Punch by Barbara Henderson is the story of Phineas, or Phin for short, who lives and works in Victorian Inverness with his “Uncle” Ewan, a cruel man with “hands the size of spades” who treats Phin like a slave. When Phin is sent to the market after hours to fetch some sausages from the ice… Read More
Back in May of this year, Sandra and I watched Children of the Stones, a children’s TV series from 1977. It’s a truly excellent piece of TV, by turns creepy and exciting, with an excellent cast of young actors ably backed up by such TV stars as Gareth Thomas (best known to me as Blake… Read More
I’m delighted to have an article on the Scottish History Network blog today. It describes the effect of growing up at Tarbat Ness Lighthouse, with its centuries of history right beneath my feet. I write about a grassy mound just outside the lighthouse complex that I thought might be a Viking burial mound, but was… Read More
It’s been three months since I wrote anything. I completed the first draft of my Roman Britain historical novel, Pax Caledonia, on the 31st of December last year. Since then, I’ve done a quick read-through, passed it out for review, then implemented the easier corrections provided by my beta readers. But that’s it – typos… Read More
In the beginning, there was the school jotter. My first stories were scribbled in pencil in half-used lined school notebooks, liberated at the end of the year, with their boring English or History notes ripped out, leaving the covers floppy and the staples loose. Then there was the typewriter. When I was 16, with delusions… Read More
On 31st December 2016, I completed the first draft of Pax Caledonia, my children’s novel set in Roman Britain in the aftermath of the battle of Mons Graupius. This was my ninth completed novel – completed to first draft, at least. Five years ago, I’d started loads of novels, but never managed to get beyond 15,000… Read More
This is my fourth year of writing up the status of my books – see 2014, 2015, and 2016. So what’s been happening this year? Let’s take a look. The Beast on the Broch In January I submitted sample chapters of what was then called The Dragon on the Tower to new independent Scottish publisher Cranachan. A… Read More
Alfie Bloom and the Talisman Thief is the sequel to Alfie Bloom and the Secrets of Hexbridge Castle (hereinafter referred to as SHC) which I reviewed back in July. I thoroughly enjoyed SHC, especially the humour and the pacy smart writing, but TT surpasses it in every way imaginable. SHC had the burden of the setup,… Read More
I read around 75 children’s books this year, up from 57 last year, which made it a much harder year to distill down into a top 10. There are loads of great books I’ve left off the list! As usual, date of publication is completely irrelevant – my only criteria for inclusion are that the… Read More
It’s that time of the year when bloggers looking for something to write about trot out their “best of” lists for the year. I think most of us will agree it’s been a particularly crap twelve months. But hey, at least there are still books to give us solace – until the Bradburyesque Firemen come… Read More