Saturday, December 19, 2009

Ads on your website

An advertising agency in the UK is looking for small to medium websites to place client’s ads. These would be in the form of links via specified words in the text. HTML code is supplied, and contracts typically are for one year. They are interested in websites which they deem valuable, based on estimated traffic or the niche which they target. They actively approach websites which they deem valuable, based on estimated traffic or the niche which they target. Anyone who thinks they may qualify please email me your website URL and it will be forwarded for consideration. Please do not submit your website unless you are certain it is commercially viable.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Reviews for "The Warlock"

This is a masterpiece of words, and you are a master storyteller! Your writing makes me look at my own and think, “What the heck am I doing?” Here are a few of my favorite evidences of your craftsmanship: “There is nothing as terrifying as horror on a bright sunny day..” “...like the raddled face of an aging whore...” “...he had collected her somewhere along the way..” “...slow voyage of exorcism...” and that is only from chapter one!

P.M.Adams

This is a beautifully written book. From the first chapter we are engrossed and drawn into the experiences that Allan has undergone and is now trying to exorcise by revisiting the places of the past. You sketch in your characters with a light hand, so that although we have not met them properly as yet, we have a clear idea of each, from Marat to Alberta, Diego and the twins. The sense of evil permeates the first chapter, and the destruction of the broken pieces of the statue, ‘stamped on...again and again, until it was reduced to unrecognizable plaster chips,’ is immensely impressive. You have a great descriptive touch, cleverly describing as clichés words and phrases into which you manage to breathe new life, like, ‘The moonlight like quicksilver on the water, reflecting almost hurtfully bright from the whitewashed walls.’ You build up an atmosphere of mingled beauty and danger with every word.

Gerry McCullough.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Aspiring Writers

There's a new group for writers on LinkedIn called "Aspiring Writers" which should be of interest to anyone just starting out in this frustrating but ultimately rewarding game. Post your comments, ask questions, whatever, and someone'll get back to you.

http://tinyurl.com/aspiringwriters

Monday, November 30, 2009

Happy Christmas

It’s Christmas! Not Happy Holidays, not Festive Season. It’s Christmas: and if you don’t like it, get over it.

I don’t care if you celebrate Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali or Beltane. I celebrate Christmas; so what right have you to object, or be offended?

So, Happy Christmas to each and very one of you, wherever you come from, and whatever you believe in.

Monday, November 23, 2009

More book selling

My co-authors call me up and get hysterical if the book isn't in Brentano's. I say "tough luck." If I have an idea for a new display or promotion, I'll send it to the publisher. It's no good sitting back and saying the publisher stinks.

Samm Sinclair Baker

The world is changing, book selling is getting harder, get a book published is the very devil: so you if you've got one out there, work like hell to get it sold, because no one else will.

Nicholas Boving

Book selling

To write books is easy, it requires only pen and ink and the ever-patient paper. To print books is a little more difficult, because genius so often rejoices in illegible handwriting. To read books is more difficult still, because of the tendency to go to sleep. But the most difficult task of all that a mortal man can embark on is to sell a book.

From a poem by Felix Dahn paraphrased by Sir Stanley Unwin.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Frances West has arrived

You don’t know how lucky you are: Frances West is coming into your life. Beautiful, clever, tough and resourceful, with a nose for trouble and a way of dealing with it that’ll leave you breathless, she gets herself in and out of danger like she’s in a revolving door, and leaves behind a trail of antagonists wondering what the hell hit them. Frances West is something else, and we mean something else. Go meet her at the E-Book site Smashwords, at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Nicholas

Gunn, Maxim Gunn.

All you armchair adventurers, you frustrated highwaymen, would-be spies and knights in shining armour with no damsels in distress and not a dragon in sight, take comfort because Maxim Gunn can take you where before you went only in your dreams. Find Maxim Gunn at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Nicholas

Friday, November 6, 2009

Frances West

CASTLE DARK - A Frances West adventure.

