Taurus

Review of "The Warlock"

2011-11-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

Review by William Holt.

If you like big novels set on Aegean Islands, you could do far worse than to read Nicholas Boving's The Warlock. It will take you right into a monastery and to a strange den of iniquity, both set against each other on a little island with great natural beauty, primitive transport, and such people as may be found everywhere if you know where to look and if you don't mind being both uplifted and appalled. You won't easily forget the experience!

My other most vivid experience of the Grecian milieu, apart from Homer, is Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Though evocative, Durrell, like many authors using first person pov, can be unnecessarily obscure and suffocatingly subjective. Nothing of that sort appears in Nicholas's narrator. He's likable, straightforward, and not troubled with any of Durrell's misty romanticism, which from the first paragraphs of Justine, put me in mind of Lovecraft, though he's differently oriented and certainly superior in talent.

The Game

2011-10-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt," explained the general. "So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’”

"But no animal can reason," objected Rainsford.

"My dear fellow," said the general, "there is one that can."

In 1924, Richard Connell’s THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, captivated readers with the tale of one man hunting another man for sport. It became an instant classic.

Now, witness the next evolution of hunt, with eleven all new tales of cunning and survival.

THE GAME is on!

Published by Seven Realms Publishing.

THE GAME, an anthology featuring some of the best indie authors around. This volume, inspired by Richard Connell's classic tale THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, features stories by Alan Baxter, Nicholas Boving, Rick Chesler, Sean Ellis, R.J. Fanucchi, J. Kent Holloway, William Meikle, Rick Nichols, David Sakmyster, R.P. Steeves, and David Wood.

Find it and buy it at: http://bit.ly/qVbloS

Tales of the Shadowmen

2011-10-22T15:34:00.001-07:00

The international anthology devoted to paying homage to the world's most fantastic heroes and villains returns in this eighth installment. This time, the stories focus on those who provoke or entice evil… Agents Provocateurs who thrive in the shadows and lurk on the periphery of our world…

My story - "The Elfberg Red". Find it at http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen08.htm

The Warlock - review

2011-10-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

Powerful and compelling, the story of Allan Collins unfolds. He is an over-worked executive who takes a sabbatical at the monastery of Agios Dimitrios on the lonely Grecian island of Melanos on the advice of his physician. He encounters Vincent Marat, a man who Alan is warned by the Abbot not to be taken in by. Though Alan takes the advice, he can't help but seeing Marat, who calls himself Ipsissimus, the highest grade of magician, as nothing more than an egotistical and hedonistic deviant.

The Warlock is a winning combination of outstanding storytelling, marvelous writing, poetic prologue, strong narration and dialogue, with Gothic overtones. This is the way thrillers and horror genres should be written.

Review by L. Anne Carrington

Now read on - a new chapter every week.

Maxim Gunn - The Serpent Force

2011-05-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

For a limited time I've decided to give away e-copies of "The Serpent Force", the third in the Maxim Gunn series. You can fin it at http://bit.ly/bOZy6p on Smashwords, along with the other five thrillers, plus a "Frances West adventure called "Castle Dark" - you'll love Frances, she's one hell of a woman, and another thriller "Declaration of Intent".

The cover above, "The Chaos Project" is for the first in the series.

The Disputed Barricade

2010-12-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

It started on a rainy day in a run-down pub in a forlorn small town on the west coast of Tasmania. She had stopped out of curiosity, stayed for a drink, and fate stepped in.
Virgil Conlan, battered knight in dented armour: poet, warrior and priest with a strange, inexplicable, mystic love for his Mother Earth spilled a drink on her coat, bought her lunch and so began her time as the biographer of a man who was to change her life irrevocably.
Virgil Conlan lives in a violent world. He is an environmental terrorist, although the description would bother him, for he sees himself as the protector of the world’s beauty. He also knows he has a destiny he cannot escape.
The DISPUTED BARRICADE is the story of man with a mission, driven to mount a one man crusade to save the world’s last great wild places from the depredations of industry. He has talked with those in power, tried reason, and having come up 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 accidental meeting brings him love; bitter-sweet because he knows it cannot last longer than it takes him to tell his story throughout a summer at an old beach house on the wild West Coast of Tasmania.
The story is the biographer’s exploration of a man: rude, sexist, domineering, at times almost mystical, a contrary man, and yet capable of extraordinary tenderness, inter spaced with four action chapters in which he successfully sabotages an off-shore mining dredge in the Chilean islands, wrecks a destructive mining operation in the Rocky Mountains, and brings a logging operation to a halt in British Columbia.
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’s 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.

