Wild thoughts by JJ Toner

My monitored house alarm

2012-01-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

I have this monitored house alarm. It’s called Eircom Phonewatch. It was installed in 2003.

I would use the alarm if ever we all left the house, me, my wife and my autistic son together. As far as I can recall, the last time that happened was in 1991. It is not practicable to use the alarm with my son in residence, as he comes and goes at all hours of the day and night, following his own mysterious agenda. So the alarm is idle all of the time and we don’t use (or pay for) the monitoring service.

Today it started beeping. I rang Eircom Phonewatch customer service and spoke to a young woman. She asked me to press the System Status button and the alarm informed us that the battery in the downstairs motion sensor was low.

The young woman offered to send out an engineer to replace the battery.

Incredulous, I said, "An engineer! To replace a battery? How much would that cost?"

She said the call-out charge was €110. She explained that I would be charged because I was “not a customer”.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I am a customer. I bought and paid for this alarm system.”

“Your system is not being monitored,” she said. “You're not paying the monthly charge for monitoring, which means you are not a customer.”

I blew a gasket, insisting that I was a customer. “I may not use your monitoring service, but as soon as I bought your alarm system, I became a customer.”

We disappeared down a rat-hole on that one for a while.

I asked her how to get the cover off the motion sensor in order to replace the battery. She refused to tell me. She could not advise me about that over the phone. She could send out an engineer...

“At a charge of €110! To replace a battery!” (That was me)

“That’s the call-out charge,” she said. “There would be materials on top of that.”

“The cost of the battery. How much is that?”

“Seven euro.”

“So you want to charge €117 to replace a €7 battery.”

I asked what sort of battery it was.

“I can’t tell you that, sir. When you remove the cover you’ll see the battery.”

“And how do I remove the cover?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I cannot advise you...”

The conversation continued in that vein for quite a while.

Then she said I could get my own electrical engineer to do the job, or, if I wasn’t using the alarm system, why not have it disconnected by one of their engineers at a call-out charge of €110.

“And what if I wanted to use it in the future?” said I.

“You’d have to get an engineer to reconnect it.”

“At a cost of another €110?”

“Plus materials.”

Mercifully, the beeping has stopped for the moment, and I’m waiting for my electrician to ring me back.

Time to panic

2012-01-22T03:12:00.000-08:00

My wife will be home in under 2 weeks. She’s been in Australia for the past 6 months, enjoying the high life and spending time with our grandchildren, the twins (now 2years and 10months old). I’m faced with the Herculean task of cleaning the house before she gets back. I spent half the morning on my knees cleaning the kitchen floor; the bathroom floor awaits, the carpets need vacuuming, the wooden floor in the hall has to be swept, and the kitchen worktop and cooker hob need urgent attention. I had to replace one of our windows recently, as the double-glazed seal had gone, so I have one clean window. The rest, 14 of them, are covered in grime. They haven’t been cleaned in well over a year. I’m wondering if I could get them all replaced and save all that work.

I remember a time, not so long ago, when we darned our socks. I use the term ‘we’ here in the loosest possible sense, of course. My mother had a wooden mushroom that was always in use. For those of you who have no notion what I’m talking about, here's a picture of one. This was a piece of wood, shaped like a mushroom, that was placed inside a sock to hold the material in position to receive the darning needle. A darning needle? That was a butch version of an ordinary needle, thick as a bookie’s pen, blunt, and with an eye that a camel could pass through - well, maybe not a camel, but you get the idea.

Who darns socks nowadays? We live in the age of in-built disposability. If something gets damaged or torn, it doesn’t get repaired; we throw it away and buy a new one. Think of the number of disposable household cleaning products that have replaced the rags and dusters that we used to use, wash and re-use in the old days. And remember those fun-filled nights spent melting wax overspill from our candles and rebuilding new ones? Who recycles candle wax these days?

My eBook Sales 2011

2011-12-31T08:42:00.000-08:00

It’s the last day of the year. After 6 months of flogging my wares on the internet, what do I have to show for it? Time to take stock.

So far, I have published 5 eBooks:

5 June: Ovolution and Other Stories (an anthology of SF stories) 25 (12)

3 August: Bird Watcher (a short story) 8 (0)

28 August: St Patrick’s Day Special (a thriller) 35 (0)

16 October: Ooze (a short story from the anthology) 3 (0)

1 November: Bartlett Rebooted (a story from the anthology) 3 (0)

4 December: Ooze (free on Smashwords) 120 (120)

20 December: St Patrick’s Day Special (US edition) 1 (0)

On 4 December I re-released Ooze as a giveaway on Smashwords, and on 20 December I released a US edition of St Patrick’s Day Special. This new edition uses US spelling conventions but makes no concessions to US idiom or word choice. My ‘automobiles’ are all ‘cars’ with bonnets and boots, for instance, not hoods and trunks. A large part of the strength and charm of the story is the Irish idiom used.

The figures attached to the titles above are sales (with freebie copies in brackets). If you add up all the figures, the total comes to 195 (132). That’s 63 books sold for money. Amazon kindle sales in US/UK/DE/Fr/ES/It breakdown as follows: 43/11/0/0/0/0

I’ve put a lot of effort into spreading my name on twitter, Facebook, my web site and this blog. Also, a huge promotional effort for St Patrick’ Day Special in the run-up to Christmas consumed almost every waking moment and resulted in 7 sales.

My books are well written, professionally edited and well formatted for eReaders. Prices are $0.99 for all but Ovolution, which is $2.99. So what am I doing wrong? Could it be that the covers are not strong or exciting enough? I’d be grateful for any suggestions.

And happy New Year, everyone.

Christmas presents

2011-12-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

I got nothing for Christmas this year, but my computer did rather well. Her first Christmas present -- from Santa Clause -- was 1MByte of RAM. My son installed it, upgrading my system from 512 KB to 1.25MB. The transformation is amazing; where before my computer was limping along like a geriatric vampire stranded between blood donor clinics, now it’s skipping around from task to task like a wild teenager called Bella.

My computer's second acquisition was a wireless mouse donated by my son. It’s working perfectly, and I expect it’s doing what it’s designed to do, but I’m not sure I can live with it. Who can live with a hyperactive mouse? My old one -- the one with the tail -- was sluggish, downright non-cooperative at times; this new one has power steering and a sport button, marked "DPI". Even without pressing the button, it’s all over the place busy-busy like a worker-ant on steroids. It makes me dizzy. Heaven only knows what it gets up to on its own while I'm in bed, asleep.

Karen Baney Interview

2011-12-23T01:03:00.000-08:00

I’m with Karen Baney, indie author of four books so far, and counting.

JJ: Tell us a little about yourself and why you're participating in the SUPPORT THE TROOPS AUTHORS Group.

Karen: I don’t exactly know when my love affair with the US Military began. Perhaps it was as a young girl when my sister and I spent hours studying the Air Force ranks in volume “A” of the encyclopedia set my parents purchased. Maybe the detailed stories we invented planted a seed.

Regardless, at the age of 21, I found myself married to a military man and suddenly thrust into an entirely different culture and country. After two years and much heartache, I left a bad situation, but my love for our military survived. Even my second husband served our country for eight years, though I met him long after he became a civilian again.

JJ: Describe your book.

Karen: My latest book, Nickels, is a contemporary novel, set in the Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona. Niki Turner is a software engineer who finds herself on a project with someone from her past—Kyle Jacobs. Both Niki and Kyle went to high school together on Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

They have very different memories of that time in their lives. Kyle thinks he was being cute by picking on Niki. He was just trying to get her attention. In Niki’s mind his efforts came across more like torture. She remembered in particular a time where he threw her into the pool in swim class, only she didn’t know how to swim.

Both characters have gone through much heartache in the eight years since they’ve seen each other. Niki has lost someone close to her. Kyle lost his entire CSAR team in a horrible accident that left him both physically and emotionally scarred.

When they are thrust onto the same project at a helicopter avionics manufacturer, the tension is palpable. Kyle hopes Niki can see him as the man he has become. She just wants to avoid him at all cost. Only one more problem – he’s her roommate’s brother and seems to keep showing up at her house at all hours.

JJ: Where did the idea for the book come from?

Karen: There’s a lot of me in this book. It’s a little scary to admit. As one close friend said, “Oh, I thought Niki was you.” Niki shares some similarities, but in some ways she’s very different from me too.

I’m a software engineer. There are so few women in this career field that it presents an interesting challenge at times. I thought it would be fun to show the world a glimpse of the camaraderie that exists between programmers.

I also spent two years in Germany, so when I decided to include a lot of different aspects of the military life, I didn’t have to go far for ideas.

JJ: Give us a short exclusive excerpt - a piece that won't be seen in the sample. (Introduce the characters first, if need be)

Karen: Kyle Jacobs is the male role in the novel. Just prior to this scene he’d been flirting with Niki in the pool by getting in a splashing contest. When she stared as his scars, he got mad and left. Inside the house his sister, Marcy is getting ready for their Memorial Day BBQ party.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kyle glanced over his shoulder at the sharp intake of her breath. Niki had seen the scars. All of them. The ones on his chest and arms. The surgical scars running up his back. Even he hadn’t been able to see the full extent of those. Judging from her reaction, they were as bad as he thought.

“Stop staring,” he growled as he opened the sliding glass door and stalked through.

“What’s got you in a bad mood?” Marcy asked, looking up from salad fixings she chopped.

He whirled around to face her. Raising his hands, he motioned across his chest. “These. And those.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he turned his back to face her.

Her mouth slacked open.

This is why he was careful to hide his torso at all times. He didn’t know what he had been thinking, trying to play in the pool without a shirt on. He hated his disfigured body. How could he expect any woman not to be repulsed by it. His perfect physique died in that helicopter crash. And it made him feel like less of a man.

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“Am I? Have you taken a good look?”

“Yes. That’s why I think you’re crazy. The scars aren’t that bad. You’re still an attractive man—with a few imperfections.”

“A few? Look at this!” Again he motioned his hand over his chest. Was his sister completely blind?

“Yes, a few. You’re obsessing.”

“Am I? How well do you think Niki reacted to them?”

“I don’t know.” Marcy stood on her tip toes to peer around him through the sliding glass door. “She doesn’t look horrified or anything.”

JJ: Have you written / published other books?

Karen: Yes. I have three other books, all available to the troops. They are all set in Arizona in the mid to late 1860’s when the territory was first formed.

A Dream Unfolding follows the lives of two different families as they encounter many dangers on the trip west to their new home. Eventually the two stories merge in the brand new town of Prescott, Arizona.

A Heart Renewed follows Julia Colter’s flight for her life as she heads to Arizona to the safety of her brother’s ranch.

A Life Restored is about Caroline Larson. When the stage coach she is on is robbed and everyone but her gets murdered, she must survive in the desert. An express rider, Thomas Anderson, comes along and becomes her reluctant hero. Sparks fly as he escorts her safely to Prescott.

JJ: What are you working on?

Karen: My current project is the conclusion of the Prescott Pioneers Series: A Hope Revealed. Then I have two more contemporary stories planned before stepping back in time to WWII. Just don’t hold me to that order. I’m getting really excited about all the WWII research so those could end up coming before (or in between) the contemporary stories. :)

JJ: If you were stuck on a desert island, what one person, living or dead, would you like to find there?

Karen: Ok, I know it sounds corny, but I’d really like my hubby to be there. We’ve been married, very happily, for eleven years and I really can’t imagine being stranded apart from him.

Hopefully there’s no weird stuff happening on the island like on Lost.

If I got to have more than one person with me? Tom Hanks. I’m pretty sure he could find a way to make us raft to get off the island.

Thanks, Karen. Great answers.

New Phrases

2011-12-15T04:56:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed how the language changes, how new phrases seem to magic themselves into our lives?

I’m thinking of “Plausible Deniability”. Remember when that one arrived, round about the time of Watergate? Then we had “Extraordinary Rendition”. I’d love to know who dreamt that one up!

Nowadays, faced with a “Double Dip Recession”, we have the almost medical-sounding “Quantitative Easing” and the dreaded oxymoron “Negative Equity” as well as the mysterious and insidious “Bank Recapitalisation”, all recent additions to our vocabulary, leading up to the inevitable “Financial Meltdown”.

"Happy Christmas" to all my readers!

Kindle All Stars

2011-12-10T03:09:00.000-08:00

It's here! The Kindle All-Stars first issue has been released and is available on Amazon. This marvellous project, the brain-child of Bernard Schaffer, is an anthology of short stories by indie authors. The idea is to showcase indie talent while, at the same time, generating income for charity. The lead stories are by Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster and John Merz. There are 31 stories in the collection, including a humble offering by me (*ahem*). And there are some real gems in there.

As I write this, the eBook has been on sale for a little over 12 hours and it has already reached #802 in all categories and

#3 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Anthologies

#6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Short Stories

#7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories

The charity chosen by Bernard is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The book is priced at $0.99 so we need to sell a huge number of copies to make a difference by generating significant income for the charity.

BUY A COPY HERE Read it, enjoy it, write a review and tell all your friends to buy a copy, too.

Getting To Know My Computer

2011-12-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

You know the way they say you should get to know your own body, so that, if (when) things start to go wrong you’ll notice those subtle changes? Well, my computer has been sluggish and uncooperative lately, so I decided it was time I got to know it.

I started with the Task Master. This is a dandy program that shows all the applications and processes running on the computer. It shows -- in real time -- the amount of CPU and memory used by each process. Right now, my computer has three applications and 58 processes running. The 3 applications are MS-Word (creating this blog entry) Outlook Express, my email program and Task Master.

The processes are programs that run in the background. Programs that monitor and control stuff, like spooling to the printer or checking for incoming emails. I checked out each of these processes to make sure that I had nothing untoward running, like that pesky Trojan that I discovered recently.

Next, I checked the hard disk. I ran the Defrag program and discovered that 20% of my disk is free. The program told me that I do not need to defrag the disk at this time. Defrag is the program that consolidates all the free space created by file deletions into one area on the disk.

Then I turned my attention to the keyboard. There are a lot of keys on there that I never use. Starting at the top, we have Esc and 12 keys marked F1 - F12. I never use these, so they can go. There are 3 other keys up there: Print Screen/SysRq, Scroll Lock and Pause/Break. I don’t recall using any of those, but they look important, so I’ll hold onto them for now. The block of 6 under these are useful for word processing, as are the arrow keys. On the second row from the top we have the numbers, minus, plus and backspace. I will keep those, of course, but who needs that other block of numbers over on the extreme right? Whip them off. On the bottom row there are 2 Shift keys, 2 Ctrl keys and 2 Windows keys; That’s 3 that I don’t need. Also on the bottom we have a mysterious key with a picture of 2 overlapping windows and a pointer; what’s that about? And finally, there’s one called Alt Gr that I never use.

I call that progress. Maybe my computer will run faster now that it doesn’t have to worry about all those superfluous keys.

Free eBook

2011-12-04T05:52:00.000-08:00

Just before lunch today I decided to publish OOZE for FREE on Smashwords. The whole process was incredibly fast. By lunchtime, the eBook was up and available for all sorts of eReaders. By the time I'd finished my lunch, 6 people had downloaded it. Here's the link and here's the cover.

Ooze is one of the stories from my anthology Ovolution and Other Stories A fun story about first contact between intelligent life forms on a distant planet, it's one of those stories that wrote itself.

Me with Christine Cunningham

2011-12-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

This is the lovely, talented author Christine Cunningham, known to her Twitter followers as @E_B_ChristineC. As part of the #HolidaySirens Crime Writers' event, she has found a corner of her blog to ask me some searching questions.

Find Christine's blog here

Here's Christine's latest book

Amazon Link

Thanks, Christine.

Interview - Tony Healey, Kindle All Star

2011-12-01T01:17:00.000-08:00

WHO ARE THE KINDLE ALL-STARS?

Tony Healey has posted short conversations throughout November with the stellar talent behind the revolutionary short-story anthology THE KINDLE ALL-STARS PRESENT: RESISTANCE FRONT. To even things up, here's an interview with Tony himself.

JJ: How did you come to hear about the Kindle All-Stars project?

TH: I saw Bernard tweet about it, and e-mailed him straight away to find out about it.

JJ: What’s your contribution called?

TH: It’s called REDD

JJ: And without giving too much away, what’s it about?

TH: It’s a prequel of sorts to my story FRANK, and we get to see the character in action pulling off a job, and what the repercussions will be for those who work with him.

JJ: What was the main inspiration behind it?

TH: Really it was to explore his character a little bit more, and have an action vignette featuring him. It’s got a little touch of a heist about it, in a way.

JJ: Did you write it specifically for the Kindle All-Stars, or was it written prior?

TH: I wrote it just for the Kindle All-Stars project.

JJ: Obviously the primary goal behind this anthology is to make some money for disadvantaged and abused children. But secondary to that, it is to promote fresh, new writing talent - the punk rock of literature - and show that Indie writers are out there, dedicated and working hard to produce Class-A work. If people take notice of what you’ve written for this anthology, what do you hope the outcome is of that attention?

TH: I hope that everyone gets some good exposure from it, and that that exposure has a domino effect in getting people’s attention. Bernard has set out to show that Indie doesn’t mean crap, just because it’s not come from Random House or some other big name. With the right amount of love and care, an Indie book can equal something put together by industry ‘professionals’ and that’s the point I think.

JJ: Is there anyone in particular who’s contributed to the anthology that you’re excited to be included alongside?

TH: Alan Dean Foster, mostly. I love his work, and he seems like such a nice guy. He travels the world over, trying to see as much of it as possible, and you just genuinely get the feeling that he is a generous spirit. As a kid I thought I’d found my favourite series of books in the Chronicles of Narnia until I found his ‘Spellsinger’ series.

JJ: We know that there will be a KAS 2 at some point. Plans are already afoot. Is there a dream name you’d like to see involved in it the next time around? Me personally, getting published in a book that includes a story by Alan Dean Foster is one of those “Wouldn’t it be great if one day...” things that I can now tick off of the list.

TH: I’d like to see King, for obvious reasons. Perhaps his son Joe Hill.

JJ: So when you’re not helping to fight evil, what do you get up to in real life?

TH: I used to be a manager in retail, but I changed company and took a step down so that I could cut my hours and spend more time with my kids. I realised that promotion and pay rises and all that business didn’t really matter to me, and that I didn’t want to miss any part of my children growing up, which I would do if I carried on working a 50-60 hour weeks. Now I’m enjoying working 30 hours a week and getting extra time to see the kids grow and develop into little people. It also gives me more time to read and watch TV, which is always a bonus!

JJ: Are you working on anything now? Anything you’d like everyone to know about?

TH: I’ve got the first draft of a thriller, ‘The Man With The Broken Heart’ resting until I’m ready to rewrite it. I’m working on a novella/short novel length scifi story called ‘The Stars My Redemption’ which sort of incorporates both Frank and Redd - the stories that is - into a much bigger and grander narrative. You can find out more about it, as it develops, at http://thestarsmyredemption.wordpress.com Hopefully I will have ‘The Stars My Redemption’ ready to go before Christmas so watch out for it!

JJ: And to your readers - both potential and existing - is there anything you would like to say? They might be reading this months after Resistance Front has landed, wanting to know more about you. What would you like to say to them?

TH: Support every writer involved in this project by looking at their stuff and maybe buying some of their books. They’re all wonderful. Bernard wouldn’t have included them if they were crap writers. The man is a paramount professional, and he wouldn’t cheat you by trying to sell you a book of stories that weren’t up to scratch. Seek these writers out and buy their stuff. Help us to drive this Resistance Front!

JJ: Thanks, Tony, and thanks for interviewing all those other Kindle All Stars.

Interview with bestselling author Mel Comley

2011-11-23T11:39:00.000-08:00

I'm with Melanie Comley, bestselling indie author of the thrillers Cruel Justice, Impeding Justice and Final Justice as well as two romances, A Time To Heal and A Time For Change.

JJ: Mel, I've read your short bio in the anthology 25 Indie Chicks, so we can start there. I gather you broke up with your husband in 1993 and moved to France on the spur of the moment, in 2000. In France, you and your mother bought a farmhouse with barns, and converted and renovated it, so that you had your own living accommodation and a gite. Have I got everything right so far?

MC: You have indeed. ;-)

JJ: My first question is this: Didn't you regret leaving friends and family behind when you moved out of England?

MC: Not really. The pull to leave England was far greater than the one telling me to stay. Most of my family have followed us to France anyway, and friends know they can always visit.

JJ: You don't have the complication of children, I guess?

MC: No. But I have two demanding dogs who insist on dragging me round our village every morning.

JJ: Did you speak any French before you left?

MC: I learnt French at school but I’d forgotten most of it by the time we settled here.

JJ: How's your French now?

MC: I don’t speak much French now, almost 12 years later! Lol The trouble is every time I try to speak it the French people converse in English back because they want to improve their English. So it’s made me very lazy. Also, learning a new language is very hard and I wouldn’t be able to devote the same amount of time to my writing as I do now if I practiced French more.

JJ: You say you never think about your life back in England. So have you put down roots in France? How would you feel if you had to sell up and return to England?

MC: That’s a no-brainer for me, I would do all I could to remain in France. England is far too expensive to live compared to France. I have a beautiful house that has beamed ceilings. The same kind of house in England would be three times the price.

JJ: About your writing: You have written 2 romances and 3 thrillers, so far. Which do you prefer writing and why?

MC: I love writing thrillers because you definitely get an adrenaline rush. I try to incorporate the same sort of style in my romances too. They’re pacey with plenty of action.

JJ: You say that, when you made it through the Authonomy process, Harper Collins were only interested in publishing celebrity autobiographies. Did they actually say that, or is this your own interpretation of the situation?

MC: My review from them was excellent. They even said that Impeding Justice was one of the best books on the site. If that was the case then why didn’t they take a gamble? In the last year Impeding Justice has sold over 75,000 copies, you can make up your own mind who was right and who was wrong.

JJ: What can you tell us about Authonomy? Is it, as people say, a popularity contest, where the writer with the most friends gets to the top, not the writer with the most talent?

MC: I don’t think that’s the case, as I’ve already explained they thought my book was one of the best on the site. I used the site to improve my writing and hone my skills. I’d advise anyone with writing ambitions to join the site, not to make a dash for the desk, but just to improve their writing full stop.

JJ: After your phenomenal success with your eBooks, you signed with Richard Curtis, a New York agent. Why? Why not continue on the indie path? Why fix something that isn't broken? And why give a huge chunk of your income to a middle-man?

MC: You raise some valid points there and this time last year I would’ve agreed with you, but the opportunities an agent can offer far outweigh what Indies can achieve by themselves. Movie contracts for instance. At the moment I still have the Indie rights to my books, so I’m not giving the agent a percentage until he comes up with a terrific deal. ;-)

JJ: Which of your books has sold the most?

MC: Impeding Justice, it’s been out just over a year now.

JJ: Are there other genres that you might try?

MC: No, definitely not. I only read thrillers and romances so I could never see myself tackling another genre.

JJ: Is there anything else that you'd like to tell people about yourself, past, present or future?

MC: I’ve always worked 70-80 hours a week, whether as a Supermarket Manager or a Pub Landlady or Interior Designer, being an Indie writer has increased the hours I work by at least 20. Anyone considering embarking on the Indie route with their writing should bear in mind this business is tough. Don’t venture into it thinking you’ll pay off your mortgage in a year, because you won’t!

You can find my books on my two blog sites.

http://melcomleyromances.blogspot.com/

http://melcomley.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Mel.

Holiday Sirens

2011-11-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

The amazing author-cum-whirlwind Stacy Eaton has started a group for authors of books about or by law enforcement officers (or LEOs). My Ben Jordan thriller was lucky enough to be included. There are 10 books on the list. Click the graphic to be transported to Stacy's blog page for the event.

