Paranormal comedy romance, with roughly equal parts paranormal and comedy, and a little romance on the side. It's a weird mix, but someone has to do it!

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?
This question seems to be flavour of the month but it's a tricky one to answer, for me at any rate. I don't write my characters with specific actors in mind, and trying to match one to t'other afterwards isn't easy. There are plenty of actors who are good enough to take on the roles, of course, but nobody who really looks and 'feels' exactly like what I had in mind. If I had to choose, though, I'd say that Ben Whishaw, who played Q in 'Skyfall', would suit Adam's kooky personality, and Miriam Margolyes (Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies) would be perfect as the demented medium Stella.

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?
Scatterbrained Adam's cosy yet haunted world is turned more upside down than usual when the Got Ghosts? film crew come to call.

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?
Neither.  I have nothing against self publishing but feel that a good publisher has access to more markets than I would ever be able to; whilst I've still never plucked up courage to approach agents.  So I'll be submitting it to publishers myself the same way I always do. Whether any of them accept it or not is another matter!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
It's hard to remember now because it was a couple of years ago, but it would have been at least a year. I do tend to work quite slowly - my recent novel Gleams of a Remoter World took me almost ten years to finish.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Hard to say really since it's fairly unique. It probably has a similar 'feel' to some of Georgette Heyer's dafter crime novels - especially Footsteps in the Dark - but the plot and characters are all mine.

What else about your book might interest the reader?
It's set in an ancient English country house full of hidden passages, secret chambers, ghosts good and bad, and eccentric characters - from the dotty vicar to the artistic Great Uncle Alfred.  Unlike Gleams of a Remoter World, the setting isn't based on real locations, but is a hotch-potch of many places I've visited over the years - and the staircase which features towards the end is loosely based on the one in my grandparents' house!

And now for details of my own victims... oops, I mean willing volunteers.  Many thanks to both Cameron Lawton and Erastes for agreeing to take up the baton and run with it.  Don't forget to check out their blogs in one week's time, on Wednesday 12th December, to see how they tackle these questions.

Erastes
Cameron Lawton

Armed and Dangerous

This year has gone by in a blur, what with moving house and having two books published in the space of six months.  And somewhere in the chaos I seem to have completely missed out on the fact that Paragraph Planet published another of my 75-word ficlets back in April.

The story is called Armed and Dangerous, it's a very tongue-in-cheek little piece about a raid on a pub, and you can still catch it at the magazine's April archive if you'd like to take a look.

Better late than never, I suppose...

Raining veg?

I know the weather has been atrocious lately, with months' worth of rain falling in a handful of days and half the country affected by floods. 

But I was still startled to see the Daily Specials board in a Kendal cafe the other day, which offered the interesting dish of "Leak and Potato Soup".  Ten out of ten for honesty, perhaps, although we didn't dare ask if it tasted like dish water...

Riptide selling print

Year-old publishers Riptide are continuing to spread their wings, and their latest development is to sell paperback versions of their books from their own catalogue.  Previously they've only sold e-books directly and readers have had to order print books from third party distributors.

I suspect this won't make a huge amount of difference to UK readers since the cost of shipping from the US will probably outweigh any benefits.  However, for readers in America it makes a lot of sense, since any purchases, whether print or electronic, will qualify for the various discounts, deals and offers on the Riptide catalogue.  Currently, for instance, all paperback books are on sale at 20% off list price, so readers might want to take advantage of that while it lasts.

Books that are available in print include longer works (novels over around 60,000 words); anthologies; and the most popular titles.  Both 'Riptide Rentboys' (including my novella Necessity's Door) and Gleams of a Remoter World are included in this list, so if you want to buy a print copy of either and benefit from the discount, now's your time!

Gallows humour

Those of you who know my writing also know I possess a mischievous, even macabre sense of humour at times - so you won't be surprised to find that this slightly gruesome video really hit my funny bone.

'Dumb Ways to Die' was originally a safety video issued by an Australian train company which has now gone viral.  Proof if proof were needed that it's possible to get a serious message across using humour and a catchy tune.

That tune really is catchy, by the way.  I make no apology for the fact that you may get it stuck in your brain for the next 364 days....

Knobs!

When we had the kitchen done we loved pretty much everything... except the cupboard and drawer knobs.  I'd ordered a rich, darkish oak, but when they arrived they were very pale and we've never quite shaken the suspicion that the supplier palmed us off with beech, which is a much cheaper timber.  We've managed with them for a year because they worked perfectly well and weren't broken, but they did look a little strange with the rest of the kitchen.

