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Print: $9.64 Download: $2.27 This is a collection of blogs that were originally published on Myspace, the social networking Internet site. They represent an eclectic mixture of my thoughts and as such are either a) a total waste of time or b) an invaluable aid into the mind of a lunatic. Take your pick!
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Print: $14.97 Download: $2.27 Adrian Templeton had been abused throughout his childhood by a domineering mother who had never wanted a cild let alone a son. She hated men and because boys would grow into men she hated those too. She attempted to remove his genitals on more than one occasion and even tried to get medical assistance in the form of surgery. When she wasn’t trying to emasculate him she was chastising him physically with a cane she kept specially for the purpose of thrashing him. Yet despite all this he loved her with the kind of passion that drove him to murder her. He had to: yet without her he was nobody. And so it came as no surprise to him when the blessed woman took up residence in his head and proceeded to guide him on a crusade to rid the world of what she saw as filth. Dead Lips Kissing is thoughtful yet at times down right nasty. There is plenty of murder and we are priviliged to overhear a huge number of conversations between a madman and a mother he carries around with him in his head.
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Print: $15.70 Download: $2.27 Thomas Dangerfield was a young man when he went to fight the good fight in the Second World War, newly married, with a beautiful wife and a young son. He returned a changed man, plagued by nightmares and filled with a terrible anger that wouldn’t go away. So he set about trying to sort his life out. In the army they’d taught him to hurt, to maim, to kill and using that knowledge was the only way he knew how to tackle his problems. Over half a century later his son was lonely and his only real companion was his dog Frisky. One day, whilst out in the countryside with that dog, he caught sight of a pair of legs that tormented him. It was the way they emerged from a brief pair of shorts, a reminder of a sexuality he’d forgotten that he’d once had. But he was shy, and instead of drawing the woman’s attention to himself he met and started an on-going conversation with a tweedy woman with whiskers on her face and a predeliction for kissing a dead frog. So he called her the Frog Princess...
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Print: $14.90 Download: $2.27 So here we arrive at the conclusion of the story. The Jewels of Ooombis have been on Earth for thirty thousand years give or take the odd few years and it is the near future. They have influenced the sexual life of countless generations whilst absorbing some of the strongest emotions of those who wore them, and the two most powerful were transferred to the crystals at the moment of death. Some died as a consequence of torture in fire and others were drowned. Yet others died in a volcanic eruption back in Roman times. The stones, capable of absorbing love and fear and pain and hope and despair and any emotion you can think of were filled with a rich variety of emotions when the consequence of global warming manefested itself on the world and in the minds of future people. Throughout the five volumes they have been trailed by the ancient biological robot created in Cro Magnon times, and it is down to him to arrange their final escape. Oh – and look out for the twist in its tale.
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Print: $15.52 Download: $2.27 The Pirate and the Child brings the story of the Jewels of Ooombis through the Dark Ages and up to the Middle ages, and an equivalent time for an obscure tribe of peace-loving Native Americans. Its sub-text is the triumph of Innocence over Guilt in all things to do with human endeavours. It starts with a pirate who makes a poor living on the underside of life until he discovers both of the jewels of Ooombis in a cavity on a beach not far from Mount Vesuvius. On a journey that takes him from there to the Americas via the Vikings he meets a strange assortment of people. Eventually on American shores he meets a peaceful Native tribe and settles down to live with them, changing his life-style to match that of his hosts. Meanwhile the brooch is in the hands of Claudette whose life becomes altered by a suggestion left in the gemstone by Henna, a previous owner. Upon arrival on the shores of Britain she is attacked and blinded, and from then on develops a strange pseudo-Christian religion.
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Print: $14.83 Download: $2.27 The Giant and the Gems is the third part of The Jewels of Ooombis and takes the story of the two gemstones into the age of the Roman Empire. The giant is Kaphkar, a reformed robber who is the only men who held the ring of Ooombis and yet never touched its shining jewel to discover its unusual properties. It is his task to prevent the destruction of the small tribe that one day would be part of the huge Roman Empire and consequently his unwritten influence on history was enormous, and when he finally dies as a very old man the ring is buried with him. The brooch, on the other hand, travels by several hands until it is finally discovered by a deformed tramp known even to himself as No-name. Yet it is not until the gemstones accidentally reach Pompeii in 79 AD that they find themselves in the hands of two young lovers for the first time since their original owners were brutally destroyed. And all the time the gemstones are, bit by bit, absorbing the emotions and fears of humanity.
