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A Package Holiday to Earthsea!

27/11/2014

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I first read The Earthsea Trilogy when I was in my early twenties and absolutely loved it. The books are meant to be read in the order they were written: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan(1971), and The Farthest Shore (1972). My wife (who it is more than likely discovered them in the first place!) and I have often recommended them to friends, we certainly sent our son Tom off in their direction once he was old enough to enjoy them. It was in fact he who first realised that Le Guin had written a fourth book, Tehanu (1990), and I have been meaning to catch up with it for some years. My son recently prompted me to get on and re-read the books by giving me a lovely surprise gift of The Earthsea Quartet a few weeks back. I don’t think he was actually aware, I certainly wasn’t, that Le Guin has, since the publication of Tehanu, added another two volumes under the Earthsea banner, Tales from Earthsea (2001), and finally (the last, perhaps?) The Other Wind (2001). Although I don’t think they’re available in one book as The Earthsea Sextet. Tee hee hee! (Don’t quite know why I think that’s funny!). Anyway, Goodreads sensibly refers to them as The Earthsea Cycle - books 1 - 6. 

As for reading the first three books again over thirty years after my first outing to Earthsea, the experience was quite simply better than I’d imagined. I was both entranced and delighted by the books, not only by the clarity and drive of Le Guin’s narrative but also by the richness and depth of her always economic prose. I love The Lord of the Rings for its wealth and genius as an epic narrative, however, as a piece of fantasy writing, the world and people created by Le Guin in her Earthsea books have a depth and sense of reality with which Tolkien, in my opinion, never managed to imbue his land of Middle Earth or its characters - and she can cover in fifty pages what JRR would need most of a book to say. This was the first series I ever read that was about a school for the training of wizards, and whilst another school is almost certainly more popularly famous these days, if given the choice I’d definitely want my own wizard’s training to take place on Roke. The first three books were wonderful to read again, and the writing, perhaps not heeded by me then as much as now, was elegant and sublime. 

This brings me to Tehanu , the final book in The Earthsea Quartet (as my volume, re-issued in 2012, is entitled). The writing is once again impeccable, however, this is not a tale of epic fantasy like the first three adventures. The main character of the first three books, Ged, is largely absent and the main focus of the narrative is Tenar who we first meet in The Tombs of Atuan. Tehanu has, unlike its predecessors a mainly domestic setting and is concerned (it seemed to me) with the process we all must go through of accepting and accommodating ourselves with life and to how our lives may ultimately fall out. Le Guin has a number of points she wishes to make about gender inequality and the differences between male and female power. I felt that she was (for Le Guin that is) a little heavy-handed at times in her treatment of these matters, and there were just a few moments when I wanted to declare: yes, I already got that. The Taoist philosophy of balance that so firmly binds together this world of Earthsea is never pointed-up or highlighted in such a deliberate way as these feminist issues are in Tehanu. However, Le Guin is a very fine writer and whatever her motives for writing Tehanu, perhaps she simply wished to redress the balance and tidy up the rather male-centric world she’d created in the first three books, and while I’m not wholly convinced that this book should ever have been marketed as the final part of a quartet (so as not to disappoint those anticipating something altogether different, perhaps it should have been presented as a separate story about Earthsea? Just a thought!) it is still a very good book indeed. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  

So, I find myself with two more Earthsea books left to go. Perhaps I’ve had enough, already? Certainly not. I shall definitely be looking forward to reading Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind in the not too distant future ... and who knows, with Christmas fast approaching, maybe Santa, or someone else perhaps, might well be reading this blog post?


And now on to other matters:
PicturePrint versions of psychological thriller 'Roadrage' and horror/thriller 'Niedermayer & Hart'
Over the past ten days I’ve happily been required to fulfil an increasing number of orders for hard copy versions of both my books. Perhaps people are ordering them as gifts for Christmas for their ‘rellies’ or chums? The books are trade paperback (airport) sized, and were beautifully produced to a high standard by the sadly no longer trading print firm of MPG Biddles. A librarian friend claims the books have remained in good physical condition even after multiple loans - so, both good-looking and durable, definitely a winning combination! Anyway, my personal thanks to those of you buying print versions of the books. I do of course appreciate that they are considerably more expensive, but they do make for lovely reading and they look great on a shelf too! If anyone ever wants a copy signed, I’m always happy to oblige, simply get in touch through the contact form on this site.

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Finally, starting today, Kindle copies of my psychological thriller Roadrage are on a countdown deal. Once again, the best price comes at the beginning as it rises incrementally until returning to its normal retail price. I hope as many thriller readers as possible take advantage of this offer. Please take a peek at what people have said about Roadrage on the reviews page of this website, and if your appetite has been whetted - here’s the link to follow Amazon UK


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Art is Long and Time is Fleeting!

