Neglected Children

This blog is supposed to be about Nicely, it says so on the tin. However, Strongoak activity has been a little lacking (Book 4 is well on the way, I promise) because the first book of a new series is soon to be published. Yes, more fantasy fun – but no dwarves!

Gasp!

More on that soon too, but in the meantime here’s a rather wonderful poster for a film I co-wrote. It won an award you know! The film is in post-production and so hopefully it will be out soon.

Nicely Strongoak – Kindle Epic Fantasy #1 Bestseller

Detective Strongoak book cover

A comedy detective fantasy; CSI in the land of Widergard, where fantasy has grown up a bit and Nicely Strongoak is just your average Master-detective-for-hire, if your detective happens to be a dwarf with a handy hand axe. In a city filled with drug-taking gnomes, goblins packing heat and a serious case of missing-persons, Strongoak might just be what’s needed, because this is one dwarf that is never going to leave a single cobblestone unturned. 

E book UK and USA–  Paperback UK and Paperback USA. Other formats available for other ereaders.

Number 1 banner from Amazon

The Resurrection Show

If you enjoy Nicely and a little fantasy, may I suggest you try some of my science fiction too. The ‘Resurrection Show’ was originally inspired by a selection of songs by the ridiculously talented David Alter. It ended up (so far) as this very funny novel: The Resurrection Show

With a cover by the inkmaster Tom Morgan-Jones this novel has been described as “Tom Sharpe style with a twist” and “Thoroughly enjoyable, funny and thought provoking.” For Nicely fans everywhere.

Happy 80th birthday, Wonder Woman!

Yes, unbelievably, Wonder Woman is 80 today! Handy being immortal eh?

Strangely, nobody ever asked me why I wanted to write a play about a stunningly attractive Amazon Warrior Princess. I’m guessing they thought it was all to do with auditions. It wasn’t – honest. It was a newspaper article about a university lecturer who took up striptease that set me off! Things like that are always happening to me.

Yes, I had read Wonder Woman as a comic-loving boy, but not obsessively. And no, bondage subtexts never entered my pre-pubescent brain – never did Boy Scouts, never got the ‘Knots Badge’.

So what was my play: ‘Life and Times of a Wonder Woman’ all about? Well, I will let this rather lovely review from the New York Times explain:

August 26, 2004
THEATER REVIEWS | NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL FRINGE FESTIVAL
She’s Oh So Wonderful and Proud of It
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

‘The Life and Times of a Wonder Woman’
Puffin Room
She’s superstrong, superquick, superbeautiful and supersmart with masses of jet-black hair, bright blue eyes and a body that would make a Trappist monk swear, as Wonder Woman herself tells us in this highly entertaining monologue by the English writer Terry Newman, a hit at last year’s Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. In cherry red boots, and killer bustier/hot pants outfit, the British performer Tara Hendry does the vixen superheroine justice as she relates in bawdy braggadocio Wonder Woman’s mighty Amazonian heritage, her Mount Olympus romps and more earthly pursuits, including bedding Superman (though Batman was better, she assures us). With her famous bracelets “that make short work of bullets” and her transformative twirl, Wonder Woman attempts to seduce members of the audience with her lusty tales and a magic lariat that makes it impossible for man or woman to resist the truth.
This multilayered, one-hour, one-woman show is an ingenious conceit, a way of talking about feminism, sexuality and society’s view of women, told through the history of a cultural icon who went from comic book character in 1941 to hit TV star in the 1970’s played by Lynda Carter. We learn about Wonder Woman’s creator Charles Moulton, a k a William Moulton Marston. We learn that he modeled Wonder Woman on his mistress, who had masses of jet black hair, wore large sterling silver cuff bracelets and was along with himself, quietly into bondage. Part history lesson, part feminist tract, all funny, this show begins and ends with a fictitious northerner from England, Susan, who becomes captivated by the TV Wonder Woman during Saturday teatime. At the end of the show, when the audience realizes what Susan has grown up to be, they just may rue the day that they, like Susan, ever stopped believing.
CAMILLE SWEENEY

So, thank you ‘Wonder Woman’ and thank you Tara Hendry nee Paulsson and director Michael Eriera and all wonderful producers Emma Douglas and Damien Scully for making one writer/fan’s dreams a reality.

GUY FAWKES – a beginner’s guide

I know that the whole history of, and reasons for, the UK’s ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ a.k.a. ‘Bonfire Night’ is something of a mystery to most of you guys in America. This is despite it having taken place in 1606 and hence it being part of a lot ‘your’ history too! Please excuse such a generalisation, but without it you guys wouldn’t even be guys at all!

The bare bones are that November 5th is commemorated here as the night when Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were thwarted in their attempt to blow up the English parliament – with gunpowder!

Their reason?