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Print: $15.95 Download: $2.27 This is a strange love story because it deals with puppy love and its possible rebirth in old age. It’s like this. Walter fell in love with Rosie when he was a teenager, but the second world war came along and they drifted apart. Things happened and their lives, once set on a course that was almost likely to lead to them spending their lives together, went along different routes.
It is a simple story and I’ve called it a romance but it isn’t a traditional romance. It deals with love, a deep and abiding love that is stronger than any other, but not in the man-meets-woman-marries-woman way. There is a wedding, but not the kind recognised by Authority, but it is acknowledged by time, which is far more satisfying. There is friendship, blood-brother friendship, and half-remembered playing times in the old copse. And there are tragedies, the war, loss, and death. There’s a lot that can happen in a lifetime, and Walter Flint decides when he is in his eighties to remember all of it.
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Print: $13.75 Download: $2.50 Imagine a world trapped under an invisible cone that prevents everything, even light and heat, from entering it. And then imagine what life would be like on the frozen world produced by such a shield. That was the Crystal Forest and in it Leena was a teenage girl, and following the customs of the few people who survived in the Crystal Forest, she had to go out into the wilds for one day in her life, and find her Prince. Likewise, Nicky was brought up from the age of two in a harsh male prison where he was randomly beaten by his guard and half-starved, and for one day in his lifetime he, too, had to go out into the wilds for his Mating. The book tells how Leena and Nicky accidentally break with a tradition that was the product of generations of ignorance, and seek for a better life. On their way they meet some of the other inhabitants of the Crystal Forest, and as they discover a doorway into another place they also discover themselves, their sexuality and their love for each other.
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Print: $15.04 Download: $2.50 The second part of The Jewels of Ooombis, The Eagle and the King mines what has been referred to as the oldest human legend still in existence. Much of the story takes place in the Sumerian City State of Kish under the rule of Etana and his childless wife. This is the bronze age, and predates the pyramids and Stonehenge. Henna has been born to be Holder of the Brooch, a classy prostitute occupying a high position within a nomadic tribe. With a childhood friend, Rowen, a self-confessed lesbian, she runs off into the wilds after committing a bloody murder, and with her she takes the Brooch of Ooombis, which contains imprisoned in its crystalline structure the sexual passions of its original owner, an alien woman. The two women find their way to Kish where one of the religions demands human sacrifice. Meanwhile, the ring of Ooombis is an increasing distance away and for a while in the hands of a reforming drunkard called Pictes and after him, Arkes, a youth.grieiving for a lost love
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Print: $13.34 Download: $2.50 Love’s Deadly Dawning is the first part of a series of five novels (The Jewels of Ooombis) that spans all of human history, from Cro Magnon times to the near future. It begins with the imminent destruction of a populated planet (Ooombis – three o’s, and that’s not spelling mistake!). Two of its natives find their way to Earth, carrying with them a ring and a brooch that have trapped within their gemstones their wildest passions. It is these jewels that the series of books is about, and the way an alien sexuality affects human history. The Jewels of Ooombis is the kind of book I personally like to read. Huge in scope, it is simultaneously both mischievous and serious, and being fiction any references to real events are not necessarily trustworthy facts, though I did a considerable amount of research when I started writing it. Love’s Deadly Dawning deals with the arrival of the gems on Earth, and the brutal demise of the attractive young couple who bore them. Be prepared to weep!
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Print: $18.86 Download: $2.27 Josie Larkin as a child was brutalised by a Christian fundamentalist mother who believed that any sin (real or imagined) is the result of demonic possession, and the only cure must be harsh corporal punishment. Leaving home soon after leaving school, Josie goes to live in service with a local family where she falls in love with their daughter, and thus begins a torrid lesbian affaire.
A Fall From Grace follows her life with Mattie, the love of her life, and parallels it with the sad and lonely old woman we eventually meet. It fills in the gaps between the beautiful young person she once was and the grubby creature who endlessly walks the streets of her village.
The story is partly told through the eyes of two children who witness the present whilst being ignorant of the past until they decide to help her.
In addition, she has a bitter enemy, a bully, who decides that she is a witch and that all witches should be burned.
And the title begs the question – what or when was her grace?
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Print: $12.40 Download: $2.50 Officer Gentry is eleven years old. One embarrassment in his life is his father, who spends a great deal of time inventing things. In this book Officer finds a television remote control stuffed down the back of the settee in his living room, only it isn’t a remote control at all, but a time machine. With a friend of his, the intelligent Vicky Simpson, he uses it and finds himself back in Victorian times. But things aren’t going to be as easy as he thought they might be. Everywhere he goes there seems to be danger. He bumps into a Victorian boy, Charles, but the boy’s father is a brutal drunkard who they have to escape from. They hide in a church porch where they are scared witless by, of all things, a ghost! Eventually the three children are cornered in a cellar with only one entrance, and the brutal drunkard is fumbling his way through it. They must escape, but where to? Or rather, when to?