In a Fortress Dark with chains upon her feet. Not in her wildest dreams had Frances West imagined anything so bizarre, and deadly, as the situation she found herself in when Drakkar the Vampire abducted her from her home in England.
But she had got in his way in Prague, and then her kitchen stove blew up, and there was the man in the middle of the road in the rainstorm when she flipped her Porsche, and after that it all got wild until she found herself in the dungeons of a crumbling Transylvanian castle, an event that sent a rescue team into action that should have scared Drakkar silly. But then, six hundred years earlier, he'd been famous soldier and nothing much frightened him.
Frances West escapes from the dungeons, gets herded by wolves that aren't quite wolves, has a bloody and terrifying battle with saw-toothed raptors from a Jurassic hell, contends with mindless zombies, a screaming snowstorm, and resists all attempts to steal her mind and life force in her efforts to bring Drakkar's reign of terror to an end.

Introducing Frances West in "Castle Dark"

Not another Relic Hunter. Not another Lara Croft. Not another Sydney Bristow and definitely not another Jinx. Frances West is something else, and we mean something else.

Beautiful, clever, tough and resourceful, with a nose for trouble and a way of dealing with it that’ll leave you breathless, she gets herself in and out of danger like she’s in a revolving door, and leaves behind a trail of antagonists wondering what the hell hit them.

And they’re different too. No megalomaniacs out to destroy the world, no mad scientist and no master criminals. Frances West takes on the supernatural, creatures and beings that should not be, and there’s the odd thing from outer space to sweeten the pot.

You'll find her at Smashwords.com
Follow the link to: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Nicholas

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Warlock

New novel for you to review. Go to http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=13311

Evil is alive and well. Demons exist. I know, for I have seen them. I have fought them and they are very real.

On the advice of his doctor, Allan Collins, an over-worked executive takes a sabbatical at the monastery of Agios Dimitrios on the lonely Grecian island of Melanos. Collins meets Vincent Marat; a balding, middle-aged man of great wealth, impeccable taste and magnetic personality who has surrounded himself with a strange assortment of house guests, including the beautiful Alberta, the saturnine Diego and the self-absorbed twins. It is a menagerie of the unordinary, even the displaced, as Collins feels he has walked through the looking glass into some fanciful and erotic land. Brother Evangelos, the Abbot of Agios Dimitrios, warns him that he should not be taken in; that Vincent Marat is a dangerous man, a diabolist and he should be on his guard at all times. Collins heeds his advice but still finds it hard to see Marat, who calls himself Ipsissimus, the highest grade of magician, as more than an egotistical and hedonistic deviant.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Maxim Gunn

All you armchair adventurers, you frustrated highwaymen, would-be spies and knights in shining armour with no damsels in distress and not a dragon in sight, take comfort because Maxim Gunn can take you where before you went only in your dreams.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Ryerson's Process

The opening pages of my new novel ...