Older Browsers

2011-11-13T03:17:00.000-08:00

I know that the big-hitters in browser land, like Google, are gathering information on my preferences each time I browse or buy stuff online, But I had no idea they were smart enough to work out my personal details from my keystrokes. Today, as I entered Amazon, it pointed out a small icon at the top of the screen with a pop-up that read as follows:

Click the Compatibility Tab: provides a better view of websites for older browsers.

It's true, of course, I am an older browser -- or bowser -- but I find it unsettling that my computer has worked this out by itself.

I've also noticed a creepy trend in the sort of advert that I am presented with recently. I can still remember the heady days when I was assailed by exhortations to fly to activity holidays in the outer Himalayas. Nowadays I'm being offered coach trips to Swansea or a cosy night in with a cup of hot Bovril. Exercise machines were another staple offering. Now I get chairlifts and hearing aids. Mind you, the stupid systems seem to have no idea what sex I am; much of their targeted marketing is well wide of the mark there. It'll be a cold day in Hell, I tell you, before they'll catch me shopping for Tena Lady or Anti-aging creams.

A Trojan Virus

2011-11-08T07:09:00.000-08:00

This post comes to you by way of my laptop. Read on to understand why.

In recent weeks my computer has been getting slower and slower. It got to the point where it was continually pausing for no apparent reason, like leaving me waiting half-way through keying-in a word.

I decided to find out what was slowing everything down on my (Windows XP) system. TaskManager provided a list of the processes, and I researched these, one by one on Google.

It was only at the end of these checks that I found the problem. A process that appears under the name “System” on my computer, has been identified as a Trojan.

Here is the web site where I found it

The entry is copyrighted, but it mentions the names of three viruses.

This web site contains further information.

To say that I am disappointed in my computer security provider would be something of an understatement. This Trojan gained access to my computer in spite of the best efforts of McAfee’s full security software.

The online documentation says that the Norton Antivirus package is also ineffective in stopping this Trojan. A complete system scan using a free trial version of AVG also failed to pick it up. And I tried to kill the process using TaskManager, with no effect. The process refuses to be killed.

This nasty virus is a potential keylogger, recording user keystrokes and sending them back to the originator. So, the first thing I had to do was alert my bank. Online access to my bank account could be compromised, as well as my credit card.

I then contacted McAfee online to get help. Their system offers a paid service, called “Gold” or “Platinum” to eradicate viruses online. Unfortunately, this service must be paid for using a credit card, and I had cancelled my credit card. The service does not accept debit cards.

ADDED: They sent me a piece of scanning software called "stinger" which failed to pick up the Trojan.

So I’m scuppered. For the moment, anyway. I can use this laptop to access the Internet, but my personal email is not available to me, and I’ll have to wait until my new credit card arrives in the post before I can sort out the Trojan.

If you’re running Windows, start your Task Manager (Ctrl Alt Del). Click on the Processes tab, then click on Image Name (to sort alphabetically). If you find a process called "System", chances are you have this Trojan too.

UPDATE: Following an automatic update from McAfee, I tried to run a scan, and the McAfee system immediately identified a rival firewall running on my system. When I clicked on the "Fix now" button, I was directed to a pop-up that offered me a subscription to McAfee (which I already have).

I uninstalled AVG after using it. At one point during the uninstall it asked if I really wanted to remove its firewall. I said YES. I can't see any process running in TaskManager now that might be an unwanted firewall. As I type these words, I'm in a queue to speak with McAfee tech support. I've been waiting 23 minutes. The holding music is turning my brain to moist cottonwool.

Computers are fun, aren't they?

The best kept secret in Blogland

2011-11-06T12:44:00.000-08:00

Having fallen out with her agent, my friend Misty Provencher has decided to publish her book, Cornerstone, one chapter at a time, on her blog. So far, we've had 7 chapters.

It's a Young Adult paranormal.

Get over there quick and read her fantastic book. Here's the link:

http://tenaciousink.blogspot.com/

Short Story Launch

2011-11-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I launched another short story from my anthology Ovolution and Other Stories as a single for Kindle on Amazon. The cover was designed by Anya Kelleye. I think it's quite special.

Find the story for $0.99 (or equivalent) at your local Amazon store.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

Shopping

2011-10-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

Since my wife left me (for 6 months) I’ve been doing my own shopping. I’m not very good at it, I’m afraid. I go to the supermarket (Tescos), fill two bags with groceries, drive home and immediately think of something essential that I forgot. Or I go to the shop to buy bread and milk, say, and come away laden down with all sorts of impulse buys - like pizzas and wine and ready-meals and vegetables (that won’t get eaten) and revolutionary cleansing products.

I don’t know why, but, since I’ve taken over the role of housekeeper, I seem to have developed a keen eye for a cleansing product. I searched for days for “Power Doctor” which, apparently, is ideal for cleaning the glass on the inside of my oven door. And I’ve been in heaven since I finally discovered the aisle where they were hiding the bleach. I’m still trying to figure out how to open the bottle, but when I do the toilets won’t know what hit them! I’ve tried getting my hands on a natty new device that will clean my kitchen floor using steam. I saw it on TV. It’s called a “Shark”, but Tesco Ireland don’t seem to stock it. I suppose I’m just going have to carry on scrubbing on my hands and knees.

This grocery shopping lark is a total black art, I’ve decided. I try to shop smart, avoiding those higher-cost branded items in favor of Tesco’s own, but every time I succeed in saving pennies here and there, I always end up losing it all again on one stupid splurge. I reckon there’s a lot of insider knowledge involved. I bought cheese sauce in a packet thinking I could add it to some pasta and whip up a cheap meal. But when I got it home and read the instructions, it seems I’d bought what we used to call “a pig in a poke”. To make the sauce I had to add 300ml (1/2 pint) of milk and 25g (1 oz) of butter from my own resources.

This morning I thought I’d treat myself to a small fillet steak, and approached the butcher’s counter in a state of mild anxiety, clutching my purse firmly to my chest. I was right to be anxious. Filet steak costs €35.99 a kilo, nowadays. I came over all faint and had to sit down. €35.99 per kilo! The butcher found me a chair from somewhere. I distinctly remember the day when steak broke through the £1 per lb barrier, in the heady days of raging inflation. Mind you, that was before decimalization and the Euro.

My Team

2011-10-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

The cover for OOZE was created by Anya Kelleye at http://www.anyakelleye.com/
She also helped (a lot) with the cover for my thriller St Patrick's Day Special.

St Patrick's Day Special was edited by Lucille Redmond. You can find here here:

http://writing.ie/writers-toolbox/services-for-writers.html?sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=4&sobi2Id=17

She's a prize-winner writer herself, a journalist and professional editor.

Price Reduction - Noir Nation

2011-10-29T03:39:00.000-07:00

Noir Nation issue #1 is now selling at 50% for the Halloween weekend. So now's your chance to grab a copy.

Amazon link
Amazon UK link
Barnes&Noble link

Do I Tell People My Secret?

2011-10-24T04:59:00.000-07:00

My friend, Juliana L. Brandt is running a Warm Fuzzies BlogFest. The idea is that a lot of writers all blog about the same subject and make new friends. The subject:

Do I tell people I’m a writer?

Yes, I do. I listen to the conversation like a crow perched on a fence, and as soon as I spot an opportunity, I’m in there like a ferret down a rabbit hole.

Me: I haven’t seen you for ages. How are you?
Her: I could be better. You know I’ve been in hospital...
I didn’t know.
Yes, I fell and broke my hip. It seems I have brittle bones.
My, my. What was the hospital like?
St. Vincents. The doctors are wonderful; the nurses are run off their feet.
How long were you in there?
Six weeks. I couldn’t wait to get out.
I expect you read a lot.
(You can see where I’m going with this.)
I read everything on the Man Booker list.
I’ve been doing a bit myself.
Reading?
No, writing. I’ve published two books.
No! So if I went to my local bookshop would I find your books on the shelves?
Well, no. I’ve self-published and only eBooks so far.
Ah! You mean you have to have one of those thingmebobs--
Ereaders.
--to read your books.
Not really. You can read them on a computer if you don’t have a kindle.
But I do so love the feel of a real book, don’t you?

The answer to that question is YES, of course, but I've no intention of shooting myself in the foot, so I change the subject at that point.

Speed Up Your Computer - The Scam

2011-10-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

My computer has been sluggish lately. I put it down to the weather. Then I found a free piece of software (lets called it “Cleanup”) that offered to check my system for “Registry Errors”. The CNET logo was prominently displayed on the sales page, so I assumed the software was endorsed by CNET, and decided to give it a whirl. It found 305 Registry Errors and invited me to buy a reduced “Cleanup” package to correct all those nasty Registry Errors. I bought the reduced package ($25), downloaded, installed and ran it.

Over the next few days I noticed the system slowing down again. I rebooted, and used TaskManager to see what was running. I found “Cleanup” was running, although I hadn’t started it, and concluded that it must be set up to run automatically at start-up. I killed the process and went about my business. A couple of reboots later (due to MS updates or McAfee restarts) I got a pop-up message from “Cleanup” that I now had 480 Registry Errors and should take immediate remedial steps (including purchasing the complete “Cleanup” system package). I became suspicious. How could I have so many Registry Errors after such a short time? Five minutes later, I got another pop-up message to say my system now had 79 Registry Errors. At that point I knew I’d bought a pup. I stopped what I was doing and uninstalled the “Cleanup” package. Hopefully, it’s gone from my system.

Beware these packages. I’m convinced that it was deliberately slowing my system down to encourage me to make further purchases.

OOZE

2011-10-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Announcing the release of a short story on Amazon Kindle. Click on the cover image above for the Amazon link.

Ooze is one of the stories in my Sci-Fi anthology, Ovolution and Other Stories.

Music

2011-10-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

I come from a musical family. My grandfather on my mother's side was a professional fiddle player and later a professor of music; my mother's sister, Jessica, played the harp and their brother (my uncle) Terry, was the lead oboist with the Royal Philharmonic for many years. Also, my youngest son has a passion for music.

As a callow youth, I first picked up the harmonica and then the guitar. At school I joined a 'skiffle' band: two acoustic guitars, a washboard, and a repertoire of Lonnie Donegan songs. Puttin' on the Style, My Old Man's a Dustman, and the incomparable Does Your Chewing-gum Lose its Flavour (on the Bedpost Overnight)? We paid for studio time and cut a record, I recall. I never got a copy, as we could only afford two.

I took up the fiddle for a while, but everyone hated the sound I made, me included. To be honest, my musical prospects were never that great, as my hands were too small for the guitar or the piano. There was a time when I could have pursued a career with the triangle, I suppose, but my timing was never quite right.

*fades into the sunset signing

My old man's a dustman,
He wears a dustman's hat.
He wears gor-blimey trousers
And he lives in a council flat.

More mouse trouble

2011-10-05T09:48:00.000-07:00

As if I haven’t enough to put up with, now my mouse has developed a squeak. You will remember that I wrote last week about how she lost her click, well, over the weekend she went through an extended period of non-cooperation. What else would you call it when the blessed creature was quite happy to move up and down the screen, but refused to go left or right? If I didn’t know any better I might suspect that she has joined a trade union. The Irish Rodents Association, maybe or SNAFU. That’s the Screen Navigation and Application Facilitators’ Union.

Despite having had no real training in the magick arts of keyboard manipulation, I had to resort to using keyboard shortcuts to get around my screen. I’m sure the members of SNAFU regard every one of the keys on my keyboard as blacklegs, but I was left with no choice, and I told her so.

That was when she began to squeak.

At first I suspected she was complaining about her tail, which has a tendency to get jammed under the bottom of the printer. I repositioned her tail around the corner of one of the speakers, all the while making tut-tut soothing sounds. But she persisted with her squeak. I confess I lost my temper at that point, and shouted at her.

Honestly, she doesn’t know she’s living. How many mice have the luxury of a leather mat to glide over, and how many have such a humane and considerate employer?

If she doesn’t get her act together pretty smartish, she may wake up one morning to find that she’s been replaced by a swish new USB model or one of those modern wireless doodahs that I’ve been reading about.

A Lucky Day

2011-10-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, I needed to go into town. I intended to do a few small jobs on my computer first, but nothing seemed to work. Everything I attempted failed, although the software was all working perfectly, as far as I could tell. Eventually I discovered what the problem was: My mouse had lost its click.

Armed with a fully charged kindle, locked and loaded with Les Edgerton's wonderful book Just Like That, I headed into town on the train.

I spotted this character at the bottom of Grafton Street, and managed to keep him in my sights long enough to take his picture.

He was the biggest leprechaun that I’ve ever seen. I spoke to him politely, but got no response. I think maybe he only understood ancient Irish.

Then I blinked and he was gone, taking his crock of gold with him!

When I got home, my mouse had rediscovered her lost click, and the next day a fairy ring of tiny toadstools sprang up, encircling a beech tree that I planted in the garden exactly ten years ago. I swear this fairy ring wasn’t there when I left the house on Thursday morning. Here's a picture of the tree with its fairy ring.

I feel sure my luck is about to change, but will it change for the worse or for the better?

New Cover Design

2011-09-27T03:13:00.000-07:00

After a lot of help from @AnyaKelleye, the talented cover designer, I have changed the book's cover. Hopefully, it will help stimulate sales.

Anya Kelleye deserves a lot of the credit, displaying the patience of Job while we worked though dozens of design ideas together. Thanks, Anya.

What d'you think of the new cover?

All comments and suggestions welcome. I can take it!

Kindle All Stars

2011-09-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

[Updated 27 September 2011]
Announcing the Kindle All Stars project, an anthology of speculative fiction. The idea for this book originated with Bernard J. Schaffer. The book will showcase talented eBook authors (*ahem*). It will be issued as an eBook and in print, and the proceeds will be donated to The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a US charity that fights child abuse and pornography worldwide.

One of my short stories (renamed "Children") from Ovolution and Other Stories has been accepted for inclusion. As of today (27 September 2011) the author list reads as follows:

Harlan Ellison,
Alan Dean Foster,
Keri Knutson,
Laurie Laliberte,
Simon John Cox,
Angela McConnell,
Bernard Schaffer,
Miles Cressman,
Matt Posner,
Richard Roberts,
William Vitka,
JJ Toner,
Dwaipayan Regmi,
Toni Dwiggins,
Frank Zubek,
John F. Merz

The book should be available for sale between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

KAS information page

Facebook Fan Page

Twitter Profile Page

Twitter identity @KindleAllStars

Twitter hashtag #KindleAllStars

On Cleaning Your Keyboard

2011-09-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

On August 23 I rang Eircom and agreed to switch my phone line and broadband back from Vodafone to Eircom. The salesman was delighted. They would take care of everything. It would take 30 days; the transition would be seamless.

At 10 am this morning, September 19, I lost my phone line. No dial tone. I rang Eircom and reported a line fault to a robot. That took about 15 minutes, by which time the phone fault had mysteriously repaired itself. My broadband line, however, was dead. I rang the robot again, and it said, "I see a fault has been logged for your line. This fault is being attended to by our technical team. The repair should be completed in 2 working days. There will be no further information available on this matter at this time. Is there something else we can help you with?"

"Yes," I said.

"Oh, right. Hold the line please and I'll put you through to someone who can deal with your enquiry." Music -- jaxx -- interrupted by fragments of recorded messages. "...the first four digits of your customer account..." before I got through to someone, and told them that my line was back, but my broadband connection was now on the blink.

"What's your account number?"

"I don't have one, yet," I said. "I'm in the process of switching back from Vodafone to Eircom."

He checked my phone number on his system, and came back with, "You're not a customer."

"Maybe not yet, but I have applied—"

"There's nothing I can do. You are not a customer."

I rang Vodafone, and had a similar conversation with them that ended with, "You are not a customer."

Never one to give up without a fight, I rang Eircom back and spoke to an engineer...

By 2:30 pm, I had run out of ideas. It seems Vodafone cut off my broadband 2 or 3 days ahead of the scheduled transition day, and I just had to wait for the Eircom machinery to swing into action and reconnect me.

I jumped in the car and headed toward Dundrum. I thought I'd catch "Tinker Tailor Soldier, Spy" the Le Carre classic story, which opened the day before. Half-way up the hill out of town, the guy on the radio told us all that he'd seen the film. "It's dreadful," he said. "Save your money." I did a U-turn and went home.

"The devil finds work for idle hands." With my mother's wise words bouncing around in my head, I decided to use the available time to clean my keyboard. It was pretty manky. I unplugged it and took it into the living room.

I won't take you through the sordid details of what followed. Suffice to say that it took an hour to remove and clean the keys and the best part of another 3 hours to put the whole thing back together again. So,

1. If you lose your broadband connection, go read a book.
2. Never take advice about movies from people on the radio.
3. If you pop the keys from your keyboard, don't get them mized up. Lay them out in rows so that you know ezactly where each one goes.
4. This rule applies equally to the 4 arrow keys. Their layout may look simple, but believe me, it's a puxxle to get them back where they belong.

Weird phone calls

2011-09-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hello.

Good morning. I'd like to speak to Mister Tohnah.

Speaking.

Mister Tohnah?

Yes.

Excellent. Mister Tohnah, I'm ringing from Bord Gas, concerning your electricity bills.

Yes?

Mister Tohnah, I've had a look at your electricity bills and I can see quite a variation from month to month. I can now offer you a new facility called "Level Pay". Using this facility, I can calculate an average bill for you based on your bills from last year. I can then set up your direct debit so that you pay the same amount every month. This will enable you to avoid those nasty large bills. Do you understand?

Yes. The electricity supply people had a similar system. I'm not interested.

What?

Thank you, but I'm not interested.

I haven't explained it properly, Mister Tohnah. Let me explain it again.

No thank you. Goodbye.

--------------

Hello

Good afternoon. Do I have the pleasure of speaking with Mister Toner?

Yes.

Mister Toner, I am calling from "Rest in Peace plc". We are a publicly quoted company serving the soon-to-depart.

The soon-to-what?

Depart. As I'm sure you are aware, funeral costs have been escalating for several years. The high cost of wood, in particular, has driven the cost of a coffin well beyond the means of many people.

Pardon me?

Indeed. Many people now realise that when they depart they will be leaving their loved ones with the burden of an unsustainable bill for funeral expenses. What we at "Rest in Peace plc" offer is an option to pay your funeral expenses up front. With our easy-pay option you may buy your coffin today at today's prices, thus leaving nothing behind for your loved ones but the good memories.

Where did you get this number?

People in your age bracket are increasingly turning to our easy-pay option. This can be tailored to your needs. Starting with the basic package of a simple coffin and short homily--

I asked you where you got my number.

--right up to the full Concorde class package consisting of a full teak coffin with brass accoutrements, flowers, a full church service, a choir of your choice and extra mourners if required--

I'm putting the phone down.

--A headstone, should you want one, is extra, of course. Graveyard monuments and mausoleums are popular among the super-rich. We cater for all religions and every denomination--

*Click*

Great movie lines

2011-09-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Remember that great line from the end of Moonraker? James Bond and Holly Goodhead are adrift in a space shuttle, making weightless love. Sir Frederick Gray says: “My God, what is Bond doing?” and Q replies: “I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir.”

Surely one of the best killer lines of all time from the movies, that one. Up there with the final scene in Billy Wilder’s Some like it Hot, when Jack Lemmon, dressed as a woman, is attempting to deflect Joe E. Brown’s amorous advances. Finally, when all else fails, Lemmon whips off his wig and says: “But I’m a man!” and Joe E. Brown comes back with: “Nobody’s perfect.”

Help me out here guys. Those are the only two I can think of.

Noir Nation

2011-09-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

The first ever issue of the noir international e-journal Noir Nation has been launched. Sales are going well in the US. If you live in UK, please take a look at the journal here, "like" it there and/or on its facebook page.

If you sample it, you'll get to read my story "Jelly Babies" as it's the first story in there. :)

If you decide to buy it, please consider doing a review on Amazon.co.uk

Thanks.

An Ancient Game

2011-09-07T03:13:00.000-07:00

The Kilkenny Cats were up against Tipperary, last year's champions, in the All Ireland hurling final on Sunday last.

Hurling is a game to be marvelled at. It's as old as the hills, dating back to ancient Celtic times just after the last Ice Age. I wonder if there's anything else like it anywhere in the world. Two teams of fifteen men, each wielding a wooden hurley, propel a leather ball, called a 'sliothar' around a full-size football pitch.

The rules are uncomplicated. A ball on the ground may only be picked up on the hurley; running with ball in hand is limited to four paces. When it comes to physical contact, body-checking is allowed and it seems the rules are a little fluid. Unlike Aussie Rules, where the 'fair catch' rule applies, a player in possession of the ball is provided no special protection and must battle to hold on to it.

You've got to love a game with so few rules, but where the referee has three cards at his disposal: yellow, red - and black.

The skills and athleticism on display are astounding, and comparable to anything that Aussie Rules football can boast. The one-handed catching skills are marvellous, and the way these players can score points from 40, 50, even 60 yards is awesome.

This is like ice hockey without the ice, on a much larger scale, and without the protective clothing. Even shin-guards, which I would have thought a basic necessity, are shunned by these players. The only concession to personal safety is a plastic helmet and faceguard. If Sunday's game is anything to go by, head protection for the officials may soon be a standard feature, as the referee suffered a nasty cut to his nose while attempting to mediate during a heated discussion between the players. The injury was entirely accidental, but was a graphic demonstration of the hazards of arming a bunch of young men with sticks in a testosterone-adrenaline fuelled environment.

Croke Park, with an all-seating capacity of 82,000 was jam-packed. This is a sport enjoyed and followed with passion by whole families in every county in Ireland. Kilkenny scored the first five points before Tipp replied, and that set the seal on the outcome. The final score Kilkenny 2-17 Tipperary 1-16, a comfortable 4 point win for the cats.

Gotta love that game.

Blogger's Time Zone

2011-09-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Derek Haines and his inspired blog article social-media-automation-what-is-acceptable I created two blog entries and scheduled them to appear. The first one should have been posted at 5 pm on Friday but nothing happened. By 10 pm when the entry still hadn't been posted, I rescheduled it for Saturday. I tried 00:01 am, but Blogger rejected this as an invalid time. I settled for 01:01 am. On Saturday morning at 9 am, the blog entry appeared.

I can only conclude that wherever Blogger lives, his time zone is 8 hours behind mine. My world clock points to Vancouver, San Francisco or Seattle. So where are you, my friend and why can't you let me use my local clock for scheduling my blogs?

Ben Jordan launched

2011-08-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

*Drum roll, please*

My thriller is now available on Amazon as well as Smashwords at 99c. Here are the links:

Amazon
Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Smashwords

An Award - pour moi!

2011-08-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

I'm staggered, flabbergasted, and almost speechless. Dierdra Eden-Coppel over here has given me an award. How could such a thing have happened? Thanks Dierdra. If it was some sort of ghastly mistake, I'm not giving it back!

Writing and Cooking

2011-08-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Many writers have been cooks. Didn't Hemingway dabble in the kitchen? And Len Deighton - or was that just Harry Palmer? I believe Derek Haines, the well-known Swiss-Aussie writer, cooks. I'm no cook, but I do know how to boil an egg. Or at least I thought I did until yesterday.

I put two eggs in a saucepan to boil and went back to my computer to make a couple of small adjustments to my manuscript. The explosion was quite loud. Who'd have thought a couple of eggs would make such a noise?

About a week ago, I opened a small carton of soup. Tomato and basil, it was, one of my favourites. There was enough in there for two, so I extracted half the soup and put it on to boil. The other half I put in the fridge. Then I went back to my computer to tweak something or other, or was it Twitter that I needed to check?

Anyway, it took a good fifteen minutes of hard work to rescue that saucepan, and, for lunch, I had the second half of the soup.

No, I've decided, writing and cooking don't mix.

