David L. Atkinson's Blog, page 117

Writing - 10 things we didn't know last week

Snippets of news for your entertainment from this week.

1. Butterflies in Europe are becoming lighter coloured because of warmer temperatures.
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2. Fair haired players are 15% more likely to score at a penalty shootout than dark haired footballers.

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3. St. Mary's Church is the most ambiguous term on Wikipedia.

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4. Large ocean waves can travel through sea ice for hundreds of kilometres.

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5. Britain's first Eurocrats invented the expression "French face-ache" to sum up the effect of long days speaking fiendishly technical French in 1970s Brussels.

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6. Congo-Brazzaville has a peat bog the size of England.

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7. Crickets on two Hawaiian islands have evolved an inability to sing to hide from deadly flies.

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8. It takes more than an hour to walk from one end of the Airbus campus in Toulouse to the other.

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9. Spelthorne in Surrey is the mining capital of England and Wales.

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10. Iceland has the highest level of obesity and overweight people of anywhere in western Europe.

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God Bless

Writing - Proof reading and final steps.

The process of producing a book really only begins when the manuscript is completed.


When I order my proof copies I usually have only a few changes to the manuscript so imagine my disappointment when the book cover came back and is totally unsuitable! I am experimenting with real photographs which you will see on this blog.



Proof readersI am lucky enough to have two volunteer readers who cheerfully carry out a great job for me for nothing more than a copy of the finished article. Not only do they save me money but while I am experimenting with photography they are giving me time.  

Different sites are available for writers of ebooks to publish their works. However, there is no consistency between sites regarding the size of the image for your cover. That may seem minor but of course if you need to expand your image then any imperfections may well be magnified. I have had problems with smashwords.com and the first Steele novel 'I Have To Get It Right' which has a different cover to the paperback and Amazon versions as a result.

The pleasure will come when all of the preparation work is complete and the finished copies are in my hands and the hands of the readers.Launch date is possibly mid-June. Watch this space for more news.

On VG today.
http://venturegalleries.com/serial/it-was-vital-to-identify-the-risks-on-his-route/
God Bless

Political Writing - London's broken

It's my opinion but not without evidence - London is broken! In fact if you go back far enough London has always been a sickly beast.
'A city in which people starve to death in the streets every week; and, in which the middle classes are corrupt, complacent, lazy, greedy and dishonest, more interested in the pursuit of shares than the pursuit of love.'
The city is London but the date is the mid 1860's! Sound familiar? The quote is from Charles Dickens while writing 'Our Mutual Friend' and I found it in the biography written by Claire Tomalin that I'm currently reading. Dickens wrote about his environment and the people he came across during his travels, he set up a home for prostitutes, he supported his extended family and showed himself to be a caring and sensitive man. He was dismayed at the state of the poor in London. Nothing seems to have changed in the last 200 years!

Other evidence comes from the result of government policies. That organisation feel the need to boost housebuilding and to create massive infrastructure projects that they believe will increase employment and galvanise the economy into a faster growth rate. There seems to have been a level of success if their strategies are correct. Nation wide there is an increase in house prices. The government have leapt upon the increase as success but it seems to me that when the increase is around 8% - 9% countrywide  and 17% - 18% in the capital that there is a falseness behind the upturn. 
The banks have in the last couple of weeks announced tighter controls on lending. Such rules as reducing the number of times your salary that you can borrow on a mortgage, and not taking the wife's salary as part of the equation. If you are making it tougher to borrow and prices are increasing, particularly in London, then that housing price bubble is going to burst. The largest building society in the country, the Nationwide, has already said this week that the movement of properties is slowing.

'If you own a property in London you must already be a millionaire!' - That was a comment by a stand up comedian this week. You can see where he's coming from. When house prices are so high in London who can afford to buy them? Where are the jobs that are paying film star salaries? When the housing bubble bursts once again, what will happen in the metropolis? Economies that have proved successful throughout the 2008 crash, such as China, Brazil and Germany, are founded on manufacturing and export not lending and borrowing.