The story skips along at a break-neck speed as they negotiate dangers in strange times.
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Print: $14.00 Download: $2.00 Spellbound is a silly story, a kind of Harry Potter (without the school or the schoolboy) for adults who haven’t probably grown up. Griselda Entwhistle is a grotesque 88 year old who, in a flash of inspiration, decides it might just be a good thing to be Prime Minister of the UK and consequently become a very important person. So, with the mysterious help of a strange character who sports horns and a barbed tail, she sets about her self-imposed task. She’s helped along her way by dodgy politics and a system crying out for magical intervention. There are references to satan, allusions to odd sexual behaviour, travel by broomstick and a whole lot of other nonsense that sensible grown-up people probably wouldn’t approve of. However, I found it amusing to write and having just edited it, have chuckled again. I really would like to bump into my Griselda Entwhistle, though not, maybe, on a dark moonless night.
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Print: $13.16 Download: $2.50 The Earth is close to its ending. Its human population has destroyed it and all that remains is an odd corner where life clings desperately. Before life was finally reduced to its dregs they built the High Centre where androids were charged with preserving any humans who had survived the apocalypse, a task they took a bit too literally, even designing a male android intended to satisfy the sole human female. Not so far away, but across the poisonous Black River, was the Scrublands populated by largely deformed remnants of humanity. Further off were The Burrows where the Dina lived, creatures said to have evolved from humankind, though they were capable of direct mind-to-mind communication, which they used in their all-consuming sex lives. Then there was the Range, and the beautiful Rena, possibly the last real human being. There were others too. Did they hold the secrets of a possible future? This is THE apocalypse novel – a must for adults curious enough to ask the question
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Print: $13.96 Download: $2.50 The book introduces us to the kind of teenager we might not notice if he passed us on the street, unless, of course, we noted his presence in order to avoid him. He is Kevin Stonewell and he is almost universally despised because of his ill-kempt appearance and the stench he frequently disperses as he walks along. He is bullied by those who enjoy bullying, kicked and battered and generally abused. Yet he has his dreams: the beautiful and classy Amanda Drayton is one of them. But before he can do anything about those dreams he’s got to climb above his status, and The Gentleman of the Road tells us of the start of that climb. He runs away from home to become a tramp, a hobo, because he sees that as a step up, and his mother is accused of his murder (although there is no body). The arresting officer (married, importantly, to Kerry who prefers to share her bed with other women) is slowly driven mad by a combination of circumstances. And the aforementioned Kerry takes him under her wing…
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Print: $12.69 Download: $3.23 Janie Cobweb was born in December 2007 as a character in a short story I wrote for the social networking site MySpace. At first (as you will see) she started as a precocious little girl, the sort who Victorian parents might have taken the birch to. But she took over, and for several weeks I produced a series of stories that ranged from light and frothy to dark and horrible. They are all, largely reworked, in this slim volume because I wanted them as a keepsake for myself and anyway, because they were so well received on MySpace, I thought it only right and proper to foist the wretched child onto an unsuspecting public. I make no claim that they are in any way literary masterpieces, though in places they’re not all that bad.
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Print: $13.61 Download: $3.63 “Rough Edges Intact” is a volume of verses and poems written as web logs and previously published on the social networking site “MySpace”. The title says it all: the poems are reproduced here exactly as they did online, and so there will be imperfections a-plenty. The poet will polish his words until he is completely satisfied before allowing the public anywhere near them whereas the blogger will scribble off his work and post it in next to no time, with all its rough edges still there.
The works in this book were written during the period of August 2007 – January 2008.
The cover photograph was provided by Dorothy Gernert, who was also the inspiration behind many of the more sentimental poems.
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Print: $16.70 Download: $2.27 Andrew Greenleigh is in his middle years and has started questioning the more important aspects of his life when he discovers an old diary he wrote during his teens. In it he rediscovers his first forays into the opposite sex and on the spur of the moment decides to see how life has treated them. At the same time his wife has won a competition that allows her a week at a dodgy health farm, where she meets her own schoolgirl hero, the then skiffle singer Bertie Withers. This is the mix, and what happens during that one week in September might quite easily be predicted!
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