Listen to Toni Braxton and get the feeling.

http://youtu.be/ZOj1urHtu4Y

Cerberus Island

2010-12-06T17:21:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the screenplay at Amazon Studios:
http://studios.amazon.com/users/10102

A dark and stormy night

2010-11-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

You could have cut the atmosphere in the bar with a blunt knife. Outside, the weather had clamped down with a vengeance in the way it sometimes can on the west coast of Scotland, and the fishing boats had taken shelter: the result being that fifty boisterous, raucous and slightly fuddled fishermen were crammed into a room meant for twenty at a pinch. The bar was on the other side of the hotel, away from the guest quarters where I was supposed to be. It was my own fault: I should have known better.
I was perched in a corner holding a whisky the size of which you'd never get served anywhere else in the bar without seriously endangering your credit limit, watching the barman dispense whisky and witticisms with equal rapidity. There were more genuine characters per square foot in that small room than you'd find anywhere outside its counterpart in some port like Halifax or Honolulu. Seamen all over have a way of enjoying themselves that’s unique, usually involving trying to drink a bar dry and find a face to smash in. I was content to make myself very small and just watch and listen.
The evening wore on, the noising level increasing in logarithmic proportion to the volume of whisky consumed, and inevitably I found myself watching a particular couple of fellows hunched over a table looking as if they were solving the riddles of the Universe. Maybe they were at that, but the puzzled frowns and expressions of intense and pained concentration indicated I.Q.s about one level up from the average house plant.

The smaller one, only about six foot two and two-twenty pounds felt my gaze in the end. You do that, don’t you: feel someone looking at you. It’s something to do with E.S.P. I imagine, or a guilty conscience. Anyway, he swung round slowly, baby blue eyes traversing the length of the bar like twin hawks looking for a juicy mouse, until they settled on me. I looked away sharply, but not sharply enough. Talk about across a crowded room! I wish he’d been called Sheila, or Morag, but I had a feeling it was just Jock because he couldn’t spell anything as complicated as Hamish.
Funny how simple actions can bring instant attention, like pushing back a chair and standing up. He stood up, the chair scraped back, and there was instant hush. Just like that, magic!
Jock came through the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea: it sort of parted as he moved, another bit of magic that made me wish I could do the same with the wall at my back. He stopped a yard away, swaying a bit and surrounded by a miasma of whisky fumes that must have really kept the flies away as I had a feeling it was semi permanent. But perhaps I was being unjust: maybe working on a fishing boat made you want that kind of personal deodorant.
“Who are ye starin’ at?” The tone did not make it a polite enquiry.
I smiled in what I hoped was a disarming manner. “Certainly not you.”
“Ye damned well were. An’ ye were listenin’ tay a private conversation, Mr Nosey Parker.”
My smile evolved from disarming to placating. “How could I possibly hear anything in this noise?” There was no noise. Sprint would have loved it.

“How could I possibly hear?” The man mimicked my English accent and moved closer. I tensed and put my glass on the bar. What had been totally innocent looked like turning ugly if I didn’t do something to create an atmosphere of calm and brotherly love and all eyes were turned in our direction in delighted expectation. Jock finally realized we were the focus of attention and decided to push it.
“Look, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” I said. “And I'm sorry you think the way you do. Let me buy you a drink to show there’s no harm meant.”
I might have been talking to the wall as things suddenly came to head when he grabbed a fistful of my sweater, thrusting his reddened face in mine. I reckoned I had a couple of seconds before the inevitable happened.
Then the barman came to my rescue. He placed a full glass on the counter and leant across.
“Whoa there,” he said.”`What d’ye want to be fightin’ this fella for, Jock? He ‘s never done ye no harm Leave it be an’ take a drink: that way ye’ll no be sorry.”
“It’ll nay be me that’s sorry,” Jock replied. By God, I was right. “I’ll smash his face in.”
The logic of the thought process escaped me, but the barman just shrugged and beckoned with a conspiratorial air.
“Jock,” he whispered loudly. “D’ye ken James Bond?”
“Aye,” said Jock, with a puzzled frown.
The barman jerked his head at me and hissed urgently. “Yer man there. Yon’s James Bond.”
The effect was little short of miraculous. Jock’s baby blues widened as he went full astern, and there were a couple of snickers from the audience. Then someone at the back of the room struck up a tune on a battered accordion and moments later the bedlam was again at force ten, the incident forgotten.

The Great Idea that wasn't

2010-11-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

It seems this young couple from the States were on vacation in Oz, that is according to Truthful Magee who swore on his Granny’s ashes which he keeps in a jug behind the bar, and is therefore according to Hoyle: and, on the last week they decided to rent a car and trip around the Outback so they could tell the folks back home they’d been in Crocodile Dundee country, though that's about two thousand miles from where they were.
Anyway, they’re out there in the boonies, barrelling along somewhere north of Kalgoorlie and south of Meekatharra, which as anybody knows isn’t exactly a freeway at rush hour even on a busy day, when this dirty great big red roo steps across the road in front of them, calm as you please. How the hell they didn’t see a six foot marsupial sticking out in that nothingness boggles the mind, and Truthful didn’t say, but wham! they smack straight into the thing, knock it for a loop and come to screeching stop feeling shaken, but not nearly as shaken as the poor bloody roo.
Outside the air-conditioned comfort of the car - they were touring the Outback the hard way, you see - the heat hits them like a fist and the flies descend out of nowhere as if they were lumps of bad meat. But, being made of stern stuff having grown up in New York where survival tactics are learned in preschool, they took it well and decided to move the poor animal off the road. Not that it would have minded much, but they were public spirited and some other poor joker could have whacked into it in the dark and taken a mean tumble, not to mention bent his motor, though, mark you, any car without a couple of dings in that part of the world looks kind of out of place and probably belongs to some city bloke.