Hard, wet sand. Sea smells. Sounds of wavelets susurrating. Onomatopoeic, alliterative words, poetic words. Pain. Not poetic. Hard fact; as hard as the sand. More words rising unbidden through the mists of slowly emerging consciousness. ‘And comes at night to die upon the sand.’ Wrong. Out of context. No sea smells beyond the Oxus. No sea smells in the desert. No Oxus river any more. What was it called now? Think dammit, think!
I gave up. Thinking was too difficult. Was this what death was like? Pain came again, in waves, not wavelets. Nothing poetic about pain, no gentle susurration; just hurt, and hard, wet sand under my back. The pain of death? Wrong kind of pain: punishment, penalty, price. This was pain as in ‘I wish the goddam thing would go away and stop trying to rip the top of my head off.’ Tennyson, Alfred Lord T. ‘death who puts an end to pain.’ No pain after death, therefore I wasn’t dead. And anyway, heaven surely didn’t smell of garlic.
No relief after that logical conclusion. And what did heaven smell of? Scented or unscented; could you take your pick? Left staircase unscented; right side: attar of roses, Je Reviens, My Sin. No. My Sin would be the other place: a touch of promise, dark eyes, raven hair, red lips and a hint of perfume to offset the choking pungency of brimstone.
Dammit, leave me alone. I’m thinking: great, momentous, ineffably philosophic thoughts. Should have put up a sign. ‘Do not disturb.’ Why can’t people read? Didn’t put up the damned sign, that’s why. Like my old school master said. ‘Could do better if he tried harder.’ Memory like a leaky can. Make a note. Put up sign next time; but right now, will you for God’s sake damned well leave me alone.
“Is he dead?”
Bloody silly question. Of course he - I - wasn’t dead. We’ve just been through all that; explained it logically. No pain after death. Ergo, he’s - I’m - not dead. I was, however, in danger of losing the top of my head. Any second and it would take off, a flap lifting like a pressure cooker blowing: Stromboli, Etna, Vesuvius, spewing a molten lava of brains. Then I’d be dead, and it would be Attar of Roses - or My Sin if the other fellow got me - but definitely not garlic.
Hard fingers pressed my neck and I shrank. No more pain. The head was bad enough. A pulse throbbed, blood restricted under the fingers.
“No, just unconscious.”
A different voice: stronger, more authoritative, not tentative and worried like the first, and with it attar of garlic. What the hell happened to the roses, and why was it speaking in Spanish?
“He’s been mugged?”
“Maybe. Someone ran. Did you see them?”
“No. It’s too dark, but I think there were three.”
The hard fingers relaxed. No strangulation tonight. Just the pain, and a gusty exhalation of garlic.
“It doesn’t matter. Go and call an ambulance.”

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Survival mode

People need time to adapt to new codes of morality. Wars, disasters, poverty; all these bring about altered states of living and thinking, and with them comes the strongest force of all: survival. And with survival the first priority, people revert and the veneer of civilization is stripped by the acid of personal need. The one becomes more important than the whole.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Road without maps

There is no roadmap for writers. There’s no arrow saying “You are here”, with a lot of other signs pointing to other places you may or may not want to go. You can only look back at where others have been and learn. Then you must go into the unknown, the places marked on the map “Here there be dragons”. This is the only way to progress in your journey, because to stay on the well-trodden path is merely to revisit what has already been done. Exploration will find your unique voice.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

That demned elusive grammar

Grammar and punctuation and tenses, are all very well and proper, but anyone who knows anything about words knows to expect anything from them. They are living things, and like all such hate to be confined. They should be allowed to run free, and if this offends grammarians, so be it: it is their loss, the words do not care, and nor should writers. All that is important is meaning and understanding and enjoyment.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Periphrastic, pleonastic or redundant

In the various arts, and above all in writing, the shortest distance between two points, even if close to each other, has never been and never will be, what is known as a straight line, never, never, to put it strongly and emphatically in response to any doubts, to silence them once and for all. (Jose Saramago - The Stone Raft)

Phew, and I thought it was just me!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Thought du jour

Robert Fisk had this to say in "The Independent" .

"It's not that everyone with a laptop thinks they can write a book. The problem is that everyone with a laptop does write a book."

Robert, you're so right. Maybe we should go back to typewriters.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Dreams Revisited

As a child I dreamed of palaces and mountains and raging seas. There were great things I was going to do, and there were wondrous places to see. I did no great things, though I saw a few of the places. Now I live those dreams through the eyes and actions of others. But those eyes do not belong to mortal man, and the people are my creations. They live only in my mind, in my imagination, and through them I live those dreams.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Maxim Gunn on Smashwords.com

The complete “Maxim Gunn” six book series of action-adventures is now available at Smashwords E-Books. Take a look, read a few chapters for free, maybe buy them, and tell your friends.