Preview

2011-08-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'd like to offer a free preview copy of my new eBook to anyone following my blog. The eBook is up on Smashwords, although I won't be launching it on Amazon until Sept 1.

If you'd like a free copy, send me your email address BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11 (my email is in the about/contact tab above) and I'll send on a Smashwords coupon.

Calibre and Kindle

2011-08-20T01:01:00.000-07:00

I love Calibre. When it comes to converting my text from crude html to a fully-functioning, card-carrying member of the eBook community, it does the business. And I have nothing but admiration for my Kindle, and her close cousin, Kindle-for-PC (KPC). But, they make miserable dancing partners.

A whole afternoon and half the evening I've spent rebuilding my latest eBook in Calibre for the Kindle. First, I changed the cover. Not a huge change, but I needed to replace the book cover file with a new version. I tried changing just the cover and re-saving the whole shebang onto the disk. No luck. I started from scratch, removing the book from Calibre's database ("library") and rebuilding from my html file. That didn't work either - KPC was still picking up the original cover. I deleted the four Calibre-generated files from my disk and started from scratch in Calibre again. That worked. KPC picked up the new cover design.

Idly paging through the book, I found a typo. Not a big one, just a pronoun that needed to be replaced by a noun; what I had written was ambiguous. I went back to square one, deleted the Calibre-Kindle files from the disk, removed the book from Calibre's library and recreated the book again.

Into KPC I scurried, with my fingers crossed. Imagine my surprise when that pronoun appeared, bold as brass on my screen. How could this be? I had changed it, scrubbed everything, started from scratch. But still, KPC was somehow picking up the old version of the book, a version which I had deleted from the disk. After my obligatory apoplectic fit, I reasoned that, far from dancing to Calibre's tune, KPC was merrily displaying its own cached data, trying to be smart, to reduce the time to load.

I rebooted. And KPC picked up the new version of the book from the disk. So I suppose when I changed the cover all those hours ago, all I had to do was clear KPC's cache by rebooting, and I wouldn't have had to rebuild the book from scratch.

UPDATE: It's a couple of days later and today, I changed the source file to include an ISBN for the Amazon Kindle version distinct from the Smashwords version. Just 3 digits. I edited the source file, saved it deleted all the files previously created by Calibre and recreated the .MOBI file using Calibre. At this stage, it's almost 11 pm and I've gone through the process 10 or 15 times without success. I tried rebooting, I tried deleting all my cookies. I've tried sacrificing a cockrel to the god Baal. Nothing works.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thanks to Kovid Goyal, the developer of Calibre, who emailed me directly with the solution, everything is as it should be again. The fault, it seems, was with KFPC, not with Calibre at all. What Kovid advised me to do was to open KFPC and remove the book file from the device. Then go into Calibre and save the book files to disk again (placing them in a folder other than My Kindle Content).
I then double-clicked on that saved .MOBI file and KFPC picked it up and it's correct.

A thousand apologies, Kovid, for accusing Calibre of having a bug (perish the thought). And thanks for coming to my aid. I owe you a pint. Expect the PayPal equivalent this evening.
I now officially hate Kindle-for-PC, and will go find Kindle Previewer as you suggested.

On Cover Designs

2011-08-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

It seems to me a miracle that any workable cover designs ever get produced. I've poured over the covers of all those best selling thrillers for ideas, but most of them have nothing to offer: The figure of a man in silhouette on a foggy day, car headlights in a serious smog, a half-open door in (you guessed it) a fog. So you go to your cover design graphic artist dude/dudess and this is the sort of conversation that ensues:

Writer: I need a cover for my new thriller.
Artist: Leave it with me.
Writer: Don’t you want to read the book?
Artist: You must be joking. No, all I need is a rough idea to get the creative juices flowing.
Writer: It’s a thriller—
Artist: Right, give me a week and I’ll come up with a few ideas.
Writer: It’s about a detective called Ben Jordan. A protected witness gets shot—
Artist: What’s it called?
Writer: St Patrick’s Day Special.
Artist: It’s a thriller, right?
Writer: Yes, it’s set in Dublin in 2004.
Artist: Right, leave it with me. I’ll come up with a few ideas and get back to you.
Writer: But—
Artist: I’ll call you.

By all that’s holy, how can any cover designer work with so little information? Imagine the analogous situation in the construction industry.

Architect: I’d like you to erect a building for me.
Builder: Right, leave it with me.
Architect: I have the plans here—
Builder: Oh, don’t confuse me with plans. What sort of building is it?
Architect: It’s a hospital.
Builder: Right, wards and stuff. Got it. Leave it with me. I’ll build something and get back to you.

My thriller is finished. It’s been written, rewritten a dozen times, polished primped and preened. And it’s been professionally edited. The next step is to publish. All I need is a knockout cover. Being less than happy with what my cover designer dudess came up with, I spent the last two weeks working with her and this is what we came up with.

What do you think?

St Patrick's Day Special

2011-08-08T06:03:00.000-07:00

Here's the blurb for my new book, St Patrick's Day Special, scheduled for launch September 1.

Okay this is Ireland, but shouldn’t the cops be trying to put the criminals behind bars and not the other way around?

2004 Ireland is Tiger country.

Aloysius Lafferty is one of Dublin’s biggest crime lords, specialising in armoured car heists, raids on post offices and “tiger” kidnappings.

DI Ben Jordan of Dublin’s Organised Crime Unit has spent three years on Lafferty's case when a lucky break uncovers the handgun used to kill one of Lafferty’s rivals. The trail leads Jordan to the low-life who pulled the trigger. To save his own skin, the shooter agrees to give evidence against Lafferty, and Jordan and his team hide him away in a country hotel.

But before the trial can start the witness and his minder are shot, the case against Lafferty collapses completely.

Lafferty goes on the offensive, and Jordan finds himself in the long grass, but who’s the hunter and who’s the tiger?

The Mini Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

2011-07-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is an Absolute Write Water Cooler blog chain dedicated to finding the worst ever opening sentence for a novel.

Here’s my entry. It’s from The Mad Vicar of Hartlepool by Dame Evangeline Patch-Albert, OBE.

I could say ‘the body lay in a pool of blood’, but, given the grotesque and unnatural arrangement of its constituent parts, the position of the corpse (if that's what it was) could hardly be described as lying, nor was the blood pooling—it had long since dried to a black cake—and to call that collection of assorted limbs a body would be to give an impression more than a little short of the literal truth; no, let me start again and say simply, ‘a jumble of parts of what might once have been a body, but could have been several, rested in an untidy pile on a black mat of congealed gore’.

Here’s the complete chain of contributors:

orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com/
AuburnAssassin - http://clairegillian.com/
dolores haze - http://dianedooley.wordpress.com/
Horseflye - http://thecozylittleplot.blogspot.com/
Proach - http://www.deannaproach.com/
BigWords - http://bigwords88.wordpress.com/
jkellerford - http://jennykellerford.wordpress.com/
xcomplex - http://arielemerald.blogspot.com/
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com/
Diana Rajchel - http://blog.dianarajchel.com/
pezie - http://www.erinbrambilla.wordpress.com/
Guardian - http://daewrites.blogspot.com/
egoodlett - http://wordlarceny.blogspot.com/
This entry
Alpha Echo - http://writersramblings81.blogspot.com/

Bird Watcher

2011-07-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have published a single short story on Smashwords. For just $0.99 it can be downloaded to any number of eReaders, a PC or a Mac. Here's the link

I'll put it up on Amazon in a day or two.

On Religion

2011-07-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

Why are Catholics always “practicing” Catholics? At least the ones that aren't "lapsed" are always practicing. Protestants don’t need any practice. From the day of their baptism, they are fully qualified for a life of protest.

Years ago, when our kids were in primary school, we got involved in fundraising for a new non-denominational secondary school. The school was built, but when we applied for our kids to join, we were refused because we were not Protestants.

“I thought this was a non-denominational school,” says I.

“It is,” replied the vicar. “It’s a non-denominational Protestant school, and you are not Protestants.”

"But we helped fundraise for the school. I lost count of the number of coffee mornings we held, the number of bring and buy sales where we brung and bought."

"I'm sorry. Your efforts on behalf of the school are appreciated, but the school is for Protestants."

“But we are Protestants,” I protested, thinking: let him prove otherwise.

“You’re not pew Protestants,” says he, and that was the end of the argument.

Addict!

2011-07-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

I don't drink. A glass of wine with my evening meal, a bottle a beer during a football match. Gave up smoking for the second and last time in the 80's. Never tried anything stronger. Honest. I used to feel an occasional urge to gamble, but quickly discovered that this was a mug's game and learnt to keep my money in my pocket.

I had just about decided I was not the addictive sort. Until this morning. I woke up to find my broadband connection was broken. I ran the standard test - three times. Unplugged the modem and router, waited five minutes before plugging them back in. No joy. No web, no emails, nothing. No contact with the outside world. What if my book suddenly went viral?

Or pigs sprouted wings. Who said that?

I rang Vodafone. An automated system took me through a labyrinth of questions. It was only by pressing the wrong button that I got through to a customer support guy, called Gary (not his real name). Gary took my personal details, then checked out a few things at his end. In order to check the line that I had called him on, he needed me to ring him back on a mobile. He told me to dial 1747. That number would fast-track me through to tech support, avoiding the automatic answering machine and her million multiple-choice questions. I grabbed my mobile and rang 1747.

This time, I got an automated system that kept repeating that all their tech support people were busy, and they'd get to me eventually. My call was important to them, which gave me a warm glow. I hung on. And on. And on. I'm sure you've had this sort of experience, so I won't labor the point. Twelve minutes later, I was surprised to be speaking to a live, breathing young lady.

"Put me through to Gary," I said. "Gary, in tech support. He's waiting for my call."

"We don't have a Gary," she says. "Maybe I can help you."

I explained about my Vodafone broadband connection. I said I had been speaking to Gary in tech support just twelve minutes earlier, and that he had asked me to ring back on this number.

"This is not Vodafone," she says. "This is O2."

I had to laugh. Obviously, both companies use the same number, 1747, to fast-track their customers through to tech support. If you have a Vodafone mobile, you get routed through to Vodafone tech support. Mine is an O2 mobile.

I went back to the original number and picked my way through the labyrinth of multiple choice questions, again succeeding in hacking the system. The phone was answered by a young lady who asked for my personal details, this time including my date of birth and my underwear size. I explained how I'd spent the last twenty minutes waiting and then talking with their competitors. She tut-tutted sympathetically and put me through to technical support.

Luke (not his real name) began the process again. He asked me to disconnect everything from the line, including the landline (Ah! So that's why I had to ring back on a mobile).

"There is a small issue on the line," he said. "Do you have a monitored alarm system?"

"Yes," I said.

"Ring them and get them to check their filter." He explained that I would be charged a horrendous fee if an engineer was sent out by Eircom to correct a fault on my line and the problem was being caused by the alarm.

Anyway, my morning continued in that vein. In between calls, I repeatedly tried my email and Internet Explorer, but both were unresponsive. On my third visit to tech support, after giving the operator my mother's maiden name, I was informed by Brian (not his real name) that there had been a lot of calls from my area. A major broadband outage had struck, Eircom had been notified and were speeding to the scene, even now, to rectify the fault.

It was only then that I realized the extent of my addiction. I couldn't use twitter, and Facebook was going to have to manage without me. My blog was out there facing the ravages of cyberspace without my help. Unread emails were accumulating in my account. For want of something constructive to do, I walked into the village and bought a tube of glue (don't ask). I was tempted to place a bet on the outcome of the British Open Golf Championship. I even considered a visit to the pub.

As you can see, I'm back online, and all's well with the world.

Instant Godfather

2011-06-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

In the days when I worked in an office, I wore suits. I tried to keep a couple in a wearable condition, but there were periods when I had to function with just one serviceable suit.

During one of those periods, the trousers of my one remaining suit split and I was left with none. As if that weren’t bad enough, I was due to travel the next day with my boss to a meeting in the UK. I had exactly two hours to find a suit for the trip.

Could I find a suit to fit me? I trawled all the gents’ outfitters in the city and found nothing. Finally, minutes before the shops closed for the day, I entered the last shop on my list determined not to leave empty-handed.

What I came away with was nothing like the style or colour that I would have chosen. Nor was it a good fit; the drainpipe trousers were about an inch too short, the waisted jacket a tight fit. But I was out of options.

When I brought it home I was faced with another problem. I had several shirts of different colours, but none that would go with this suit. The shirt that I selected really was my only option, as was my choice of tie.

When I met my boss at the airport his jaw fell and his eyes bulged. I swear he lost the power of speech for a good thirty minutes.

The suit was purple, the shirt chocolate brown, the tie a broad check in yellow, brown and white squares. The effect was straight out of Reservoir Dogs.

The meeting was a great success. We made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The Leather Scam

2011-06-24T02:45:00.000-07:00

My father was a traveling salesman. He was a kind-hearted soul and often picked up hitchhikers. In 1975, or thereabouts, he picked up an Italian headed for Dublin airport. This man spun a long, complicated story about how he’d lost his fare home. He was a leather worker and had a couple of samples in his suitcase that he could sell to raise the money for his fare. My father bought a poor quality leather jacket for 70 pounds (a crazy price). He never wore it; it was fit only for the dustbin.

About a year ago, in Woodies car park, I was approached by a man in a car. He was about 30-40 years old. He claimed to be Italian and asked if I would be interested in some end-of-stock items of Italian leather. He had them in the boot of his car. I laughed and told him my father had fallen for that scam over thirty years earlier.

“I hope you don’t think I’ve been doing this for thirty years,” he said, and he drove off.

This morning, walking to the shop at the end of my road, a car pulled up. The window opened and an old man looked out at me. He must have been seventy-five or eighty. “Scusi,” he says, followed by a torrent of Italian. I love the sound of spoken Italian, but I don’t speak a word of it. He asked me if I spoke Italian. Then, in very broken English, he asked where the leather shop was.

“There are no leather shops around here,” says I. “There are none that I know of in Greystones. The only one I know of is on the south quays in Dublin.”

He thanked me, apologized for his poor English and said, “I can ask more questions?”

Then he produced a pile of papers, air tickets, his identity card. “Exhibition International” it said. His name, Alphonso Copolla, under the photo of a man at least thirty years younger. He mentioned the name of two hotels in a nearby town. I gathered there had been an exhibition. It was now over and he was heading back to his Momma in Milano.

“I have some samples left over,” he said, and bells and claxons went off in my head.

I laughed at him, and told him that my father fell for that story about thirty years ago.

It’s amazing. To have stood the test of time like that, his must be a really successful scam. It’s worrying, though, that both my father and I look like ideal marks.

Bartlett Rebooted

2011-06-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a short extract from one of the stories in my eBook (now selling at $2.99 on Smashwords).

Fnnnff

“What did he say?”

“It sounded like Fnnnff.”

Bartlett was lying on his back on a rough wooden table. He was buck naked, his eyes open, unblinking, staring at the ceiling. He was not breathing. His limbs were stiff as pokers, which was hardly surprising given that they were recovering from recent rigor mortis.

A box the size and shape of a shoebox sat perched on his chest. The box connected to an oxygen cylinder and wires from the box ran up Bartlett’s nostrils.

The professor made a slight adjustment to the oxygen release valve. “Ask him again, Smedley,” he said.

Smedley manoeuvred his huge bulk closer to the table. “Doctor Bartlett, what is your name?”

Gnnnnngh

“No, that's not right.” The professor put his mouth to Bartlett's ear and raised his voice. “Try again, Doctor. Your name is…?”

Nothing.

Cardew the postgrad sniggered. “I don't think he heard you, Professor.”

A long slow tremor ran through Bartlett's body, starting with his feet and moving up towards his chest.

“I think we need more water, Cardew.”

“Right you are, Professor,” said Cardew. He picked up a galvanised bucket and poured water over Bartlett's legs and feet.

“Pour it on his head, you idiot, not his feet.”

“Give it here,” said Smedley. He snatched the bucket from Cardew’s grasp and emptied it over Bartlett's head.

Shhhmoooooooo, Bartlett gurgled.

“That sounded better,” the professor shouted. “Say that again, Bartlett.”

Nnnnggrhh

The three academics retired to a corner of the laboratory and Cardew put the kettle on.

“It looks hopeless,” Cardew mumbled to Smedley, dropping three tea bags into the kettle.

The professor’s hearing was as sharp as any bat’s. “Nonsense, Cardew,” he said. “Have a little patience. It's bound to take time.”

“It's been a week already,” said Smedley.

“Six days, and he is talking.”

“He's not making much sense.”

“His vocal chords could be damaged. We can't be sure.”

Cardew adjusted his spectacles on his nose “And what of his brain, Professor?” he said, lifting the lid from the kettle and pouring in a quarter pint of milk.

“His brain is perfect, young man. You'll see.”

“Yes, but we've run out of time.” Smedley produced a half-melted Mars bar from his pants pocket and began to unpeel it.

“We have the rest of today and tomorrow morning.”

“He'll be here at ten,” said Smedley, licking his fingers.

“Well there you are, then. We have at least fifteen hours.”

Smedley bit his lip. “Is there no way you can postpone the visit? Maybe you could say you've caught something horrible – the plague, maybe, or a really bad head cold.”

The professor shook his head. “Not necessary. I've told you before, there's no way the Military will pull the plug on this one, not now that the Secretary for Defense has got wind of it.”

When they had finished their tea, they returned to find Bartlett's head turned to the left. As they approached, Bartlett fixed the wiry Cardew with a bird-like stare.

“Look, he's moved his head!” the professor whispered.

“I think he's taken a fancy to you, Cardew.” Smedley chuckled.

“I see what you mean,” said the professor. “Better fetch more water, and make it cold.”

Bartlett's eyes followed Cardew’s lissom figure as he hurried from the room.

“Bartlett!” The professor shouted. He snapped his fingers. “I'm over here, Bartlett. Look at me, Bartlett. Do you know who I am?”

Gggggggrrrroooooooooo

“That's right! Professor Gordon. Listen to this, Smedley! He said my name.”

Cardew came running back carrying half a bucket of water.

The professor waved his hands in front of Bartlett's face. He snapped his fingers again, and shouted, “Bartlett, Bartlett. Look at me, Bartlett. WHO AM I?”

Ffnnnnfnngh

#

The man from the Pentagon arrived at nine o'clock on the dot. Cecil Footprint was on the wrong side of thirty but the right side of forty. His small snub nose and weak chin tucked in under his prominent brow suggested a face carved from a solid block of wood, like an African ceremonial mask. His clothing was remarkable only insofar as it was identical in every detail with what Bartlett, whom Smedley had dressed for the occasion, was wearing: a suit of worsted wool in charcoal gray, one of those shirts with red stripes and a white detachable collar, a red striped tie and sensible shoes.

Bartlett stood stiffly against the wall where Smedley and Cardew had put him.

“This is the, ah, subject?” Footprint said.

“This is Doctor Bartlett. Say hello to Mr. Footprint, Bartlett,” said the professor somewhat optimistically.

Bartlett’s unblinking eyes latched on to his visitor. He said nothing.

“As you can see,” said the professor, “he is well aware of your presence.”

“What’s that under his shirt, strapped to his chest?” Footprint said.

“That’s his life-support apparatus. It’s a small box full of electronic instruments that control the flow of oxygen to his brain.”

“Doesn’t the brain extract its oxygen from blood?”

“Normally, yes, but we use a different medium to carry oxygen to the brain.”

“And this contraption of yours does that?”

“Yes.”

“And the medium?”

“A special secret concoction of my own. It’s only a temporary fix, of course. The brain needs oxygenated blood to function properly.”

“Secret.” Footprint looked disappointed.

“Yes. Its patent is pending.”

Footprint scratched his head. “Can you get him to say something?”

“Yes, of course. Bartlett,” said the professor, “tell Mr. Footprint what you have been doing this morning.”

Bartlett said nothing.

“Try speaking to him yourself,” the professor suggested.

The man from the Pentagon took a cautious step forward. “Footprint,” he said, “Department of Science and Technology.” He raised a hand, palm forward. “I come in peace.”

“Take me to your leader,” muttered Smedley.

Bartlett said nothing. Then he winked.

On Cling Film

2011-06-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Who invented cling film? If anyone knows, please send me his/her name and address and daily work schedule. I have a bone to pick with him/her. My understanding of the concept is that this nefarious product is supposed to be a handy and convenient way of keeping food fresh. All you have to do is extend a piece of the stuff over the top of the bowl or plate, the film clings to the bowl, and your food is sealed and ready for the fridge.

Here’s the instructions for use:

Find the start of the roll.

Pull film to required length and tear against the cutting edge.

The start of the roll is roughened to make finding it much easier.

Yeah, right.

Here’s my instructions:

First locate the end of the roll. Allow plenty of time for this part of the exercise; if you manage to keep your temper it can take twenty minutes; if not, you may need to redecorate and you’ll have to find some other way of keeping your food fresh.

Second, when you try to extend the stuff it will tear, coming away in strips too narrow to cover the food.

Third, it clings. To your hands, your arms, the kitchen wall, your face. To everything except the food container. There’s a long list of materials that static electricity loves. Cling film sits proudly at the top of this list.

Fourth, getting the stuff onto the intended plate/bowl is a complex task fit only for an astronaut trained to dock a shuttle with a space station. If you do finally manage to maneuver enough of the stuff into the intended position, be very, very careful with it. If you puncture it, you’ll have to start all over again.

Ovolution is released!

2011-06-07T01:55:00.000-07:00

My first eBook Ovolution and Other Stories by JJ Toner is now available from Smashwords and for Kindle from Amazon. Here are the links:

Smashwords

Amazon UK

Amazon US and all other countries

These ten stories were written over a period of 15 years. They are only available as e-books. If you don’t have an eReader, you can download free Adobe Digital Editions software. This will enable you to read an e-book on your MS-Windows PC or Apple Mac.

To read an e-Book on your smartphone, try downloading this free software from Amazon. Both Amazon and Smashwords allow you to download a free sample of any eBook before buying.

If any of these links don’t work, just search for “JJ Toner” on any of these websites and the book should appear. Please note that purchase prices may vary depending on your currency and the sales tax in your area. If you have any problems, let me know.

If you do buy it, please leave a review on the site where you bought it. Please keep your review comments genuine and honest. Reviews (even bad ones) are a great help for independent authors to gain exposure. If you enjoyed the book, please tell your friends.

Ovolution and Other Stories - Endorsements

2011-06-04T03:17:00.000-07:00

My first eBook is now in the oven at Amazon. The Kindle edition should be cooked and ready for the shelf within a day or two.

The book has received fantastic endorsements from two writers that I admire.

The first is from crime noir author Paul D. Brazill:

"One of the things the best sort of speculative fiction can do is to satirize the absurdities of society and human behavior. In ‘Ovolution and Other Stories’, JJ Toner does just that. And he does it marvelously well, too, with a style and wit worthy of a Kurt Vonnegut/ Groucho Marx double act."

Paul is the author of the forthcoming book 13 Shots Of Noir. His blog is here

The second is from Les Edgerton, author and writing coach:

"I HATE sci-fi. I LOVE JJ Toner’s sci-fi! If I’d read other science fiction created as Toner has with his collection, OVOLUTION, I would never have considered making that first statement. This is just fun reading. It’s laugh-out-loud stuff but with a serious theme at its heart. His stories transcend genre and are just rockin’ good stories, evoking vestiges of O. Henry and the Twilight Zone television series… as translated by John Hodgson through his character Joel Robinson from his front row seat in the Peabody Award-winning Mystery Science Theater. Get this book and pass the word on to the rest of the kids in study hall."

Les Edgerton is the author of Hooked, Monday’s Meal, and the forthcoming novels, A Perfect Crime, Just Like That, The Bitch and The Rapist, and a writing coach who helps kidnappers perfect their notes. Les's blog is here

GIZMO list

2011-05-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

I never can remember the words of songs. The only one that I know really well is the second half of “The Boxer” by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle. You know, the bit that goes lie lie lie, lie lie lie, lie lie lie, lie lie lie, lie lie lie, li-lie lie lie. I can sing along with that all day.

