Authors Electric

I wonder if it's the same for Father Christmas. You know what I mean - the speeding up of time. When I was a lad a day was like a week, a day at school more like a term. And as I got older, time began to run amok. This afternoon I was struggling to finish off a novella about Nelson before travelling down to Leicestershire for a pre-Christmas jolly with the rellies. Only about two thousand words to go, and the deadline seemed more than possible. It's got to be done before I leave here, because the village that we're heading for has no broadband to send it off from. Politicians' promises. Aren't they a hoot? The day had been bitty, certainly - but handleable. (Do you like that word: it's not copyrighted). Endeavour Press told me yesterday that Other People's Blood would be going up today (that is, Nov 11) for free until the weekend. I dutifully spent lots of the next few hours twooting and faceboogeringabout and all the other modern jollities. It was...

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...