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Nicholas

Friday, July 24, 2009

A Little Touch of Zenda in the Night

Revue by David L. Vineyard

In “Maxim Gunn and The Sun Fortress”, the fourth volume in Nicholas O. Boving’s entertaining series about secret agent and adventurer Maxim Gunn, the author produces not only another fine adventure in the series, but adds a hint of Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe as we learn some surprising facts about Gunn’s history. Readers of the series will know Gunn is a former agent of the Organization headed by the cool headed and cold blooded splendidly named Vileman. Despite having left the service Gunn can’t sit on his laurels and enjoy his life with beautiful lady friend Lady Cynthia ffoote and his man James Sweetstory, he keeps getting drawn back into the Great Game.

In Sun Fortress Gunn is drawn back into a very personal battle when Princess Alicia Flavia of the small but key nation of Ruritania is kidnapped by mercenary terrorist Devlin and his small army. The kidnapping has a personal tie to Gunn who it seems is a direct descendent of Rudolph Rassendyll, an adventurer who was involved with the Princess’s great grandmother and Ruritanian intrigue, the story fictionalized in Anthony Hope’s adventure tale The Prisoner of Zenda.

Almost as soon as Gunn is drawn into the case it becomes apparent this is no ordinary kidnapping for ransom or extortion. The Princess has been taken so she can be sacrificed by an insane Mayan priest who believes that a coming disaster can only be averted by spilling royal blood. Meanwhile she is being held in a remote fortress by Devlin and his mercenary army, inaccessible on one side by jungle and the followers of the mad priest, and on the other by the sea and nearly vertical cliffs.

But one or two men could perhaps get close, scale the cliffs, and rescue the Princess before the deadline --- especially if one of those men is Maxim Gunn.

Boving continues to weave Gunn’s adventures with elements of the fantastic and old fashioned swashbuckling, while in Gunn he has created a classic adventure hero who is equally at home in the company of James Bond or the Saint, Dirk Pitt or Richard Hannay, Modesty Blaise or Rudolph Rassendyll ... These books are grand adventures, playful and inventive and written in a literate and civilized manner that makes them ideal escapism. In Sun Fortress he has also created a fiery and intelligent heroine in the Princess, who proves equal to Gunn and his dashing ally Don Sebastian as they dare the sheer cliffs and ruthless army that guards the inaccessible fortress.

It all builds up to a suspenseful conclusion as Gunn and Don Sebastian find themselves alone facing an angry army with their backs to a sheer cliff ...

These books are a wonderful blend of modern thriller and old fashioned adventure and readers who enjoy Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider, Ted Bell’s Alexander Hawke, or James Rollins Sigma Force books should give them a try. Nicholas Boving is a most civilized and entertaining writer, with a touch of savagery and a delightful tongue in cheek sense of humor. Get on the Maxim Gunn bandwagon now. The call to adventure has never rung so clear. The entire affair runs as coolly as Gunn’s Lagonda and goes down as smoothly as his favorite Glenmorangie whiskey, with the solid kick of his .357 Colt Python. Superior escapist fun for all readers.

Enter a Hero

Revue by David L. Vineyard

“Maxim Gunn and The Chaos Project” introduces the world to Gunn, Maxim Gunn, Nicholas Boving’s entertaining and clever twist on the cool eyed British hero of lore. Of course it’s impossible to escape the comparison with James Bond, and Boving cleverly manages to play his own clever variations on all the tropes of Fleming’s popular works, but Boving is holding his cards close to his vest and if Gunn occasionally offers a glimpse of Fleming’s world of glamour and danger he also plays --- in a different manner --- some of those same notes that Fleming himself drew on from the rich past of the British thriller while keeping his tongue in cheek with a panache that may remind readers of the late George McDonald Fraser’s cheeky Flashman. Maxim Gunn is no Flashy, he’s true blue, handsome, dashing, and with impeccable manners, but he also manages to touch on that same wealth of earlier heroes from Anthony Hope’s Rudolph Rassendyll and Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond to C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower.

