Bryan Islip's Blog, page 58

Message on a doorstep

Though none have appeared in the national media Going with Gabriel has received some brilliant 'private' reviews since publication 11 February. Nevertheles its sales are not exactly rippling the surface of the The Bookseller pond. I've asked this before - about a million times - but why? Why does the media review books only when they're written by well-known authors, encouraging readers to buy the things 'sight unseen'?

My wife is an avid reader of novels. She reads at least three novels a mon...

Good news from Goodreads

A 40 years old lady in Southend-on Sea made my day the other day. She calls herself Zephfire on the Goodreads website. I sent her one of my publicity giveaway review copies of Going with Gabriel and this is what she wrote about it...


'I won this book on Goodread's Giveaways and I am really so pleased that I did! being a privately published book I doubt it'll be readily available in the bookstores and that is in itself a crime!
This is such an unusual book, I expected it to be a sort of Tom Sawy...

Rose Feather (1)

Well here we go again. If you like this beginning / think it holds promise / captures interest strongly enough - or not. Let me know ... please?


Rose Feather

Chapter one

At the top of the stairs she opened the door, slipped into the crowded, silent hall, made her way as unobtrusively as she could around the backs of the spectators. Billy wasn't behind the bar, only this bosomy blonde woman she'd never seen before. She tried a smile but the woman, unimpressed, made no attempt at a welcome. "What'...

'Orrible old politics

I've read biographies of most of the British poets, more than one biography of some of them. Right now, for instance, I'm currently well into my third helping of the life and works of Robert Burns. Fascinating stuff.

It seems that Rabbie and other poets have at least one thing in common with most of us common folk in that they generally loathed politics and despised their politicians of the day.

I'm told we in the UK have something called a general election in the offing. Every time I switch ...

And now for something different.

I am thinking of doing something a bit different with this blog.

I've made a start on writing my third novel, provisionally entitled, 'Rose Feather'. What I have in mind is to post each chapter here as it is finished - that is, as finished as the first flush of a chapter can be finished even though it will be changed and edited time and time again along the way according to the developing storyline.

Bearing in mind that I do not at this point know any more than you about where this young lady...

Selling books

For the past couple of years I've been getting The Bookseller each week. The big feature that recurs time and again is the battle between book agents / publishers and retailers both high street and on-line. They seem like mad dogs scrapping and snarling with each other over the bones of some unfortunate animal.

The quality of books, or rather the content of books, the joy they bring to millions now and historically seems hardly to be an issue to these people. Of course the latest object of gra...

Storms and Old Masters

Weather is boring but a force ten wind, that's interesting!

And gale force winds up to force ten is what we had all (last) night long. The sea this morning has gone from blue/gray to titanium white, the bushes in our garden are thrashing about like whirling dervishes, sounds like a tube train emerging from a tunnel, rain reduced visibility meaning I can barely see Loch Ewe. Few birds fly today, like British Airways tomorrow.

A good day to be inside strong stone walls that have felt all this bef...

Burns and The Holy Fair

If someone asks you the old old question, 'What would you change if you could go back in time?' and after you've replied to the effect that you wouldn't change a thing, what if you had no choice but to go back anyway? To which era of time would you return?

It is probably a truism that, the older we get the more we think of the future - until we reach a certain age / stage when thoughts of future and present give way to the past.

I confess to becoming more and more interested in history. Not my ...

Another brick out of the wall?

I came across The Optimum Population Trust whilst researching my novel Going with Gabriel. It seemed to me that the objectives of this body were both positive and realisable. In personal conversations, in the odd oblique public reference and in reviews of GwG it is apparent to me that the vast najority of us do actually sense the problem and do actually want to bring the subject of human population growth out into the open. And as I understand it, this is the first objective of the OPT.

In my ...

Nothing for nothing

"Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it; let's do it, let's fall in bed." Or something like that goes the old American songbook.

Yesterday we walked the new footpath around Laide wood. We were watching for The Arrival and that was just as well, for as we approached that jewel of a lochan amidst the denseness of the trees Dee almost stepped on a frog. Well, actually not one frog but two, for the larger, fatter female had a smaller, mightily amorous male clinging tenaciously to her b...