22-07-2022

It's been wonderful weather. Real sun and record temperatures; but the heat is having a terrible effect on my house plants, due to the increase in insects. My chillies have greenfly, my weeping fig has scale insects, my livistonia has rust and my rose (outside, it is true) has black spot. No silver lining without a cloud.  However, I am consoling myself with the progress of my latest book, Keepers of the Sun. It's a follow-up to The Green Enclave where the school hacker Stick, and Allie, a doctor’s daughter, had become an item, but in this  one  Keepers of the Sun they are separated, Allie’s mother having found her daughter a prestigious medical course in Chile, part of Runa Five, South America.  As I mentioned in the previous blog conditions are the same with the world starved of oxygen, no naturally growing vegetation and gross inequalities in the population with many living in wretched poverty.  When Allie rescues a young thief from the police in a local mall she runs into trouble and eventually becomes embroiled with a rebel group who wish to overthrow the corrupt government.  These rebels have links to an ancient Incan tribe, descendants of the mighty Inca civilisation, some of whom appear to have miraculous powers.  But can they prevail against corrupt authority?

18-04-2022

NEW BOOK:  I’m happy to report that the latest book in the Runa Series, Keepers of the Sun, is coming along nicely. In fact it should be ready to publish shortly so keep an eye out on Amazon. The Runa Series is set in a future world starved of oxygen, where the ozone layer has been so destroyed it is almost impossible for vegetation to grow. As an earth denuded of plants is only barely able to survive governments are doing their best to preserve and increase any greenery they have by means of Green Enclaves, forests which are protected by a variety of different means from the rays of the sun which are now lethal.  People also have to wear arm packs which provide them with oxygen.  However in many respects the world is much the same as it is today in that there are pockets of deep poverty while some people are extremely wealthy, and some sectors of society have greater privileges than others.  The first book in the series, The Green Enclave, dealt with one of these protected forests and told the story of Jake whose father is connected to one of these enclaves but has gone missing, his flat ransacked.   Aided by his girlfriend Allie and Stick the school’s hacker, Jake tries to find out what has happened to his father. In this new book, Keepers of the Sun,

13-04-2022

THE HUNT FOR THE NIGHTINGALE  by Sarah Ann Juckes is a truly delightful tale of a young boy’s search for his missing sister, their shared love of birds and the song  of a particular nightingale.  Jasper wonders why his sister Rosie has not returned home from university and gone with him to the tree in the field next to their house so that they can listen to the nightingale together as they always did in the holidays.  As the nightingale has not returned either Jasper, who suffers anxiety attacks, is really worried.  Then he learns that the nightingale has been heard at a motorway station some distance away and coupled with something Rosie had said the last time he saw her he realises that that is where he will find them both.  Gathering his backpack and his courage he sets off as far as he can go with the bus until his money runs out and then begins to walk.   As he does so

15-03-2022

This is an engaging, exciting and intriguing tale of the orphan Bastien Bonlivre  and his friends, Sami, Theo and Alice, as they try to solve the mystery of the strange deaths of Bastien’s author parents. The conditions in the orphanage where the boys are virtually imprisoned are dreadful (cold onion soup for a main meal and being locked in a broom cupboard in the dark for hours as a punishment);  while the director, the villainous Monsieur Xavier,  eats a glistening roast duck with dauphinoises potatoes as the children starve. 

20-02-2022

The Observer called The Explorer, about four children who escape a plane crash in the jungle, ‘a gripping story of survival and the tenacity of the human spirit against all the odds’ and it became a Sunday Times Children’s book of the year.  It is certainly a rivetting read.  When a small plane on its way to Manaus crashes in the Amazonian jungle the pilot, whose apparent heart attack has caused the crash, is killed but his four child passengers survive.  

02-02-2022

Early in life we often moan and groan about punctuation.  What is the point, we think.  Who cares where you put the comma?  In fact people hardly used punctuation at all in the early years of writing and it was only when Gutenberg’s press got going and things were printed as opposed to transcribed by hand that it became common to punctuate.

24-12-2021

Well readers I’m looking forward to getting to know you and telling you a bit about myself (well, the good bits at least), and what I’m working on at the moment.  It won’t involve anything strictly personal since I understand that you’re here because you love books and that’s what I really want to talk about – all those books I love, (as well as my own, of course!)  and hopefully the ones you love.  Just let me know.  An author’s life is frequently solitary and so it’s good for our morale to hear what young people are reading and enjoying these days.

17-12-2021

I haven't written anything in the blog for some time and I feel a bit guilty about that but I attribute it to the way things deliberately foil me just when I'm going to get started.  You know what I mean.  The mascara brush which disappears from the dressing table you're still sat at, the pen which wilfully hides behind the router, or the vanishing password crib sheet which you keep in a code that even you can't understand sometimes.  Well my life has been a bit like that recently but now I'm back   I'm in the middle of a very interesting Patrick Ness...

02-12-2021

Well I promised to tell you about the latest book I've been reading and believe me it's been  well worth the time spent.  MORE THAN THIS is an earlier work by Patrick Ness, an amazing writer who has won multiple awards including...

15-10-2021

Review of Ink by Alice Broadway. Winner of Leeds Book Awards.    I have just read Ink, by Alice Broadway, winner of the Leeds Book Awards. It has an unlikely premise.  The heroine, Leora, lives in a society where everyone is ‘inked’ or tattooed almost from birth and thereafter throughout their lives with details of events as they occur – naming, school, engagements, exams marriage and so on...

17-06-2021

Bulb by Bradley Wind. A vivid and engrossingread set in a richly imagined future world.  The MC Ben has conjoined twin brothers, rescued by his father from a replicants program called Lazarus, and is trying to engage in an online relationship with Susan, initially to discuss books...