They wanted to kill the Protestant King James and his cronies and replace him with the Princess Elizabeth – as a Catholic queen.

Every year, certainly when I grew up, Fawkes’s capture was celebrated by a big bonfire built by the children of your street (could start that in summer!), loads of fireworks, food provided by families and of course, the burning of the guy! Other people might celebrate with the family in their own back gardens.

The guy was an effigy of the Mr Fawkes made from tatty old clothes stuffed with newspaper and conkers (they go bang); plus a bought cardboard mask supposedly in the style of Mr Fawkes. Each year one would (if allowed) push, carry or ‘guy’ the effigy around asking for a ‘Penny for the Guy!’ The money to then be spent on fireworks and/or sweets (NOTE – not candy!).

This ‘Guy’ entered into literature in books such as Tom Brown at Oxford, which described someone as ‘such an old guy in his dress’. While in 1893 in ‘The Swell’s Night Guide’ they excused themselves by saying: ‘I can’t tonight, for I am going to be seduced by a rich old Guy’. This became incorporated into US English as ‘Wise Guys’ and ‘Fall Guys’, until it was just ‘you guys!’

The importance of this very social (and potentially dangerous) family event has rather diminished in recent years in favour of public displays, but this depends on your location. Where I live in the south of England there is a proud tradition of Bonfire Boys (and Girls). Many villages hold a torch-lit procession through their streets with marching and drumming bonfire boys (and girls) from different villages in different fancy dress outfits. This is spread out over most of November! Each night culminated in Bonfires and fireworks and rather a lot of drinking (sadly not this year). It’s a truly splendid sight and sound: loads of drums! It’s slightly mad and it’s not state controlled!

Photo courtesy of Adrian Spinks photography

Why is this still going on?

Well, perhaps strangely, the terrorist Guy Fawkes has become something of an anarchist hero. The fact that he wanted to blow up one government to replace it by another has largely been forgotten. Every generation sees Guy Fawkes slightly differently you see. Each year we burn a different politician on our bonfire – plenty to chose from.

I have recently written the ‘book’ and some of the lyrics for a new musical about Guy Fawkes, with music by the far too talented Ben Durkin. It is actually based on a Victorian novel about the man by William Ainsworth – a Bestseller at the time! To the Victorians, Fawkes was something of a romantic figure and the novel (and the theatre show hopefully) has many gothic elements beloved by audiences of that time – spirits, alchemy and magic, and explosions of course!

And so Fawkes continues still. Those anarchist masks you see at demos, they are Guy Fawkes masks adapted from the wonderful ‘V for Vendetta’ graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, which imagined a new ‘Guy Fawkes’ figure and a different totalitarian state. Guy Fawkes just won’t lie down!

So, you ‘guys’ over there in the USA – and everywhere else – ‘Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.’

Penny for the guy, mister?

Check out the amazon Susie Dent’s book ‘Word Perfect’ for more about ‘guys’ and all sorts of other fascinating words. You can read more about the exciting new musical and hear song samples at our website.

Photo Multi-media Fun

Ever since they invented computers – well, you know what I mean – I have enjoyed playing around with pictures and photos. I was lucky enough to be involved for a while in what was then called ‘interactive multi media’. I ended up demonstrating our prototype ‘Interactive Biological Information System’ to the son of a now disgraced (and dead) genuine newspaper tycoon. He said ‘I’m the guy you have to impress’. We walked away with a cheque, I guess we impressed him.

At one time we were an Apple Development Station! I had to demo what we doing to the top Apple people in the UK on a black and white monitor (that long ago). To be honest I’m not sure they really understood what we were up to as they seemed much more interested in the pictures accompanying the demo and where I had got them.

‘I drew them,’ I said.

‘What! With a mouse?’ they said.

‘Yes, it’s easy!’

‘Wow!’

I’m not sure whether we got a cheque, but we did get use of a brand new Mac!

Of course, image production and manipulation is easier than I would ever have dreamed. Here’s some fun with the new Nicely Strongoak cover – done in two minutes from a free online site. The much-younger me would have been thrilled. The older me certainly is!

The New Detective Strongoak Adventure

Delighted to announce the cover for the new #1 Kindle Bestelling ‘Detective Strongoak’ adventure: ‘Dwarf Girls don’t Dance’. Published by Monkey Business, an imprint of Grey House in the Woods – coming soon.

“You never hear much about Dwarf women, do you? That’s because they are trouble. Real trouble.”

When Master Detective Nicely Strongoak first encounters the drop-dead gorgeous dwarfess ‘Diamond’, a fully paid up member of the Citadel Guild of Amorous Dancers and Associated Divesters, he should have known better than to leave his business card. Especially when subsequent business turns out to involve murder and the man reputed to be the Citadel’s Dark Crime Lord.