Nor is Boving content to put his man up against anything as tiresome as the Russians, terrorist fanatics, or the usual run of megalomaniacs. Gunn, who is contemplating retiring from the Organization to escape his tiresome boss, the perfectly named Vileman, finds himself arrayed against the beautiful and deadly Wanda Liszt. Seems Gunn killed Wanda’s super criminal father and Wanda and her allies have been seeking revenge ever since. And what revenge it is. Wanda has gotten her hands on the legendary necklace of Sheba, and with it’s powers she plans to seize all of Africa as her own little fiefdom -- but first she has to gather her forces in a splendid set piece of a gothic unassailable castle fortress --- replete with its own version of the Jacob’s ladder that threatened the real king of Ruritania in Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda --- where Gunn, with the help of a former SAS man and a Union Corse godfather, has to literally bring the house down on Wanda’s head.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Boving orchestrates it all with clever byplay, fast action, and a knowing nod to what splendid fun all this nonsense can be if the reader will just relax and go along with it. The author has a real gift for capturing the feeling of exotic locales and creating exciting, colorful, and bizarre dilemmas for his hero to extricate himself from with the proper mix of derring-do and the well placed mot juste.

It all runs as smooth as Gunn’s Lagonda and with the kick of his trusty .357 Magnum, at a rapidly evolving pace and with just the right balance of action, character development, and colorful background and locales. I won’t be giving away too much to reveal Wanda Liszt meets a just end, but I suspect she won’t be quiet long, and Boving hints as much in a clever coda at the books end. It’s no small thing to create a hero as attractive as Gunn (think Stewart Granger in The Prisoner of Zenda) or a villain as wickedly inviting as Wanda, and Boving plays the two off each other with all the right notes. If Maxim Gunn deserves to stand in the company of such heroes as Bond, Drummond, and the Saint, as well as more modern entries like Dirk Pitt or Ted Bell’s Alexander Hawke; Wanda deserves a place alongside Carl and Irma Peterson, Fu Manchu and his daughter, Fleming’s Ernst Stavro Blofield, and of course the immortal Professor Moriarty.

I can’t say enough about Boving’s literate and highly readable mix of old fashioned adventure with a pleasingly gothic touch of what the Scots like to call the uncanny and a whiff of the kind of world threatening science we’ve come to associate with Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and Mathew Reilly’s bestselling novels. Long live Maxim Gunn --- and the good news is there are six more already available. You won’t regret meeting Mr. Gunn, and you will be eager to make his acquaintance again and again.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Maxim Gunn in West Africa

West Africa is a more dangerous and treacherous place than when I was working there in the 60’s, and there certainly weren’t any Leopard Men that I knew about, but Maxim Gunn is the type of man I wouldn't have minded meeting during a few of the more dicey moments in my own more sedate career in the wilds of Northern Nigeria, like the terrible day when the world went mad and the killing started. They called it the Biafran War, but it was more like bloody retribution and the fulfillment of a prophecy.

But most of it was good, very good, and I still remember arriving all those years ago. We landed at Kano in the wee hours, and after customs I went up onto the airport roof to wait for the local plane - a DC3 - to Jos. And as I waited the sun rose. It was a Rider Haggard moment. It was "King Solomon's Mines" and "She". It was P.C.Wren and "Beau Geste". The blood red ball shimmering through the desert dust, the smell of camel dung cooking fires, and the muezzin’s call to prayer. It was glorious, that first sunrise over Africa. I sat and watched it with a feeling of intense excitement and awe and it has stayed with me and I can still smell it although it was nearly fifty years ago.