So they’re out of the motor, you see, lugging this dirty great roo off the road, and those things weigh a couple of pounds I can tell you, when the young bloke has a bright idea, the kind you always wish later had died still born. Now this may be where Truthful departs a wee bit from the straight and narrow, but these two decide to dress the animal up in some duds and take a couple of pictures to put in their album to show the folks back home. After all, there’s so many tall stories come out the Oz that people will believe almost anything, even civilized kangaroos.
So they get a Levi jacket and slip it over the roo’s arms. It's a bit of a snug fit but they manage, and then they reef the guy’s backpack on it and for a finishing touch stick a pair of sunshades on its nose. Very artistic really I should think, specially as they’d got it propped up against a fence post.
First, the girl stands by the thing, hand on hip and one on the roo’s shoulder, and gets her picture taken. It took a while as she had a fit of the giggles half way through and wasn’t at all sure about whether the thing had fleas. But that was one for the family archives, and they had to wait while a road train ripped past and the dust settled as it will eventually do even if there’s no wind.
And then the young fella steps forward, hands over the camera and strikes a pose. His lady takes aim, gets the two of them in the view finder and presses the button. She’s no expert, but the camera’s one of those idiot proof jobs so she gets the picture, and what a picture.

At that moment the roo wakes up - seems it wasn’t dead - shakes it’s head, takes one look at the scenario, decides there’s definitely something wrong with this picture, and with one damned great bound takes off in the general direction of Sydney. The snap the lady gets is one for the memory book ‘cos her fella has a look on his face that would beat all for sheer unqualified surprise. I mean to say, if you had your arm round a dead roo and it suddenly took off I reckon your mouth would drop open a bit too.
Truthful said the young fella gave a shout they could have heard a couple of miles away. His missus drops the camera as she needs two hands to cover her mouth, and they both swivel to watch in disbelief as the roo disappears over the horizon with no intention of ever having anything to do with cars or cameras ever again.
But there’s a problem, you see. The Levi jacket they can do without, and the sunshades were only a pair of cheapies, but it’s the backpack, still firmly across the animal’s shoulders that stirs up their anxiety.
Why? Well, according to Truthful it contained all any tourist holds most dear, especially when they’re in foreign parts and far from home: little things like passports, traveller’s cheques, air tickets and the like. Just paper, you say. Not worth worrying about, you say again. But have you ever tried to get out of, or into a country without them? And one thing was certain, the roo wasn’t about to snap its fingers, say "silly me" and turn round to give them back.
Of course, it all turned out right in the end, but they had a hell of time convincing the U.S. Consul in Perth that a roo had stolen their passports, and American Express weren’t all that sympathetic either, that is until they’d seen the photo, and somewhere out there in the GABA, the Great Australian Bugger All, is a roo wearing levis and cool sunshades.

“You won't believe this, but it's true”

2010-11-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

The in-flight meal was good. Portioned, packaged, exact in its dimensions, and indistinguishable from that of the man in the next seat - but it was too much. It seemed like the fourth meal in as many hours, and the banana lay on the white plastic plate accusingly, daring me to leave it. I gave in and slipped it into the bag under my seat, to be immediately forgotten, until the Customs Officer, resplendent in a uniform that wouldn't have disgraced a Ruritanian Admiral, extracted it, holding it out between finger and thumb as if it was contagious.
“It is forbidden to bring fresh fruit into this country,” he said, firmly.
“It was part of my lunch - on the plane you know.”
“You have an import permit?” he asked.
“Well, no, of course not. I didn't think ...”
He lifted his chin and dropped the offending fruit onto the counter.
“It will be impounded.”
“What ?”
“The banana. It will be impounded for examination by the Department of Agriculture.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, exasperated. “Do what you like. I didn’t want it anyway.”
“Then why try to smuggle it into this country?”
“I did no such thing.”
The Admiral smiled knowingly, reached into a drawer under the counter, and took out a buff coloured form. He handed it across.