He certainly shouldn’t have gone to help Diamond beat a murder rap. Not when it involved heading back to the old Dwarf Kingdom of Skragsrealm, and the memories of a much younger Nicely and his encounter with the Nine Idlers – a group of men, elves, gnomes, dwarves and even a Warrior Princess. Oh, and the one brutal killing he had never managed to solve. Yet his alliance with the strangely attractive gobliness Detective Analyst Grundrund leads Nicely on a trail full of enchanters and lost love that might solve not just one, but three murders. That’s if the rewilded wolves and mud dragons don’t get him first.

Continue reading The New Detective Strongoak Adventure

Happy 100th Birthday Robots Everywhere

I have always been a huge fan of robots. I adored ‘Robbie’ in Lost in Space – although I preferred him in ‘Forbidden Planet’.

Gort was great too!

He was the eight-foot robot companion of the alien Klaatu in 1958’s classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. Unfortunately he lacked facial features, but was still capable of more expression than Keanu Reeve who played Klaatu in the remake. And Gort could open his visor and shoot out a death-beam, something else Keanu Reeve can’t do – yet.

Then there is Marvin – ah, Marvin! ‘Brain the size of a planet’, but he’s an android isn’t he?

And of course everybody loves Asimo, the real-life walking and running robot from Honda, who unfortunately stands a little like he might have had a minor oil leak in his metal shorts. Apparently it is a complete coincidence that his name sounds like Asimov, the surname of the SF writer who proposed the three laws of robotics. These are (and surely it’s not just us cool guys who know this?) the following:

1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Not bad thinking for 1942 Mr Asimov!

I think we can safely say that these laws should apply to androids too – especially Marvin.

Anyway – robots everywhere: happy birthday! You are 100 years old this year! Many congratulations!

It was in 1920 that Czech Karel Čapek published R.U.R., which stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The play wasn’t actually performed until 1921, but it was from his play that the word ‘robot’ soon entered human language. It is now used to define any a machine that is programmed to move and perform certain tasks automatically.

However it is clear from this early photograph from a production of R.U.R. that they were intended to be human-like. In that, they were actually very much like androids – a term that appears in US patents as early as 1863 and, as “Androides” in Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia of 1728.

Since then robots, and androids – and cyborgs too (a name first coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline) – have given us plenty to think about when it comes to being human.

Even the Daleks have had their moments!

So, happy 100th robots everywhere! Long may you rule. Continue reading Happy 100th Birthday Robots Everywhere

Dr Tel’s Magnificent Seven

Being asked to appear at a Literary Festival, especially a local one, is always a great honour. At the behest of my inspired interviewer Isabel Lloyd I delivered a ‘Magnificent 7’ of the fictional characters I love who have also inspired my writing. Here are some more words about these fabulous characters, who have meant so much to me.

Samwise Gamgee
There has to be some Tolkien of course. If it wasn’t for Tolkien I would never have wondered what did happen in Middle Earth when everything moved on a few thousand years, and they had an industrial revolution, and race relations and such like became important, and they even needed a dwarf detective in the first place.
But why Samwise, after all isn’t Frodo the main character of LOTR? Or maybe Aragorn, the proper heroic type? No, actually it’s Sam who is the protagonist of the book, because a protagonist is defined by change. Frodo and Aragorn are certainly heroes – but they don’t really change. Sam, bless him, goes off on his adventuring dreaming of the heroes of old, and to his amazement becomes one of those heroes.

He is the everyman and we need everymen and everywomen:

“That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

Philip Marlowe
Raymond Chandler introduced the mostly science fiction and fantasy reading me to a whole new world, that of crime. Some say Dashiell Hammett did crime better, but Chandler did it with more class. The world-weary knight in tarnished armour, treading those ‘mean streets’ was the main inspiration for my own dwarf detective Nicely Strongoak walking his ‘mean cobbled street’. Chandler also taught me that books weren’t just about storytelling – my main passion until then – but about the language to. And what language!

‘She had the kind of figure that would make a Bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window’.

I also loved the things I didn’t even recognise: ‘Chesterfields’ and ‘Davenports’ and the ephemera of a bygone age – which it was by then for me.

And if the past is a foreign country – why not make a few things up and put them in your books too! I know I did.

Arthur Dent
Douglas Adams – who I singularly failed to meet one day in the 1980s, but I got a nice pen from Apple – was a hero. His radio series of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe’ was a huge inspiration and was responsible for the first version of Nicely being written for audio. Bit of a mistake that, looking back, as it took me twenty five years to get it into novel form as the Radio 4 producer suggested to me. Arthur Dent appeals to that part of all of us that never feels like it is completely in control of events. Even detectives are never completely in control, which is why they get hit a lot.

‘This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.’