My mother was often heard to use the saying,
'Never a lender or a borrower be'
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has instigated a strategy against lending and borrowing, particularly aimed at pay day lenders. It is the Church Credit Champions Network (CCCN) a credit union run for the benefit of its members and providing an attractive alternative to the pay day lending companies that are charging interest rates in the 1000s of percent per year. The pilot starts in London, Southwark and Liverpool.
In the last month the Times in its infinite wisdom has published a rich list. Why do ordinary people with little prospect of joining that group need to know who has more money than someone else? I would rather see a list of people who have donated money to charity from their own personal fortunes, much more praiseworthy.
I could rant on for much longer about the imbalances in society, the negative role that London plays in this country and the fact that the UK would benefit if it was London that was annexed from the UK and not Scotland. I won't I will just leave you with these thoughts that came to me at 05:09 this morning.
Millionaire’s Lament
What is the point of a millionaireif they exist just to make more?
What is the point of a millionaireif all they make is more poor?
What is the point of a millionaireif the earth is simply their playground?
What is the point of a millionaireIf when they play no one’s around?
What is the point of a millionaireif the money they spend is wasted?What is the point of a millionaireif the prices they pay are inflated?
What is the point of a billionaire?
©David L Atkinson May 2014
God Bless

Poetry Thursday 112 - Baby Boomer Generation and Millionaire's Lament

The poem today was in response to a challenge that I read earlier this week. The style seemed to fit!
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Baby Boomers
Born into a black and white world and a simpler existence.Earth’s produce available and unsullied by chemicals or health and safety insistence.
Psychodelia and the beautiful people’s flower power resistanceto societies rules and sterile, unfeeling dominance.
Free love, happy beads and Sgt. Pepper’s musical alliancewith halucogenic’s pictures of a common people’s emergence.
Soon to end and be dragged back to Big Brother’s will and to subserviencedominated by Disney’s own hooting and vindictive fairy Maleficent(s)
The Millennium approached with threats of computer failure and imploding finance.The reality being a somewhat understated nascence.
Noughties have come and gone with our lot damaged by banks’ deviancecreating national voting tendencies thrown out of balance.
The future holds more questions than answers for the aging Baby Boomers guidance.But it appears that society is no more than a colossal hindrance.©David L Atkinson May 2014

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Millionaire’s Lament
What is the point of a millionaireif they exist just to make more?
What is the point of a millionaireif all they make is more poor?
What is the point of a millionaireif the earth is simply their playground?
What is the point of a millionaireIf when they play no one’s around?
What is the point of a millionaireif the money they spend is wasted?
What is the point of a millionaireif the prices they pay are inflated?
What is the point of a billionaire?
©David L Atkinson May 2014
God Bless

Writing - A Venture Gallery Blog Tour

A submission as part of a blog tour to be featured on Venture Galleries hosted by Caleb Pirtle III and Stephen Woodfin.


Recently, I was invited to join a touring group. No, we’re not singing and playing music.  But we are sharing a bit about ourselves as writers and then shamelessly promoting our writing. Our answering the four questions below will give you some idea who we are as writers and why we pound these silly keys over and over again.
What am I working on?
I have recently finished the manuscript of the 6th Steele novel 'Castled' and much of my time is spent preparing that book for publication. The cover is currently presenting a problem which I hope will be solved by the end of this week. Even so I have started my next story which once again features Patrick Steele. The idea for the story came to me as I was nearing the end of 'Castled' so at the moment very busy.
How does my work differ from others in this genre?
I don't consider myself as a writer tied to one genre. I have written the Steele novels which are all of a similar genre but then there is also 'Cessation' a dystopian novel. In fact some of the Steele novels tend towards possible futures while still being written in the present time. 'A Changed Reality' explores a possibly 'other' future without being intentionally SF. In a sense I write adventure/thriller/mystery stories but with my own leaning towards social concerns.
Why do I write what I write?
To adequately explain why I write it is necessary to return to the beginning. I have had the urge to write for a number of years without really knowing what category I would be fitting into and there hangs the problem. Since my teenage years I've always felt it wrong to categorise or be categorised. As a member of the baby boomer generation living through the flower power/free love era, I question the realities to which the accepted establishment expect us to conform. So I don't write to fulfil the parameters of a particular genre, I write to satisfy my own personal need.
How does my writing process work?
My writing process is intensely personal and is similar to Ian Rankin's, he is the guy who writes the Rebus novels about a Scottish police detective operating in and around Edinburgh. He writes from scratch, just sits down and does it. I'm not that good I usually get an idea, and it can come from anywhere, rough out the first five chapters, no more than a couple of sentences per chapter, list my characters, location and skills or equipment then I start. Quite often where I'm going is decided by the characters and their personalities. I think that is why I've not suffered the dreaded writer's block. No matter where you are in your writing if things seem to be slowing or taking a different direction don't be afraid to deviate from your plan. Sticking slavishly to a plan is where blocks can be generated if the plan has weaknesses! 
Thanks for touring along with me. Now you will have the opportunity to see how another writer I know creates the work she does:
Claude Nougat Born in Brussels, brought up on three continents (Europe, Africa, America), Claude Nougat is a Columbia University graduate (economics). Now happily retired, she dedicates herself to her two lifelong passions, writing and painting. So far she has published two books in Italian and eight books in English (6 novels, one collection of short stories and an essay on development aid).