Maxim Gunn Downunder

Western Australia is perhaps a bit less wild and woolly than when I was a mining engineer there in the late 70’s but Maxim Gunn finds it challenging enough in his latest adventure. Marble Bar in the old days really was a one pub town, the famous Iron Clad, and the roads weren’t blacktop; just rutted tracks that billowed dust in the dry, and turned to mud in the wet. But otherwise it was pretty much as Gunn sees it: bloody hot, prone to mind-numbing cyclones, and a cold beer is still a cold beer. As for aliens, well, anything’s possible I suppose.

After Western Australia I chucked mining because as I’ve said somewhere else, it became my unalterable opinion that working in 40 degrees Celsius in the shade was for the birds.

Friday, July 17, 2009

The Disputed Barricade

This is with my agent. Anyone interested, drop me a line.

We have the distinction of living in a time in which our collective acts will decide the fate of all nature on Earth. Many of Earth’s billions are justifiably worried and embittered by the state of the environment and the results of multinational summits have had disappointing results, bringing further outcry and demands that those in power exercise that power for the good of the Earth and its people. The notion that we are at the mercy of big business and governments has been reinforced by each failure to make positive progress. But there is a movement gathering strength and the people feel betrayed, and that can be dangerous for those who fail in their duties.

Virgil Conlan, the protagonist of “THE DISPUTED BARRICADE” embodies that frustration as he leads the way through thought, beliefs and actions that will validate the feelings of those who read this novel.

“THE DISPUTED BARRICADE” is a novel in tune with the world pulse, and will strike a sympathetic cord in that like so many flawed heroes he is to some extent out of sync with society’s norms.

After half a lifetime as a mining engineer in many parts of the world, I have seen both sides of the environmental fence, seen the appalling destruction uncontrolled industry can wreak, and played a part in achieving positive results. This had placed me in a unique position of having had real experience when it came to writing this novel.

There may have been other novels about the environment, but none have the angle of a biography, none have the combined elements of decline, redemption, violence, tenderness, love and loss, and as powerfully as “THE DISPUTED BARRICADE”.

“THE DISPUTED BARRICADE” is the story of a man with a mission, driven to mount a one-man crusade to save the last great wild places from the depredation of industry. He has talked to those in power, tried reason, and having come against a stone wall of vested interests, political obstruction and industry whose god is money, decided to get their attention the hard way and hit them where it hurts: the balance sheet.

The story is a biographer’s exploration of the man, which takes place at an old beach house on Tasmania’s wild West Coast, inter-spaced with four chapters in which he successfully sabotages an off-shore mining dredge in the Chilean islands, a mining operation in the United States’ Rocky Mountains, and a logging project in British Columbia, Canada.

Conlan’s background, from a young man of Anglo-Irish descent in London’s post-war slums, through independence, a failed marriage, a disastrous affair, alcoholism and despair, to his final awakening and new found sense of purpose on a sheep station in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, is explored over a spring and summer of wild days and calm, in which the biographer and narrator uncovers his curious semi-religious beliefs about the earth, and comes to understand the roots of his near fanatical love for it.

It is also a love story, and culminates violently in a contracted attempt on Conlan’s life, and his return to Chile to finish the uncompleted job: his rendezvous with death at the disputed barricade.

Think about a man ...

Have you ever thought it was time for a different kind of hero? Well ...

Think about a man: suave, hard, devil-may-care, an ex-agent, the best that ever was. Call him MAXIM GUNN.

Think about the dark realms, the hidden corners, the places where things lurk, things that live only in our imaginations, things that just should not be.

Think about hostile aliens, and vampires and werewolves. Think about priceless jewels with unearthly powers, and demons controlled by computers.

Think about the people who come to MAXIM GUNN for help, help he cannot deny for that’s just not in his makeup.

Think about MAXIM GUNN the man. A man who avoids violence, but meets it head on if he can’t. A man who’d rather think his way out of trouble, but whose fighting skills are legendary.

