Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Summer or autumn, does it matter?



1 September

According to some folk today is the start of autumn; it doesn’t really matter does it within our usual lives. So we haven’t had much of a summer really but that happens at times. Someone on telly was saying it’s the wettest summer we’ve had since the 1950s. Well, I remember doing door to door selling in 1982 and that was summer was a lot wetter than this last one. I wasn’t the only salesman who got caught up with in it either. Long term salesmen I knew were saying the same. But whatever, we can do nowt about it, so we just get on with it.

ISIS has blown up an ancient temple in Syria, and yet give permission for finding of ancient relics and so on and expect a large cut from their sale. In Afghanistan the Taliban blow up an old Buddhist site. A couple of years ago it came out that the ruling family in Saudi Arabia were destroying all the places where their prophet was born, lived and died and so on, and that family is supposed to be Muslim. So much for their peaceful religion eh?

But you know something, the faith of normal every day Muslims is far greater than a lot of the Christians I’ve met. The Muslim is not ashamed of his faith, some Christians are by the looks of it. Muslims are happy to abide by their dress code every day (although I don’t agree with the all-over black thing they make their women wear), many Christians won’t even wear a small fish of cross pin badge. Does it mean I will become a Muslim? Oh no, not on your life!

Have you noticed how many top selling writers now have a second writer listed on their book covers? There’s quite a few of them these days; Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, James Paterson are just three of them. Ian Rankin has worked as co-writer/producer of a play recently. I hope he doesn’t expand it to his books as well. My problem with this is that you can’t tell how much the top name wrote and how much the other name wrote. Or were they the editors? If so, why not just as the words ‘Edited by ******). At least readers would know wouldn’t they?

The thing is, each writer has their own ‘voice’ and no other writer can copy that voice in additional writing, no matter how they are as writers. The guy who tried to write more James Bond books seems to have sank without trace. This was something I worried about with my two Fred Copper novels that are based in Cambridge. What I was concerned about was that some folk would say I was trying to make a Cambridge version of Inspector Morse. I wasn’t, actually, I’m still not. As Simon Whaley explained to me, my voice is different to Dexter’s, therefore there is no similarity. As a fan of Morse anyway, I do know my story lines and plot are not found in any of the Morse novels.

Arathusia is slowly moved on with another 1,000 words done this morning. Makes a difference not putting telly on as soon as I get up. Hopefully I managed to close a hole I realised was in there, and not only that, but I also opened up a whole new area to work on and expand. I shall be getting back to it later this afternoon after I’ve finished here. The major job though is to get the hand written first draft typed up. That will be a big a job methinks.

There’s a new dino show on this evening with Ellie Harrison. And at 9pm Liz Bonnin is in India looking at their wild life. Two of my favourite presenters both on telly the same night. As it is, I can’t hope to equal the filming they will talk about, which means my friends you will have to make do the T-Rex we saw last week … 



Today’s funny …

A woman in her 50s was driving with a friend. She went through a red light. The friend didn't say anything. But then she went through another one. The friend said, "Do you realize you just went through two red lights?"
"Oh," she said, "was I driving?              

No comments:

Post a Comment