On VG today.
http://venturegalleries.com/serial/he-was-trying-to-escape-when-the-car-hit-him/
God Bless

Tuesday Recipe - Beef and honey stew

Beef and Honey Stew
I am not usually a fan of sweet and sour style food but when this was described as 'comfort food' I felt that I had to give it a go. In fact it is delicious but I did deviate slightly from the recipe that is produced in full on the TAB above.As a rule I fry off my onions with a couple of cloves of garlic which were crushed and chopped. I also added a tablespoon of tomato puree which gives a slightly Italian flavour. If you stick to the recipe I'm sure you will enjoy the flavour.On this occasion I served the stew with Yorkshire pudding but it could also be served with mashed potato.
FunI received the following today. It made me smile wistfully.
(Under the age of 40? You won't understand.)
 My mum used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread butter on bread on the  same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem  to get food poisoning..

 Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag,  not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.. coli

 Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake or at the beach instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

 We all took PE .... and risked permanent injury with a pair of Dunlop sandshoes instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors that cost as much as a small car. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

 We got the cane for doing something wrong at school, they used to call it discipline yet we all grew up to accept the rules and to honour &  respect those older than us.

 We had 30+ kids in our class and we all learned to read and write, do maths and spell almost all the words needed to write a grammatically  correct letter......., FUNNY THAT!!

 We all said prayers in school and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We also learnt our times table by reciting them every day.
 I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was  allowed to be proud of myself.

 I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station,  Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. We weren't!!

 Oh yeah ... and where was the antibiotics and sterilisation kit when I  got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

 We played "King of the Hill" on piles of gravel left on vacant building sites and when we got hurt, mum pulled out the 2/6d bottle of iodine and then we got our backside spanked.


 Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10 day dose of antibiotics and then mum calls the lawyer to sue the contractor for  leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

 To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.
 How could we possibly have known that?

 We never needed to get into group therapy and/or anger management classes.

 We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!   How did we ever survive?

God Bless

Writing - The first ever assassination?

Is this the first ever assassination?
A 16th Century Handgun
At around 6am on Monday 13th November 1536, Robert Packington left his house in London's Cheapside to attend early Mass in the Mercer's Chapel on the north side of West Cheap. He was probably carrying a lantern because the morning was dark and smoke from a thousand chimneys mingling with early morning mist reduced visibility to just a few yards. As he crossed a thoroughfare only a few yards from his destination a shot rang out and Packington fell down dead.
A crowd gathered pretty quickly as it was a gathering point for the unemployed hoping for work but no one noticed a gun man which was unusual. At that time the weapon of choice was a rather large and cumbersome arquebus but it would seem Packington was shot with a smaller more discreet wheellock pistol. In fact poor Robert Packington holds the dubious distinction of being the first person in England to be killed with a handgun.

The reasons for the murder were probably rooted in the fact that Packington had been outspoken regarding the 'cruelty of the clergy' and perhaps had imported a copy of the banned English translation of the New Testament by William Tyndale along with other heretical publications. Packington was in fact a messenger between merchants in the City and exiled members in Antwerp.

In fact twenty two years earlier there was a similar killing of Richard Hunne, by hanging in St Paul's Cathedral, and he was also a critic of the then religious hierarchy. Dean John Incent, dean of St Paul's, confessed to involvement in the murder on his deathbed and may have been the paymaster. Even John Stokesley, Bishop of London, was believed to be involved having paid someone 60 gold pieces for the commission of the crime.

Stokesley was  a passionate believer that the vernacular of the Bible should not be available in England and ruthless and rich enough to carry out the crime. He'd been fighting a losing battle for years to prevent Tyndale's translation and frustration could have taken over and been focussed against the confidant of Thomas Cromwell, Robert Packington.

We'll never know for sure.

God Bless

Write - An interesting snippet from this week

Life is fascinating and seems to be more so the older I become. The are anniversaries coming and going continually, we commemorate the beginning of World War I this year, for example. And there are more below.