“Fill this out - Sir.”
“But ... Oh, all right, but ...”
He was already moving away to the next victim, satisfied that the day had begun well.
I filled in the form, sweating in the close-aired confines of the long shed, and marvelled at the stupidity of petty officialdom. Name - address - date of birth - reason for entering - port of departure - and so on. Why didn’t they want to know the colour of my grandmother’s eyes as well?
The form stuck to my damp hand, and the ink blurred on the cheap paper. This was a fine start to a new country. Finally I gave it back. The Admiral examined it, nodded, and chalked a squiggle on my case.
“You will be notified, Sir.”
“Of what?” I asked, anxiously, with visions of a cockroach infested jail. Missing, presumed stupid.
“Whether the banana is safe to import. Have a nice stay, Sir.”
“I see. Well, thank you.”
I didn’t see at all, and left the shed, hot and confused, and feeling the pitying looks of more seasoned travelers follow me into the harsh, bright sunlight.
A month later, the incident, if not forgotten, at best no more than a vaguely irritating memory, I received a windowed envelope. Puzzled, I opened it with my butter knife, read it, and burst out laughing. It was from the Department of Agriculture, informing me that my banana had been cleared for importation. The final paragraph was the rib tickler.

“ Please remit your money order for the sum of $5.00 if you wish the said fruit forwarded, or $10.00 if you wish it destroyed. The enclosed form should be completed and returned, indicating your preference.”
The signature was indecipherable.
I tossed the letter to my wife, who read it and also laughed.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“With that? Nothing, of course.”
“Why?”
I looked at her, mystified.
“Why? Because it’s nonsense, that’s why.”
“Oh, come on. We could have endless fun.”
I was still mystified. She tapped the letter and said, through a mouthful of toast and marmalade.
“This is bureaucracy at its most idiotic. Let’s send for it, and then disclaim it as being the wrong one.”
Understanding dawned. I’m not usually so thick, but it was early. I took the letter, and a few minutes later the form was completed. Later that day I mailed it, feeling slightly foolish.
Two weeks later a puzzled mailman delivered a small package that oozed stickily. We unpacked it in the kitchen sink, and transferred the barely recognizable contents to a polythene bag.
“Is that your banana?” my wife asked, suspiciously.
I peered at the rotten mess.

“Definitely not.”
“You’re sure?” she asked, seriously.
“Of course. Mine was a yellow-green colour, and that thing is ...” I poked it doubtfully.
“ Hm. I see what you mean. Very black and squishy.” She sighed. “Oh well. I suppose we’ll have to send it back.”
I grinned. “I suppose we will.”
And we did.

Interview with Kent Holloway

2010-09-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

Just had an interview with Kent Holloway of Seven Realms Publishing. Take look and read all about me and Maxim Gunn: http://kenthollowayonline.blogspot.com/

Also visit Seven Realms Publishing. I promise all you armchair adventurers will be suroprised and delighted. http://www.sevenrealmspublishing.com/index.html

Declaration of Intent

2010-08-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

Things have a way of just happening when you least expect it. Situations take on a life of their own. Colin Paget had a quiet, uncomplicated life as a gentleman farmer, he had a beautiful girlfriend he loved, and all was right with the world, until she started doing her job as an investigative journalist.
A truckload of small arms parts, an arrogant TV interviewer, a cruelly murdered cat, and life began to come apart at the seams. Illegal arms manufacturing is a profitable business, and Jan Tobin was getting too close.
At the harvest festival dance she went outside, and didn’t come back, and Paget had no idea what had happened until he got a telephone call. He expected a demand for money, but what he got was an invitation to a duel, the kind of invitation he couldn’t refuse.
The quiet, rolling South Downs of Sussex became the venue for a deadly game of hide and seek. Two men, two rifles and one outcome. Kill or be killed.

Check my new thriller out at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/20436

E-Books on a roll

2010-07-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

Seems E-Book sales are outpacing hard cover sales at Amazon.com. To read the full article follow the link:

http://finance.sympatico.ca/home/e-book_sales_outpacing_hardcovers_amazon/ea0b16f9

Maxim Gunn - Book Trailer

2010-06-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

The new book trailer of the “Maxim Gunn” series of action-adventure books is now up and running. Take a look and get your mojo going:

http://bit.ly/d4mZDJ

The MAXIM GUNN series

2010-06-01T17:35:00.002-07:00

Those earlier posts, the ones below. They are the covers of the first three books in the series. You'll find them at:

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

Try 'em, ypou might like 'em.

2010-06-01T17:35:00.001-07:00

2010-06-01T17:34:00.001-07:00

2010-06-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

Interview with Sean Ellis

2010-02-18T08:20:00.000-08:00

Just had an online interview with Sean Ellis of Sean Ellis Thrillers about the "Maxim Gunn" adventure books, writing and life. Take a look at: http://seanellisthrillers.webs.com/guestauthors.htm

Ads on your website

2009-12-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

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.

Reviews for "The Warlock"

2009-12-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Aspiring Writers

2009-12-01T06:45:00.000-08:00

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

Happy Christmas

2009-11-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

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.

More book selling

2009-11-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-23T12:41:00.000-08:00

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.

