Check your Facts

So there I was surfing the web poking around self published e-books and came across one on a site that opens with London suffering a bombing raid from the Germans in January 1919.

I’ll just repeat that: London being bombed by Germany in 1919.

I don’t need to tell you what is wrong with that do I?

I did read far enough to check there wasn’t some alternative time line being created. As the action jumped almost immediately to 2009 and mentioned in passing other major events that mark the 20th Century  it would appear not.

So I scanned the comments, someone else would have spotted the gaffe wouldn’t they? Not one comment even touched on it. I contemplated joining the site to make a comment, something simple, like “the Great War was from 1914 to 1918″.  In the end I decided against it. The site boasts a large membership already, one of it’s existing members will catch it eventually, and I’m not into ‘hit and run’ site joining.

It did irritate me though. The year WWI ended isn’t some obscure fact that is hard to find, or under any sort of dispute.

On a completely unrelated website, that I am a member of, we’ve been debating the “rules of opening paragraphs”, as provided by writing guru’s.

Oddly “Check your facts” isn’t one of them.  It should be.   Being confronted with something so obviously wrong is more of a turn off for me that any  animal MC waking up and describing the weather opening  would be.  All of which, individually, are listed as DO NOT’s

Snow Days

We’ve been having weather in the UK. Snow and we are not prepared, we never are

It’s the third  year in a row I’ve had to take time off work because of snow. Now you might think that means more time for writing , but it appears my creative juices freeze over when it’s cold.

A snow bound Britain may look very pretty from space but it’s much less fun when you’re in the middle of it.

We of course still have our great British eccentrics who think swimming in the Serpentine is a good way to start the day. *shiver*. I’m more inclined to reach for the Ready Brek  (porridge) and hope that ‘central heating for kids’ still works on adults.

It’s snowing as I type, and more is forecast over the weekend meaning work is looking dodgy next week too.

Meh said I had brain freeze. What I meant to write about was that back on the 19th of December I ordered “Writing Fiction for Dummies” from Amazon and they still haven’t dispatched it. Some of which is Christmas and some of which is the book itself  but now we’re into  ”Severe weather conditions are affecting deliveries across the country. Some deliveries could take 1-2 days longer than usual to be delivered.” and it still hasn’t even been dispatched.

I’m considering cancelling the order and selecting something that might actually turn up as I’ve been dithering a bit waiting for this to give me some structure to plot and edit around, but that’s a lot of days dithering. Of course whatever I order will probably get caught by the severe weather too but at least it may be in stock.

Oh well browsing the site looking will give me something to do until  midday when in the warmth of the noonday sun I’ll brave the roads and get in some food to keep us going for another week. Our cupboards are looking somewhat bare as we eat for heat.

Chuffed

Just before Christmas I entered a  holiday competition for first line/last line of the first chapter of a piece of fiction over on Blee Bonn’s writing blog and I discovered on New Years Day that I had  been placed second with:

1st Line: “When I say run, run”
Last line: “I’ll round up the bar staff and some of our more atheist regulars and distract the choir for you”

So I’m well chuffed. According to Dictonary.com that means I could be

1. delighted; pleased; satisfied.
2. annoyed; displeased; disgruntled.
3. making a noisy puffing or explosive sound, such as one made by a locomotive.

Can’t say I’ve ever used it as 2. though. The picture that’s a chuff too, though its a bit posh so we spell it chough. (and for many of my formative years I was unaware of that and thought the chough and being chuffed were somehow related)

This entry is a tad late, but I was busy reading yesterday. Have you ever heard of Modesty Blaise?  She was the lead character in a syndicated newspaper comic strip running from 1963 to 2001. As the blurb on the re-issued novels says

“Before Buffy, before Charlie’s Angels, before Purdy

and Emma Peel there was Modesty Blaise. For almost

40 years, Pweter O’Donnells iconic heroine drop-kicked

her way through a swath of villains and into a

unique place in popular culture”

Well I spent yesterday getting re-acquainted with her, reading the first novel. Originally  published in 1965, when I was much, much too young to be allowed such racy, by the standards of the day, material.

Wait could I even read in 1965? Hmm just about but I’m not going to start re-reading the Ladybird Peter and Jane series if I want a dose of nostalgia.

Off the point ramble: I changed schools in 1966 and while both schools used the Keywords scheme my first school had let me off it at something like 2C because I was reading ‘proper’ books in my free time. The new school was more insistent that its pupils finished the scheme. The indignanty  of having to return to the scheme when I was way past needing it. Well I probably  chuffed (3) a lot  at the idea as I sped through to number 7  -or wherever the scheme ended then – to get the all important permission to read what I wanted.

So back on topic. I’m not sure why I was thinking ‘whatever happened to Modesty Blaise?”  Though it had something to do with reading ‘Day of the Triffids’.  Oh yes some silly passage about the best women could expect was a good man and babies, (okay it actually made sense in the context of the novel) which coming after an abortive attempt to re-read Robert Heinleins’  ”Number of the Beast” which has ’look after your man’  female leads in it I really needed to lose myself with a kick ass female lead and  Modesty came to mind.