That’s why I make lots of lists. Here’s one of my most valuable: my GIZMO list. Non-specific words, gathered over a lifetime, for gadgets, artefacts and doohickeys - in a word - Gizmos.

Apparatus, Artefact, Article

Contraption, Contrivance

Device, Dinkus, Doodad, Doodah, Doohickey, Doojigger, Doowhedie

Gadget, Geegaw, Gimcrack, Gimmick, Gizmo (or Gismo)

Implement, Instrument, Item

Knick-knack

Machine, Maguffin, Mechanism

Object

Paraphenalia

Thing, Thingamibob, Thingammy, Thingumadoodle, Thingy

Whatchamacallit, Whatsit, Whizz-bang, Widget

Yoke

Have I forgotten any?
Additions to the list would be appreciated.

eBook Blurb

2011-05-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

I've had to change my name. I discovered a published author called J.B. Toner on Goodreads, so I can't publish my book under that name (even though it's the one my parents gave me).

I'm now calling myself JJ Toner, and will publish under that name. So watch out for:

Ovolution and Other Stories by JJ Toner on lots of eBook formats.

Here's the blurbs:

Ovolution: What would happen if women laid eggs?

Children Admitted Free: A mission to find the source of a mysterious message from deep space

Deca-Millennium Bug: Remember the millennium bug? It's all going to happen again in 9999. Better get ready!

Intelligent Design: How it all went wrong right at the start

Scouting Party: First Contact, Love and Golf

Snugglesuit: The adventures of an irrepressible inventor

Bartlett Rebooted: The human brain is more resilient than people think

Short Back and Sides: An alien abduction and a great haircut

Ooze: It's life, but could it be intelligent, and can we eat it?

The Perfect Woman: Baron von Frankenstein’s assistant finally succeeds, but will he survive the experience?

If you're looking for short stories that are fun, look no further. Here are ten original stories in the tradition of RA Lafferty and Douglas Adams.

“One of the things the best sort of speculative fiction can do is to satirize the absurdities of society and human behavior. JJ Toner does just that. And he does it marvelously well, too, with a style and wit worthy of a Kurt Vonnegut/ Groucho Marx double act.” Paul D Brazill

“This is just fun reading. It’s laugh-out-loud stuff but with a serious theme at its heart. His stories transcend genre and are just rockin’ good stories. Get this book and pass the word on to the rest of the kids in study hall.” Les Edgerton

My Second Book

2011-05-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

My Second Book is called "The Black Orchestra".

Those of you who have been reading my blog will remember my posts about my first book, part 1 and part 2.

Here’s what happened next.

I had read a couple of books about German spies in Ireland during what my countrymen of the time called “The Emergency” and the rest of the world called World War II. To a man, these spies were incompetent and badly trained. Their English language skills were poor. One was an Indian, his dark skin a complete give away, as everybody in Ireland in those days had white skin. Their exploits had me in stitches.

One guy turned up at a railway station and asked a local when the next train was due. “I wouldn’t hold your breath,” says the Irishman. “The last train left here ten years ago.”

Another spy parachuted into the country, landing maybe fifty miles from where he was supposed to be, and asked for walking directions. This would have been like landing in Kent and asking directions (in a German accent) on how to walk to Buckinghamshire.

A third spy was dropped off on the south coast by submarine. Before he could make landfall, his radio and all his supplies fell overboard from his dinghy and were lost.

A fourth was a semiliterate circus strongman with a girlfriend and a child in Ireland. He did better than most, although it’s difficult to understand how he could have coded his transmissions back to his handlers.

All of these men were picked up by the Irish police and incarcerated, some within days, or hours, of arrival in Ireland.

I had also read a book about the wonderful Hans and Sophie Scholl and “The White Rose” Munich student resistance. Hans and Sophie published 6 broadsheets condemning the Nazi regime before they, and several others, were guillotined by the Gestapo in 1943. Yes, that's what I said. Hans was 25, Sophie was 21.

I read books on Enigma and the work of Alan Turing and the team in Bletchley who broke the Enigma code. And of course I had read how Admiral Canaris, Hans Oster and their team in the Abwehr were secretly working against Hitler’s regime.

Out of all this was born my second novel. Set in Berlin during WWII, this is the story of an Abwehr signalman who finds evidence of a conspiracy within the Abwehr. When he runs the conspiracy to ground he uncovers a resistance group called Schwarze Kapelle – The Black Orchestra – and decides to join it. It’s a thriller, a spy story and a love story all rolled into one.

I queried the main London agents in alphabetical order, and one agent asked to read the whole thing. When he got back to me, he said he liked it but it needed to be faster, more exciting and have more violence in there.

I did a massive rewrite and sent it back to the agent, reducing the comedic chapters about the poor training and the misadventures of agents in Ireland. He asked for still more pace, more violence, more excitement. So I added some more of these, eliminated a few minor characters, introduced a new one, and so on.

Finally, after nine months of rewriting, he passed on the book.

References:

Mark M. Hull, Irish Secrets. 2003, ISBN 0-7165-2756-1
Enno Stephan, Spies in Ireland. The New England Library Ltd, 1963
Dumbach and Newborn, Sophie Scholl & The White Rose. 2006, ISBN 1-85168-474-3
Rudolf Kippenhahn, Code Breaking. 1999, ISBN 0094-79890-7

Making Friends on Facebook

2011-05-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to make friends on Facebook. It’s not easy. Some friend requests that I send out seem to work with one click, others invite me to add a message, still others pop-up with a warning: “Are you sure you know this person?” and others, including Nathan Bransford, say: “This request could not be sent”.

Facebook seems determined to corral me among people that I shared a school or college with, or co-workers. This knocks my idea of social networking into a cocked hat. I am looking to make friendships on a much wider basis than that.

Following people on Twitter is a lot easier (although gathering followers isn’t).

Can I ask anyone who reads this post who has a Facebook account to send me a friend request. My Facebook account is

JJTonerYA

On Twitter I'm @jjtoner_YA

Thanks.

First eBook

2011-05-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

Moving toward publication of my first eBook, a collection of ten short Science Fiction stories. The provisional title for the book is

“Ovolution and Other Stories”.

Here’s my checklist of tasks to be completed:

1 Complete the ten stories
2 Commission and receive cover
3 Complete final text edit
4 Pass the manuscript to editor
5 Rewrite as necessary
6 Write blurb
7 Obtain Copyright
8 Format for Kindle
9 Download to Kindle
10 Prepare file for Smashwords
11 Download to Smashwords

I have briefed a specialist cover designer and he has agreed to create a cover for the book. I expect something from him next week.

Today, I completed the last of the ten stories. I still have some editing to do to make sure that all of the stories use the same quotations convention, are spell checked for the US market, and so on. I should be able to complete this step in time to pass the manuscript to my editor by the weekend.

Any waiting periods, I will spend working on my new web site.

Have I forgotten anything?

On Plot Outlines

2011-04-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

Plot outlines come in all shapes and sizes. At one extreme we have “pantsers” - people who just sit down with an idea in mind, and start writing. At the other extreme we have people like me who wouldn’t dream of putting two words together without a detailed outline of the book.

The thought of working like a pantser brings me out in goose bumps. I have to have an outline before I start writing. I like to work with 60 chapters, so I start with 60 lines on a spreadsheet, and type in at least one line for each chapter. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a cliff face. The 60 notes are the footholds that will get me to the top. I spend weeks rearranging these notes, adding to them, shuffling them, testing each one for strength. I may even use index cards to help get them in the right order.

Under time pressure I might start to write with some of the footholds missing, hoping that they will come to me as I go along. But each of these is like a chasm, and as I approach one I have to stop until I’ve filled it in. Faced with a chasm of two or three chapters I become cranky and absent-minded; anything bigger than that - say 5 or 6 chapters - and I wake up screaming. It really is just like balancing on a tiny ledge with nowhere to go, trying not to look down.

Sometimes I come to one of my footholds and find it’s not strong enough to support my (i.e. the story’s) weight. I know it seemed okay when I wrote it, but now it’s turned to dust; there’s nothing there! I need to replace it before I can continue. Often when this happens, I can simply eliminate the chapter - jump up to the next foothold - and carry on.

Pantsers bemoan the necessity of outlining. They say a detailed outline stifles creativity and removes the fun and excitement of writing. I couldn’t disagree more. As I write, my outline changes (a lot). New ideas come to me and are incorporated into the story. Often, whole new characters are added while others disappear or merge. There’s plenty of room to be creative.

I can see how creativity could be stifled if your outline is too detailed, when you might feel you were writing in a straitjacket. I suppose, the trick is to start with an outline that is strong enough to get you through to the end of the story, but not so elaborate that you can’t breathe. To use yet another metaphor, I think it’s useful to think of the outline as a skeleton, the narrative the flesh that gives it form and life.

What about you? Do you outline or are you a wild pantser?

The Half-baked Approach

2011-04-22T03:40:00.000-07:00

Note to self:
Okay, you’ve writing three quarters of your new YA book. You’ve reached the climax at the end of part 2, when “all seems lost.” You have an outline of the plot, you know what will happen next and how the story ends, but you have doubts. Is the storyline strong enough? Are the stakes high enough? Are the characters working? What about their inter-relationships? How should the story end?

Maybe this would be a good time to enlist the aid of some beta readers. Give what you've written a thorough line edit, weed out as many typos as possible. Then get some young people to read what you’ve written and tell you what they think, using a questionnaire something like this:

On a scale of 1-10:

Do the characters grab you?
Does the story interest you?
Do you want to read the rest of it?
Would you like to read a sequel?

And on a scale of 1-10, how badly do you want:

The budding romance(s) to bloom?
The villain to be beaten at his own game?
Or to die a horrible death?
Main character A to find what he’s looking for?
Main character B to find what she’s looking for?
The characters that have been cruelly separated to be reunited?
The society to survive the disaster/war?
The society to resolve its underlying problems?

Obviously, the questionnaire will need to be tailored to the individual manuscript, and you could add open questions like:

What did you think of the storyline?
Did you like the characters?
Was there anything in what you read that you thought was:
Stupid, Unbelievable, Lame, Great, Gross, Funny, Sad, Childish

The essential idea is to get this work done NOW, before you write the last part of the book. You may be surprised by the responses you get, and you may have to rethink the ending. You may have to rewrite some of what you've already written.

On Style

2011-04-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

I have a well-thumbed copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style somewhere.

Someone recommended the Chicago Manual of Style, a book that covers every aspect of grammar. I found a few second hand copies on ebay selling for $70. Too expensive. So I went to the local library and asked if they could get me a copy. “Is this a fashion book?” the girl asked me. A reasonable assumption, I thought.

I would have thought the term “style” applied to writing should mean much more than whether or not an author puts his/her commas in the right places. To my mind, style should mean the author’s approach to the written word. My notion of style is the flavour of what we read. It springs from the writer’s background and the art that s/he puts into his/her prose. Who would expect a modern writer of women’s fiction to write in the same style as Jane Austen, say?

Here's a few examples:

PG Wodehouse wrote in a style a million miles removed from, say, Christopher Moore, although they both write laugh-out-loud comedy.

The styles of Charles Dickens and Albert Camus are poles apart, principally because Dickens uses so many words, Camus so few.

Raymond Chandler’s style is characterised by what he himself described as wisecracks, Oscar Wilde’s stock in trade was the aphorism, just as wise certainly, but lacking the same craic.

Alastair McLean and Joseph Kanon both wrote WWII stories, but would anybody confuse their styles?

Likewise, John le Carre and Len Deighton with the spy story. Two very different styles of writing. I could go on, of course, but I think I’ve made my point.

Point of View

2011-04-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

As a reader, my own preference is for some variety in point of view. An alternative pov can enrich a narrative, and I often feel that books with only one can be flat, as if they lack a dimension.

On the other hand, it can be a difficult task to leap from one character to another without leaving the reader behind. To avoid this, I have two rules: 1) only one pov per chapter and 2) the pov must be clearly established early on in each chapter. IMO head-hopping is the only thing worse than reading a chunk of text (or dialogue) without a clear pov.

My YA work-in-progress has two main characters, a boy (Marko) and a girl (Janet). The way the story is structured, the boy is the main character, the girl a secondary character, although it’s a close thing. So far, I’ve written 25 chapters, 14 from Marko’s viewpoint, 7 from Janet’s, with 4 that could be from either. There is no obvious pattern to the pov switches. There are some chapters where either one or the other is not present (no contest), others where both are present, but the drama determines pov, and a few where the decision is a toss-up. Wherever the choice is not obvious, I’ve generally opted for Marko, as he is the main character.

What I mean by a pattern is this: I have a book here by Sophie McKenzie called Blood Ties. She has two main characters, Theo and Rachel. McKenzie’s approach is to share out the pov duties equally between the two. Theo gets all the odd chapters, Rachel all the even ones. I wonder if this approach is necessary, or even wise. Towards the end of the book it seems an artificial constraint.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if my approach is any better.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Plausible Excuses 2

2011-04-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

(for falling behind with your writing)

1.Incoming eMails must be answered

2. Blogs must be written. Mustn’t neglect your blog. That’s what networking is all about.

3. Read a couple of chapters. You can’t call yourself a writer without keeping up with your reading.

4. Check in at Facebook. Isn’t that what networking is all about?

5. And Twitter. Don’t neglect Twitter.

6. Other people’s blogs must be read and commented on. That’s what networking is all about, right?

7. Phone a friend. She talks the legs off a donkey, but isn’t that what friends are for?

8. Time for a quick lunch and check the news on TV. Another a shocking disaster!

9. Take an hour for some shuteye. You’ll wake refreshed and ready to write a storm.

10. Follow some of the links supplied in other people’s blogs, especially Nathan Bransford’s Blog. That’s what market intelligence is all about, right?

11. Some of those links are UTube videos. They’re usually fun. All work and no play, right?

12. Check in at Absolute Write. Someone may need a beta reader, a proofreader, a short critique. That’s what networking is really all about.

13. Spend an hour worrying about queries. Have you really given up on novels 1-9?

14. Have you checked the post yet today?

15. Right, put the kettle on and edit what you wrote yesterday. Then,

16. Write something new, if there’s any time left.

17. What’s on TV tonight.

18. Another exhausting day. You wrote only 300 words, but it’s good stuff.

19. Tomorrow you’ll do better. Maybe you should get up earlier.

20. If only you could get more sleep.

Plausible Excuses

2011-04-09T01:15:00.000-07:00

(...for losing at golf)

1. A seriously wicked party the night before.

2. Injuries. Like: tennis elbow, housemaid’s knee, a hangnail, athlete’s foot.

3. Other health issues: Sclerosis of the liver, shortness of breath, double vision, tinnitus, mild insanity, varicose veins, backache, terminal dandruff.

4. Something in your shoe: a nail, a stone, an unwelcome insect.

5. An unhappy childhood.

6. An impending divorce, causing insomnia, lethargy and imminent penury.

7. Multiple Personality Disorder.

8. Apathy, Antipathy, Hydropathy, Sociopathy, Homeopathy.

9. The other guy sneezed just as you started your downswing.

10. You were struck by lightning (again).

11. Social unrest, a revolution, or a Biblical Plague.

12 A broken seven iron.

13. One of the phobias. Arithmophobia (numbers), Kakorrhaphiophobia (failure), Pluviophobia (rain), Pentheraphobia (mothers-in-law), Agoraphobia (open spaces) are all popular choices.

14. An allergy. Grass pollen is the most popular.

15. For Professionals: The Caddy gave me the wrong club/ yardage/ put too many clubs in the bag/ forgot to pack my medication/ lunch/ gum.

16. PTSD, PMT, HRT, ADHD.

17. Bankruptcy.

18. If all else fails, blame one of these: Bad luck, Kismet, Astrology, Witchcraft, Leprechauns, St Nicklaus.

The Rules of Golf

2011-04-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

(For the season that's in it, with the first Major of the year under way)

1. On the first tee, make sure your phone is switched ON. Find an annoying ringtone here

2. When playing a shot, never let go of the club.

3. Keep out of the line of fire at all times, and expect the unexpected shank or flying club.

4. On the greens, you may repair plug marks, potholes, divots, major excavations and meteorite craters, but not spike-marks.

5. Psychedelic clothing is mandatory. Matching colours are the mark of the amateur.

6. Sand traps are sometimes called bunkers. Don’t be fooled by this.

7. Never show surprise when you sink a putt; it’s a sign of weakness.

8. Petulant displays are inevitable, but remember to repair all divots on the greens.

9. For Amateurs, one curse-word per hole is the accepted norm. The Professional may swear at his caddy after every shot.

10. Never play a shot over water. Avoid courses with lakes or rivers.

11. Experienced golfers know how to cough or sneeze just as the other guy is starting his downswing. You should practice this.

12. Try not to laugh at the other guy’s efforts. If the other guy laughs at you, use a seven iron.

13. If your ball goes into the rough, declare it lost immediately and reload. You don’t want to go in there; if you found the ball, chances are you’d never be able to get it out.

14. The guys behind are always faster. The guys in front are always slower.

15. One good shot per round is all any reasonable golfer can hope for.

16. If it rains, call it a day. Who needs the extra aggravation?

17. Stay out of lateral water hazards. You never know what might be lurking in there.

18. Know your Plausible Excuses. Always carry a copy in your bag.

Tomorrow: The Plausible Excuses.

My First Book (blog 2)

2011-04-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

Following that commercial line edit, and after reading a mountain of how-to-write books, I took a year to complete a number of further edits and rewrites of my first book. The first chapter changed at least 300 times, and I rewrote the ending maybe 20 times.

There are a number of reputable literary consultancies in the UK, who provide genuine editorial services for aspiring writers. I decided to try one of these.

This time, the edit was completed by someone who concentrated on the plot. He didn’t like it. The villain was too villainous, the main characters’ perils were too infrequent and not perilous enough, and the ending made no sense. Worst of all, the plot did not follow Hollywood’s classical three-act structure. He recommended that I read The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.

I bought a copy of Vogler’s book. Sure enough, I could see that my book was climaxing in all the wrong places. The problem was that I had tied the plot into the progress of the Crusade, and I wanted it to be historically accurate. I set about another rewrite with Vogler’s three-act structure uppermost in my mind.

At this stage I sent out a few more queries. Having no positive responses, I returned to Book 2 – another historical novel, set in Berlin during WWII. I completed Book 2 and Book 3 (a crime thriller) before returning to My First Book.

The very first editor had suggested that the book might be good for the Young Adult market, so I rewrote it for the Young Adult market. This meant removing explicit sexual content (maybe two paragraphs), rewriting the ending and the first three chapters (again) and reducing the length of the book from 90,000 to 70,000 words.

I decided to send it out for another professional edit at this stage. (Yes, I know, but I was worried about stepping into YA territory. I needed some reassurance that my book wasn’t going to cause some serious adolescent unrest.)

This editor spotted one large plot hole that arose when I shortened the text. She said that the villain was entirely believable. She seemed happy with the ending. There was no comment about the accuracy of historical detail, which I took as a positive indicator.

So there you have it. I’ve been working on this book – on and off – for 15 years. I’ve spent about EUR 2,000 on editing services, and the book remains unpublished and unrepresented.

Perhaps it’s time to self-publish it as an ebook.

Either that or forget about it.

eBook editors?

2011-04-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

I’m now planning to self-publish on Kindle. It seems this is the way of the future. Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler have published an eye-opening conversation on the subject here

Near the end of that discussion, Barry says:

“To turn a manuscript into an actual book and get it into the hands of a reader, we still need an editor, line editor, copyeditor, proofreader, jacket copy writer, bio writer, cover art designer, and digital formatter.”

I wonder if this is true. I have read here that Scrivener version 2, the software package running on Apple computers, will convert text into various formats for epublishing, including the .MOBI Kindle format.

One notable bestselling book that I have read on Kindle shows no evidence of having been edited or even proofread by anyone.

I accept the need for a cover art designer. As for the rest, surely I can write my own blurb (jacket copy) and my own bio, and do I really need all those editors? And if not, who ensures the quality of what's published?

My First Book (blog 1)

2011-03-29T02:39:00.000-07:00

In 1996 I began to write a book. I wanted to write a murder mystery about a serial killer where the scene of the crimes kept shifting. I decided to set it during the First Crusade, which started in 1096 – exactly 900 years earlier.

I began by rereading Steven Runciman’s wonderful book: A History of the Crusades – Volume 1. Then I outlined my plot, pasting the action onto the geographical progress of the crusade. A lot of research about the period followed. What did people wear, eat, and so on? Who would have been responsible for investigating the killings? What system of justice did they have?

I spent a lot of time trying to decide what sort of language to use. My main character is the son of a blacksmith who lived in Brittany. Since I was writing in English there was a mismatch to start with right there. I decided to write the text in modern English while avoiding modern idioms and slang.

The dialogue needed to be accessible to the reader. This meant it needed to be reasonably modern, but avoiding modern idiom, words etc. I read a lot of Ellis Peter’s books to see how she handled language.

I wrote the book. That took about a year. Then I spent another year editing, rewriting, weeding out anachronisms. The metric system, for example, was introduced after the French Revolution – who knew?

The book was called THE SIGN OF THE CROSS.

I sent out queries to about 20 agents in London, and got about 14 rejections. The remaining 6 never responded.

At that stage, I put the book on a shelf in a box file, put it out of my mind, and went back to writing the occasional short story.

In 2007, I spotted an advertisement on a writers’ web site for a literary agency in New York. I sent a sample of the book off and forgot about it. Within a week, the agency responded that they wanted to represent my novel. They said it had potential.

I was delighted by this news. As it happened, I was in hospital at the time, undergoing a series of tests. I didn’t have access to my computer, so I had to communicate with my new agent via my wife. She received the contract, printed it and took it to the hospital.

I signed up, and began to work on my second book.

As soon as I had signed the contract, I was contacted by my agent (Georgina) who recommended that I send my book to an editor in a sister company. For $1,200 this editor would help me to prepare the manuscript for the market.

This, I agreed to. I sent off the money and the manuscript, and, within a few weeks, I received a line edit. There were some anachronisms still in there. I remember that the word “pantaloons” was not appropriate. We settled on “breeches”.

Shortly after that I discovered that this “agency” was no more than a well-known scam, whose purpose was to extract fees for editing services from unsuspecting and naïve people like me. I cancelled the contract.

The one good thing that came from this experience was that it got me writing again. Maybe I might have got there without spending that money. Maybe, but I doubt it. As a writer, I was in a horrible black hole of self-doubt. I’m not sure if I would ever have found my way out of there any other way.

Tune in next week to find out what happened next.

Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? No, it's a Kindle

2011-03-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

On Friday last, I ordered a Kindle. Finally, after raging against the machine, so to speak, I capitulated, logged on to Amazon.co.uk and clicked on Kindle.

Sorry, says the screen, if you live outside the UK you have to buy your Kindle from Amazon.com. It will be shipped from USA. That seems daft to me, but what the heck. So I switch over to Amazon.com and set about ordering the thing.

The process took about an hour.

First, I had to choose Wi-fi or Wi-fi plus 3G. Having previously consulted my friend who had bought one recently, I was prepared for this question, but still I wasted some time reading about the difference. And then there was a larger version to consider.

My main problem was that I wanted to buy it for use in Ireland, but then give it to my wife when she goes on her planned long (6-12 months) trip to Australia. So, when it asked me to select a country, I could have entered Ireland or Australia. I tried both, flip-flopping between them, trying to work out which I should choose.

I selected Ireland and got a dinky pop-up that warned me about VAT. As I was placing the order I noticed that I was eligible for free shipping. It told me how to claim free shipping by clicking on Preferred Delivery Method. My fingers were poised to do just that, when the screen thanked me for my order. Hastily, I cancelled the order and tried again.

