Yup, I should have mentioned this earlier, but my newest Holmes came out from Wildside Press Books a few weeks ago and will be at Malice Domestic – look for it there. I love writing Hokmes for several reasons, one is that there’s no heavy-duty CSI stuff, simply a consulting detective and his best friend, doing what humans do, asking questions, talking to people, and making deductions by the human ability to see patterns even when they aren’t obvious. And Victorian London is a fascinating place in which to set stories – as are places like Bodmin, Bartlett, and more rural areas where things were both oddly similar to farming areas nowadays, as well as quite different in some ways. One day I really must have Holmes stay on a farm and investigate, as a farmer for almost 30 years now, half the fun of doing that would be the differences and similarities. Hmmm, excuse me while I make a note or two…
My Musings on Old Age 19
Nothing is more certain to come around in life than death and taxes. Fortunately only one does it annually.
BONDED AGENT by David Riley
Quick review of this book from Steve Johnson- wow. nudity, tits, a lizard king, and some very strange events. Read this, and if you’re my age, it’s all gonna remind you in a very weird way of Jim Morrison. And that can’t be bad!
And (with a broad grin after posting that from a friend who reviews for this site now and again ) What he says, plus – I like Sarah, it’s really really nice to see an agent that’s female, conpetant, and likeable, also wish we had ‘a bright orange door’ (with all those services behind it) around here.
I set out to read this a few pages at a time over a couple of weeks. (I prefer print books and ended up with this on my computer) Somehow that didn’t work, I kept finding I’d read well into the time i was planning to do something else – a good recommendation. I laughed aloud at the episode of King Karl and the reclamation of his scepter – and world. And then I moved the PDF to a flash drive so I can read it again, and maybe again, and … Yup, I liked it. Buy the book.
My Musings on Old Age 18
“Do you miss men now you’re getting older?” I was asked recently.
“Not often” I replied. “I’m still quite a good shot.”
This month is Definitely Dry
well, so far anyhow. 47mms and only five days to go. Mind you it isn’t too cold either, so the grass has stayed growing, but to remind me that it’ll be winter soon, the hens have mostly gone off the lay. That also reminds me I should start in buying firewood, sigh. It feels as if it was barely New Year and already the year is a third over.
New Sherlock Novella Available
yes, Wildside now have what i think of as my “Sherlock and cat” novella out. This is a follow on to the short story I had in MX Books’ major Holmes anthology. SOMETHING THE CAT DRAGGED IN is available on amazon, and at Wildside, and I love the cover. and for a mere $1.99 you too can enjoy a cat-burglar – the genuine feline kind – and how Holmes becomes involved when Mandalay once again drags something very strange home to give Miss Emily Jackson.
My Holmes Novella
Some time ago I was aked to write a Holmes story for a major anthology. I did, but I found that I loved the characters I’d created so much I couldn’t just drop them. So I wrote Something The Cat Dragged in – which has just appeared at Wildside and on amazon, to my delight. Someone asked me how I came to think of Mandalay, the cat hero. That’s simple.
Years ago a friend ended up sitting on my couch, telling me sadly that it was her birthday, and no one had given her anything. It wasn’t that she wanted presents so much as she wanted to know someone cared. I left her for a few seconds and returned with the wrapped gift I’d had for her, she opened it and was happier. Then Thunder (my Ocicat) who had just returned inside again after his initial greeting and departure patted urgently at her knees. She looked down and he was offering a very recently dead mouse. She burst into laughter and cheered up completely. And that was where Mandalay came from.
Since then another Mandalay story has occurred to me, I hope that it too will be published. After all, there’s a lot of us out there that love Sherlock Holmes detective stories – and cats.
I’m Officially Elderly.
Yup, today is my birthday and I’m 70. I guess I can’t say I’m middle-aged any longer. Three score and ten is beyond that. Not even ‘late middle-aged’ cuts it any more. If I’d lived in ancient Rome I’d now be very very old – average age then was 40ish. Okay, but, as has been said, it beats hell out of the alternative. This year I have four books to write, a dozen stories, two dozen articles, a lot of reviews, and other items too. I may be 70 but I’m certainly not going to have time to dwell on it.
Mind you, in my teens I was reckless – something common to teens even now. But looking back I’m surprised I survived to this age. There was the time when, at 16, I was in his car with a friend. We were racing another friend. I was driving, no, I know I can’t drive, I couldn’t then either. I was steering, my friend was working the clutch and accelerator. I passed the other car – doing around 110mph (note that’s miles not kilometres) and swung back ahead of it a bit too sharply. I tunked his front corner with the back corner of the car I was ‘driving,’ lost the car, swerved, back, over again, back again, and then the car rolled. Several times, and taking out a length of a farmner’s boundary fence. The car came to rest, we staggered out, quite uninjured, got the car out of the fencing and drove home. Yes, we went back and fixed the fence, and no, pretty much no one HAD seat belts then. And that was only one of the damfool things I did in those days. So I’m happy I’ve made it this far, back then I never expected to. But then, they do say that only the good die young…
My Musings on Old Age 17
In the 1960s I heard a story about a young king of ancient days. He wanted to learn wisdom but found that this came in brief items in all manner of books, and wise saying from all sorts of places. So he gathered a team of learned men, and told them that he wanted all the wisdom in the world written into a set of books. And after years of toil they came to him with a set of ten huge books, which the king had printed and distributed to every town.
But after seeing that most of his people couldn’t read or didn’t bother to read so many books, he went back to those that had done them and asked For all wisdom to be boiled down into a sngle book, and after many more years that book was brought to him. Not content, (typical king of the time) he considered again, and asked that the wisdom of the world be brought down to a phrase. And it was, and the king had THIS TOO SHALL PASS engraved over the door of his palace. Still he wasn’t satisfied, and at last, he came back to his sages and asked for wisdom to be expressed as one word and it was. The wisdom of the world is MAYBE.
To my mind that’s right. But I prefer my own wisdom which backs up to the earlier phrase. Endure the bad, it passes, wallow in the good, it won’t last – but it’ll come around again. And be optimistic, people that are, always feel a lot better than pessimists- we also live longer, say medical specialists. In my case that seems to run in the family genes most times. We’re optimists, and I like it that way. Because sure there’s bad times, but you live through them, and then there’s the good times, they’re great and you can look forward to them coming back. And somehow, if you expect them, there they are, on the horizon heading your way. At least, I’ve always found it so.
Winter Warmer
11 May 2016
or so all the forecasts say, and I think they may be right. I’m merely grateful if that’s so, less firewood used, less expense as a result, and my wrecked leg may have less to say. The prolonged autumn has also left me with happier hens, they’ve only recently stopped laying and started to shed feathers all over, and the local mice haven’t yet begun to sneak in out of the cold. Of course, the lack of them annoys Thunder (my 18lb Ocicat) but you can’t have everything. (Although given half a chance, he tries.) And to keep him thinking of something other than food, we had an earthquake a few days back. a 4 point something. Small bump, followed by a larger one. THAT got his mind fof mice – and mine (temporarily) off writing. But only briefly. Then he went back to check his plate, and I got on with my newest Holmes book. Earthquakes here are just an accepted blip in life.