Think about a contrary man who might say that knowing there is a trap is the first step to avoiding it, and then smiles and adds, but into battle, murder and sudden death, good Lord deliver me, right up to the neck.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Storytellers Creed

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge,
That myth is more potent than history,
That dreams are more powerful than facts,
That hope always triumphs over experience,
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Maxim Gunn and the Leopard Legion

Magunta, the Witch Doctor, Wizard and Master Criminal who first appears in THE CHAOS PROJECT plans to take over West Africa by resurrecting the infamous Leopard Men. Fear is his key, and the Great Black Leopard his weapon. Gunn is called in by his old friend, the Emir of Ladi, and tracks the leopard to its mountain lair.

Location: Northern Nigeria.

Maxim Gunn and the Sun Fortress

It was a fortress carved out of a living cliff in a time before history, and dedicated to the Sun God. Devlin, revolutionary and anarchist has taken it over to house the Princess, kidnapped for an impossible ransom. Maxim Gunn is called upon to do the impossible: find her and get her back before a country is brought to its knees. Simple search and rescue, he thought: but he hadn’t reckoned with the Sun God and the horrors that went
with his worship.

Location: Central America, West Coast.

Maxim Gunn and the Stolen Waters

Was the really such a place as Atlantis? And was there a super race ahead of its time, or something so different we wouldn't want to know? Trapped for thousands of years beneath the ocean until a submarine earthquake frees them, a few survivors emerge on a mission of revenge against the "Dry Landers" whom they blame for the Great Catastrophe. Kidnappings, blackmail and ugliness keep Gunn fighting to stop them - and the world will never know how close they came to success.

Location: West Coast of Scotland.

Maxim Gunn and the Serpent Force

The alignment of all nine planets will bring the Serpent Force, a mysterious power known to the ancients, to its maximum effect. One man has the secret and must be stopped. Once more Maxim Gunn is on the trail which takes him from Stonehenge to the temples of Greece and the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan. Earthquake, unseen powers, duels with the forces of evil, and time running out leave Gunn little time for sight seeing. It's a race which must be won, for the consequences of failure are unthinkable.

Maxim Gunn and the Demon Plan

Witchcraft in the twentieth century? Computer controlled demons? Maxim Gunn didn't believe it either - until his old enemy Wanda Liszt, miraculously returns from the dead with another plan to control, the world. Ambushes, a booby trapped tomb, a demonic attack by the fiend Wanda controls keep Gunn on his toes, until, with a little help from the giant Swedish archaeologist, Torquil Tornquist, the crashing finale is reached.

LOcation: Turkey

Maxim Gunn and the Chaos Project

Maxim Gunn, agent extraordinary, takes on one last official mission before resigning from the Organization. Wanda Liszt, arch criminal: dark, beautiful and deadly, has found Sheba's Necklace, the legendary rope of emeralds that bestows great powers on its possessor. Her plan: Chaos in Africa, after which she, as Great White Queen, will pick up the pieces and rule the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Gunn is ambushed by a Mongolian archer, fights a starving jaguar, wrestles a monstrous freak, and pits himself against an albino swordsman in his desperate efforts to thwart her. The explosive climax takes place in the Swiss Alps.

The Maxim Gunn Series

Right at the beginning I said this blog would be more or less about the Maxim Gunn series of Action-Adventure books - so this is what they're all about.

These action adventure novels will appeal to the adventurer and armchair agent in all of us. Maxim Gunn's wiles are a match for the most twisted of villains. Follow the saga in this riveting series of books.

Experience the flare of Maxim Gunn as written by Canadian author Nicholas Boving.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Travel Books

Most travel books are dull, with the dullness only a mélange of facts and figures, dates and timetables can produce. But there is a better way. The Portuguese café-philosopher Fernando Pessoa says that “Travel books are worth only as much as the imagination of the one who writes them, and that if the writer has imagination he can enchant the reader with the detailed, photographic description of landscape’s he’s imagined as well as with the necessarily less detailed description of the landscapes he thought he saw.”