This time, Amazon realized that I was not based in the USA and therefore not entitled to free shipping. But somehow, I managed to order two of the things, one with and one without a case.

Cancel and start again.

The order has now been processed and I am to expect delivery in about 4-5 days.

Monday: We were out when UPS delivered the pesky thing. I ordered it Friday (18 Mar) at 10:59. It was dispatched the same day at 22:15 and delivered today (20 Mar) at 11:36. The UPS man left a note in our mailbox: “Left it in your grey bin”. The whole process, from order to delivery was so fast, it’s made me nervous. What have I let into the house? At 13:30 I rescued it from our dustbin. By 16:00 I had it charged and ready to go. It’s now 17:00 and I couldn’t find a single ebook on Amazon’s top 100 titles that I would want to buy.

I’ve switched it off for the moment.

Toothpaste

2011-03-20T04:55:00.000-07:00

It’s amazing how much toothpaste there is in a tube. Remember when toothpaste tubes were made of lead and we rolled them up to squeeze the last globule out of there? We used to use the empty tubes as weights in model aircraft or boats. Like everything else nowadays, the tubes are made of plastic, and, although rolling your tube is not an option, there are other ways of squeezing those last few blobs out of there. If you’re diligent enough, and you know what you’re doing, you can get weeks of brushing from a tube that looks entirely empty.

This morning I finally gave up on our latest tube and broke out a new one. Imagine my surprise when I discovered shiny green paste oozing out. My first thought was that this was a special edition manufactured in recognition of St Patrick, but then I dismissed this idea as frivolous and unrealistic. The paste is called “Smooth Mint**.” I can only suppose the unusual colour is intended to reinforce this notion.

Our last tube provided striped paste in the French colours: blue, white and red. How they do that is a mystery, and frankly, I’d rather not find out. I love the idea that the manufacturing process incorporates some arcane magical spell to delight us at brushing time, twice each day. Mind you, the tube before that produced red, white and blue stripes. I can only suppose that a massive logistical meltdown caused the inadvertent diversion to these shores of a consignment destined for England.

God only knows what we’d ever find to talk about in our house if all toothpaste was plain white.

On Tenses

2011-03-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

I have noticed an increase in the number of books that are written in the present tense. I’m sure the technique is intended to heighten excitement, suspense, or tension, and maybe it does in some situations. Speaking for myself, I find it irksome and distracting. For many (most) books written in this way, it feels artificial, the text like a rubber band that the author has stretched too far.

Here is a short sample list of books I have read recently that are written this way:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Winterland by Alan Glynn
Room by Emma Donoghue
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Perfume by Patrick Suskind is interesting. On one half page of chapter 1 he uses the present tense to describe his main character’s traumatic (and dramatic) birth. And that’s it. He never uses the present tense again. (Correct me if I’m wrong). Wonderful book, btw.

In Hans Fallada’s famous book Alone in Berlin (US, Every Man Dies Alone) written in 1947, he mixes his tenses. In some chapters, he starts in the past tense and then segues into the present, using past tense to tell us how the scenario came about and then the present tense to tell us what transpires. In other chapters he reverses this, starting with the present tense and then using the past tense to fill in the scenario. I’m not sure if this might be characteristic of the way German is spoken, but it is a very effective technique. I expect it’s probably considered old-hat in literature nowadays, which is a pity.

Submissions and Stuff

2011-03-05T05:06:00.000-08:00

Two stories that I submitted to Tor.com were rejected in the last few days. The first, “Intelligent Design” was a light-hearted look at Creationism; the second a version of “Snugglesuit” (included in this blog under its own tab). I have one more story still in Tor’s in-tray. Given that it took them 9 months to respond to the first two, I should get my rejection for “Ooze” in late August.

I have also entered one of my novels in the Amazon Breakout Novel Competition and I’m happy to report that it got through the first stage. On the strength of a one-page summary, it was selected to go through to stage 2 with 999 others. Still, that’s 1,000 out of 5,000 entries. The schedule for the rest of the contest is as follows:

March 22 Quarter final stage. 250 books are selected to go to the next stage.
April 26 Semi-final stage. 50 books are selected to go on to the final
May 24 The Final. 3 books are announced.
Amazon readers vote to select the winner.
I’m not holding my breath.

Hunger Games

2011-02-22T08:58:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Overall, an impressive piece of work, and I can see why the trilogy has been such a hit. It says “teen” on the cover and I think I read somewhere (on the web) that it’s aimed at 12 year-olds and up. That sounds about right. On the other hand, it’s classified as “Young Adult” in the library. Now, this has me confused, as I thought Young Adult meant 14 year-olds and up.

I made the mistake of reading the third book “Mockingjay” first and it made no sense as a stand alone.

The Hunger Games is written entirely in the first person and in the present tense. An awful lot of recently published books use the present tense to give an immediacy to the text and heighten tension, I suppose. But I find it distracting. I spotted just a couple of typos, and one of these was where the past tense crept in by mistake. The way that it leapt off the page at me demonstrated just how conscious I was of the tense all the time that I was reading.

I thought the section in the early middle part of the book a tad boring, and that it could have been shortened. To be fair, a lot of this concerned fashions, hair dressing and so forth – not a great area for me. Still, the book ran to 454 pages, and could have been trimmed a bit, IMO.

A Failed Test

2011-02-17T03:07:00.000-08:00

When I first moved from Ireland to UK, I was 23 years of age. I had been driving my parents’ car without major mishap for 5 years. I considered myself an exceptional driver. I may not have been up to the rigours of the advanced driving test, but I was certainly more than competent. Any device powered by the internal combustion engine could hardly have been in safer hands. An aficionado of the three-point turn, a master reverser around corners, my arms were permanently set at ten minutes to two. Believe me, the travelling public had nothing to fear from me.

I may have been – indeed, I probably was – a trifle overcautious, my eagle eye always alert for the vicissitudes of other drivers, the unpredictable dash or suicidal lunge of lunatic pedestrians. My awareness of the potential hazards of the road bordered on OCD, I will admit that, and there were those who said that I was a tad trigger-happy on the horn. But in my defence, I only ever used it when I could see a chain of events about to unfold that could lead to an accident.

There was the incident with the tortoise, for instance. I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say that I used my horn to avert an anticipated accident. The chain reaction that followed necessitated the application of my brakes in an emergency stop (one of my specialities). The damage to the rear of my Morris Minor was substantial, as was the damage to the front - and the rear - of the car that hit mine and the two behind his.

Anyway, the first time I took my driving test in UK, I failed.

Everything went swimmingly for a while. We were more than half-way through the test, when the test examiner asked me to park the car on a hill. Our flat was situated on a hill, and I had been practicing hill starts for a couple of weeks before the test. I was confident that I could do this.

“Right,” said the examiner, “I want you to do a hill start – using hand signals.”

I put one hand on the hand brake, one arm out the window - and ran out of hands for the steering wheel.

Plotty Training

2011-02-13T02:54:00.000-08:00

As a writer in training, just out of diapers, so to speak, it’s time I got plotty-trained. Gone are the days when I can put my creative hat on, rub my wisdom tooth, boot up my laptop and start typing. I need plots with structure, plots with arcs, subplots that enhance the theme, scenes dripping with conflict and tension, and characters that change.

My How-to-Write library (now with well over 20 books) contains four classic books on the subject. Here they are in the order I read them:

1. The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
2. Story by Robert McKee
3. Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham
4. Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

All of these are fabulous books, but of the four, only Jack Bickham’s targets Fiction Writers generally; the others are all aimed at Screenwriters.

Blake Snyder refers to McKee and other authors on screenwriting:

Syd Field – Screenplay (and 6 other books)
Viki King – How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
Joseph Campbell – Hero With a Thousand Faces

The thing is, I’m writing a novel, not a screenplay. So I’m wondering how much of the screenplay-guru wisdom is applicable to the novel.

I have the basic idea: the setting, the main character and his sidekick, and several ideas for the main storyline. I have the Inciting Incident, the Story Question and a hazy idea of the overall Theme. I even have a complete outline, and I’ve written the first few chapters. But do I have a viable plot? In Syd Field’s words: Is my story structure dramatically effective in holding my story line together?

Ho hum.

I’m off to buy lots of card-index cards, coloured pencils, some drawing-pins and a cork-board. Once I have all these hyphenated-accessories I should be able to start.

A Virus, a Trojan, a Worm

2011-02-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

We were watching a movie called The Snatch and I got confused between Jason Statham and Vinny Jones.

I googled Statham and printed his picture. Then I googled Jones and tried to print his picture.

All sorts of odd things started happening on my laptop.

A popup popped up on my screen. It was called Security Shield and it said that I had 26 viruses, Trojans and other, unhealthy nasty things on my computer. It listed them.

Did I want to clear these from my system now? Yes or No.
I clicked No (I was suspicious - I have the full McAfee and I’ve never had any problems before).

Are you sure? Click here to clear these viruses from your system.
I clicked - Yes, I’m sure.

I carried on working. Every two minutes Security Shield popped up again offering to clear those nasty viruses from my system. Some of the text was in pidgin English. My files could be read by third party. Did I really want other people excessing my private files?

I kept clicking - Go away. Leave me alone.

And then I must have lost the plot.
I clicked Yes: Clear the viruses from my system.

And up popped a new screen, asking me for my credit card details ! Aaaargh! Security Shield wanted $79 !

At that point, I panicked.

I disconnected from the Internet and tried to get back to work. But every two minutes or so, Security Shield flashed up onto my screen - obscuring my work, and telling me how dangerous my position was. Did I want to clear those 26 viruses from my system? No.

Are you sure? Yes.

I rang my son, who’s a professional computer wizard. He came round and restored my system from an image from 24-hours earlier.

MAGIC !

Snail Mail

2011-02-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

My cousin near Salisbury, UK sent us a Christmas card, which arrived in a plastic bag. Well, half of it arrived in a plastic bag. The bag was supplied by the Royal Mail, and it had an apology printed on it. “Sorry this item reached you in this condition…” and a phone number to contact Customer Services.

The card, in its envelope, had been torn in two. We received the top half. Only the postal gods know what happened to the bottom half. I suppose we should be grateful for what we got. It was foresighted – or prescient – of my cousin to write our address on the top half of the envelope. She must have sensed that it was in for a rough ride. If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have received anything at all; and we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of reading the greeting:

Happy Ch
and Good L
2011
From your c

On Tuesday, February 1, the postman delivered a Christmas card to our house – a whole one, this time. On the back of the envelope someone had stuck a blue notice that reads as follows:

Royal Mail OE 1065

The sender of this item applied insufficient Airmail postage,
so we diverted it to an alternative service.
This may have caused delay.

The front of the envelope carries a second class stamp, so I suppose it was fair enough to divert it to an alternative service.

But what alternative service?

The postmark reads 11 December. What I want to know is: what alternative service could take 51 days to transport a Christmas card from Bradford, Yorkshire, to the outskirts of Dublin?

As the crow flies, Bradford to Dublin is 185 miles. At that rate, our Christmas card travelled 3.6 miles per day. That’s 0.15 miles (= 266 yards) per hour or one mile every 6.6 hours, 13.3 feet per minute or 2.66 inches per second. (Numbers courtesy of MS-Excel)

The problem is, if a crow (or a pigeon) did fly at that rate, it would fall out of the sky.

Perhaps they sent it by bicycle. Even then, the postman could have delivered mail to all the major cities in Scotland before taking the ferry to Larne and pedalling south to deliver our card.

I can only suppose the service they selected must have taken a detour along the way. Perhaps they sent it on a Mediterranean cruise, a package holiday to the Egyptian Pyramids, or across the Atlantic on a leather boat, like St Brendan the Navigator. Maybe it took a short trip on the Space Shuttle; a couple of dozen orbits around the Earth would have done it.

Nothing is too expensive or too much trouble for Her Majesty’s Royal Mail.

Hooked!

2011-02-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

To date I have three full length novels in the bag. By that I mean I’ve written them, edited and rewritten them, tweaked and polished until you can see your face in them, had them beta-read, edited, critiqued, criticised and castigated. They are ready to fly, or as ready as I can make them. And, in case you’re wondering, I have backup copies on a memory stick.

In the process of building this enviable oeuvre, I have devoured about 20 books on the art of writing, and I’ve learnt a lot. I am now a grammatical guru, a high-priest of sentence structure, nuance and rhythm, and no longer a tyro of the common typo. Unnecessary surplages, neoplasms and pleonasms I eschew, avoiding clichés like the plague; and, of course, I always spit expectorantly on any passing adverbs. I use commas the way Rubens used his flesh-tones, sparingly, with a fine brush and a keen eye. A champion of brevity, a master of suspense, and with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the essentials of a good story, how could I fail to take the publishing world by the neck and shake it into submission?

And yet...

And yet my debut novel has not stormed onto the shelves; my masterpiece remains as yet unpublished.

You may wonder what diabolical quirk of destiny has led to this unconscionable situation, and I have to tell you that I have given it some thought. The plain fact is, that, although my novels may all be potential best-sellers, as long as literary agents cannot be persuaded to take a look beyond the first three chapters, my genius will remain undiscovered.

Three chapters is the accepted norm for a submission, and many agents prefer less. The accepted wisdom is that the first chapter, the first page, the first paragraph, even the first line must capture the reader’s attention and HOOK her for there to be any prospect of further progress.

The HOOK is a concept much vaunted by the experts. From where I'm sitting I can see at least five how-to-write books on my shelf that concentrate almost exclusively on the topic. Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages is a good example, as is Hooked by Les Edgerton. In addition, there are numerous blogs out there, each with its own take on the subject.

In a nutshell, here is my understanding of what is required:

The first line of the first paragraph should encompass and summarize the whole book.

The first few pages must engage the reader. The writer must establish an empathic (and not necessarily sympathetic) connection between the reader and the main character to the extent that the reader cares about what happens to her.

The main character’s normal, stable world must be established in as few words as possible before the Inciting Incident is introduced.

The Inciting Incident is the event that turns the main character’s normal, stable existence on its head in some way, causing some extreme instability that drives her to abandon her normal life and go on a quest to fix, resolve or explain the instability.

It is important to start in the middle of the action, without any build-up. Slow build-ups are of the past, apparently. On the other hand, starting with an extreme action or violent scene solely for shock value is not acceptable. If the action is germane to the story, fine. Otherwise leave it out.

And that’s it. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

And yet...

Here’s a list (in no particular order) of some of the books on writing I’ve devoured in the past three years:

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
Hooked by Les Edgerton
The 10% Rule by Ken Rand
The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass
On Writing by Stephen King
Story by Robert McKee
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman
Fiction Writers’ Handbook by Hallie and Whit Burnett
Write a Blockbuster and Get it Published by Helen Corner and Lee Weatherly
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 10

2011-01-29T03:10:00.000-08:00

‘In that case,’ said the inspector, ‘I arrest you, Gladys Abbott for the murders of Benjamin Betteridge, undergardener, and Michael de Farr, twelfth duke of Bishop-Salford.’
Gladys stared at him in amazement. Constable Longneck stepped around the footman and took firm hold of Gladys’s arm and shoulder. There was uproar in the room. All of the others who were seated – me included – rose from their seats.
‘You are arresting the maid?’ I cried. ‘What madness is this? Soames…’
Soames raised his hands to re-establish a measure of calm. ‘Let me explain,’ he said, and we resumed our seats.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘meet Gladys Abbott, previously Gladys Monk, daughter of Albert and Mary Monk. Do you admit this, Gladys?’
Gladys scowled at him.
Soames continued: ‘You will remember that Mary Monk was murdered and Albert Monk, her husband was executed for her murder. Some time later, this man, Carter confessed to the crime and was sentenced, not to the gallows, but to life imprisonment. He was released on parole after serving just twelve years of his sentence, thanks to the intervention of his lordship the duke. Gladys took a position in the duke’s household intent on wreaking terrible revenge, not just on Carter, the murderer, as she saw it, of both her parents, but also on the duke who intervened to have him released and then provided him with employment.
‘Her plan was to have a great injustice righted by killing the duke and framing Carter for the crime. It was her intention that Carter would be executed for a murder that he did not commit, just as her father had been.’
Again there was pandemonium, and again Soames called for quiet. He resumed: ‘Unfortunately, her first two attempts at killing the young duke failed. Betteridge and the duke’s dog suffered the consequences of those failures. She finally succeeded last night and having created a number of clues pointing to Carter, she then provided him with an alibi. It was her intention to break down under questioning – as she did here today. It was all an act, one which she expected would finally seal Carter’s fate and complete her evil plan.’

‘But Soames,’ I protested later, ‘how on Earth did you deduce all of this from the facts available?’
‘Well, her name was a major clue. Abbott is not much removed from Monk, after all. And it was clear to me that, while she was providing false alibis for Carter, she was also creating alibis for herself.’
‘So once she confessed that the alibi was false, she was actually incriminating herself?’
‘Precisely, Wilson. Then there was the murder weapon. You will recall that I found it here on the mantle. I ask you, who but a female domestic would place an ornament back where it belongs after using it commit murder?’
‘Who indeed, Soames?’
‘It is back in its place again. Would you care to examine it?’
I did as he suggested, but could see nothing remarkable in the statuette.
‘Take a look at the mantle, Wilson. Notice the complete absence of dust. Who but a housemaid would take the trouble to dust the mantle before replacing the statuette?’
‘And what of the old duke?’ I asked ‘Did she murder him too?’
‘I doubt it, Wilson. She must have intended to slay him for the part he played in her family’s affairs, but I believe the old man died of natural causes before she could act against him.’
‘So she turned her revenge on his only son?’
‘Elementary, my dear Wilson.’
‘All the same,’ I said, ‘an autopsy on the old duke’s body would be advisable.’
‘I think not, Wilson. After all, as a wise man once said: "Let sleeping dukes lie."’

END

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 9

2011-01-27T05:22:00.000-08:00

Rebecca de Farr sat in splendid isolation on her favourite settee. Parks and his wife sat close together by one of the windows. Carter sat on the head gardener’s other side. Dressed as usual in full morning suit and white gloves, Fortesque declined to sit; he stood bolt upright close to Constable Longneck by the door. Soames and Inspector Morgan stood on either side of the marble fireplace. I occupied the chaise longue.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ Soames began. ‘I believe that the inspector and I now have sufficient information to enable us to solve this case. To start with, I would ask you, Mr Fortesque to examine this pair of gloves.’ The constable produced the soiled gloves uncovered by Henry Parks. Fortesque took them gingerly, holding them at arm’s length.
‘Are these your gloves, Mr Fortesque?’ The inspector asked.
‘These garments are filthy, Inspector,’ the hapless butler replied. ‘I can envisage no circumstance under which a pair of my gloves would degenerate to such a deplorable state.’
‘Yes, but I would ask you to imagine the garments laundered, starched and pressed to your impeccable standard. In that case, would you say that these gloves might have originated from your glove drawer?’
‘It is possible,’ the butler replied.
‘Let me put it this way,’ Soames interjected. ‘Is there anyone else in the household who uses gloves of this type?’
‘No one.’
‘And do you accept then that these gloves originated from your supply?’
‘If you say so, sir.’ Fortesque returned the soiled gloves to the constable.
‘Very well. I can tell you all,’ Soames said with a flourish, ‘that whoever poisoned his lordship’s dog did so with the aid of these gloves. Indeed, since the discovery of these gloves it is clear that, not only Mr Carter, but anyone in the household could have arranged for the poisoning of the beet that killed the dog.’
‘And may we take it that whoever that was also committed the murders of Betteridge and my brother?’ Rebecca asked.
‘You may,’ Soames replied. He turned his attention back to Fortesque. ‘While we are on the subject, perhaps you would be so kind as to remove your gloves, Mr Fortesque.’
Fortesque did so and handed the gloves to Soames.
‘Thank you,’ said Soames. ‘Now please show everyone the backs of your hands.’
There was an audible gasp from everyone present. Fortesque carried the unicorn tattoo on the back of his right hand.
‘You carry the tattoo,’ I said in astonishment.
‘Yes,’ Fortesque replied, ‘as did his lordship.’
‘The old duke,’ Soames added.
‘Please explain the significance of the tattoo, Mr Fortesque,’ said the inspector.
‘The Ancient Eclectic International Order of the Unicorn was founded many centuries ago. I believe it originated in the time of St Joan of Arc –’
Soames shook his head. ‘Earlier than that, much earlier.’
‘His lordship joined during the period of his diplomatic service in India and I joined shortly thereafter.’
‘And you, Carter?’ the inspector enquired.
‘I joined in prison,’ Carter replied. ‘It was the one thing that saved me.’
‘How so?’ Soames prompted.
‘His lordship represented my case to the parole board. He used his influence to arrange my parole and when I was released he took me into his employ. God knows where I would be today if it had not been for his intervention.’
‘And you attribute his intervention entirely to your membership of the AEIOU?’
‘Beyond question, sir. AEIOU members stand by one another. It is part of the oath of membership.’
Soames turned back to the butler. ‘So, Mr Fortesque, you, the duke and Carter were all sworn members of this organisation. But young Michael, the duke’s son was not.’
‘That is correct. He understood nothing of the oath of loyalty sworn in brotherhood. He would have dismissed me and perhaps Carter as well – if he had lived.’
‘I think we should take some refreshments at this juncture,’ Soames said. ‘Morgan, if you would be so kind.’
Morgan pulled the bell pull.
‘Speaking of dismissals,’ said Soames, ‘I understand that the young duke intended to dismiss you, Mr Parks and to make Betteridge head gardener in your place.’
‘That may be, but as I told you earlier, Mr Soames, I would not have allowed such a thing to happen.’ Parks stood up as he spoke, his face reddening with anger.
‘And how would you have prevented it?’ Soames asked. But there was no answer from Parks.
‘Our investigations have revealed that you, Miss de Farr had an inappropriate relationship with the undergardener, Betteridge. And it has been suggested that you might have killed him as a result of a lovers’ quarrel.’
Rebecca blushed copiously. ‘I loved him!’ She declared. ‘We had plans to run away together and marry. It is quite preposterous to suggest that I killed Betteridge.’
‘And your brother? Perhaps you killed him for his inheritance?’ Inspector Morgan interjected.
‘Never!’ She responded, and fell silent.
There was a knock at the door, the constable opened it and Gladys appeared carrying a large silver tray of tea and scones. She placed the tray on a small table and turned to leave.
‘Gladys, while you are there, you might confirm for us that you spent last night with your lover, Mr. Carter,’ said Soames.
‘Yes, sir. That is correct.’
‘And the evening when Betteridge was murdered, Mr. Carter was where?’
‘He was with me, sir.’
‘And the morning when his lordship’s dog was poisoned?’
‘He was with me on all three occasions, sir.’
‘You realise that the inspector and his constable are just about to make an arrest.’ Soames said. ‘If you are lying, you may be found complicit in all of these crimes.’
‘Mr Carter was with me, sir, on all three occasions, I swear it.’
‘Very well.’ Soames turned to where Carter sat by the window. ‘Mr Carter, I believe the case against you is irrefutable. First, the dog was poisoned by a beet which his lordship should have eaten and using a toxin from one of your venomous reptiles. Second, you carry the unicorn tattoo and both of the murder victims were slain with the unicorn statuette. Third, you are reported as having had a violent argument with Betteridge on the day before he was killed. Fourth, you knew that the young duke hated you and was going to dismiss you from the household and fifth, you have a criminal record and have served a term of imprisonment for an earlier murder.’
‘But I am guilty of none of these crimes.’ Carter protested. He leapt to his feet, a wild look in his eyes. Constable Longneck stepped forward and held up a warning hand. Carter slumped back into his chair.
‘If it were not for the alibi provided by Gladys, here, you would already be rotting in a cell at the police station.’
Soames turned back to the maid again. ‘I ask you again, Gladys, do you still stand by your statement that Carter was with you on all three occasions?’
There was a long pause. All present looked at Gladys. She seemed to quiver all over, then her body shook and she burst into tears. ‘I lied!’ She wailed. ‘I’m sorry, sirs. He threatened me. He said that I had to lie to save him. He said if I didn’t lie he would kill me too.’
Carter sprang to his feet again. ‘This is nonsense!’ he shouted. ‘What are you saying, Gladys?’
‘Please sit quietly,’ the constable said.
Carter remained standing and the constable took up a position directly behind him, wrist-bracelets at the ready.
‘So Carter was not with you when these crimes were committed?’ Inspector Morgan said to the maid.
Gladys shook her head. Her ringlets flashed in the lamplight.

