Monthly Archives: September 2013

Murdering Darlings – In Two Minds

I’ve been procrastinating editing my novel since yesterday afternoon because I am completely stuck on half a chapter and the events that take place in that 3000 words. So I guess I’m looking for advice once I’ve given you the context of the story.

Once again, the novel is set 500 years from now in a medieval society that has grown from the ashes of a nuclear war that started with The Cuban Missile Crisis. There is a new church that has an iron grip on Europe. They began as an extremist Protestant sect that grew out of the Church of England. They gained momentum and soon expelled the Catholic Church from Rome. Catholics are now persecuted throughout Europe (as are other religious groups). As a result of this persecution, Britain’s Catholic populations are keeping a low profile in the major cities or they have created ghettos in the abandoned industrial towns.
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Daily Post: Three Years Hence

I’ve not really bothered with most of the Daily Posts since I really got into this blog a couple of years ago but I have kept an eye on the prompts and this one put a smile on my face. I’m going to play it partly for laughs and partly as a “Goals for the next three years” as I am now closing on my third anniversary. Anyway, here’s me in 2016. Continue reading →

Wrong Word Wednesday #16

Every week I will demonstrate an example of poor English where a different word is used from the one intended. Sometimes this creates a grammatically incorrect sentence. Unfortunately, the mistake is usually so pervasive that we all do it and such errors are usually made by those who should know better – journalists working for national or global media outlets such as newspapers and television Continue reading →

Book Review: Origins By S.E. Meyer

As an archaeologist, the name Zecharia Sitchin sets all of my alarm bells ringing and my “Nonsense Detector” into overdrive; so when the writer presented me with this novel for review through theindieview.com, and the premise sounded very much the sort of novel Sitchin might have written, you’d think I’d have turned it away. But I didn’t. After all, I love the Assassin’s Creed games and the back story there is of a similar premise – silly but fun and enjoyable so my hope was that this would be similarly silly but a good read. Continue reading →

My Top 3 Stephen King Novels

This week has seen the release of a sequel to his novel The Shining – a book that divides fans firmly between “prefer the film” and “I hate the film for missing the point”. Is it possible for me to sit on the fence of this issue and say that I appreciate both productions for different reasons? For the record, King hates the Kubrick film – and as much as I enjoy it, I fully appreciate and accept his reasons for doing so (number three on the list).
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Doctor Who’s Scariest Episodes

Don’t look away and DON’T BLINK!
funkyjunk.com

What Culture has listed its twelve scariest episodes of Doctor Who. Unsurprisingly, it lists the first appearance of the weeping angels – Blink – as the scariest episode ever in a list that is totally bereft of the classic series. Some of these terrified me as a kid (as with most children) so I’m proposing my alternative scary stories with one condition – classic series only. In no particular order then…
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Wrong Word Wednesday #15

Every week I will demonstrate an example of poor English where a different word is used from the one intended. Sometimes this creates a grammatically incorrect sentence. Unfortunately, the mistake is usually so pervasive that we all do it and such errors are usually made by those who should know better – journalists working for national or global media outlets such as newspapers and television Continue reading →

Book Review: Forget Yourself by Redfern Jon Barrett

Continuing commissions from theindieview.com, this interesting 75,000 word novel came to me at the end of July with a most intriguing description – the first one that was really right up my street.

Blondee is in a prison, of sorts. She occupies on of fifty huts inside a walled compound. She has no memory of how she got there or where she came from but she does have flashbacks to a previous life and of people she might have been acquainted with. The people inside the compound tell her she is a thief, she must have been as she has long fingers. She’s also highly sexed and is accused of being a “cheat” – something she doesn’t seem to comprehend. Continue reading →

What is “Track Changes” and How Do I Use It?

One of the terms you will undoubtedly come across as a new freelancer, especially if you intend to use a proofreading service where the proofreading goes beyond checking merely for typos and grammatical errors (where the contractor wants you to edit so it is clearer, flows better etc), is “Must know how to use Track Changes“

I’d heard of it but never used it. As a fiction writer, I haven’t felt the need to track changes I’d made to a document. Or at least, if I’d decided I didn’t like a passage enough to remove it I’d never felt the inclination to keep the older version as a comparison and if I still didn’t like it I’d keep writing it until I did like it!
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Book Review: Conquest by Stewart Binns

It is 1066 and England is about to undergo the most cataclysmic change of history since the arrival of the Roman legions. On one side, the last Saxon king Harold II. On the other side, William – Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard, William the Conqueror. The story is recreated on the Bayeux Tapestry which despite being a pro-English piece of propaganda, sites in a museum in Normandy. Harold would be killed at that battle and England would once again be ruled by those of Norse descent. The period of Norman Conquest would see a time of bloody battles but also an immense building programme of castles, towns and cities and

In the middle of the two men is a third – Hereward the Bourne. What? Never heard of him? Neither had I and I hang my head in shame – not just at this gap in my own knowledge but also at his omission from the history books. Actually, some people doubt his existence but regardless of this, his story is no less impressive and if he did exist, no less important. Continue reading →