Frances West has arrived

2009-11-20T17:56:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-11-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

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

Frances West

2009-11-06T17:17:00.000-08:00

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"

2009-11-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

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

The Warlock

2009-11-01T14:21:00.000-08:00

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.

Maxim Gunn

2009-10-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

Ryerson's Process

2009-10-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

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.”

Survival mode

2009-10-07T12:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Road without maps

2009-10-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

That demned elusive grammar

2009-09-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Periphrastic, pleonastic or redundant

2009-09-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

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!

Thought du jour

2009-08-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Dreams Revisited

2009-08-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Maxim Gunn on Smashwords.com

2009-07-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

A Little Touch of Zenda in the Night

2009-07-24T14:14:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Maxim Gunn in West Africa

2009-07-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

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.

The Disputed Barricade

2009-07-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2009-07-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

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.

The Storytellers Creed

2009-07-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

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.

Maxim Gunn and the Leopard Legion

2009-06-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Travel Books

2009-06-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

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.”

Online piracy

2009-06-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

“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

2009-06-11T12:35:00.001-07:00

“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

2009-06-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Why do we write?

2009-05-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

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.

John Updike

2009-02-23T13:31:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-02-23T13:24:00.000-08:00

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.”

Inkhornism

2009-02-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

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.

Faulkner– Ipse dixit

2008-12-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Writing is - Ninety-nine percent talent . . . ninety-nine percent discipline . . . ninety-nine percent work. ”

I guess you can’t do better than that.

This is part of an interview that took place in New York City, early in 1956.

Love 'em or hate 'em

2008-12-21T09:43:00.001-08:00

Publishers get a lot of bad press – from writers, but where would we be without them?

Self Publishing

2008-12-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

Way back when, when I was younger and even more foolish, I tried self-publishing – it seemed like a good idea at the time and the road to riches. I mean, the writing part was relatively easy, so how hard could selling be?

Don’t do it! Don’t touch it unless you have nothing else to do but promote your books and cold call every bookstore and chain from coast to coast. And even if you do sell them, there’s no guarantee you won’t get most of them back. You see there are damnable things called “returns”, which means if the bookstore doesn’t sell your babies in a reasonable period of time – reasonable to them, that is – they’re going to send them back and you’re going to write them a cheque, and your garage will be full of books no one wants.

There are vanity publishers out there, hundreds of them...most are honest and some who just want your money. But nevertheless, take my advice and go the regular route: find an agent, or find a commercial publisher; that way you can put your car in the garage overnight.

Take heed! Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) knew all about it back in his day when he wrote. “There are men who will make you books and turn ‘em loose into the world with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.”

Publishers, God bless 'em

2008-12-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

“Now Barabbas was a publisher.” (Thomas Campbell 1777-1844), and often wrongly attributed to Lord Byron. Which probably explains why he ended up where he did – Barabbas, not Byron.
But that’s beside the point. According to “Notes and Queries” there was a famous incident when Napoleon ordered the execution of Johann Palm, a German publisher who had been printing subversive pamphlets. Later, at an authors’ dinner, Campbell gave the toast, “To Napoleon!” Consternation reigned. Campbell went on, “I agree with you that Napoleon is a tyrant, a monster, the sworn foe of our nation. But, gentlemen – he once shot a publisher!”

Word Power

2008-12-21T09:27:00.001-08:00

Every agent and editor has the power to reject your writing. But only you have the power to be, or not to be a writer.

Dementia Novella

2008-12-21T09:16:00.000-08:00

Dementia Novella: The symptoms are a wholly irrational urge to get into print; so says the literary agent Frensic in Tom Sharpe’s “The Great Pursuit”. If that was true in 1977 when the book was published, how the disease has spread. It has assumed plague proportions that threaten the survival of the dedicated writer of fiction who might actually have produced something worth reading. No longer can you approach an agent or publisher with some expectation of at the least getting a hearing and a promise to read your offering: more likely you’ll get a polite form reply wishing you better luck elsewhere, or else be ignored.

I don’t blame the agents or publishers. I blame the disease that can be contracted by touching a PC or Mac with a word processor installed. Unfortunately, unless there is a massive worldwide power failure and writers are forced back to the dark ages of manual typewriters, I see no cure. The literary world is doomed to the continuing spread of this dementia.

A few writers on writing

2008-10-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who write know anything.
Walter Bagshot 1826-1877

A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent of Writing, but wants fifty Guineas.
Jean de Bruyère 1646-1696

(Sounds to me as if they’d both have agreed with the theory of the 99%! And fifty guineas for a first book, in those days? Wow!)