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 8

2011-01-27T05:13:00.000-08:00

Upon the suggestion of Fortesque, we all repaired to the study where the inspector positioned himself behind a large desk. Rebecca de Farr was interviewed first. She sat bolt upright on a straight-backed chair and answered all of the questions put to her without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Miss de Farr,’ the inspector began. ‘With regard to the murder of the undergardener, Betteridge, where were you at that time?’
‘I was in this room, inspector, reading, when my brother came looking for a book to read.’
‘And which book did he select?’ Asked Soames.
‘Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens.’
‘And when your brother was killed, you were where?’
‘I was in the oratory tending to my morning devotions.’
Soames raised an eyebrow. ‘This is a regular habit of yours, Miss de Farr?’
‘Yes.’
The inspector continued: ‘May I ask you, Miss de Farr, do you have any idea who might have killed the undergardener or your brother?’
‘I believe that Parks, the head gardener may have had a hand in Betteridge’s killing.’
‘And your reasoning?’ Asked Soames.
‘My brother intended to let Parks go and promote Betteridge to the position of head gardener. Parks would never have allowed that to happen.’
‘I see,’ said the inspector, thoughtfully. ‘And do you consider that sufficient motive for Parks to have killed his lordship the duke as well?’
‘Yes. Of course the footman, Carter is an equally likely suspect for both murders as I am sure you must realise.’
‘How so?’
‘My brother hated the footman, and Carter knew that sooner or later, Michael would find an excuse to discharge him, once our father was dead.’
‘Your father favoured Carter?’
‘Yes. They had a special bond, which my brother did not share.’
‘The AEIOU?’ Soames surmised.
‘Just so,’ Rebecca confirmed.
‘And why would Carter wish to kill the undergardener?’
‘I thought it was obvious that Betteridge may have been killed in mistake for my brother.’
‘They were sufficiently alike to be mistaken for each other?’ The question was mine.
‘Yes, Dr Wilson, in stature, colouring and in build.’
‘And are there others in the household whom we should consider suspect?’ The inspector pressed.
‘Fortesque, our butler,’ she replied. ‘My brother told him after the death of our father that he intended to replace him. I believe he might have killed Michael for that reason.’
‘And Betteridge?’
She shrugged. ‘In mistake for Michael.’
Mrs Parks, the housekeeper, was the next to be interviewed. Before the inspector could frame his first question, she produced a pair of dirty white gloves from the folds of her gown an handed them to Constable Longneck. The constable passed them to the inspector, who gave them to Soames.
‘My husband found these in amongst the compost,’ she said.
‘When did he find these gloves?’ The inspector asked.
‘A few days after the lizards escaped,’ she shuddered, ‘shortly after the dog was poisoned.’
‘And you or he did not think to present them to us before now?’ The inspector asked pointedly.
‘I was not sure that they had any bearing on your investigation.’
‘And now you think that they may have?’
‘Yes.’
I observed that Soames was holding the gloves close to his nose. He said: ‘These gloves must have been used to administer the poisoned beet that killed the dog. I can smell the toxin. The smell is faint, but still distinguishable and see here where the red of the beet has left a stain.’
The inspector began his questioning by asking the housekeeper if she could provide an alibi for her husband for each of the murders.
‘Yes, of course, he was with me on both occasions.’
‘And yet he was absent on both occasions when you discovered the bodies – that of the undergardener and the body of your master.’ Soames’s tone was tart.
The inspector held up his hand before Mrs Parks could answer. ‘We do not seriously suspect your husband Mrs Parks. It seems that these foul deeds may be laid at the door of others.’
‘Indeed, yes, sir,’ she responded. ‘I believe you should look closely at her ladyship for the murder of the undergardener.’
I was amazed at this. I blurted out: ‘Lady Rebecca? What possible motive could she have to slay the undergardener?’
‘A lover’s tiff, perhaps?’ She replied slyly.
‘They were lovers?’ Soames was astonished at this revelation.
‘Indeed, sir. As are Gladys Abbott and the footman, Carter.’
‘You found his lordship’s body?’ Soames asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell us what happened.’
‘I left the kitchen to find Gladys. I found his lordship lying in the vestibule.’
‘And what time was this?’
‘Nine-thirty or thereabouts.’
‘And was he dead when you found him?’
‘I really can’t say, sir. He looked unwell.’
‘Unwell? Was he breathing?’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
Gladys the maid, was the next to be interviewed. The inspector began by asking: ‘Where were you when the body of the young duke was discovered?’
‘I was in my room, sir.’
‘I must warn you,’ the inspector said, ‘that we have been informed that you and the footman, Carter, have been having an affair.’
She blushed visibly. Her eyes darted about the room. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound emerged.
‘I ask you again,’ said the inspector gravely, ‘where were you when Mrs Parks discovered the body?’
‘I was in Mr Carter’s room, sir.’
‘You spent the night there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And what of Carter? Did he leave the room at any time during the night?’
In response to the inspector’s question, the maid’s eyes again darted about the room. Soames glanced at Inspector Morgan, the inspector gave an almost imperceptible nod and Soames dismissed the maid.
The head gardener was the next to be interviewed. He was a small man with a dark, swarthy complexion and big hands. His fingernails were encrusted with dirt and he seemed to be chewing something as he spoke.
‘You are Henry Parks, the head gardener?’
‘Your humble servant, sir.’
‘The husband of Mrs Parks,’ Soames said.
‘For my sins, sir, for my sins.’
The attempt at humour was ignored by all present.
‘And where were you when his lordship’s body was discovered?’
‘I were in the garden, sir.’ The tone of voice and the expression on the man’s face were of patient indulgence, as if the question could only have been posed by a child or a complete half-wit.
‘And when your wife discovered Betteridge’s body?’ Soames gave no reaction to the man’s impudence.
‘I were in the garden, sir, as I told the inspector before.’
‘We have been told that the young duke intended to dismiss you.’
‘I know nothing of that, sir.’
‘Apparently, Betteridge was to take your place as head gardener.’
‘Over my dead body, sirs.’
‘Perhaps you killed Betteridge to frustrate the young duke’s plan?’ I suggested.
‘No, sir. That is not true. I am not a killing sort of person. Ask anyone you wish.’

Later that afternoon, after a passable luncheon of small game, Soames informed Inspector Morgan that he had solved the case.
‘There are just a few minor details to resolve, for which I will require the participation of the entire household – in the drawing room,’ he said.

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 7

2011-01-25T06:46:00.000-08:00

It took us the best part of thirty minutes to complete our circuit of the manor garden, by which time there was an open police carriage parked at the front door with two large black mares sweating either side of the shaft. A white covered ambulance carriage was drawing away from the house.
We repaired to the drawing room where Rebecca de Farr introduced us to Inspector Morgan and Constable Longneck of the Bishop-Salford constabulary.
‘You are the detective Herbert Soames of London?’ The inspector asked.
‘I have that honour,’ Soames replied graciously.
‘Your fame precedes you,’ the inspector said.
‘You are too kind,’ said Soames, ‘although I believe my fame is perhaps a little overstated in some quarters.’
‘We are but simple country folk hereabouts,’ the inspector continued, ‘and as you and your companion have been present during the night, I would be most interested to hear what you make of the matter, Mr Soames.’
‘My companion’s name is Wilson – Doctor Wilson. And we would be delighted to assist you with your investigation in any way that we can.’
Morgan tipped his forelock to me and turned his attention back to Soames.
Soames placed his finger tips together and held them to his lips as if in deep thought. Then he continued thus:
‘We arrived yesterday in response to a desperate request from his lordship –’
‘Desperate?’ Morgan interrupted.
‘Oh yes,’ continued Soames. ‘We were summoned by letter as his lordship was in fear for his life.’
‘You have this letter?’
Soames fished the letter from an inside pocket and handed it to the inspector, who read it and handed it to his constable.
‘You were previously acquainted with his lordship?’
‘We were at school together – all three of us.’
‘Please continue, Mr Soames.’
‘Unfortunately our presence was not sufficient to prevent the tragic death of our dear friend. We have however, determined the following facts which may expedite your investigation. Firstly, the young duke was killed in exactly the same way as was his undergardener, Betteridge - by a single stabbing blow to the back of the neck. I managed to secure the murder weapon and I now offer it to you for safe-keeping.’ At this, Soames produced the ivory unicorn and handed it to the inspector. ‘Second, his lordship informed us before his tragic death that an earlier attempt had been made on his life by a beet laced with a deadly poison. This attempt failed only because the offending vegetable was consumed – in part – by one of his lordship’s dogs.’
‘The poison was identified as venom from a large lizard.’ This time the interruption was from Constable Longneck.
‘Indeed, Constable,’ Soames resumed. ‘A Komodo dragon, one of the reptiles which the footman, Carter, had in his herpetarium and which – he says – escaped or were released mysteriously.’ He turned back to the inspector. ‘May I ask, Inspector, whether you were in charge of the investigations of the poisoning of the dog and the murder of Betteridge, the undergardener?’
‘I was. I am.’ Morgan replied.
‘And may I ask whether you have reached any conclusions on these matters?’
‘Not as yet, Mr Soames. The footman is our main suspect for both crimes, but we have insufficient evidence to charge him with either.’
‘And your reasons for suspecting him?’
‘For the poisoning, I believe he would be the only person capable of lacing a beet with the toxin from a Komodo dragon – a beast which he kept in his room.’
‘And for the murder?’
‘In the first place he bears the tattoo mark of the unicorn – no doubt you have observed this?’ Soames nodded. ‘And second, we have it on good authority that he had a violent argument with the undergardener shortly before he was killed.’
‘And your authority for this violent argument?’
‘Henry Parks, the head gardener.’

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 6

2011-01-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

Carter was a sullen cur. He cowered just inside the door, wringing his hands and, for the most part, staring at the floor in front of him. Had he been a dog, he would surely have had his tail tucked firmly between his hind legs. He had in his possession a sack of rough brown material, tied at the top.
‘You first made the acquaintance of his lordship in India, I believe,’ was Soames’s opening gambit.
‘I did, your honour. My mother served ‘is lordship in the colony.’
‘And you joined his employ – when?’
‘Shortly after I was released from prison – about five year ago.’
Inside the sack something stirred.
‘Tell us about the lizards,’ I prompted.
‘Yes, tell us about your lizards,’ Soames agreed.
‘I’ve always kept them – reptiles, I mean. Ever since I was a lad.’
‘You had no fear of them?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, your honour, no fear. I find them quite affectionate, in a reptilian sort of way.’
‘Explain,’ Soames insisted.
‘Well, your honour, reptiles crave just two things: food and warmth. Give ‘em enough food and keep ‘em warm and they are ‘armless creatures. They will ‘appily sleep all day.’
‘And at night?’ I asked sharply.
‘Many of them are nocturnal, it’s true, your honours, but even so, they are only active at night if they are hungry.’
‘You keep these lizards where?’ Soames pressed.
‘I keep them in a herpetarium in my room –’
‘A herpetarium? That’s an aquarium for snakes?’ I said.
‘Exactly, your honour, a number of large glass cases.’
‘How many lizards are we talking about?’ Soames asked.
‘I had twenty-six, your honour, but six are still at large.’
‘At large?’
‘Yes, your honours. All twenty-six escaped –’
‘When was this?’ Soames demanded.
‘A day or two before the dog was poisoned.’
‘And how did they escape?’ I asked.
Carter shrugged. ‘Someone must have let them out.’
‘Someone entered your room and let your lizards loose. Is that what you are saying?’ Soames asked.
Carter nodded. ‘Yes, your honour.’
‘And you have no idea who let them out?’ I asked.
‘No, your honour.’
‘So you have been rounding them up and six are still at large?’
‘Yes, your honours. I have a couple of the smaller ones here is this bag.’
‘And the Komodo dragon?’ I asked.
‘Still at large.’
‘And are any of the others venomous breeds?’ I was aghast.
‘Two are gila monsters, one a small Mexican bearded dragon, your honour. The others are harmless to humans.’
‘And are these under lock and key?’
The footman shook his head. ‘Still at large, your honours.
I shuddered.
‘Before you go,’ said Soames, ‘tell us about the tattoo on your hand,’
‘The sign of the dominant sex,’ he replied, lifting his head and leering at us.
‘That will be all for now.’ Soames said bringing the interview to an end.

After the interview, Soames and I took a stroll in the grounds. The great house was surrounded on all sides by acres of parkland set in lawn, punctuated with ornamental evergreen trees and bounded by tall hedges.
‘This way,’ said Soames, and we set out to circumambulate the house.
‘I must say, Soames,’ I said, ‘I am surprised that you have made no attempt to locate the murder weapon.’
He pulled something from the pocket of his greatcoat and handed it to me. It was a small statuette of a unicorn made of ivory, exquisitely carved, and mounted on a solid marble base. The horn was about three inches long, tapering from a sharp point at the tip to about one sixteenth of an inch at the base. I was astonished.
‘Where did you find this?’ I gasped.
‘It was on the mantle in the drawing room. I noticed it yesterday when we arrived.’
‘And you picked it up today – after Piggy’s murder?’
He nodded.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘It was in its usual place on the mantle in the drawing room.’
‘This is almost certainly the murder weapon, Soames,’ I expostulated.
‘Indubitably.’
‘And the murderer?’ I asked, for I would not have been surprised at that point if Soames had had a full explanation for everything that had transpired at Charlington Manor.
Soames stopped abruptly. He said: ‘Listen, Wilson. What do you hear?’
I did as he requested. Then I shook my head. ‘I hear nothing,’ I said.
‘And I,’ he replied. ‘Is not that remarkable?’
‘How is that remarkable?’ I asked.
‘Surely, there should be some sounds of the countryside to regale our ears.’ He said.
Soames was right, as always. In fact, the silence, once he had pointed it out to me, was quite unnerving. There was not a sound to be heard; not the lowing of cattle nor the bleating of sheep and not a tweet or twitter from any bird.
We rounded a corner of the manor and came across a dead crow lying on the grass. I bent to examine it and Soames cried out sharply: ‘Leave it, man.’
‘What danger do you suppose there could be from a dead bird?’ I enquired.
‘Who knows?’ He replied. ‘Better safe than sorry, Wilson.’

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 5

2011-01-23T03:42:00.000-08:00

I arose early, dressed, and made my way down to breakfast. To my surprise, Soames was there ahead of me, a full plate of greasy black and white pudding on the table before him.
‘Good morning, Wilson. Sleep well?’
‘Not really, Soames, thanks to an intruder.’
Soames raised an eyebrow.
‘I woke up at about four A.M. to find someone or something in my room.’
‘Who or what was it?’
‘I cannot say,’ I replied. ‘It was dark. It might have been lizards.’
‘More than one?’
‘Possibly. I cannot say for certain.’
‘But you did confront him – it – them?’
‘No, Soames. I thought it more prudent not to.’
‘So what transpired?’
‘It – whatever it was – scuttled about the room for a bit and then disappeared.’
Soames gave me one of his withering looks – one of those looks usually reserved for Mrs Johnson when his warming pan is not at the required temperature or his shirts are not starched to perfection.
‘There really was nothing I could do,’ I protested. ‘By the time I managed to light my candle, I was alone again in the room.’
‘You did the right thing so, Wilson,’ Soames said in a tone which suggested otherwise.
I began to help myself to some breakfast. The adventure of the night had given me a healthy appetite.
Soames said: ‘After breakfast, you might accompany me on a tour of the grounds, Wilson. There are a number of matters which we need to discuss.’
The scream hit us before I could respond. Such a blood-curdling scream I have seldom heard. It came from close by and echoed from the walls around us like the tolling of a great bell. Soames was up and running. I dropped my cutlery on the plate and followed him.
Piggy’s body lay on the carpet in the vestibule. The servant Carter was close by. Mrs Parks stood by the doorway, her hand stuffed in her mouth to stifle her screams.
Piggy was fully dressed. He was lying on his right side near an open door, his eyes staring straight ahead, as if he were attempting to follow the progress of some insect crawling across the carpet. I checked for signs of life and found none. Piggy’s body was still warm, but the spark of his life had departed beyond the reach of medical science.
Soames bent down to examine Piggy’s head. There was a small wound at the base of his skull at the back, and very little blood.
At this grisly sight, Mrs Parks gave another ear-piercing scream and ran off.
‘The mark of the unicorn,’ I gasped.
‘So it would seem,’ Soames replied.

The head gardener was despatched to the village to fetch the police and Soames and I returned to the dining room to resume our breakfast. Not that we lacked respect for the unfortunate Piggy, but our ministrations, no matter how well intentioned, could do nothing to help him, and in the meantime our food was growing cold.
‘These unicorns are a puzzle,’ I said, hoping for some enlightenment from my learned friend.
‘In what respect, Wilson?’ Soames asked.
‘Well for a start, why would Carter and the seventh Duke Randolph both carry the same strange tattoo? Do we put this down to coincidence?’
Soames shook his head. ‘You will have heard of the AEIOU.’
‘No. I don’t believe I have.’
‘The Ancient Eclectic International Order of the Unicorn. An order founded around the time of the crusades, dedicated to the furtherance of male ambitions and aspirations.’
‘Maintenance of the superior social standing of men in society?’
‘That sort of thing, yes.’ Soames nodded.
‘A secret society – like the Freemasons?’
‘Secret? Possibly. Secretive, certainly.’
‘And the tattoo is a mark of membership of this secret society?’
Soames nodded. ‘The unicorn is the universal symbol of the male persona, and has been used for that purpose since time immemorial.’
‘I don’t think I follow you, Soames,’ I said.
‘It is really quite simple, Wilson. When we contemplate the unicorn’s unusual horn, what part of the male anatomy immediately springs to mind?’
‘Oh, I see,’ I blushed. I am as broadminded as the next man, but the conversation was taking us into unfamiliar territory. ‘We must assume, then, that Carter is implicated in Piggy’s murder?’
‘Obviously,’ Soames replied. ‘And not just Piggy’s murder, but Betteridge the undergardener’s as well.’
I considered this proposition for a moment.
‘So both cases are solved,’ I said.
‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ Soames replied.
‘But I thought that was what you said a moment ago.’
‘Not at all, Wilson,’ said Soames. ‘I merely agreed with you that we must assume that the footman is implicated.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that the proposition is a reasonable working hypothesis, but we do not yet have definite proof one way or the other.’
I said, ‘I see,’ although I was now thoroughly confused.
‘We must find the motive,’ said Soames. ‘To be sure, Carter was an ex-convict –’
‘ – a convicted murderer,’ I interjected.
‘As you say, a convicted murderer, but one who had been taken in by the duke, given shelter and employment. Would he not have been grateful to his employer? Would he really have jeopardised everything that he had gained at the hands of the duke by killing one of his benefactor’s servants and then his only son?’
‘If it comes to that,’ I said. ‘What was the duke’s motivation in helping Carter in the first place? Are we to believe that this was a magnificent act of heroic altruism?’
‘Good question, Wilson,’ said Soames. ‘And if so, how did he come to select Carter as the object of this altruism? Was he selected at random? Or was there some prior connection between Carter and the duke?’
‘Are not these questions which we must address?’ I asked.
‘Yes, indeed, Wilson. We must interview the footman as soon as may be.’

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 4

2011-01-23T03:37:00.000-08:00

Soames removed his pipe and opened his mouth, but said nothing.
Piggy explained. ‘A small circular incision at the back of the neck. The locals have identified it as the mark of the unicorn.’
At this, Soames and I exchanged a glance. During the course of our investigations, there are times when we are confronted by ignorance and superstition. As practicing scientists, we would never give credence to such nonsense, of course, but we both recognise the powerful nature of these ancient beliefs, many of which have been passed down through the generations for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.
Soames said: ‘Betteridge was stabbed in the neck, you say?’
Piggy and Rebecca nodded in unison.
‘And the wound was…circular?’ I asked. ‘Surely a bullet wound.’
‘Circular, yes,’ agreed his lordship. ‘About one sixteenth of an inch in diameter.’
‘Far too small for any bullet,’ said Soames.
‘The mark of the unicorn!’ Rebecca cried. ‘No question about it.’

Before dinner, we met Mrs Parks, the housekeeper. She was a diminutive lady of perhaps sixty years with a mottled red complexion, her grey hair tied in a severe bun at the back.
Piggy introduced us. ‘Mrs Parks and her husband, Henry, have been with the family for – How long has it been, Mrs Parks?’
‘Close on twenty years, my lord.’
After she had left the scene, Piggy explained: ‘Henry Parks is the head gardener. Mrs Parks is our cook as well as our housekeeper. It is difficult to keep servants in this neck of the woods.’
Dinner was a sombre affair. The meal was served by Fortesque, the butler, assisted by a short, plump scullery maid called Gladys Abbott. Fortesque was an entirely unremarkable man of average height and stocky build, in his late sixties. Like all of the best butlers, he was the sort of man who could easily pass for a piece of the furniture.
Gladys was an entirely different matter. She was fully forty years old with what the euphemists would describe as an ample figure, and with blonde hair in ringlets which would have been much more at home on an infant. She was impossible to ignore, dressed as she was in a black and white costume several sizes too small. She had a tendency to clumsiness, making it advisable to watch her every move as she manoeuvred our dishes in front of us.
The first course was an attempt at consommé, but it was far too salty and served lukewarm, which spoiled it for me. Soames did not seem to notice.
As Gladys was clearing away the soup bowls, Soames said to the young duke: ‘I think we may have met one of your servants in London.’
‘That would be Carter, the footman,’ Piggy replied. ‘It was he who delivered my letter to you. Carter is a reformed convict. Upon his release from prison, my father took him in and given him employment, and he has served the family faithfully ever since.’
‘He was released from prison, you say?’ I could not disguise my amazement.
Piggy nodded.
‘Of what crime was he convicted?’
‘Murder.’
‘Great heavens, Piggy!’
‘He served twelve years in Broadmore. While in prison he discovered religion and when he came out he was a changed man. There’s not a violent bone left in his body.’
‘Tell them about the lizards,’ Rebecca said sharply.
Piggy nodded. ‘Carter keeps – kept – a large collection of lizards.’
‘Including a Komodo dragon,’ said Soames thoughtfully. It should have been a question, but Soames felt no need of the question mark.
Piggy nodded.
‘Whom did he kill?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you recall the case, Wilson?’ Soames said. ‘It was about twenty years ago. He slew his landlady, Mary Monk. He slit her throat and made off with her jewels.’
Once again, I had cause to marvel at my colleague’s incredible powers of recall. When it comes to criminals and crimes, Soames has the memory of a herd of elephants.
‘And he escaped the gallows – how?’ I queried.
‘As I recall, the victim’s husband was tried for the murder and found guilty. Carter confessed to the crime some years later.’
‘And he escaped the hangman because…?’
‘I assume the judge was influenced by the fact that an innocent man had already been hanged for the crime.’
‘All the more reason to send the true murderer to the gallows, I would have thought.’
‘Even so, Carter was sentenced to life imprisonment.’
‘And the landlady’s husband was convicted of the crime, you say.’
Piggy nodded vigorously. ‘Albert Monk. He was a well-known member of the London criminal underclass. No-one was surprised when he was convicted.’
‘And he was executed.’ I swallowed hard. The vicissitudes occasioned by Lady Justice are sometimes hard to stomach; her infamous blindfold is as much a curse as a benison.
‘Yes,’ replied Piggy. ‘He went to the gallows protesting his innocence.’
‘Tell me, de Farr,’ Soames interjected, ‘did Carter contract the smallpox at some point?’
‘Yes, while serving his prison sentence. He still carries the scars.’
‘And he has lost his violent tendencies?’ Soames enquired.
‘Completely,’ said Piggy. ‘He was paroled about five years ago after serving a mere twelve years of his life sentence.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I said.
‘Not really,’ Piggy explained. ‘I believe someone of influence spoke up for him.’
‘Your father the duke?’ Soames suggested.
‘Precisely so,’ Piggy replied.