20/11/2014

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PictureKindle Countdown - starts today!
It has been rather a frustrating and disjointed week - I guess we all get ’em sometimes. My head and chest are still blocked-up with the remnants of the flu-like bug Judith and I fell prey to a few weeks back. We’d hoped this week to finally wave goodbye to the monumental scaffold that clings about our house, but there’s a problem with the flashing on a chimney, so the scaffold has to stay until the end of the month when our roofing guys can get on to it. Last night we went to the cinema and watched what was billed as a tour of the art treasures of the Vatican Museum in Rome. It turned out a big disappointment with lots of pointless tracking shots entering and exiting grand doors, or cameras pulling away to reveal the great sweep of a curving staircase, every meaningful moment meaningfully backed with meaningful music (geddit!), and then there were long lingering moments when we were transported to some darkly-lit space where a brooding bare-chested actor painfully emoted while the narration prattled on, ramming it home how artists suffer for their art - I don’t know about that, but I was certainly suffering about ten minutes into this ludicrously ponderous production with its fatuous commentary. For goodness sake, just show us more of the flippin’ art, the wonderful sculpture and fine painting, the Michelangelo and Raphael! What a wasted opportunity! 

Okay, that’s the ranting over and done with - good things happened too. My book Roadrage acquired a very nice review from Aditi Saha, an avid reader and book blogger who lives in West Bengal, India. Aditi posted her comments on Goodreads, Amazon.com and provided a first review for either of my books on Amazon India. Over the past two weeks I’ve been highlighting opportunities for Kindle readers in the US to buy copies of my books at greatly discounted prices. And from today there’s going to start a similar offer for UK readers. The countdown deal begins with Niedermayer & Hart from 20 November, immediately followed by Roadrage from the 27 November. As with the Amazon.com countdown offer, the very best price for each of the books will be at the start. I sincerely hope a large number of people take up this offer and I look forward to hearing whatever feedback they care to send my way over the coming weeks and months. Enjoy. Here’s the link to Niedermayer & Hart. 


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Random Harvest and Roadrage

14/11/2014

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My late mother adored a darn good film and was generally a lot of fun to watch a movie with. I went to the pictures with her often when I was a boy, and I recall she always got caught up in the action on screen very easily. Sometimes (as children are strangely wont to do!) I’d cringe with embarrassment at her cinema antics, like the time when we were watching Where Eagles Dare and at the moment when it looked certain that Richard Burton was a Nazi spy, Mam muttered loud enough for me and a few nearby rows to hear, “Ooo, you wicked bugger!” I momentarily shrank in my seat, and by the time the interval arrived (RB wasn’t, it turned out, a baddie, and yes, long movies had intermissions back in 1968!) Mam looked round at me, her eyes dancing with excitment and exclaimed, “It’s very exciting, Mart, isn’t it? Shall we have an ice-cream?”

Last weekend Judith and I watched a favourite film of Mam’s from her wartime days, which we’d bought on DVD. My Dad, her fiancé, was by this time (1942/3) far away in India, and Mam was at home alone, just a lovelorn girl of eighteen or nineteen. The film Random Harvest was based on the James Hilton bestseller of the same name and starred Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson. It’s about a young man who has lost his memory after he is discovered injured in No Man’s Land during World War One. Believe you me - this film helps you arrive at a fully comprehensive understanding of the term ‘tear-jerker’! I’d never watched it before, but Mam, who had seen it at the Rex Cinema in Aberdare, and had gone to every single evening performance over the week it played, had given me a scene by scene description many times throughout my childhood years. Yes, it’s sentimental, but so what, we had a box of tissues leftover from the last time we watched It’s a Wonderful Life! The performances, despite the era when it was made, are subtle and understated, and the script is always convincing, even if the overall premise may be a little far-fetched. Anyway, it was great to watch, not least because it was in some way like being able to share the experience with Mam. Definitely got the thumbs-up from me and Judith.


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Last week I announced that Niedermayer & Hart was on a Kindle Coundown offer - however, this offer only applied to US readers. A similar deal starts today on Amazon.Com for my psychological thriller Roadrage, which will kick off at only 99 cents (before rising incrementally every 40 hours to its normal price of $4.99) - so if you’d like to read a copy, get in fast! UK readers will have their own opportunity to purchase both books through a similar offer from the end of next week.


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Nightmare Builders!

5/11/2014

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It has been a strange hectic few months since our summer holiday in Ruhpolding, Bavaria in early August. Upon our return, I’d arranged for some necessary and fairly extensive building works to get underway. I’d considered what needed doing carefully and gone about things cautiously, or so I thought, and had received about half a dozen different estimates for the work. The job mostly required the repointing of brickwork that was in poor condition and had been hidden beneath masonry paint. I didn’t have any immediate contacts when it came to bricklayers, so I used an online directory provider who claim that they thoroughly vet the tradespeople on their website, and that the reviews for them posted by scores of satisfied customers are most definitely to be trusted, enabling you as a prospective customer to feel confident and sleep easy in your bed. A note of warning ... beware! 