Literary success of any enduring kind is made by refusing to do what publishers want, by refusing to write what the public wants, by refusing to accept any popular standard, by refusing to write anything to order.
Lafcadio Hearn 1850-1904

There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It’s a kind of trick of the mind and he is born with it. (And I’m sure he meant to include ‘she’)
Morley Callaghan 1903-1990

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.
A.A.Milne 1882-1956

Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. It’s really dangerous and ultimately destroys you as a writer if you start thinking about responses to your work or what your audience needs.
Erica Jong

This is what I find most encouraging about the writing trades: They allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.
Don Marquis

(The trouble with that theory is most of those people now watch reality TV or play video games)

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler 1890-1960
(Maybe he should have tried something else)

And maybe the dreamers and wannabees should take note from Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) when he said that when he stepped from hard manual work to writing, he just stepped from one kind of hard work to another. Let’s face it, writing for money is a job.

Of course Benjamin Disraeli probably blabbed our innermost secret when he wrote, “When I want to read a good book, I write one.”

One last thought, from Papa Hemingway – The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.

The Necessary Man

2008-08-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I promised myself this blog would be all about writing. But I’ve got to get one political opinion off my chest and say that I think Barack Obama is what is called “The Necessary Man”: the man who turns up when needed, at just the right time. He is akin to J.F.K. and Pierre Trudeau. There is the style, the élan, the class that catches a nation’s imagination – hell it catches the world’s imagination. The world likes Barack Obama, and if America is to reassert herself as world leader and moral compass then she needs this Necessary Man.

Can they all be wrong?

2008-07-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

“Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.” Lionel Trilling wrote that, and a lot of other writers have said pretty much the same thing: among them Tom Lehrer, Alexander Pope and Quentin Tarantino – an eclectic bunch. I guess by that they mean ideas are public property, available to anyone: the important part is what you do with them.

And once again the immortal Dr. Johnson had something to say on the subject when he wrote to some unfortunate, “Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” Kind of proves the point, doesn’t it?

It's getting harder

2008-07-28T12:48:00.001-07:00

Writing is harder these days, not only because of the number of people trying to get into it, but the number of untalented people trying to get into it. The system is getting choked.

What can I say? The man was right.

2008-07-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

“If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.”

“If the public likes you, you’re good. Shakespeare was a common
down-to-earth writer in his day."

“I’m a commercial writer, not an ‘author’. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.”

“Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.”

Mickey Spillane (1918-2006)

Distraction by gadgets

2008-07-16T17:30:00.001-07:00

There’s no question about it. Our attention spans are becoming increasingly short. I blame it in electronic gadgets: principally cellphones and pagers and those inventions of the devil, blackberries.
Now I’m among the first to agree that the telephone is useful: in fact it’s hard to imagine modern life without it; and word processors and e-mail and the Net make for quick and easy communication despite rendering the art of letter-writing all but dead. (See previous post)
But when I am sitting with someone, hopefully having a meaningful discussion, and that person has acquired an involuntary tic that compels them to check a damned gadget every few minutes, or they rudely interrupt our conversation the moment a call comes in instead of letting it go to an inbox, then I know gadgets are fast taking over, and mankind is doomed to become a second class citizen and electronics will eventually rule the world.
It’s enough to make me wish for a catastrophic, world-wide power failure – well, almost, because I’ve forgotten how to do semaphore and my inkwell has run dry.

Online Books

2008-06-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

They say the future of writing lies with online books: The ubiquitous ‘they’ again, the omniscient ‘they’. I don’t know about you, but paging down on a computer screen, or PDA or whatever other device is used doesn’t seem to be catching on; at least not so you’d notice. I’ve got books online, and the only remarkable thing about them is the lack of downloads. Of course this may be my fault, but I can’t help thinking the real reason is that most people would still rather hold a book in their hands; feel the weight of it, smell the paper, turn the pages, perhaps make notes in the margin. Online books are for certain kinds of information where we swoop around like birds of prey searching for tidbits, gathering text for specific purposes.
And what happens then? If you’re like me, and you probably are, you print it out to read at leisure. It comes back to the feel of paper in your hand. I think the future of the printed book is pretty secure; at least until paper gets as expensive as gasoline.
As House of Anansi President, Sarah MacLachlan recently said, “The question you really have to ask yourself is, ‘Do people really want to read a 320-page book on a screen?’ There is not yet an interface that is pleasant enough to do that with. I might be naive, but I actually believe that once there is a device that can deal with a digital file like a book then we will come up with a solution to that problem.” She added “I don’t believe that we will be left in the dust.”

Letter Writing

2008-06-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Letter writing as a form of communication is to all intents dead and E-mail has delivered the coup de grace. Those who argue that E-mail has greatly enhanced the frequency with which we keep in touch don’t get it. Letters were a leisured form of written communication; they were snapshots of our lives, and required thought and some effort. They required paper, pen, envelopes, stamps and a trip to the postbox. E-mail on the other hand requires nothing but a few hurried words and a tap on the ‘send’ key. Presto, like lightning it arrives next door or at the other side of the world. And now there is ‘texting’ on cellphones which further reduces the message to minimalistic shorthand.
As a boy, I remember my grandfather retiring to his study after breakfast every day to write letters: to friends, family, his brothers in Canada and Sweden. They were letters about nothing and everything: his garden, his grandson, the state of the world, books he had read, of ships and shoes and sealing wax.
I wonder; does anyone still do that? Does anyone sit at a well-worn desk, slide a clean sheet of bond paper from a pigeon-hole and write, simply for the pleasure of communication?
Sadly, I doubt it, and I doubt they ever will again unless...and then they probably wouldn’t know how, because not only has the art of the letter vanished, but also the ability to write legibly, and the ability to compose a half-decent sentence.