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This coin was minted in copper from around 1860 and remained legal tender until 1969. The coin was 1/480th of a pound. At that time there were 240d to £1; 20 shillings to £1; 8 half crowns to £1 and so on. A bit of a mathematical nightmare working to the base 12, or 240! In fact around the time I was born they were still using farthings!
After decimalisation in 1971 the 1/2p coin was re-introduced until 1974 when it was finally withdrawn. At that time it was 1/200th of £1!
There was a whole raft of language involved with the halfpenny which rarely received its full name. Quite often it was a ha'penny in bot incarnations and if you had 1 and 1/2d it was a penny ha'penny. Sometimes the same sum became 3 ha'pence. Which leads nicely into a piece of entertainment that was popular in the middle of the 20th century, - the monologue.
[image error]Stanley Holloway (1890 - 1982) 
Stanley Holloway popularised this form of poetry reading and I remember having an LP on vinyl of his recitations. One of them I reproduce below.
Three Ha'Pence a Foot

I'll tell you an old-fashioned story
That grandfather used to relate,
Of a builder and joining contractor
Who's name it were Sam Oswaldthwaite.

In a shop on the banks of the Irwell
There Sam used to follow his trade,
In a place you'll have heard of called Bury
You know, where black puddings is made.

One day Sam were filling a knot hole
With putty when in through the door,
Came an old man fair reeked i'whiskers
An th'old man said good morning I'm Noah.

Sam asked Noah what were his business
And t'old chap went on to remark,
That not liking the look of the weather
He was thinking of building an ark.

He'd got all the wood for the bulwarks
And all t'other shipbuilding junk,
Now he wanted some nice birds-eye maple
To panel the sides of his bunk.

Now maple were Sams monopoly
That means it were all his to cut,
And nobody else hadn't got none
So he asked Noah three ha'pence a foot.

A ha'penny too much replied Noah
Penny a foots more the mark,
A penny a foot and when rain comes
I'll give you a ride in my ark.

But neither would budge in the bargain
The whole thing were kind of a jam,
So Sam put his tongue out at Noah
And Noah made long bacon at Sam.

In wrath and ill-feeling they parted
Not knowing when they'd meet again,
And Sam 'ad forgot all about it
'Til one day it started to rain.

It rained and it rained for a fortnight
It flooded the whole countryside,
It rained and it still kept on raining
'Til th'Irwell were fifty miles wide.

The houses were soon under water
And folks to the roof had to climb,
They said t'was the rottenest summer
As Bury had had for some time.

The rain showed no sign of abating
And water rose hour by hour,
'Til th'only dry land were at Blackpool
and that were on top of the tower.

So Sam started swimming for Blackpool
It took him best part of a week,
His clothes were wet through when he got there
And his boots were beginning to leak.

He stood to his watch-chain in water
On tower-top just before dark,
When who should come sailing towards him
But old Noah steering his ark.

They stared at each other in silence
'Til ark were alongside all but,
Then Noah said what price yon maple
Sam answered three ha'pence a foot.

Noah said nay I'll make thee an offer
Same as I did t'other day,
A penny a foot and a free ride
Now come on lad what do thee say.

Three ha'pence a foot came the answer
So Noah his sail had to hoist,
And sail off again in a dudgeon
While Sam stood determined but moist.

So Noah cruised around flying his pigeons
'Til fortieth day of the wet,
And on his way home passing Blackpool
He saw old Sam standing there yet.

His chin just stuck out of the water
A comical figure he cut,
Noah said now whats the price of yon maple
And Sam answered three ha'pence a foot.

Said Noah you'd best take my offer
It's the last time I'll be hereabouts,
And if water comes half an inch higher
I'll happen get maple for nowt.

Three ha'pence a foot it'll cost you
And as for me Sam says don't fret,
'Skys took a turn since this morning
I think it'll brighten up yet.God Bless