So I was delighted to find the website of Wooden Knobs & Handles recently.  They're relatively local, and they make all their knobs to order from a range of beautiful timbers, in a huge variety of shapes and sizes.  I chose walnut, ordered half a hundredweight since there's a lot of cupboards and drawers, and they turned up within days.  We swapped them out over the weekend and they look really smart, and it didn't even cost very much.  A great way to get a cheap make-over.

While we were at it, we decided to re-oil the wooden worktops.  You're supposed to do it every month or so, but we've had so much going on that it's kept slipping our minds and they had started to suffer.  Dave hauled everything off every worktop - microwave, toaster, kettle, loads of storage jars and general junk - sanded them down where they needed it, and applied a couple of coats of Danish Oil.  Then we opened the window to get the stink of fish and varnish out, and settled back to wait for it to dry.

And waited.

And waited....

By the time six o'clock came round and I needed to start cooking the evening meal, the worktops were still too sticky to put anything down on them.  That meant I had nowhere to prepare anything, chop veg, peel spuds; nowhere to put utensils during cooking; and nowhere to serve out the meal.  We considered juggling things in mid-air, or preparing everything in the dining room (which was already full of all the stuff we'd moved out of the kitchen), and in the end we realised it wasn't possible.  So the local Chinese take-away came to the rescue... and then we found we couldn't even do the washing up!

Mercifully everything has dried overnight so I've spent the morning putting the kitchen back together, and the worktops do look stunning.  Memo to self, though - don't expect two coats of Danish Oil to dry quickly in the winter.

Short, sharp interview

For some strange reason I seem to have completely missed blogging about my recent interview over at fellow Brit-writer Paul D Brazill's site.  Paul specialises in gritty crime and noir and I first 'came across' him via Byker Books, since he had stories in a number of the same Radgepacket anthologies I had.  He runs a very popular blog called You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? and often features fun little interviews with other authors writing in similar genres.

You can see my feeble efforts at Paul's blog, dating from a few weeks ago now.  Apologies for not passing on the link sooner - either Blogger ate my original post or in the words of the Queen song, I'm going slightly mad...

Truth is stranger than...

The case which provided some of the inspiration for Necessity's Door has just come to court, and some of the details now being revealed are more lurid and hair-raising than anything I could have invented.  You can read the full report on the BBC web page, but basically the allegations involve several police officers who, whilst working undercover, are said to have befriended women, tricked them into having sex, and in one case apparently even attended a family funeral.

I suspect this case will run and run.  The Metropolitan Police want it held behind closed doors, for obvious reasons.  (Nobody likes it when their employees are accused of nefarious practices, least of all when those employees are themselves supposed to be upholders of the law.)  The women who were allegedly wronged, on the other hand, want every last detail made as public as possible.  They say this is to highlight the issue of "police misconduct and the extent to which police officers can invade the personal, psychological, and bodily integrity of members of the general population"; although you can't help wondering, cynically, if they're also trying to win themselves larger amounts of compensation.  (And of course, they're quietly ignoring the fact that if they hadn't been involved in illegal activities themselves, they would never have been targeted by the undercover officers in the first place.)

It's all rather sleazy, and does indeed raise interesting issues about just how far the police should go in pursuing criminals, but it's going to be fascinating watching the case unfold.  If nothing else, reading about all the salacious details might just sow the seeds for another book... 

Death of the bookstore?

The other day I gathered my courage in both hands and asked at my local book shop whether they'd be willing to carry a few copies of Gleams.  The owner was both charming and deeply apologetic, but the answer was a firm 'no', and here's why.

He's been running the same store in the same location for over twenty years.  Currently his annual rent is somewhere in the region of £25,000 (which probably equates to around $35,000 or even $40,000 for those of you across the pond).  And thanks to the rapid emergence of e-books, Kindle and the like, he simply can't sell enough books to make ends meet.  He told me he honestly doesn't know how much longer he can keep going, is unlikely to still be there next year, and for that reason can't commit to carrying any additional stock, even if it's from a local author.

Particularly galling for him is that more and more people are using him as a sort of 'shop window'.  They go in, scan the covers of the books they want on their mobile phones, and then go out again without making a single purchase, to order the books more cheaply online.  Fair enough, vast online stores are always going to be cheaper - they don't have the same overheads as a small, one-man-band operation.  Even so, that does seem a little... I don't know... underhand.  The least they could do is buy a single paperback, or even a bookmark or a birthday card, while they're in the store.

I have a feeling that the next five years could see the end of the traditional book store here in the UK.  It's a crying shame because they are wonderful places, full of opportunity to browse the shelves, find new authors, be transported to a magical new world.  When was the last time you discovered a completely new book or writer on Amazon?  It's far more likely you go online with existing details, and simply buy the book you want.