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Online piracy

Putting your work online risks piracy, just as has happened with the music industry. Only it doesn’t seem to be doing the music industry much harm. Look at Apple’s iTunes which, after a bit of a painful transition is now making money as if it had its own mint. And as one writer so rightly said, obscurity is a much worse fate than piracy. Apparently Brazilian author Paulo Coelho thinks so too, because, since he’s been actively pirating his own books his sales have increased. I wonder how many he pirates? I wonder if it's true?

A spokesman for the London based Society of Authors said that “book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales.”
I think we should wait and see what the technology brings – what do you think?

First lines I have in my head

“He broke a rose.”

No idea what it means: it came to me in a dream so it’s probably rubbish.

“Because the Governor hath said thou hast so great a heart.”

Also words from a dream. Go figure.

First line I did write

“The most dreadful thing you can do is not live up to someone’s expectations of you.” The Disputed Barricade.

First line I'm glad I didn't

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents ... Paul Clifford. Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

First lines I'd like to have written

According to Donald Maass, “The best first lines make us lean forward, wondering, ‘What the heck does that mean?’ ... The one thing all good first lines have in common is the intrigue factor.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness .....

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. Scaramouche.

And inevitably ... “Call me Ishmael.”

Stalin

Now there’s a name to make any writer sit up and look over their shoulder. He’s supposed to have coined the unforgettable description that writers are “engineers of the human souls.” Actually it was a minor Soviet novelist in a toast to a writer’s gathering in 1932. No one knows what happened to the man, but he probably vanished into the Gulag ......

John Fowles on writing

Narcissism or pygmalionism is the essential vice the writer must have. Characters (or situations) are like children or lovers: they need constant tending to, caressing, listening to, watching, admiring. All these occupations become tiring for the active participant --- the writer--- and only something akin to love can provide the energy. I’ve heard people say, “I want to write a book.” But wanting to write a book, however ardently, isn’t enough. Even to say, “I want to be possessed by my creations,” isn’t enough, all natural or born writers are possessed, and in the old magical sense, by their imaginations, long before they even begin to think of writing.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Why do we write?

Why do we write knowing that only a miniscule percentage of us will make it to the point of being able to give up our day jobs? Is it compulsion, a few words scratched on the cave wall to mark our passing? Is it the heart-stopping hope that some editor will relent and guide our efforts into print with the words “New York Best Seller List” on the cover of the sequel? Or is it just the pleasure of entering a private world at the end of a long day’s grind? Whatever the reason we know it is worth it, and there is always the chance of that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The lure is strong, but also the spinning of tales is in our blood.

Monday, February 23, 2009

John Updike

John Updike, at the 2006 convention of the American Booksellers Association said, “The printed, bound and paid-for book was – still is, for the moment – more exacting, more demanding, of its producer and consumer both. It is the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following the other’s steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness. Book readers and writers are approaching the condition of holdouts, surly hermits who refuse to come and play in the electronic sunshine of the post-Gutenberg village.”

John Updike, “The End of Authorship,” New York Times Book Review, June 25, 2006

R.L.S.

Seen in a school in Samoa.

“Robert Louis Stevenson, who was born in Scotland, was too delicate to work; instead, he became a writer of books.”

Monday, February 2, 2009

Inkhornism

Inkhornism, apparently in common use from 1400 to 1600, or thereabouts, means a learned or pedantic word or expression. In 1553 Thomas Wilson wrote The Arte of Rhetorique, a work intended to assist budding poets. In it he made fun of exaggerated and overblown language and offered a tour-de-force gibberish example. “I cannot but celebrate and extol your magnifical dexterity above all other, for how could you have adepted such illustrate prerogative and dominical superiority if the fecundity of your engaigne had not been so fertile and wonderful pregnant.”

He sounds as though he was talking about a politician.

St. John Bosco

It seems this St John is the patron saint of editors and publishers, so perhaps we as writers should give him our respect: without editors and publishers, where would we be? No, don’t answer that.