One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence [Book Review]
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence My rating: 5 of 5 stars If you love Stranger Things then you are very likely to love this book. It's a little geeky and features a bunch of roleplaying teenagers as the core cast. Unlike Stranger Things it's set in London, mainly the suburban SW, in the 1980s, also there are no weird creatures, although there is some weirdness, just of a different nature. One Word Kill Cover of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition with a set of dice on it (photo: James Kemp) One Word Kill was very relatable for me, as much because I'm the same sort of age as the protagonists (not now, but I was a teenager in the 1980s). I'm also running a D&D story for my son and his friends, so I've watched those teenage roleplayers…
Paul Blake Author Interview
Paul Blake's author photo. (Photo: Paul Blake) Paul Blake is a fellow alumni of the Open University creative writing course (A215), although not my cohort. I first found out about Paul Blake via twitter, we share some common interests. His book A Young Man's Game is an awesome take on modern spy thrillers. So I was very pleased when he jumped at the offer to do an author interview. His latest book, A Few Hours After This, is out today. Go buy a copy! Paul Blake Author Interview How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I’ve been writing since 2016. I was doing an Open University Degree in ICT, and doing pretty badly to be honest. I was fine with the theory behind concepts and how they were used in real situations, but when…
Nettlecombe Court – a Real Family Holiday
Nettlecombe Court in Somerset from the drive. (photo: James Kemp) Last summer I went on a Real Family Holiday with both my children. We had so much fun that we booked another. This time we went to the Field Study Centre in Nettlecombe Court, Somerset. We also went in the first week of the Easter holidays, and it was rather chillier than I'd hoped last week. Despite the cold weather we still all had a lot of fun. We also ate rather a lot of cream teas! FSC Nettlecombe Court The centre at Nettlecombe Court is much larger than the one we went to in Start Bay last year. It's a late Elizabethan mansion, completed in 1599. It's the sort of house that the National Trust tend to look after. This one is still owned by the Trevelyan family, and…
Shifting Horizons by S.J. Sherwood [Book Review]
Shifting Horizons by Sherwood My rating: 4 of 5 stars Shifting Horizons is the second in Sherwood's Denounced series. It starts immediately where A Grey Sun finished. I was a little confused with the first few paragraphs until I realised that Ned, the main character, was confused. It was such a well written bit of disorientation that it worked on me as a reader. Shifting Horizons (The Denounced #2) There's depth, conflict and a series of obstacles in Shifting Horizons. The title shows how Ned and Pod 15's view of the world changes. At the end of A Grey Sun they'd broken out of the training dome. They'd been sent there after their faked executions. In Shifting Horizons they find themselves on the edge of the Sahara desert. The story is their struggle to evade the hunters attempting to recapture…
Horse-Riding Research Round-Up
My pseudo-viking YA fantasy novel moved from seaborne to horse-riding. Yngvild met a cavalry troop and learnt how to ride with them. Like Yngvild, I've had to research how to look after horses, and how far you can travel on horseback. I've not done much horse-riding, I've been on horseback fewer than half a dozen times in my life. I've done it just enough to know that you can take a teenager and give them the basics of horse-riding in about half an hour, but I'm far from being a Dothraki! Horse-Riding for Writers An Argentine Lancer, this is pretty close to how I've imagined the cavalry unit that Yngvild met. (picture credit ) There are many good websites for writers interested in realistic portrayals of horse-riding and horse borne expeditions. There are some links at the bottom, but by…