Writing - Smart guns and Steele's weapons

When creating a hero whether anti- or otherwise there is usually scope for introducing weapons of some description. My man Steele has three such options.
[image error]The Nemesis Sniper Rifle
The sniper rifle was used in 'I Have To Get It Right' and 'The 51st State' but not so often since those early stories.
For closer work Steele carries a Glock 27.Glock 27
This is his weapon of choice for 'wet work' and is used in the later stories such as 'Inceptus' - it is important to keep up-to-date as technological advances are made.
Now for the slightly more scary and extremely close work that Steele is quite accomplished in we have his knife.Fallkniven F1 Survival Knife
This is not a huge weapon but has the advantage of being held in a horizontal sheath, and if you are close enough to use a knife the odd inch doesn't make a huge amount of difference! Steele has used this evil blade to exact justice in many stories and in the new book 'Castled'
As mentioned above it is important to keep on the ball and weapons can play a significant part in stories. 
In the film Law Abiding Citizen Gerard Butler uses a handgun with needles soaked in poison  in the handle, that shoot out into the user's palm when he tries to use the weapon. He traps one of his quarry in this way. I was intrigued by an article in the news this morning about smart guns and was intrigued to read on.
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Apparently smart guns have been around for quite a number of years but the technology seems to be more sophisticated than in the early efforts forty years ago. The weapon shown above has proximity sensors and many other facilities. The Armatix iP1 is a smart semi-automatic pistol that communicates with an RFID watch, which is worn by the user of the gun.Thanks to an internal tracking device on both the gun and watch, the pistol will not fire if it is away from the owner. The watch can also provide useful data to the wearer, such as how many bullets have been fired. A US and Austrian company called Biomac is currently working on a system that will use optical sensors to measure the biometric data below a user's skin in order to determine whether the individual holding the gun is the rightful owner of the weapon.
If the biometric data isn't recognised, the gun will not fire. The company claims it will allow for the recognition of a number of different users for a single gun and that "retro-fitting" - applying the system to older weapons - will be possible.

I can sense Steele having a change of weapon fairly soon!

God Bless

Write - Big Brother has you by the short and curlies!

Big Brother has you by the short and curlies!
So you think you have your life under control! Really! I have a theory that is bordering on science fiction and may be too strong for you to take so if you are of a nervous disposition it may be time to leave. However, whatever you do don’t look up to admire the sky; don’t fool yourself into thinking that your government hasn’t got your DNA; and stop using the internet – if you can!The above may be seemingly scary stuff but consider surveillance by camera and satellite. Did you know that when a rocket sets off into space to launch a large satellite or travels to the International Space Station it often takes large numbers of mini satellites? They cost around £200, consist of a 10cm cube and are packed with technology that can sample, tap into the internet and a myriad of other nefarious uses. Anyone can arrange for such a device to be circling this planet, or any company!Consider the interactions you have on a daily basis and never fool yourself into thinking that the internet hasn’t any involvement. The most common way of obtaining DNA, for example, is by mouth swab. Who is it that spends time, on average twice each year, probing round your mouth and usually keeps records on the internet? As soon as that information is on the dentist’s computer it is available across the world.Why do you think that the USA and UK were so quick to condemn the actions of Edward Snowden? The answer is simple – he was telling the truth. NSA, CIA, FBI, MI6, MI5 and many other security agencies around the world are probably tapping into our lives even as I write this. The real worry of course is that it’s already too late for Snowden and the rest of us. There are around seven million people in the UK that are not connected to the internet and are probably congratulating themselves that Big Brother can’t touch them because they’re not connected. However, where do they get these folk get income from? Who holds their health records? Do they shop with a card of some description? Even if you shop using cash and went into the bank to withdraw the cash over the counter your financial records are online. I know they are I worked in a bank!There was a bit of a fuss recently over Google losing a court case because a man complained that they kept financial records showing that he’d had his home repossessed years ago and that information was still available just by typing his name into the search engine. He successfully forced them to remove that from their records but surely the question goes much deeper. Who published that information on the net in the first place? Did his mortgage lender flag up his default or perhaps it was the credit checking agency, or the estate agents? The fact is Google may remove any reference to his financial problems but all they do is pull together information linked to a name from the World Wide Web! It’s still out there buddy!Every person in the UK, who has had a bank account, and the government forced even pensioners to have a bank account in which to have paid their state pensions, has a credit reference controlled by credit referencing agencies. They advertise that you can check your financial standing on the net for a small fee. Ipso facto everyone is on the net.
It may seem that I’m talking against the use of the internet but in fact what choices do any of us have? We are all in it, even if you don’t have a computer at home. The only solutions available would be to pull the plug on all electronic interchanging of information and return to pen and paper records secured in vaults, or to pull the world wide electric plug from the socket. Such an action would plunge us all into the dark ages, so we have to be smart online at home.Don’t waste your time railing against the internet. We ordinary citizens need to adopt high security measures at home. I used to find changing my passwords at work monthly, an absolute pain. They tell you not to write them down but if you are working on three or four systems, each with different passwords, remembering them becomes impossible after a while. However, you must decide to deal with that issue, whether it be regular changing passwords or pulling the plug on the computer at home altogether the single indisputable fact is that
you are on the net.
God Bless