DEATH
And so we come to Terry Pratchett’s DEATH. This is not Terry Pratchett’s personal death – which sadly came far too early, but his character DEATH. Finding a favourite character from Terry Pratchett was actually quite difficult. He’s not really about the characters for me, although there are many great ones, like Rincewind, Nanny Ogg and The Luggage, but he’s more about attitude – a way of looking at things. I was pretty upset when Mr Pratchett made it into print before I did – by the odd twenty five years or so – because he did so well what I originally set out to do. He deconstructed fantasy ideas and used them to address many of the foibles of – well, ‘life the universe and everything’. Thanks to Mr Pratchett I had to tighten my focus and make sure that my books became proper crime books too. There had always been a murder or two and a mystery, but now that was really something to be solved. Nicely grew up a bit and became more of his own dwarf. DEATH stands out, because he TALKS IN CAPITALS and because he is really quite a decent chap. You wouldn’t mind having a drink with DEATH, as long as his bitter didn’t go everywhere.

Two death quotes:

“And what would humans be without love?”
“RARE, said Death.”

and given the subject matter, this one:

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

Howard the Duck
Iron Man is really so much scrap, Superman couldn’t have a sex life, Batman can’t talk properly, which makes Howard the Duck the greatest comic book ever, and one of the great film turkeys too. Certainly the worse crime against cinema committed by George Lucas.

Howard the Duck is a cynical, tough-talking, cigar champing duck, who ends up in a world of hairless apes. It wasn’t just the fish out of water aspect that appealed to me, but also that he was able to satirise and basically ‘take the piss’ out of all the Marvel comic book heroes, as well as other cultural norms, while still going along with their fun and games. An attitude I approve of and exploited in my 2005 play: ‘What do you do on the Night after you’ve Saved the Universe?’ This was a play that basically featured super-heroes sitting round and eating pizza. Had great fun with ‘C Thru Girl’ and ‘Minuscule Man’.

The great affection felt for Howard in the comic book community can be seen by the fact that he has a cameo in both ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ films.

“Hey, if I had some place to go I certainly wouldn’t be in Cleveland” – insert your least loved location.

Harry Dresden
A detective and a wizard – isn’t that a little close to comfort, Terry?

No actually – Jim Bishop’s modern day Chicago based PI shows how much fun you can have with the tropes and ideas of fantasy in a modern setting – yet be very different. This was a great relief to me when I was trying to get ‘Nicely’ published. A very different cauldron of spells.

For a start, being a wizard, Jim actually uses magic. Nicely Strongoak isn’t too sure about magic. He prefers his racing green, ’57 Dragonette convertible steam wagon, the model with the air trims and the longer foils, and a shooter instead of a staff. Nicely wears good hats. Harry doesn’t wear a hat – whatever the covers may show!

Bernie Gunther
The late Philip Kerr’s WWII German detective Bernie Gunther is one of the great creations. He narrowly beat another German, Gunther Grass’s ‘Oskar Matzerath’ to my list. Like Oskar, Bernie Gunther holds up a powerful light to shine on the atrocities of WWII and the circumstances that make an essentially decent policeman do what he has to, and makes us wonder what we might do in similar circumstances.

And in Berlin of the war period Kerr also provides another world with its own furniture and slang as interesting and varied as any fantasy world can be.

Bernie quotes:

“When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can’t expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar.”

and:

“Looking round the room I found there were so many false eyelashes flapping at me that I was beginning to feel a draught.”

Please note: I could have cheated for the sake of political correctness and included references to private investigators ‘Kinsey Malone’, and ‘VI Paretsky’ – who I love – or female action heroes like Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor – but they are mostly film and this was for a literary festival after all. And I haven’t mentioned ‘intertextuality’ at all! At the end of the day it’s all about what influenced my writing the most and these are the main people, outside of Roxy Music, David Bowie, August Darnell and Bugs Bunny.

That’s all folks!

* With thanks to Jane Triton and The Robertsbridge Arts Partnership and, of course, my intrepid interviewer, the writer and journalist, Isabel Lloyd.

Continue reading Dr Tel’s Magnificent Seven

Ten Reasons why I Love Books for World Book Day

Ten Reasons why I Love Books … and one extra

1) Easy travel without buying a ticket
2) Legal voyeurism
3) You can fall in love but behave outrageous and see other people too
4) A novel of the proper length enables you to support your head when lying on the floor to straighten your spine
5) Turning pages is good exercise for turning pages

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Three books I wrote (the last one with David)

6) You don’t need to share a book and you don’t get told off for it
7) You can meet such nice people
8) You don’t have to put up with the company of people you don’t like (for long)
9) Words in books help you to understand more about the world
10) I’ve never been stood up by a book

Bonus 1:

Continue reading Ten Reasons why I Love Books for World Book Day