Just a word …

Something from Chris White 🙂

Routine Matters

Just a word …

India has recently broken its own world record by planting 66 million trees in just 12 hours in a bid to honour a pledge made at the Paris Climate Change Conference.

More than 1.5 million volunteers turned out one Sunday between 7am and 7pm to plant the massive number of tree saplings along the Narmada River in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Now that is impressive. And I got to thinking. If every one of those trees was a word then how many well-known books might they be equivalent to from the word-count point of view ?

Word-counts vary tremendously of course. A short story may be just a few thousand words whilst an epic tale could easily run into several hundred thousand.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare weighs in at 885,000 words and the Bible at 788,280. That’s a staggering 1,673,280 words in total. But…

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DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

A little something from Mira in India…

mira prabhu

My father taught me a powerful lesson growing up; I watched many a time as he out-intimidated the legion of official and governmental bullies that routinely harass all Indians and make millions of lives miserable. “Do you know who I am” he would roar, and the would-be bully would literally quake with fear and trepidation. And he did this with genuine anger, because this kind of official misbehavior personally offended him. He stood up not just for himself—in his prime, he was a wealthy, powerful, articulate and educated man with immense influence—but for those with lesser resources, and even for the illiterate poor who had no option but to bow down to these horrible apologies for man so that they could get their work done. Since survival was a burning issue for many of these people, and the bullies knew they held the winning card, most often there was no…

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The Perfect Anthem

Something from a little tinkerbell 😉

e-Tinkerbell

Empress Sissi

There is one thing that characterizes Italian summers more than the heat, that this year, let me tell you, has reached unimaginable, long-lasting pitches:  the broadcasting of Empress Sissi’s saga on tv. Every summer, in August, and since I was a child as far as I can remember, here comes the moment to sigh upon the romantic and fortunate story , only in fiction, of course, of the beautiful Elisabeth of Bavaria and emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. There is something in this period drama that enthralls you so much, that  even if you have seen it one hundred times at least and you know every single line of every character, as in my case, you cannot but watch it again. Hence; my husband and I found ourselves watching it again willy-nilly, as tradition requires, and I have to say that despite the incessant heat that was…

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Just Publishing Advice

Like it says, keep it simple!

History Is Bunk

More from BeetleyPete

REDFLAGFLYING

Many of you may not be aware, and many will not even care, but there has been a great deal of controversy in America of late. Besides the antics of Mr Trump, his cabinet, and his family, or the bluster and counter bluster with North Korea, something else has been going on.

Some states have decided to remove statues and memorials dedicated to people who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, from 1861-1865. Famous generals like Robert E. Lee, and some statues of other officers, as well as memorials to fallen Confederates are being removed by the authorities. The reasons given for this vary, but the overall idea is to stop ‘glorifying’ people who fought in a cause that supported slavery. I could add quotes, or write all day about the many other reasons why that war happened, but there would be no point. It has become…

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Semaine bavaroise

More from Léa 😉

found-in-france

Semain bavaroise or Bavarian Week was the theme in Narbonne last week. I hadn’t noticed any mention of it in the paper but there are so many such events year around and even more in the summer when crowds of tourists line the streets. I first glimpsed the little white chalets set up for selling traditional food and drinks. The were set up in the center square in Front of Place de Ville and facing the Via Domita. Then as I turned and walked up Rue Droit (Right Way) I began to see men and women is costumes heading toward the center square. 

The participants gathered on the steps of Place de Ville for a brief welcome was given and an invitation for people to come to the performances of singing and dancing in the evening. The traditional food would also be available in the evening so no chance of…

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Hands up…

Akhen

…who read my science fiction space opera Onet’s Tale, the sequel to Turning Point, the science fiction story I wrote in 1995? Not many of you I suspect since after falling out with me, the publisher pulled it off the market!

A few days ago I was looking for some of my unused saved material for my fantasy anthology Goblin Tales, which I am currently re-working. In amongst everything stored in the sideboard I came across my original MS for the story in question under its original title – The Berserker Saga, saved on a CD. Before you ask, I wrote it while on a trip back to New Zealand in 2003. Needless to say I spent many months more than I intended back in Nzed while I wrote it. It all came to an abrupt halt when my then laptop objected to having coffee spilt all over it. Thank god for the CD!

After returning here to the UK it would be seven years before I was in the position to offer it for consideration to a publisher, let alone afford a replacement laptop. As it was, it was available on Amazon for barely six months back in 2010…

So, once I have finished re-working Goblin Tales, I’ll be tackling The Berserker Saga once again, minus all the nonsense the publisher insisted must be added, such as his curriculum vitae of the characters, just because he couldn’t remember who is who, plus his adding his and his then business partner’s names to the by line. The latter being the reason we fell out!!!

The more astute among you will have read it chapter by chapter already, since I published it here on my blog over many weeks last year. As its 102, 518 words in length on 196 A4 pages, which equates to a little over 324 pages for both the ebook and print versions, I fully expect it to occupy me for most of next year (2018).

More later

😉