There is no disputing that British restaurant food has lifted its game considerably in recent years. Search diligently, choose wisely and you can end up enjoying a reasonable meal and, if you are really lucky, one that represents value for money. But, really, it’s not all that good. The choice is limited to “safe” dishes,…
The most welcome words to a writer’s eye have at last been typed: The End. After far too many months, numerous delays and self-inflicted procrastinations the fifth book in the ongoing Bromo Perkins crime fiction series has been completed. All 95,000 words of it – far more than any of the previous books and well…
Into the home straight. The finish line is so close. I can see it, there, emerging from the mists that cloud my mind. All that’s needed is that final surge of creativity, the ramping up of the action, the delivery of drama, the concluding nail-biting moments. Then we can all relax, take a few calming…
Good news from Endeavour Press: Twisted Trees, my latest crime fiction novel, is now online and available to purchase from Amazon as an e-book. This is the fourth in the ongoing series of crime novels featuring reluctant sleuth Bromo Perkins. The series began way back at the start of the 2000s with Done Deal, which…
Since my recent blog bemoaning the loss of memory a bit of work has been taking place on stimulating whatever part of the brain is responsible for storing and recalling past events. I’ve been doing some ghosting. In other words, visiting old haunts. No need to wrap the body in white sheets and utter some…
Seventy years ago I lined up for my first running race, untrained and unaware of what it involved. Tomorrow, almost to the day of that step into the unknown, I will be on the start line yet again. Significantly – at least to me – this will be an anniversary not only in terms of…
As I was saying before … Before what? Before when? Why did I come into the kitchen? What am I doing here? Well, as I was saying … What was I saying? Something about … er … Hell, let’s start again. There’s this problem I’m having with memory. I hear mention of such terms as
Thinking about this resolution thingy. The reality is it depends on others. No point in giving up the drink unless your booze-buddies do likewise, or you’ll have little support. Same with the fags. And the diet. And the “join a gym” promise to oneself. Resolutions need to be a mass initiative to be of any…
As anyone who has ever tried well knows, the first rule for writing a successful novel is that there are no rules. Or, if you like, there are dozens of rules and innumerable variations upon them. In recent days there has been further proof of this in newspaper interview revelations about their writing days with two highly…
One of the more misleading headlines of recent times was the one that suggested, for readers, there was no difference between the trashy romance porn of Fifty Shades of Grey and such established classics as Ulysses, War and Peace or Metamorphosis. This led into a report of a research study that found that all novels…