Authors Electric

I get very jealous when I read all you other writers’ blogs. You all seem so effortlessly serious in your choice of subject and the erudition and application you so generously put in. And here am I, pushing the monthly deadline to its outer limit (not for the first time, or the second, or the third). Look at Dennis. Spends half his life zooming around the planet enjoying himself, and still has time to produce a wonderful new volume, and make me dribble with longing for his buckshee television. And then a spiffing blog on top. As you can see, deadline or not, I haven't got a thought in my head as to what to write. My brain is wrecked. I'm seven-eighths of the way through revising a big thriller, I've just spent a week doing a final polish on the second of my nautical novellas about Charlie (Craven) Raven, and in the interstices (try saying that to a voice recognition programme!) I've hammered out an outline and pitching document for a novel about Napoleon. Fasc...

Huge jollities over poor old Rudy. The weekend when Endeavour Books put Death Order up for free, the Independent did a huge story headlined Adolf Hitler's Nazi deputy Rudolf Hess ‘murdered by British agents’ to stop him spilling wartime secrets - which is the nub of the novel. Within hours the Daily Mail had lifted the Indy’s story, and fully credited their source, which in modern journalism terms might be something of a first! They also added a further twist: Nazi Rudolf Hess was 'murdered by British agents in prison to stop him revealing war secrets but Scotland Yard was told NOT to investigate' Both papers named the Scotland Yard detective who undertook the enquiries – Detective Chief Superintendent Howard Jones – and also revealed that his investigation had been abruptly terminated on the orders of the DPP! They also named the British Army surgeon, Dr Hugh Thomas, who said the medical evidence proved that the prisoner who died in Spandau could not hav...