Fedor Michajlovic Dostojevskij, One of The Genius of The Latest Centuries.

More from young Aladin…

lampmagician

http://t2.gstatic.com

I have got to know him in the early seventies. I have read almost all his works, and he had changed my life forever. Let’s have some words from him.

One year ago, it was Autumn, I was travelling by train in Germany, and once, of confusion, I missed a station which would have to get off and change the train. I got off at the next station. It was about three pm, with the clear sky. It was a small town. They showed me a hotel because I had to wait for the next train, which would come at eleven pm. I was not in hurry at all, and even happy somehow! It was a small stinking hotel but surrounded with greens and plants and also flowers. I got a small room and dinner, which I ate with an appetite, and because of the long travel, went into…

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Then and Now

Time passes…

Have We Had Help?

I was having a conversation with my good friend Jamie Boswell, here in my home town yesterday. His brother Duncan (the man responsible for the superbly executed map of Goblindom in my fantasy anthology Globular Van der Graff’s Goblin Tales for Adults and his girlfriend are soon off to New Zealand, the land I love, for a few weeks. Like most young people operating on a budget, when it comes to seeking a bed for the night, they plan to find a cheap hostel for the first few days they are there. And so I suggested to Jamie that he might mention they utilize the YHA hostels that pepper both of the main islands (North and South) that go to make up the bulk of the country.

Like a lot of people these days, Jamie hadn’t heard of the Youth Hostel Association, despite it being a worldwide organisation. And…

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Oh so true…

You can all dream…

Have We Had Help?

Ask any writer. We would all love to have the epithet ‘bestselling author’ added to our names.

http://www.derekhaines.ch/justpublishing/how-do-you-measure-your-success-as-a-writer/

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One For The Road

One from Peter…

countingducks

“Was he my hero,” I ask myself, this man who’d walked another path than mine; climbed mountains I would never see but whose eyes lit up with understanding when I talked. You do not have to be young to be lost, and living on the edges of approval was a fate we both shared. I was twenty four and he “just over eighty” as he’d said for several years.

He was difficult by all accounts, and refusing to be wrapped in his obituary: we shared a horror of the commonplace as seen from Chaos Road. His morals were doubtful, career had been patchy, but he was exuberant in person and a celebrator of the smallest event.

He was there by force of circumstances and I, because I lacked direction, but our bond was to “Grab the moment and let the morrow damn you if it can. “

“Drink and smoke…

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Progress Report

Remembering 2014

Have We Had Help?

OK folks, as promised, here is the first of the progress reports on my new eBook. My intention is to share with you how I go about researching and writing a book along with the tools I use. So bear with me please.

I begin by opening a new file on MS Word, plus I have my Kindle versions of the Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus opened and standing by, not forgetting my research material. As I progress I constantly save the work both as a Word.doc, plus a PDF document, and a .MOBI file. Why do I bother with all of these different files? Simply because by reading what you have written using formats other than MS Word means that glaring errors immediately stand out. In the case of the .MOBI file, Calibre allows you get to see how the end product will look before it has…

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3 Tips for a Great Cover Reveal – by Greer Macallister…

Make of it what you will…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Writer Unboxed:

We wouldn’t need the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” if people weren’t always doing exactly that. The cover of your book is important! It makes a huge difference to how the book is perceived at every stage of the process, regardless of how your book is published or distributed. And making the most of the cover reveal is something any writer can do.

Fresh off my own cover reveal (about which more later), I thought I’d share a few tips that you can use as guidelines while you’re planning and executing on sharing that powerful first look at the cover of your upcoming book.

Here are three things you’ll want to do:

Continue reading HERE

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Another work in progress begins

I had good intentions. Still haven’t done it yet!!!

Have We Had Help?

If you read myrecent postyou will know that I have an idea for another book. This time concerning a freelance assassin, or perhaps that should read avenging angel – identity and gender unknown.

So, while I work on completing the rewrite of my fantasy anthology Goblin Tales. And before I begin the rewrite of my science fiction space opera The Berserker Saga, I have already begun playing around with the opening two paragraphs. This is what I have so far:

“It was all so vivid. Not only could I see every detail. But I was aware of his deodorant and the lingering smell of his last meal, still heavy in the air. I had just witnessed the violent death of my first target, without actually being there.”

“Weeks earlier I had had the same recurring dream. Each night I came to dread falling asleep. It was always the…

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Ennui

Rascally Tallis is back, Gentlemen lock up your women folk!!!

Tallis Steelyard

Charity Mealwrath was described to me as a lady of uncertain temperament. I rather ‘pricked my ears up’ at this. I’ve met such ladies. One minute they are presenting a demure facade to the world, the next they are drinking wine out of tankards and singing songs they learned when their mother left them in the care of the maid (who had previously been assistant cook on a merchant schooner of uncertain reputation and legality). So it behoves a poet to be wary.

But in the case of Charity, frankly she is difficult to describe. When she encountered something new she would be briefly interested. But then her interest would pall and she would slip back into quiet boredom. Some people would rather harshly whisper that she was too stupid to understand things. Having met her and performed for her, I think the truth may have lain in the opposite…

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Answer me this if you can?

#writers Some say we are what we eat!

Have We Had Help?

The other day I posted the following on my Facebook page:

They say you are what you eat. Following that totally ilogical way of thinking, I am Gouda, Bacon, Eggs and Chips.

Why is it that total miseries who claim their know best, disapprovingly shake their heads at the rest of us who prefer to eat real food, not dietary supplements and other complete nonsenses?

According to people like them, I’m doomed because I love the following mix of basic foodstuffs. Do I feel unhealthy? Not a damned bit of it!

All answers on a thick piece of buttered toast please…

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Review: THE SABOTEUR, by Simon Conway. published by Hodder and Stoughton.

Review…

writerlywitterings

NOTE: I conducted a short interview with Simon Conway on SHOTS E-ZINE, which you can find here:

http://shotsmag.co.uk/interview_view.aspx?interview_id=318

I hope you enjoy that too!

As a reviewer and reader, there are rather few authors whose work I look forward to every year. My old stand-bys like John le Carre and John Gardner, are dead. Other favourites aren’t writing any more either, so on my short list of writers to look out for, Simon Conway is at the top.

It is not only the sheer inventiveness of his plots and writing, it is the obvious deep understanding he has of his subject matter. Conway was a British Army officer and more recently an aid worker. He has helped in landmine clearance, and travelled the world helping make munitions safe and disposing of them. Now he works with The HALO Trust, responding to the urbanisation of warfare and the growing use of…

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