Shortly after the meal, Soames and I were shown to our rooms. At the head of the stairs there hung a huge portrait of the seventh duke – Randolph – dressed in colourful doublet and hose, an enormous menacing stag peering over his left shoulder. He was sporting an impressive sword in a scabbard and I immediately spotted the now familiar unicorn tattoo on the back of his hand as it rested on the butt of the sword. I pointed this out to Soames.
Directly upon entering my room, I prepared for bed. The hour was not late, but it had been a long, gruelling day, and I was uncommonly tired. I tossed my clothes onto the back of a chair without bothering to fold them, climbed into the bed, blew out the candle and fell asleep right away.

I awoke with a start. It was pitch dark. I could see nothing, but I sensed there was someone – or something in the room. I lay very still and strained to hear the intruder’s breathing, but I could hear only my own. I considered lighting the candle, but I was unsure where the matches were.
My pistol was out of reach in the pocket of my greatcoat which I had thrown across my suitcase.
I became convinced that there was a small animal in the room with me. A scuttling scratching sound near the door, then by the end of the bed confirmed my worst fears: whatever it was, was moving around the room. From the scuttling sounds, I tried to calculate the size of the beast, but I could not. To my ears the sound suggested a dragon of the size slain by St. George. Then I was assailed by an even more alarming thought: perhaps there was more than one of them.
I am not a timid person and have had occasional encounters with all manner of beasts – indeed, I kept a wild tortoise for several years as a child – but I own that my heart was beating fiercely by the time I managed to locate the matches and light the candle by my bed.
A thorough search of the room revealed nothing. It was close to four A.M. and as I had no knowledge which rooms Soames or Piggy occupied, I blew out the candle and tried to go back to sleep.

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 3

2011-01-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

We approached the great house from a height, rounding a bend in the road to see it nestling in a valley and surrounded on three sides by extensive lawns, terraces, and mature oak woodland. An involuntary gasp escaped my lips. The great mansion was breathtaking in both size and scale, perfectly symmetrical in every detail and with impressive turrets on every corner.
We dismounted. I unloaded the luggage and the carriage sped off at a gallop back down the long driveway and into the gathering dusk.
We were received at the door and escorted to one of the drawing rooms by an old butler in full morning dress and white gloves. From within, the manor seemed even larger than it appeared from without, an impression perhaps accentuated by the fact that it was bathed in an unnatural gloom, being but sparsely lit.
The silence of the place was spine-chilling. Soames and I have visited many country estates during the course of our investigations, and we were accustomed to the bustling sounds of a large country house. Apart from ticking and chiming of clocks and the creaking and groaning of the timbers, there should have been distant sounds of dripping water, curtains rustling, windows rattling, doors opening and closing, and a multitude of other sounds – small animals scampering through the wainscoting, bats in the attic, death-watch beetles munching their way through wood panelling. This great house was silent as the grave.
The drawing room was dominated by a large fireplace of black marble, topped by a large mirror in a gilt frame. No fire filled the hearth, but even so, it provided a magnificent centrepiece to the room. Soames strolled over and proceeded to inspect each and every ornament displayed on the mantle.
I had just unbuttoned my coat and was lowering myself wearily into a large chaise longue when Piggy rushed into the room, hurried over to Soames and shook him warmly by the hand.
‘Soames, my old friend, thank you for coming.’
Soames recovered his hand and said: ‘De Farr, this is Wilson. You remember Wilson. He was at school with us.’
Piggy looked at me. ‘Sniffy Wilson,’ he said. ‘Yes of course I remember. Welcome, old boy.’ He shook my hand vigorously.
‘Hello, Piggy,’ I said, trading sobriquets. Soames glared at me over Piggy’s shoulder, but Piggy seemed unaffected – perhaps even pleased – by the appellation. He gestured for us to sit and began to relate his story.
‘I am under siege,’ he began, ‘by a ruthless and persistent criminal assassin.’
‘My God, Piggy!’ I exclaimed.
Soames flashed a recriminatory glance in my direction and said, ‘Tell us what has transpired, de Farr. Take your time and omit no detail.’
‘It started with the beet,’ said de Farr.
‘The beet,’ Soames echoed.
‘Yes. You see we have an excellent kitchen garden on the estate and each year we are blessed with copious quantities of light vegetables, lettuce, leeks, celery, tomatoes, cucumber –’
‘And beet.’ Soames suggested.
‘And beet. Yes. Beet is one of my particular favourites. When beet is in season, I eat a lot of it. I’d have beet in vinegar at luncheon, beet soup at dinner. Sometimes I would take small amounts of beet with my porridge for breakfast in the morning.’
‘You are fond of the stuff, then?’ I suggested.
Piggy continued: ‘About a week after my father died, I discovered that my beet was poisoned.’
Soames’s eyebrows twitched visibly.
‘As luck would have it, I gave some to Truffles, one of our old dogs, and he dropped dead at my feet.’
‘Great Heavens, Piggy!’ I cried.
‘So you didn’t eat any of the poisoned vegetable yourself,’ Soames said.
‘Not a morsel. I am certain that I would not be talking to you now if I had but tasted the deadly stuff.’
‘And the poison? You discovered what it was?’ I asked, my scientific curiosity aroused.
‘Yes. The police had it analysed. It was a powerful toxin, derived from the venom of a reptile.’
‘How extraordinary!’ I exclaimed.
‘This reptile, what species was it, do you know?’ Soames asked, fishing his pipe from his breast pocket.
‘A Komodo dragon,’ Piggy replied.
‘How astonishing!’ I exclaimed.
Soames nodded. ‘The venom of the Komodo dragon is a foul smelling fast acting toxicant,’ he said, peering into the bowl of his pipe. ‘Quite lethal, but not commonly used as a poison.’
‘I expect it is difficult to come by,’ I suggested.
‘In England, certainly,’ Soames replied. ‘But it is almost worthless to the poisoner as the odour is so difficult to disguise.’
‘And beet –’
‘– would have been the ideal disguise,’ said Soames. ‘And what of your father?’ he asked Piggy. ‘Was he murdered?’
Piggy’s eyes widened in shock. He shook his head. ‘He died six weeks ago, of heart failure. We buried him in the local cemetery, in the family vault.’
‘My condolences,’ said Soames solemnly.
‘Yes, and mine, old man,’ I added.
‘Thank you both. His passing was a great loss to the family.’
‘Was he elderly?’ I enquired.
‘Eighty-seven.’
‘He was in poor health?’ Asked Soames, shovelling tobacco into his pipe.
‘Fit as a fiddle.’
‘And the cause of death was heart failure, you say?’
‘Yes. His death was certified by the family doctor.’
‘And there was no inquest,’ Soames mused thoughtfully.
‘No. The police were satisfied that there was no doubt about the cause of death.’
‘And you are satisfied that he died of natural causes?’ I asked.
‘He was old. He died. What could be more natural than that?’
‘And you had no cause to suspect foul play?’ I persisted.
He looked up at me sharply. Before he could reply, the door burst open and a large woman entered. Instantly recognisable as Piggy’s sister, she bore all of the family features: the tendency to obesity, the upturned snub nose with wide pronounced nostrils. She had Piggy’s flushed complexion and his small eyes, set just a fraction too close together.
By means of a rapid series of jerky hip movements, and with surprising speed, she advanced across the room towards Soames, flinging out a podgy arm in greeting.
‘Herbert Soames,’ she cried, shaking his hand in both of hers. ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I am Rebecca de Farr.’
‘Enchanted,’ said Soames. ‘My condolences on the loss of your father.’
She dropped Soames’s hand and turned to face me. ‘And this is. . .?’
‘Wilson,’ I said. ‘Doctor Reginald Wilson. Soames and I work closely together.’
She shook my hand and lowered her frame carefully onto a settee.
‘I take it there were other incidents, de Farr?’ said Soames as he lit his pipe.
‘There was the death of the undergardener,’ replied Piggy
‘Betteridge,’ Rebecca snorted.
Piggy continued: ‘He was found in the conservatory.’
‘Found? Great heavens, Piggy, you don’t mean he was killed?’
Piggy nodded. ‘Yes, but I believe that I was the intended target.’
Soames said, ‘Please explain.’
‘I usually have my afternoon tea in the conservatory. On this particular occasion, I had taken a detour to the study to fetch a new book. I had just finished one, you see – Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. Have you read Dickens, by the by – either of you?’
‘And while you were in the study fetching a book . . . ?’ Soames prompted, blowing great clouds of smoke from his pipe.
‘I was away for no more than a few minutes, and when I returned I found poor Betteridge. He was sitting in my chair. The housekeeper was attempting to revive him, but he was beyond help.’
‘Dead?’ I gasped.
‘As a gatepost.’
‘And how was he killed?’ Asked Soames.
Piggy and Rebecca exchanged a glance.
‘He carried the mark,’ said Piggy.
‘And what was this mark?’ I asked.
Rebecca’s nostrils flared. ‘The mark of the horned beast,’ she hissed.

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 2

2011-01-18T04:47:00.000-08:00

There is something very relaxing about a train journey. The rhythmical clickety-clack of wheels on track, the occasional high pitched, animal-like wail of urgency from the whistle, and the violent swaying from side to side all add to the wonderful feeling of reckless speed. But for me, the most abiding memory of train journeys is the smell of soot wafting in through the open windows. Even now, the smallest whiff of soot from a coal fire will bring locomotives instantly to my mind and tears to my eyes.
We had a compartment to ourselves, and we sat facing each other by the window. It was a no smoking compartment - there were signs to that effect over every seat - but Soames lit his pipe, and I raised no objection.
Sitting opposite Soames, watching him tinkering with his pipe, I could not but marvel at the dexterity with which he handled this enormous fiery instrument. It seemed to me that his nasal hairs, bountiful as they were, were constantly at risk of immolation, and yet they never caught fire, nor were they ever singed, to the best of my knowledge.
I sighed contentedly. This trip to the Dorset countryside promised to be a good old fashioned tonic to both of us. Soames and I have been friends for many years, and it would be hard to imagine a finer association. However, it had been some weeks since our last case, and through constant exposure to his company over an extended period in the confines of our apartments, I must confess that I was starting to find his eccentric personality just a little irritating.
Soames pointed the stem of his pipe at me and said, ‘What do we know of de Farr’s family, Wilson?’
I searched my mind for old discarded memories of long forgotten conversations with Piggy. The effort brought a frown to my face. I replied: ‘His father was a duke, I believe.’
‘The duke of Bishop-Salford.’
‘So if the duke is dead -’
Soames nodded. ‘Piggy is the new duke of Bishop-Salford.’
At that precise moment, the train lurched violently, flinging open the door to the corridor, and a man fell full length into the compartment and onto the floor at our feet. He was tall, perhaps fifty-five years old, thin to the point of emaciation. His dress suggested a labourer or a servant of some kind.
Together, Soames and I helped him to his feet. Instantly, I found myself staring into two small piercing eyes astride a nose like a hatchet; the man’s skin was cratered with pock-marks. The expression on his face was one of undisguised hatred, of violence barely restrained. He drew his palm across his face, revealing the tattoo of a unicorn on the back of his hand, before mumbling something incoherent and disappearing back into the corridor.
‘I wondered when he was going to introduce himself,’ said Soames to the bowl of his pipe.
‘I beg your pardon, Soames?’
‘Our friend the postman.’
‘The postman?’
‘Yes. Surely you noticed him earlier, Wilson. He followed us from Barber Street to Waterloo station and on to the train.’
I stared at Soames in disbelief, for in truth I had not observed the man before.
Soames chuckled. ‘I think we may assume that he is the one who delivered de Farr’s letter. Probably one of the duke’s footmen.’
‘Or a gardener, perhaps,’ I said, recovering some of my composure.
‘Definitely a footman,’ said Soames. He waited for me to ask how he had worked this out, but I said nothing. Undeterred, he resumed: ‘You will have noticed the fraying of his cuffs and the way his shoes were scuffed at the toes and the outer edges?’
I shook my head.
‘Also, the knees of his britches were worn almost threadbare.’
‘So why has he been following us?’ I interjected.
Soames shrugged. ‘He is probably acting under instructions.’
‘Piggy’s instructions?’ I ventured.
Soames raised his eyebrows in affirmation.
‘And what of his facial disfigurement, Wilson?’
‘Undoubtedly the result of an earlier encounter with smallpox or the syphilis. Either way, the unfortunate fellow will carry the scars with him for the rest of his life.’
Soames was peering down into the bowl of his pipe like a man in search of lost treasure. ‘Unfortunate he may be, Wilson,’ he said. ‘But there are many less fortunate than he.’
‘In the cemetery, you mean?’
‘Precisely so,’ said Soames.

We arrived at Bishop-Salford station as dusk was falling. As we alighted from the train, our pock-marked friend was close by. He stood poorly concealed behind a pillar watching as I loaded our luggage on board an open carriage.
I instructed the driver to take us to Charlington Manor. At the mention of our destination, the driver blanched visibly.
‘The maanor?’
‘Charlington Manor,’ I confirmed.
‘But it be gatherin’ daark,’ the driver objected.
‘Yes, so let’s get a move on, man,’ I said.
‘You’d best not go there after daark,’ said the driver.
‘Whyever not, man?’ I asked.
‘There be things. . .’
‘Things?’
‘Things that ‘aappen there at noight. ‘Awrrible things. . .’
‘What sort of things?’
Soames had been engrossed in my newspaper. ‘Is there a problem?’ He enquired.
‘Nothing I cannot handle,’ I replied.
‘Will you take us to the manor,’ I asked the driver, ‘or should we engage another carriage?’
‘Oi’ll take you there, young sir, but don’t you say as you ‘aaven’t ‘ad fair waarnin’,’ he replied. With that, he cracked his whip fiercely across the horse’s back and the carriage shot forward with such force that I was thrown back into my seat.

Of Unicorns and Dragons: Chapter 1

2011-01-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

The whole affair started innocently enough. I had taken to walking briskly, early mornings and late evenings, my purpose being to stimulate my metabolic system which had become strangely sluggish. It was early one misty morning in March that I returned from my pre-prandial perambulation to discover a letter lying on the floor in the entrance hall. I picked it up, and seeing that it was addressed to my good friend and colleague Herbert Soames, I took it upstairs and placed it on the breakfast table.

Within minutes, Mrs Johnson, our housekeeper had placed a plate of steaming kippers before me and I set about the meal with a will.

By the time Soames appeared it was close to ten thirty, Mrs Johnson had set out for the shops and I had polished off two helpings of bacon and kidneys and a generous portion of her excellent eggs Benedict. Soames was dressed in his favourite lounge coat which covers his ample frame from neck to ankle. He picked up the letter.
‘Great Heavens, Wilson!’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you seen this letter?’
‘Yes, Soames. I discovered it in the hallway on my return this morning.’
‘Intriguing, don’t you think?’
‘Is it?’ I replied, a little testily. I was taken aback by his question, given that Soames had not yet opened the missive.
He handed it to me. ‘Look at the envelope, Wilson.’
It was of a durable paper, light grey in colour. Baffled, I shook my head.
‘Observe the monogram on the reverse side,’ said Soames.
I turned the letter over to find the monogram ‘de Farr’ embossed on the flap of the envelope. I recognised it on the instant.
‘It’s from Piggy!’ I exclaimed.
Piggy de Farr had the distinction of sharing a number of his latter school years with myself and Soames. The sobriquet, while unfortunate, was sadly apt, for de Farr had a small upturned, distinctly porcine nose and a tendency to obesity, no doubt inherited.
Soames nodded, spreading a thick layer of salted butter on a triangle of toast. ‘And what of the stamp?’
‘There is none,’ I replied. ‘The letter must have been delivered by hand.’
‘Indubitably, Wilson. And when do you suppose it was delivered?’
‘It must have been delivered while I was out walking.’
‘Very good, Wilson,’ said Soames through a mouthful of buttered toast.
I was astounded, for we had neither of us set eyes on the redoubtable Piggy since our school days.
There followed something of a protracted pause while Soames attended to the demands of his appetite. I knew he was not going to be able to resist the kidneys, so I opened The Times. Holding the newspaper up in front of me with much noisy rustlings and a few pointed coughs, I attempted to read the headlines, but try as I might I could not divert my thoughts from the mysterious letter. Human curiosity, once aroused, is a powerful force. Indeed, I have often ventured the opinion that the very evolution of civilisation as we know it may have depended to a large extent upon it. One can only wonder to what cultural and anthropological backwater mankind would have wandered if our earliest ancestors had not had the pigheadedness to discover how to tame fire, for example, or the chicken.
It was apparent that my curiosity was not going to be satisfied in the near future, as Soames continued with his breakfast, resolutely working his way through the remains of the bacon and the kidneys, masticating each morsel with infinite care. Finally, he turned his attention to the eggs Benedict, which, by now, must have been stuck to the platter. I caught myself grinding my teeth in exasperation.

Quite suddenly, Soames said: ‘Aren’t you going to open it, Wilson?’
‘Open what?’ I replied, obtusely.
‘De Farr’s letter.’
‘It’s not addressed to me, Soames.’
‘That’s all right, Wilson. Please open it.’
I put the newspaper down and opened Piggy’s letter with Soames’s ivory letter-opener.
As a schoolboy, Michael ‘Piggy’ de Farr was an unruly mess. Throughout his years at Chesterhouse, he remained sadly slovenly in every area of personal grooming. His fingers were never free of ink marks, as were his ears, his mouth, his piggy nose and even his legs; his hair looked like last year’s abandoned hedgehog nest, his knees a riot of scabs in various stages of repair. Sartorially, the kindest way of describing him would have been ‘unkempt’. In all the years that I knew him, I cannot recall a single occasion when his stockings were at full mast or his shirt tucked into his trousers; the knot of his tie was always somewhere behind his left ear, and his shoelaces had lives of their own. One would have been hard pressed to find a scruffier individual in all the long history of that great school.
The missive that unfolded from the envelope was Piggy on paper. It consisted of a single page liberally covered in inkblots and smudged finger marks. The handwriting was grotesque, the strokes of the pen at times bold and sweeping, but more often weak, hesitant, barely leaving a mark. The writing was recognisably Piggy’s.
I cleared my throat and read aloud:

‘Dear Sherbet. . .’
I grinned at Soames. The long forgotten nickname threatened to release a flood of boyhood memories. Soames waved his fork at me impatiently. ‘Read on,’ he commanded.
‘Dear Sherbet,
‘Forgive my presumption in writing to you after so many years, but I am in dire something - of your help. I am in dire need of your help. My father is dead and I am to be - I can’t make out the next word - in his place. There have already been two attempts on my life. I can trust nobody here. Please come at once. It is signed: Your friend Michael de Farr.’
I looked up from the letter to see Soames beaming across the table at me, a stringy piece of spinach lodged between his front teeth.
‘The words "presumption" and "dire" are misspelt,’ I added.
‘Good old Piggy,’ said Soames.
‘Poor spelling is hardly a matter for adulation,’ I protested.
‘Never mind the spelling, Wilson. What about the content of the letter?’
‘It sounds like gibberish to me, Soames.’
‘I think not, Wilson. Remember how de Farr hated writing.’
‘About as much as he hated bathing,’ I said grimly.
‘He would do anything to avoid picking up a pen.’
I nodded.
‘Well there you are, then. The very fact that he took the trouble to write to us suggests that his concern for his personal safety is genuine, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You mean Piggy’s life really is in danger?’
‘Undoubtedly, Wilson.’

What a Grey Day!

2010-11-29T01:59:00.000-08:00

Woodies, our local DIY store, is a wonderful place to shop. But not on Thursdays.

I cannot speak too highly of the store. The professional expertise of the store assistants (if you can find one) is second to none. Any other day of the week, if you are a home handyman in need of supplies, an aspiring carpenter short of a plank or two, a plumber’s mate seeking a length of piping, a home decorator, or a gardener, then this is the place to go. But not on Thursdays.

You may have noticed the tremor in my hand. If you knew me, you would see how pale I have become. If you asked my doctor, you’d be amazed at the strength of the pharmaceutical concoctions he has had to prescribe to steady my shattered nerves.

For I made the mistake of visiting Woodies on a Thursday.

In ignorance of the danger, I went in search of a small paint brush and a bottle of white spirit. It was the middle Thursday of last month, and my sleep has been plagued by nightmares ever since.

Nobody warned me.

Looking back now, I remember an eerie chill that swept around my ankles as the automatic doors slid open and I stepped inside. Going about my business in the paint section, it was some minutes before I realized that anything was amiss.

The first inkling I had was when I came upon two old gentlemen in the tile section locked together in a deadly embrace, each seeking directions from the other as to the location of some obscure items – directions that neither man could satisfy. Then a grey-haired customer with a peg-leg and a psychopathic leer in her eye blocked my path. Listing to one side, she grabbed my lapels, demanding to know where the woodworm treatment could be found. I professed myself ignorant in the matter, directed her to the information desk, and made a dash for the checkouts.

My route was obstructed by wrinkled hordes of old folk, many of them wandering around in a daze, trying to remember what it was they had come to the store to buy. And suddenly I was aware that all of the customers – myself included – were grey, and wrinkled; the whole store had been taken over by an army of half-crazed old age pensioners. It was like Thursday of the Living Dead, or the set of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

I made it to the checkout, and stood quaking in a long line of elderly handymen and women as they made their purchases, fumbling in their purses in obsessive efforts to lighten their load of small change. It was only then that I saw the large sign on the wall behind the checkout desks:

10% OFF NEARLY EVERYTHING IN STORE FOR CUSTOMERS OVER SIXTY ON THURSDAYS ONLY

So, be warned: If you value your sanity, if you value your life, stay away from Woodies on Thursdays.

Man Booker Reviews

2010-10-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

As long as everyone else is doing it, here are two short reviews of Man Booker short- and long-listed books.

First, the winner: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.

I saw the announcement of the winner on the telly. This book, he said, was the best of the bunch, and very funny. Hmm. Perhaps it’s down to that syndrome where, when someone tells you a book is good, or funny, your critical faculties automatically put themselves on Red Alert, but I didn’t find it funny; slightly amusing in the first two chapters and in spots here and there, but not my idea of a funny book. At all.

The book is quintessentially Jewish, with obscure expressive Yiddish words drizzled throughout, and it may be that you have to be Jewish to understand the humour. I have a half-read copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s prize-winning novel Everything is Illuminated on my shelf which left me similarly confused and beaten.

The story revolves around a Catholic who lives on the fringes (no pun intended) of a Jewish community in London. He contemplates having sex with a Jew and has a dalliance with the wife of a Jewish friend, only to discover that she isn’t Jewish.

I did find the book educational, though. It was interesting to read that some Jews – at least – are ashamed of the recent extreme actions of the Israelis in Gaza. I had a lively discussion with my boiler maintenance man about that military action (his visit coincided with the Israelis attack on the Gaza Strip). I thought we parted on reasonably amicable terms, but he never came back.