So sue me!

2008-04-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

Far be it from me not to defend an author’s rights, but isn’t J.K.Rowling being just a bit dog in the manger by trying to stop RDR Books publishing the Harry Potter Lexicon? I mean, it’s not as if she exactly needs the money, and she did give the lexicon a “fan site award”. However, from a different point of view I’d be delighted if she sued me – what huge free advertising? Maybe I’ll use Professor Severus Snape as the antagonist in my next Maxim Gunn story. After all, Jean Rhys used Charlotte Bronte's Mrs. Rochester in "Wide Sargasso Sea."

There's no right way to write

2008-03-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

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.

There is no right way to write. Read: novels and screenplays; learn from others, see what they did and then find your own voice.

The books will tell you about structure, about beat, about subtext: all very necessary particularly the last one if you write screenplays. But don’t let them take over your own ability to tell a story. There are only three real cardinal rules. Every story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. You must engage your audience immediately, keep them engaged throughout, and then finish off with a bang, or at least give them an ending that leaves them guessing. But whichever way you do it, there’s got to be a “wow” factor. Your reader or cinema viewer has got to put down your book or walk out of the darkened theatre thinking they’ve had their money’s worth and are going to tell someone else about it.

I am a writer

2008-03-20T14:24:00.001-07:00

I am a writer because…

I am a writer. I have self-published six books and have two more with an agent. These two have Big House names written all over them.

I am a writer. I have received both kudos and criticism. I like the kudos more.

I am a writer. If you don’t enjoy my words, that only means that you don’t enjoy my words. Nobody made you Literary Critic God.

I am a writer. The fact that I earn my living from a day job subtracts nothing from this fact.

I am a writer. My heart goes pitty-pat at the sight of new editions of Writer’s Market and Roget’s Thesaurus.

I am a writer. When my computer goes pffft, or the electricity fails, I resent the loss of my word processor more than I care about the Internet access or television.

I am a writer. I cannot imagine not writing.

AND - I am the last boss I’ll ever have. Of course that doesn’t take into account my agent, my editor, my publisher and the people who read my books, who all think I work for them. Actually, it’s the other way round. In their own way each of them works for me.

Typewriters

2008-03-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

Today’s generation can’t comprehend the aggravation of having to use manual typewriters and eraser fluid. Those were the times when writing was a labour of love, literally.
Imagine pounding out screenplays and novels with two fingers, emptying bottles of eraser fluid. No cut and paste, no insert, no spell-check, no page numbering, no perfectly turned out product from a laser printer. In the pre-computer days writing was about love of writing and perseverance, about producing something that looked like a manuscript dug up after half a century in the ground and handing it to a typist in the hope she, yes she, could read it and produce something an editor wouldn’t chuck in the garbage. If we still had to do that, there’d be a damned site fewer manuscripts and screenplays written, and the ones that were would come from the heart, written in heart’s blood.
Writers today have no idea what it was like before computers and word processors. It was a constant battle; stabbing at a mechanical keyboard, eternally reaching for the whiteout as you stumbled around with two fingers, cursing a wishing you’d had the sense to go to typing school, but remembering that if Hemingway could do why not you. People wrote because they really wanted to and were prepared to put up with the inconveniences. And because there were none of the conveniences we take for granted in word processing, if you changed you mind or wanted to revise a chapter or a page it meant typing the whole damned thing again, or scribbling endless little hieroglyphics in the margins, pasting fragments till the manuscript looked like one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I tell you, the writing life back in those days was for the dedicated few.
Publishers actually had what were called slush piles and had readers whose job it was to sift through all those unsolicited manuscripts from hopefuls like me just in case the next Steinbeck or Hemmingway was lurking in the dust. Publishers actually encouraged authors: today if you don’t have an agent and send an unsolicited MS, it’ll end up in the shredder.
There’s a saying which probably contains a lot of truth. “Everyone has a book in them, and in 99% of cases that’s exactly where it should stay.” As I said, I blame the computer. Today, anyone can slap together a few of hundred pages and call it a book, and the sad part is it’ll be beautifully presented thanks to those word processors. Look at bookstore shelves: there are hundreds and hundreds of books that will never make a penny, and many are so badly written it’s frightening. But what’s more frightening is why any publisher would want to risk their reputation by turning them out.
Life’s a mystery. Writing is part of life. I just wish sometimes the computer had never been invented and then only those writers who had the passion to write and maybe had something worth reading would make it past the shredder.