A quick check on Amazon uk and to my surprise the books and graphic novels are in print. So I ordered the first in the series and it arrived yesterday. If I like a book a tend to gobble it up, which is what I did with Modesty yesterday, and into the small wee hours of Sunday. I’m useless at reviews but to quote Willie Garvin  ”bloody good caper”.

As finances allow I will be adding to my collection, and ignoring the faces my son is pulling at the very idea there were any kick ass females before Buffy.

It’s about well erm..

I had a friend pop in for coffee and gift swapping this morning.  As the conversation roamed he asked what I was writing about and my reply was somewhat inarticulate.

He wasn’t impressed. Between my inability to explain and his lack of interest in fantasy it sort of fell flat. Not surprising really we lived together for five months  back in the early noughties and he never once  read any of the novels I have, the management self help stuff is more his speed, but it did make me realise I haven’t done a synopsis. So to avoid actually writing anything I spent time today on a cover and a very short synopsis

Becca Morris gets caught up with the Children of Annwn and a mysterious group of people called the Coelbren as they race to save 1950’s London from the threat to both realms posed by the Earl of Fog and his cronies.
But Becca holds a secret that could be more damaging to the Children of Annwn than anything the Earl plans.

It is just a first stab but its a lot more articulate than the “well erm there’s this group of people trying to stop this fog fae from using the fog to erm do bad stuff.”

I need to go back to work, having all this free time isn’t helping with working on anything but I’m certainly honing my procrastination skills, and yes the sudden upsurge in blog posts counts as procrastinating

I also ended up tweaking the banner I’m using on the nanowrimo forums. Battersea Power Station is just going to have to have four chimneys. I’m sure they’d have built them first

E-Books

Another company has joined the e-book market Kobo eReading: anytime. anyplace I decided to have a look and maybe tip my toe in the e-book world as one of the things offered by Kobo is multi-platform use. So no having to  shell out  £161 ($259)  for a special reader.

On the up side they have an interesting back catalogue, 500 hits for  Andre Norton. Or as it turns out anything with Andre,  it narrows down to six when  quotation marks are used. All six are free (she surely hasn’t been dead that long yet has she?) and I may read them as my  paperback copies threaten to fall  apart these days if I open them.

My paperback copies are very old, even got a couple that have old money on the cover 2/6 (or 12.5p in decimal).

I’ll have to read them on-line; either from a PC or a smart phone.  Not that I have a smart phone my mobile is as dumb as they come. Last time I had anything clever enough to surf the net the cost was so exorbitant  that once I’d downloaded a ring-tone I never used it for surfing again. We are talking in the days when the screen for the mobile was still black on grey admittedly

So what about the more up to date  stuff like Laurell K Hamilton and her Meredith Gentry series. Seeing as I have the first six of those already and its now on its eight volume

number seven: “Swallowing Darkness” list price is $7.99 reduced to $6.39  = £3.99*

number eight: “Divine Misdemeanour’s” is $26.00 reduced to $9.99 =£6.25

Amazon.co.uk will give sell me a copy of No.7 for £5.48 ( paperback) and No.8 for £11.59 (hardback)

So e-books are cheaper.  Why though is an e-book using the hard-cover price as the list price to make the reduction from?

I rarely buy hardbacks, combination of cost and space considerations; with over 1000 books space is a big consideration which is why e-books look so tempting.  If I want to take an e-book on the train with me I’m still going to need a reader, even if its just a smart phone with its monthly contract. At least I have a net-book for reading in bed, or the garden come summer, but the bath is completely on the no-go list

Now the latest volume is cheaper than a hardback but still more expensive than a paperback yet the medium for both is the same; electronic. I’m guessing when the paperback comes out there will be a cheaper e-version on Kobo

Indeed they have a ‘hardback’ version of one of the earlier volumes available on Kobo, same title, twice the cost of the ‘paperback’ edition they’re also offering of the same volume. Now that’s going to get confusing for people. After all there’s no cheaper paper, smaller pages or less resilient binding on cheaper e-versions to make it obvious why it costs less.

For all the grumbling I do like Kobo. I like the free  e-books (who wouldn’t) and I like that I can create an on-line library of what I purchase. I mentioned the 1000 books already didn’t I. Some are repeats because of cover changes (not many I usually pass them on to friends when I blunder like that); but it’s hard keeping track of all the books you’ve bought over forty years. Especially when its only a fraction of what I’ve actually read.

I also like that they are prepared to offer first time authors a break:  guidelines for submissions . Though it’ll be a while before I’m anywhere near brave enough to submit something.

For now though I’ll be getting those Laurell K Hamilton’s from my local library for free and feeling unfettered as I read them anywhere there’s enough light for my eyes to work

*I’m assuming those are American not Canadian dollars on their website otherwise the savings are a bit more due to current conversion rates