Authors Electric

And now folks - Rump of Rump Hall! Somehow or other this blog appeared briefly on Weds, then just as mysteriously vanished. Hillary to blame, or Mr Trump - the choice is yours. Maybe the blonde bombshell himself will evaporate. Trump. Ooh, what a disgusting thought... Is it possible to watch the world events of today without despairing just a teeny weeny bit? In England the whole concept of truth is being redefined by the day, with political integrity leading the van. Men and women who pride themselves on their probity (they are honourable and right honourable members, for God’s sake) now talk about a ‘post-honest society’ as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Brexit battle buses festooned in blatant lies are now passed off jokily as rather neat examples of how to game an unimportant argument, while our new and unelected leaderene insists that she has an unshakeable mandate to do what most thinking people look on with growing apprehension. Ian Duncan Smi...

Mallard in all her glory at the the National Railway Museum at York. Picture by Rich Bacon  Research has always been one of the bugbears of writing. In the old days, if one was doing a book based on factual matters, part of the process was finding out where you could find out things that were important and germane. This, as you all know, could take hours, days, weeks, months – it was a pain. Rich and Muava with Adam Fozard in museum colours It hit me hardest when I was writing one of my historical naval fictions. Because of a misspent youth I knew a vast amount about the technicalities of square rigged ships and how to sail them. But suddenly, well into a novel set in the mid-eighteenth century, I wanted to investigate some of the nuts and bolts of gunnery at sea. Simple, I thought. I'll find a book. That in itself wasn't easy, as it turned out. Or even possible, in the area that I was specifically after. And many of the volumes I needed were either in obs...

W ith impeccable timing, my ebook publisher Endeavour Press just told me that my sea novella, The Devil's Luck, is going up for free on Amazon at nine o'clock THIS MORNING!      Yeah, TODAY.      They suggested I asked as many people as possible to 'buy' it for nowt, to help it up the freebie ratings. I'm not sure how that helps me , but they say it does. Optimum time for free download algorithm is as close to nine as possible, so if you're feeling bored with toast and Weetabix, please click on the url below . Failing that, do it when you've finished crunching, or any time to suit yersen. And you don't even need a Kindle, I've just learned from this magnificently useful AE site - I've put the link below for people like me who tend not to read instructions. For once, it seems, I haven't missed the boat...     Missing the boat, however, is a trick I've made into something of an art form over the years. Most spectacularly was when I had...