What I didn’t realise, and probably most prospective customers don’t either, is that these companies charge the tradesperson a nice fat fee to to use their service. A reputable builder explained that even impressive acronyms for what might seem to us novices as representing solid-as-rock trade organisations, are often meaningless - “Just an opportunity to hike-up the price,” he suggested, and went on to say, “The only way to be sure of a good builder is either to see their work, or, through the recommendation of someone you completely trust”. I entirely agree. These customer-review sites are simply opportunities for tradespeople to advertise their skills and should definitely be seen as such; undoubtedly there are some good people on these sites, but they are easily open to abuse; the danger lies in the perception (which they have a vested interest in promoting) that customers are dealing with an authoritative voice that can be unequivocally trusted ... again, I say, beware! 

After I’d sacked the builders I’d taken on via this well-known website, I rang to make a formal complaint. The girl on the phone was warm and expressed dismay that we had had a bad experience with one of their tradesmen. She said she’d put me through to their ‘Complaints Department’, pointing out that there may be no-one in that office at this time, but reassured me that if I left my name and telephone number someone would be sure get back to me promptly. Ten days later I’d heard nothing and rang again. I was about to be put through to their complaints department once more until I mentioned this was the second time I’d called. I got the distinct impression that most people give up before they make the second call. The apologetic chap I spoke to suggested, as I hadn’t been given an invoice number by the tradesman, that I leave my feedback on their website, which they would understandably, for the sake of fairness (presumably because I might be an unrealistically demanding or even vindictive customer) allow the tradesman an opportunity to comment on and offer his explanation, or perhaps he might be able to put the work right ... after twenty-one days if the matter wasn’t resolved and the tradesman couldn’t justify himself, my comments would be posted on their site. I suggested their organisation, to ensure fairness, might like to send someone over to examine for themselves the builders’ thoroughly dreadful work ... witness for themselves the mortar they’d thinly smeared over paintwork to make it look like they had ground-out and repaired a joint, or see their wafer thin pointing that would no doubt ‘ping-out’ at the first frost. He gently explained that they were not able to make site visits at that time (whatever that meant!). 

It’s quite a big thing to get rid of your builders once works are underway, because by this time you generally have quite a lot invested already in what they’re doing. At first you try to convince yourselves that maybe they just got off to a bad start ... maybe next week their time-keeping and perhaps even their work might improve ... in your heart you already know you’re deluding yourselves ... the sleepless nights have already started! There were four of them and I don’t think I ever saw one of them before 9 am ... some days I didn’t see them at all ... the last straw was when only one of them rolled up for work in the second week at about 11am, broke for an hour’s lunch at 12.30pm, then condescended to do an hour more in the afternoon before packing up for the day. Their on site presence was as rare as a hen’s teeth (as someone who works from home, I took to jotting down their hours) ... four guys over two weeks totalling 72 hours present on site (I suspect time actually working was far less) isn’t going to win any gold medals for diligence and hard work. The moment arrived when they just had to go! And once I’d bitten the bullet it immediately felt better - no work is better than rotten work that is going to require a good deal of putting right. 

However, there were inevitably consequences to bear: I’d agreed to what I’d considered to be a reasonable payment at the end of each week’s work, so we were taken for some money - but in the great scheme of things and against the overall cost of the job, we didn’t suffer too badly. There’s certainly no way of getting any money back, they’re the sort of guys who if you took them to the small claims court, it would not only end up costing you more money, they’d probably claim to having no money at all and would probably be allowed to pay you back at £1 a week. I’d suggest that if a builder requests any interim payments, that you discuss this thoroughly with them before agreeing to it and make any agreed payments a week in lieu. Hindsight is a great thing! 

Once the builders were finally gone we then encountered a couple of weeks of disturbed if not entirely sleepless nights - our home was now surrounded by a large scaffold, costing us money as it lay idle. There has been something of a building boom in the south-east of England this year; the number of other houses in the surrounding streets that bear their own scaffolds confirms this. For over two weeks every reputable builder I approached who came recommended to me turned out to be busy. The situation seemed impossible ... I was comforted by a story I knew from Eastern wisdom about the transience of all things ... “This too will pass” I assured myself many times. And to ease my frustration and to save my nails from being bitten down to the quick, I launched myself at the house’s gable end (not literally!), and my son lent a hand too - I don’t possess the skill to dismantle and rebuild a chimney, but I could certainly grind out and repoint brickwork that would ultimately be painted again. I persisted in looking for new builders and eventually some of the good guys in white Stetsons turned up and took on the more skilled work. We are very grateful to them.


PictureUp to 81% discount on Kindle from 8 November!
And that’s what happened, and why this has been the longest blog-holiday this website has ever taken! I’ve still got a few bits and bobs inside and out to finish off, so I can’t get down to my daily writing schedule again just yet; but I’m no longer solely thinking and dreaming about bricks and mortar - the house is looking great and the end is definitely in sight! I’ve actually started thinking about my books and their marketing again, and recently set up what I hope will prove to be some attractive opportunities to get Kindle copies of both my books at highly discounted prices on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk. The offers will start on Saturday 8 November and go on until Thursday 4 December. Both the books will be available at different times and the price they’ll be available at will vary - I’ll simply say this, remember, it’s the early bird that catches the worm!


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    Available in paperback and ebook:
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    Amazon.com
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    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
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    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    ​Amazon.com
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