However, change happens, and I do think that the owners who manage to adapt their book stores to the current economy (perhaps by offering coffee, or an internet cafe where buyers can order their books online) are the ones who are going to survive.  In the meantime, I wish my local book shop all the best, and can only hope it lasts longer than the owner thinks it will. 

And that I can find other places to stock my book...

Comets and curry

Sounds like a weird combination, doesn't it?  But actually, it was the highlight of a weekend away to celebrate Dave's upcoming ::ahem::ieth birthday.

Dave has always been a huge fan of astronomy and all things 'space' oriented, so as a special treat I booked two nights in a local hotel and two tickets for a special event at Herstmonceaux Observatory science centre in Sussex.  It meant another almighty drive (the third to the south-east corner in a couple of months) but boy, was it worth it. 

The hotel wasn't up to much, mind you - booking over the internet can be a hit-and-miss affair - but it was cheap, reasonably comfortable and only a couple of miles down the road. 

We had the opportunity to explore the area on Saturday, having never visited East Sussex before.  Hastings turned out to be a big disappointment (although I think we might have missed the more insteresting Old Town) but both Eastbourne and Lewes were amazing.  So much so that we've said we must come back, have a holiday in the area, and trawl through the sights at our leisure.

The crowning event, though, was the Comets and Curry night at the Observatory.  We rolled up just before 7pm, had some time to look round the exhibits (mostly in the form of child-friendly experiments but still great fun), then trooped into a geodesic dome in the grounds for our plate of curry and complimentary glass of wine, followed by a fascinating talk about the origins of comets and meteorites by one of the Observatory staff.

After that, we were let loose on the telescopes.  Herstmonceaux was used as the Royal Observatory for a period after the second world war, and has six separate observatory domes as a result, each housing an amazing and (in several cases) very old telescope.  As part of the evening, we went into four of the domes, not all of which are open on a regular basis.  We saw the copper-clad roofs rotating to line the telescopes up with different areas of sky.  We saw one dome raise its own floor so we could reach the huge telescope which is so heavy it's easier to move everyone up to it, than to move it down to ground level.  We looked through three different telescopes and were able to see Jupiter and four of its moons, Uranus (not visible with the naked eye), and even the Andromeda galaxy.  We talked to members of both a local astronomy society and a local amateur radio society.  And we saw several shooting stars - the result of the annual Taurid meteor shower.

Remarkably, since it had been raining all day, the skies cleared and everything was pin sharp, and because the Observatory is sited out in the countryside there are fewer lights around to cast everything into an orange glow.  I was delighted to be able to see the Milky Way, and individual stars in the Pleiades cluster, both for the first time.  And Dave was like a small boy in a sweet shop the entire evening and enjoyed every second.  Which, after all, is why I did it in the first place!

We're back at home again now, tired from the travelling, heartily sick of motorway service stations, but very, very happy that we made the effort.

Want to help victims of Sandy?

Then you could do worse than buy a book or two from the Riptide online store.  The staff at Riptide have been personally affected by the aftermath of the hurricane, and have taken the unanimous decision to donate 25% of all their onsite proceeds this week to the American Red Cross, to help pay for the clear-up efforts.

The offer stands until 10 November (Saturday) so if you'd like to do your bit, hurry along to the Riptide store and place your order.  Any book you buy will qualify for the donation, be it large or small, one or many. 

Thanks for listening, and thanks for your help.

Tree petition fails

All efforts to save the beautiful monkey puzzle tree at Brockhole Visitor Centre failed yesterday, when it was felled without notice - ostensibly on health and safety grounds, but more likely to prevent protestors gathering at the site.

I'm really sad about this.  Over two hundred people had signed an online petition to keep the tree; a recent survey by the Lake District National Park Authority showed that only one out of 1000 people asked was in favour of the felling; and local people in general were horrified at the idea.

And yet the LDNPA has disregarded the feelings and wishes of all of the above and cut the tree down, on the dubious grounds that it 'wasn't in the original plans for the gardens' at the house.  Well, nor was the zip-wire tree-top trek they've just opened, but I can't see them getting rid of that any time soon.

It's a crying shame, and leaves me nervous about the fall-out.  The LDNPA are the local planning authority for all properties within the National Park, and up to now they've been quite severe about refusing to let mature trees be chopped down on a whim.  But how can they refuse permission for other land owners when they've gone ahead, in the face of strong local opposition, themselves?  It doesn't bode well for the local landscape.

I've removed the link to the online petition as there's no longer any need for it.  Sadly.