Second, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

An intimate portrait of the life of a fourteen-year-old in a boys’ boarding school in Dublin. This book is a rollercoaster read, at least it is if you are one of those who turn green and lose your breakfast on fairground rides. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since I was fourteen, but even so, I can’t believe the world has changed that much in the intervening years. In my day, young teenagers amused themselves with exciting games like dab and marbles—or conkers when they were in season, and well-thumbed copies of illicit material like Bunter or Biggles were passed around surreptitiously. Boardgames were everywhere, as the only video game available was called ping - or was it pong? - and the RPG was but a twinkle in the eye of some electronics wizard in a far-distant mist-shrouded land. For level-headed boys like me, Ludo was the preferred choice, while for those daring or foolhardy enough to risk it, there was the racy equivalent, called Snakes and Ladders. Women—girls—those of the fairer sex were another country, to paraphrase someone or other. Faced with the prospect of talking to anyone of the female persuasion, I, for one, would have curled up and withered like a snail confronted by a leaky salt-cellar. The kids in this book habitually access hardcore pornography on the Internet, and are as sexually promiscuous at fourteen as I was at thirty. Heaven help us all if the appaling vista depicted in Skippy Dies is anything close to the truth.

Paul Murray’s writing style is confident, his voice distinctive, funny and fresh. An enjoyable read, although there are some plot holes here and there, and I found the storyline confused at the end. Also, the book would have been served by a strong editor, as it is too long (661 pp) by about 200 pages. For example, I spotted one whole chapter that should have been omitted (the first chapter in Part 3) as it involves two completely irrelevant characters and contributes nothing to the storyline.

The entire story is told in the present tense, a popular contrivance these days that I usually find distracting, but not so in this book. Whole sections of internal dialogue appear in the second person, which works surprisingly well, but I found the absence of chapter numbers irritating.

Golf Bloopers

2010-08-16T04:17:00.000-07:00

Over the years I’ve accumulated a collection of bloopers – verbal blunders – by golf commentators on TV. Here are a few of the best ones in my collection.

“What Rory [McIlroy] needs now is a birdie.” Ewen Murray during the last round 2010 USPGA Championship.

“We have Colin Montgomery, Phil Michelson and Retief Goosen in this two-ball.” Andrew Cotter.

“He won’t be cutting off any of his ears today.” Bruce Critchley, talking about Tano Goya as he won the Madeira Islands Open.

“It’s exactly three hundred and seventy five yards from where that ball is to the hole. That’ll give you some idea how far it is.” Howard Clarke.

“That just shows you what a rice and fish diet can do.” Peter Alliss admiring a good round in the British Open by Jeong Jin, an Asian (amateur) golfer.

“I used to know him [Fredrick Andersson Hed] when he had no Hed.” Sam Torrance.
“Yes, his wife gave it to him, I believe.” Howard Clarke.

Commentator 1 (speaking about Noh Seung-Yul): “He seems very calm.”
Commentator 2: “It’s the Korean way. Very focussed, mentally, anyway.”

“He looks like the guy who cleans Tiger Woods’s pool.” Johnny Miller about Rocco Mediate during the shootout for the 2008 US Open.

That Mediate-Woods encounter also produced the golf quote of the century. When Woods sank his birdie putt on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Mediate, Rocco, watching the putt on television, said: “I’m toast.” (And he was!)

I’ve been trying to work out what it is about these golf tournaments that I find so fascinating. I mean, I spend about 32 hours of every week glued to the telly watching these millionaires walk round and round various fields, dressed like cartoon characters, and struggling to deposit small white balls into holes.

That’s 32 hours of every week of the year, 32 hours that could be spent reading or gardening or tackling that long list of house repairs that I’m sure I’ll get around to one of these days.

The drama of last night’s USPGA Championship three-hole playoff ended at 1:30 a.m., Irish time, and I crawled into bed in no state for sleep. That’s it, of course! The drama is what makes these occasions such compulsive viewing. It should have been a 3-way playoff but, in a dramatic twist worthy of Hollywood, Dustin Johnson, apparently tied for the lead, was penalised two shots for grounding his club in sand on the eighteenth hole. That was the same Dustin Johnson who threw away a 3-shot lead in the final round of the US Open in June.

Once again, our own David Feherty - Kate Adie of the Fairways - drew the short straw and was dispatched to interview the hapless Johnson as he did in June. Unflinching, and sporting a natty van Dyke goatee, David Feherty thrust his trusty microphone under the nose of the dazed golfer and extracted that vital sound-bite that will cement the moment for us all in golfing history.

In a Northern Ireland accent as thick as salted butter, Feherty described himself recently as “an American”. I’m not sure what that was all about, but I believe he’s made a video that might contain an explanation.

Oh and congratulations Martin Kaymer, a worthy winner and a worthy successor to Bernhard Langer, the golf king of Germany.

Roll on the Ryder Cup on October 1.

Anyone for tennis?

2010-07-02T01:55:00.000-07:00

When did tennis become such a fierce competitive game? If I didn’t know any better I’d say that players nowadays seem bent on doing everything they can to prevent the other guy from returning the ball. They hit it so hard, and seem to play it into areas of the court where the other player can’t reach it – on purpose! I mean, what happened to common sense, chivalry and the spirit of cooperation? In my day the object of the game was to hit the ball back and forth across the net as many times as possible. We called them rallies and I seem to remember one incredible rally, when I was about ten, that went on for an almost impossible seventeen strokes.

In those days we used to listen to the tennis on the radio. Inspired commentators conveyed all the thrills of the game, although some of the finer details were undoubtedly lost in the telling. “Laver serving at thirty-all. And the serve is…good. Roche returns with a forehand cross-court. Laver backhands it down the line, Roche volleys, Laver cuts it off, Roche retreats, Laver lobs, a smash from Roche, a forehand cross-court, a backhand, Laver counters, another backhand from Roche. And Laver finishes the point with a magnificent forehand down the line.” We sat there glued to the set, recreating the scene in our minds. Those were the days when “virtual reality” really meant something.

Like many a youngster, I was bitten by the tennis bug at school. At the risk of sounding immodest, the sports master described my forehand at the age of twelve as “unbelievable“. Looking back now I have to admit that my backhand lacked conviction and I never really got the hang of that loopy overhead service action, but if circumstances hadn’t conspired against me, perhaps I could have been a contender.

Today’s centre-court match features [Me] playing the six-times Wimbledon Champion, Roger Federer, for a place in this year’s final - has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

My budding tennis career came to a shuddering halt at university. I happened to mention to another student - called Bill - that I played the game and he suggested a match. Perhaps sensing a Fawlty moment at some deep subconscious level, I responded that, sadly, I had no tennis equipment in college. A friend, who overheard the conversation, offered to lend me his racquet and Bill said that he had balls. So the match was on. We agreed to meet on one of the hardcourts the following day.

High noon. I stroll onto the court dressed in my fashionably-torn wranglers and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, clutching my friend’s racquet - a pre-war wooden job, warped and with a loose string. Bill appears, carrying a large sports bag. He’s dressed in a white shirt, white shorts, white shoes and white ankle socks. He flashes a crocodile smile, pulls a professional-looking metal racquet from his bag and advances to the baseline. He lobs a ball over the net and it goes clean through my racquet. He chips another ball towards me with the same result. Puzzled, I examine the implement, but can find no explanation for what has just happened. I retrieve one of the balls and use my famous forehand to project it into the net.

At that point Bill suggested we call time on the knock-up and play a game. I agreed to let him serve.

I never saw the first ball. I caught a glimpse of the second as it sizzled past on my weaker backhand side and embedded itself in the wire boundary fence behind me. The third buried itself in my midriff while my brain was still trying to send an urgent message to my leg muscles to get out of the way.

“Forty-love,” he called cheerfully.

“Yes, darling,” I gasped.

We played one set, which he won six-love. It wasn’t a complete whitewash, though, as I won a point in the fourth game when he collapsed in a fit of laughter and served a double fault.

After that match I hung up my racquet for the last time and the game lost a potential champion. Still, tennis’s loss was golf’s gain, I suppose.

While we’re on the subject, what’s this “Hawkeye”? It seems some genius has invented a device that can reproduce the exact path of any shot. The players can challenge the calls of the line-judges and Hawkeye shows whether a ball was in or out. What I want to know is: How reliable is it? How come the verdict of the system is taken as gospel every time? And if it’s so infallible, why not eliminate the line-judges all together and simply let Hawkeye do the line-calls in the first place?

US Torture

2010-06-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

Forget water-boarding. The Americans have invented a new kind of torture. Modelled on the famous links golf courses of Ireland and Scotland, the American version is pure evil. Chosen by the USPGA mandarins to stage the US Open Championship of 2010, Pebble Beach must be the most devilish of them all. Teetering on the edge of vast cliffs bordering the Pacific Ocean on the Monterey peninsula in California, with knee-high rough, this course would break any normal mortal on a dead calm day. And exposed to the elements as it is, Pebble Beach has wind the way the sea has waves. This is a Hell on Earth where even tiny sea-breezes can destroy the card of a seasoned pro.

Variously described by the commentators as “the proverbial marble staircase” and “a sheet of glass”, the greens are miserly in size, dry, bumpy and surrounded by rough and sand. Asked to characterize his experience on the greens, Tom Watson (who won the US Open here in 1982) said it was like putting over “a herd of turtles” – surely that should be a bale of turtles, Tom, but we get the idea.

A more diabolical test of Man’s endurance has not been invented, and Man has faced nothing like this since the golden age of Polar exploration. Witness the carnage on the par 5 14th hole where a bale of bogeys, doubles, triple 8’s and quadruple 9’s were recorded, and the abject downfall of the young American golfer, Dustin Johnson, who started the final round with a 3-stroke lead on 6 under par, and went round in 82. Dustin’s day will come; he is a superb player.

On June 20, 2010, supported by his caddie, Ken Comboy, Graeme McDowell of Rathmore emerged victorious to join the threadbare ranks of Irishmen who’ve won Major golf trophies.

It’s 40 years since a “Brit” (Tony Jacklin) took the US Open trophy. Padraig Harrington won the British Open in 2007, 60 years after Fred Daly (an Ulsterman), but the last time an Irish “Brit” did anything as heroic as this must surely have been Ernest Shackleton’s heroic journey to Elephant Island in 1915 to rescue his men when his ship Endurance was trapped and crushed by the ice.

The US Open has been held at this venue five times. Apart from Tiger Woods’s superhuman performance in 2000 when he triumphed with the incredible score of -12, fifteen shots ahead of his nearest challenger, there was Jack Nicklaus in 1972 with a score of +2, Tom Watson in 1982 who finished on a magnificent -6, and Tom Kite who managed -3 in 1992. Graeme McDowell’s total was level par.

Famously, this course is open to anyone with the $495 green fee and nerves of steel. If you take it on, make sure you bring your mountain-climbing gear, a bagful of balls and a bottle of Prozac.

Find that Gizmo

2010-04-02T02:57:00.000-07:00

She sent me out to buy a meat tenderiser. I suppose our teeth are not what they used to be. Anyway, I got the pick-up out, started it with the handle and drove to the general store. I made a beeline for the electrical section and took a look around. Food mixers, they had, several makes. Liquidizers, kettles, deep friers, grills by that famous boxer, griddles, and all sorts of radios, TVs. Music centres galore. I wasted a few minutes examining a gizmo for chopping up carrots and such, not because I thought it would do the job, but because I couldn’t figure out why anyone with a sharp knife would want to buy one. I found a meat grinder and thought that might be near enough what she wanted. After fifteen minutes I gave that the elbow. Finally, I found a young guy in pimples and a blue suit who looked like he worked there and asked for directions.

“Do I look like I work here?” he says, all hurt, like.

I wasn’t due for my next knuckle fight, so I let it go. I found a dumpy woman with a wart on her nose stacking tins of beans on a shelf as if her life depended on it. She had a name tag “Melanie” high on her chest, so I reckoned I’d hit paydirt.

“A meat tenderiser,” says I. “I’ve looked everywhere,” pointing at the electrical section. She chuckles, takes me by the hand and steers me to the kitchen utensils.

“There you go,” she says, handing me a wooden mallet with a small label attached. I thanked her and Melanie scuttled off to see to her beans.

I read the label. “Meat Tenderiser” it said. I read the instructions, which were in six languages. “Directions for use: Wipe clean with damp cloth.” Someone had added an afterthought. “Care Instructions: Dry thoroughly after cleaning. Do not soak.”

I would have expected something a little more to the point, like “Place meat on a clean flat surface and beat the bejaysus out of it.”

She's in there now, practicing on a pork chop. Maybe instructions are unnecessary. I suppose some things just come natural to a lady.

A Night Out

2010-03-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

We met at the Palindrome where the Philharmonic Orchestra was playing Furtwangler’s twelfth symphony (“The Battenberg”). I love the first movement (don’t you?) with that startling catafalque of basinets to start with and the wonderful cascading credenza at the end. The lyrical casuistry of the work is so post-modern and so imbued with integrity, with honest-to-goodness peasantry that you might believe it purloined from Valhalla and transported to us on Icarian wings (don’t you think?). Furtwangler was amazing, you know. Completely self-taught, never attended a conservatory, blighted by the blindness in later life, or was that blinded by the blight? I jest!

My date for the night was slimmer than usual, which I put down to a sneaky corselet. Her frock was amazing, with lateral coulisses and a rather grotesque felt hat with feathers and hanging participles.

My Rolodex told me that I had a couple of hours to spare after the performance, so we found a quiet boutique, and sat down to a four-course meal.

We started with an aperitif, some small espadrilles and a few canopies. I tried the beer which was French, flat and quite acephalous. For the main course I ordered a pashmina soutane, she a pizzicato “Tuscany” with sheep’s eyes, served in a traditional thurible. We cracked a bottle of Mantilla (Spanish, of course) between us. A pretentious enough little wine, described on the label as having, “a fragrance to rekindle all the nasal hues, redolent of chiffon, bone and iron filings, carrying all before it like a taffeta tsunami,” whatever that might mean!

The vegetables were served by a stunted uxorious ramekin in what I took to be an adiabatic kilt. “Mange tout!” he demanded in an acrostic manner, and I replied that I always do. What a miserable crotchet! I hate bad mannerisms, don’t you? To end on a positive note, though, delicate fruit sobriquets were provided between courses, and the homemade bread kept coming. The bill came to a palfrey fifty euros per head.

In the Woods

2010-03-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve just finished reading “In the Woods” by Tana French. A monstrous book, of 485 pages, it must be 150,000 words long.

It’s full of atmospheric prose about childhood experiences, which are fun and insightful. The plot, though, was full of holes. For example, the breakthrough came when the investigating team decided to search some portakabins at the murder site. That was on page 360!

The author/first person narrator addresses the reader directly at least three times. I thought this sort of thing had been stamped out in modern literature; perhaps not. On one of these occasions, the author accuses the reader of being fooled/sucked in by one of the characters as the main character was. The height of this assumption I found staggeringly offensive, as I, for one, was not fooled or sucked in, and I couldn’t believe how the main character was.

Having said all of the above, I can understand how some readers could be sucked in by the misty prose. For me, though, the bottom line is that this book is self-indulgent and poorly plotted. It should have been a lot shorter and could have used a stronger editor. But the worst sin of all was setting up an ancient mystery in the beginning and leaving it unresolved at the end. I was aware, all the way through, that I was still reading only because I wanted to know the answer to that ancient mystery. What a disappointment!

When Good Shopping Goes Bad

2010-02-23T02:34:00.000-08:00

We went shopping on Saturday. These are trips where I drive the two of us to the shopping centre. When we get there I shuffle about behind the missus feeling useless. Sometimes I get dropped off in a cafe and left to tackle the crossword, nursing an Americano for an hour.

We visited Boots the chemist, and while she shopped I examined the labels on the cosmetics. I spotted one label that read Euro 537 per litre, then another Euro 715 per litre and a third Euro 1999 per litre. There must be some law that says the chemist has to display the unit cost of each item.

The record went to Olay’s Regenerist 30 minute wrinkle filler at Euro 2266 per litre! Anybody out there find a pricier one than that?

Two More Book Reviews

2010-02-23T02:28:00.000-08:00

Two more books that I’ve just finished reading: The Way Home by George Pelecanos and Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin. Different genres, yes, but these two books share one big element: they both drip with humanity. Pelecanos is a master at getting under the skin of his characters, and you can tell from his books how much he enjoys that aspect of his craft. But, if I had had an editorial input to this book, I would have made a couple of suggestions which I believe would have improved the work: The first 100 pages is essentially backstory and building the characters of the young people in the story. 100 pages is too much. I would have suggested cutting a chunk from this part of the book. Second, the ending is a big anticlimax, and left me feeling I’d been short-changed. Still, a worthwhile read, as with everything Pelecanos.

Lean on Pete is a simple story of a young man in difficult circumstances who makes friends with a horse close to its last legs. Resonant of John Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor, Colm McCarthy, et al., the story is told in a refreshingly straightforward style that carries the reader along compulsively. However, the last third of the book dragged a bit for me, as it seemed to lose its focus, and as with Pelecanos’s book, I found the ending delivered far less than the book promised. A good read, although I’m not sure I would agree with the superlatives on the cover.

Winterland Review

2010-01-14T09:17:00.000-08:00

Just finished Winterland by Alan Glynn, a lively romp through the themes of the Celtic Tiger; a deep-seated and persistent conspiracy of bad-ass developers and compromised politicians.

I enjoyed it. The plot and subplots were presented in a way that even I was able to follow in spite of many and frequent interruptions (which is how I usually read books these days). I thought the multiple changes of point of view were handled very well.

The whole book is written in the present tense. It nearly comes off, but I was always aware of it and found it a tad distracting. Where the action switches to the past tense for flashbacks, for example, I found the transition back to the present tense a little bumpy. I’m not at all certain that the present tense can sustain a piece of this length. I would argue with the length of the book, as well. It seemed to drag a bit towards the end, and, in my opinion, would have benefited from the excision of maybe 20,000 to 30,000 words.

Another small quibble I had was the author’s continual use of the phrase “nods along” or “nodding along”.

Anyway, as I said I enjoyed the book.

I hope it does well in the book shops.

And Another Thing

2009-10-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is my favourite book, the one that I would have to take with me to that desert island. If I could take all five books in the trilogy, I would. When Douglas died in May, 2001 we lost a great contemporary philosopher, a literary treasure, and a comic genius.

Yesterday, I bought a copy of Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing, the sixth and final book in the trilogy.

I read it in one day.

Fair do's, Eoin, you did a cracking job.

The first thing that struck me was that you must have switched off MS-Word’s spell checker. Otherwise, the manuscript would have looked like the Book of Kells while you were writing it. Second, I was flabbergasted at how quickly you churned it out. In the time it took you to write the book and Penguin Books to publish it, I would have located my glasses, arranged my pencils in a neat row and put the kettle on.

Far from attempting to replicate Douglas’s voice, I was glad to see that you injected your own literary juices into the mix. Those characters who inhabited the earlier books are still there with all their original quirkes, and you have added a few new characters, notably, Hillman Hunter the Oirishman and Wowbagger the green alien with a problem.

I spotted a passing reference to a character in Adams’s Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, as well as Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner. I wonder how many references to other Science Fiction works I missed. I’d be willing to bet that the Sci-Fi community will have endless fun searching for these, but then I never won a bet in my life.

I found only three typos: on pages 28, 126 and 128. I expect you left them in there deliberately, for people like me.

So, well done, Mr Colfer, and thank you. Hopefully, they’ll let me out soon, and if I ever do end up on a desert island, maybe they'll let me take six books.

An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

2009-10-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Richard Dawkins,

I have just finished reading your latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, and I am driven to write you this open letter, even though I have no expectation that you will ever read it.

I have read all of your books (in order!) apart from A Devil’s Chaplain, which I am half way through. I discovered your books principally because of your inspired title The Blind Watchmaker. It seems to me the label "non-fiction" is an inadequate description of your books. We need a new word, without the negative connotation.

I have an ancient degree in Mathematics, but I think I must admit to being one of those people identified by Medawar as ‘educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought’. The distillation of all that I have learned from your wondrous books amounts to a jumble of half-remembered and barely understood, but amazing, facts about evolution and the planet that we share. I have gathered your main messages, of course, about how evolution has worked over the Aeons, how destructive are the religious memes in all their varieties, what a genius Charles Darwin was and how much you enjoyed the company of Douglas Adams.

I too loved Douglas Adams. I knew him only through his writings, but I rejoice in his unique talent. I include this only as an amusing aside, but you and I are linked by a chain of acquaintances. My first cousin’s wife is Eoin Colfer’s sister-in-law, and as I’m sure you must know, Eoin has been commissioned by his literary agent (whom he shared with Douglas Adams) to write the sixth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

As for The Greatest Show on Earth, it left me with a few questions, some of which follow:

1 How on earth did physicists calculate the 49 billion year half-life of Rubidium-87?
2 How can we account for the persistence of the Cystic Fibrosis gene and others that shorten an individual’s life?
3 What happens where Malthus and Darwin meet? Or why are there so many of us on the planet, and when will the human population stop increasing?
4 What do you think of the idea that the application of human thought is an evolutionary force in its own right? That perhaps our technology (e.g. Genetic Engineering) might gazump natural selection?
5 To what extent do random genetic mutations arise from cosmic rays? The Coelacanth lives in the depths of the ocean, shielded from cosmic rays; does that explain why it has evolved so little?
6 What tells us that the DNA bases are processed in threes? (I think I missed a lecture somewhere). I can see that the four base pairs could be used to create a 64-letter alphabet, but how does that translate into biology?
7 I assume that Darwin was unaware that plants and animals share a common ancestor. Is this correct?
8 If we are here simply to pass on our genes, why do we live so long? Why don’t we mate and die like butterflies?

If I had a quibble it would be on the miserable size of the index to each of your books.

In conclusion, let me say how much I envy you. I envy the field that you work in, so rich in variety and wonder; I envy your erudition, your facility with language; and I envy the time you spent with Douglas.

Yours truly,

JB Toner

A Book List

2009-08-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading a lot lately. In an effort to understand more about writing, I’ve been tackling thrillers, modern and retro. Since my last posting here, I’ve read (1) Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, (2) The Hackman Blues and (3) Priest by Ken Bruen, (4) Allan Guthrie’s Two Way Split, (5) The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld, (6) James Patterson’s Along Came a Spider, (7) Last Train to Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey, (8) Echo Burning by Lee Child, all of the above topped off by (9) Mystery Man by Colin Bateman.

I don’t do book reviews, but can’t resist a word or two in passing about these:
(1) A brilliant debut novel, but I had a major problem with his attempt at omniscient point-of-view which came across to me simply as head-hopping; his use of italics for dialogue gave me a headache; and why leave out chapter numbers?
(2) and (3) Hard-hitting ‘Noir’ detective stuff. Interesting style. Everything is subsumed in ‘Voice’ and character interaction. No room for scene-setting and exposition. Sort of stream-of-consciousness on speed.
(4) Another ‘Noir’ book. An adventurous attempt at an original story presentation that, sadly, didn’t work for me.
(5) Far two long and long-winded for me. Could have used a good editor.
(6) Patterson’s first Alex Cross book. I was looking for the magic ingredient that made this a bestseller. Not sure I found it.
(7) An atmospheric book about Italy. Far too long. This book should have been cut by at least 30%. The ending, when the story finally gets moving, is enjoyable.
(8) Not really my cup of tea. Good writing style, story quite contrived and formulaic.
(9) Brilliant! I love Colin Bateman. Humour to die for. I want to read more of his books.

I’ve also recently read Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass

My ‘to read’ list now includes: Alan Furst, John Le Carre, David Baldacci, Tom Bradby, Fred Vargas, Ken Follett, and, in an attempt to brush up on some of the classics that I should have read years ago: The Great Gatsby, Shogun, Moby Dick, Lolita.