Introducing Maxim Gunn

2008-03-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

This blog being about the Maxim Gunn adventures, and not being a blockhead, I thought I’d give you a chance to read a couple of pages of the first story “Maxim Gunn and the Chaos Project”. So, first the blurb, and then...you never know, you might like it, so read on.

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.

CHAPTER ONE

“I swear,” Maxim Gunn announced, with feeling, “that after the next job I’m going to quit.”
Cynthia Ffoote took a chocolate from the box at her side, unwrapped it carefully and popped it in her mouth before replying indistinctly. “I wish I had a pound for every time you’ve said that.”
Gunn unfolded from his arm chair, and stood by the window, hands in pockets, looking onto the street below. “This time I mean it.”
“So, you mean it. And what would you do?”
Gunn shrugged. “God knows. But look at all those people down there. They lead normal, productive lives. No nasty surprises except at income tax time and hardly anyone ever tries to kill them. They’re perfectly safe and happy.”
“And mostly bored out of their skulls,” Cynthia replied.
“Why should they be?”
“Not much excitement in the average nine to five job, you know.”
“I’ve had enough excitement to last a life time. And who said I’d do something boring?”
Cynthia closed the chocolate box firmly, got up, and went to stand behind him, chin on his shoulder and arms around his waist.
“I can't see you behind a desk. You wouldn’t last five minutes.” She peered into the street and said. “Look at that man down there, the one in the dark suit with a raincoat over his arm. What d’you think he does?”
Gunn followed her gaze and picked out the object in question. “Respectable business man. Happily married. Two kids and a dog, and spends two weeks a year in Benidorm.”
“Yes. Something like that, I suppose. But the sun’s shining, not a cloud in the sky, and he’s carrying a raincoat. That tell you something about him?”
Gunn twisted round and grinned at her. “He doesn’t take chances.”
Cynthia gave him a triumphant smile. “Exactly. You want to be like that?”
“No,” Gunn replied, firmly. “But there are a lot of things in this world that aren’t dull, and I’m still going to quit after the next job. It’s very definitely time to say, ‘Up the Organization.’”
The girl rested her dark blond head against his chest. “I’ve got to admit there are times when I wish you would.” She pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “But I don’t think you will. I don’t think you could. I think you live for the excitement. It’s what makes you what you are, and it’s what you’re good at. Wouldn’t you miss the people you know?”
Gunn kissed her forehead. “You don’t miss people in this kind of life; you just remember them. Anyway, you’ll see. And while we’re on the subject of seeing. Did you...?”
“See the man watching the house? Yes. Who is he?”
Gunn’s eyes widened. “I’ve no idea. But no doubt we’ll find out.” He looked down at her from his six foot two height, blue eyes twinkling. “I wonder why anyone would want to keep an eye on me?”
Cynthia’s face took on an unusually cold expression. “So long as it’s not that woman.”
“Wanda Liszt? Do I detect a hint of jealousy?”
Cynthia put her hand on his arm. “She frightens me, Maxim. She’s ruthless, and so cold; and you know she wants revenge more than anything.”
Gunn laughed, delightedly. “She does add a bit of zest to life, doesn’t she?”
Cynthia shook her head in mild exasperation. “See what I mean? The minute there’s a thought of something happening you’re up and running to meet it head on. You’re hopeless.”
Gunn tried to look offended. “But I haven’t done a thing,” he protested. “And anyway, while there are people like her in the world I’ll...”
“You’ll never quit. And just for that, you can take me to dinner tonight at that new place. I hear it’s very good, and very expensive. Your lies are going to cost you, Maxim Gunn.” She glanced at her watch, and gave a sharp exclamation of annoyance. “Damn. I didn’t realize it was so late. I must fly.”
As she gathered her things, Gunn asked. “What’s the great rush? Something vital, like a hair appointment?”
Cynthia’s look was withering. “If you like, I’ll turn up for dinner in curlers.”

Welcome to the writers life

2008-03-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

This is a thing of bits and pieces, of quotations, aphorisms, thoughts and other unconsidered trifles of the writing life. Feel free to comment, add your own thoughts and ideas. Stay away from destructive criticism, bad language and vulgarity: life hands out enough of those and nobody needs them here.

First quote: Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” It’s a good point. The trouble is that it’s so hard to get anyone to pay you for your efforts. Still, roadblocks never stopped a writer from trying, and Winston Churchill said, “Never give in, never, never, never.” And to that end I’ll direct you straight to my website at http://tauruspub.net/ – which is Taurus Publishing.

Links to Mobipocket.com – this is the easy one because the Reader software is free. Anyway, just search for Maxim Gunn and you'll be able to take a look at the six books available. Who knows, you might even buy one.

The other link is to Amazon.com and so to the Maxim Gunn books. Take your pick, but I recommend Mobipocket – Amazon owns them anyway.

Stay tuned – there will be more.