The Gospels - Harmonized and Annotated

      This is a work I have been wanting to produce for 57 years. In hindsight, I can see how the information and facilities have been coming in for many decades without any actual planning on my part, but it is only in the last few years that they have all come together. It began when, as a teenager, I attended a Crusader camp in the Blue Mountains, and took along my father's Bible. The publication date was not recorded, but he must have acquired it before the Second World War. More importantly, it contained an appendix, of similar size to the New Testament, entitled Helps to the Study of the Bible, 2nd edition, the first edition having been published in 1890. And in the middle was a Harmony of the Gospels. "What a useful tool!" I thought.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

     At the beginning of the year I wrote an article about the literary parasites who prey on first time authors. I also mentioned that Amazon offered a self-publishing facility called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for e-books, which appeared legitimate, but I hadn't tried it at the time. I have now tried it, and discovered that it allows publication, not only of e-books, but of paperbacks in a print-on-demand (POD) manner. It is also free. Whatever else might be said about it, you won't be ripped off.

Wannabe Authors, Beware!

     So you've written your first book! Isn't it hard to find a publisher! Some of the biggest companies refuse to accept unsolicited manuscripts. In other words, they outsource to literary agents the task of culling out the badly written chaff from the wheat. Finding a good agent is almost as difficult as finding a publisher. You virtually have to have a reputation before you start. After all, a first time author gets little money, and the agent gets only a fraction of that, so they operate on a shoestring. Besides that, your book may well be poorly written - especially if it is a novel, which requires a whole more skill than non-fiction. Yes, we've all seen published rubbish which makes you wonder how anything ever gets rejected. Just the same, most people have an exaggerated idea of their own writing skill. But even if your book is good, it faces competition from a lot of other excellent works, and the publisher just might not have enough scope to fit it in. But beware! There are predators out there waiting to exploit first time authors.

The Panther - and Other Comics You've Never Heard Of

     The reviews of Black Panther have been so good that I shall probably check out the movie when it comes on TV. But I won't be reading the comic. I've now 68, going on 69, and I haven't been "into" superhero comics for decades. Nevertheless, I am reminded of a comic published in Australia during the 1960s ie when I was a teenager, called The Panther. Although the character himself was not black, his costume was, and he was essentially a rip-off of inspired by The Phantom.

Pook-A-Noo: a Forgotten Childhood Classic

     I was only a few months older than three at the time, so I don't remember a single thing about my Uncle Charles except my aunt standing at the top of the stairs, shouting: "He's dead!" (My parents didn't know I knew. According to my mother, they tried to keep the truth from me by telling me he had gone away. It must have been confusing for a little boy.) But he did leave me one memento, because the previous Christmas he had given me a large format, 106-page book with a hard green cover, and called Pook-A-Noo. Of course, I was far too young to even have it read to me, but within a few years it had become my favourite.

Robinson Crusoe's Anonymous Friends

     They didn't go in for dramatic book titles in the old days. For example, if I had written a novel about a man who spent twenty-eight years alone on a desert island, I would probably have given it a title which would leap out at you from the book stand, like "Castaway!", or "The Island of Despair", or even "28 Years Alone on a Desert Island". Instead, in 1719 Daniel Defoe attached to his novel the title, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of  Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Admittedly, the title was then followed by what can only be called a blurb, detailing what it was all about. Then, at a time before mass communication and mass marketing, based solely on word of mouth advertising, it became a runaway best seller, and has never been out of print. Not only that, within three months he had produced a sequel, which is little read today because, basically, it reads like a sequel which has been run up in just three months in order to make money.
    Personally, I have read the original novel three times, and the sequel once, and I have noticed something peculiar about them. Defoe does not provide names for the other key characters. What's that you say? There are no other key characters except Man Friday. If that's what you think, then you haven't read the book.

Fanthorpe's Fantasies

"Brinton couldn't believe the inscription when he read it in the cold white moonlight. He was looking at his own grave. He tried to read the date but the light wasn't strong enough to be certain. He returned to the graveyard by daylight . . . but the grave had gone.
He left the town in horror, but the grave followed him. He was drawn to burial grounds like iron to a magnet. It was always the same. By moonlight he saw the grave, but never the date. By day he saw nothing. One night he saw the month. Then the day; at least he saw the year. He knew he was due to die in one week. What could he do? Can a man forestall his fate? Can a mortal outwit the dark designs of destiny? Was it all in his mind? Perhaps Roger Brinton was mad? The asylum is warmer than the grave. The day before he was due to die he saw the grave again . . .  the earth was newly turned . . . it was waiting for him!"

    This was the blurb on the back of a paperback I found in a secondhand shop in the 1970s. It drew me in, but when I read it my immediate impression was that it was mediocre. Still, it took some sort of hold on me. I threw away novels by Robert Heinlein and Stephen Donaldson after I had read them, but never that worn paperback by Bron Fane. Also, there were indications inside that a couple of characters formed part of a series so, after a lapse of thirty years, I decided to ask the internet about the mysterious Mr Bron Fane. What I found was astounding.

What You Didn't Know About Books

     Have you ever wondered why most books do not start at page 1, and frequently have blank pages at the back? Are you aware that, if you add up all the pages, both printed and blank, they will nearly always come to a multiple of eight? Have you wondered why photos are not placed close to the section to which they apply? What about those mysterious numbers or letters you occasionally find at the bottom of selected pages? All of these have a perfectly simple explanation.

Re-introducing a Great Adventure Writer

     One is hard pressed to find even a copy of H. G. Wells in my local suburban library, but when I was a teenager in the 1960s it was a source of hardback copies of lots of older writers, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Baroness Orczy, R. M. Ballantyne - and H. Rider Haggard. One day, my mother brought me home a book by the last author, Nada the Lily. At once I was immersed in a larger than life milieu: the bloody world of the Zulu king, Shaka, "the black Napoleon". I thrilled to the exploits of the invincible hero, Umslopogaas, who wielded a great axe, who roamed the veldt with his friend, Galazi, at the head of a pack of "wolves" (ie hyenas), and who loved the beautiful Zulu maiden, Nada. It left me with two ambitions: to learn more about this phase of African history and, most of all, to read more of the author. Over the following 50+ years, I have scoured libraries, secondhand book shops, and lately reprint publishers, and have just completed the twenty ninth.
     However, I have noticed that H. Rider Haggard appears to have dropped off many people's radar by now. Even my son-in-law, who grew up in South Africa, had never heard of him. In fact, I read on a now extinct website that most of his fans are people like me: baby boomers who were introduced to him by an earlier generation. In that case, it is time to pass the torch and reintroduce one of my favourite authors to a new generation.

Murder Most Ineffective

Ten minutes later I knocked on the door of his stateroom.... He lay dead, sprawled face-downwards on the floor, and a dark patch of blood oozed up through his dinner-jacket, round the knife that was buried up to the hilt in his back. (Dennis Wheatley, 1939, The Quest of Julian Day)

    The evening after I read those words, I watched a TV program in which a person was killed - instantly - with an arrow in the back, apparently in the lower part of his ribcage, in the middle of a crowded park.
    This is typical. Writers of novels and films deal in violence with which, fortunately, they have no practical experience. What makes them think you can kill a man so quickly using such methods?
    Warning! Anatomical descriptions coming up.

Geert Wilders Speaks

     Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament. In fact, he is the leader of the fourth largest party in that admittedly fragmented chamber. Yet his parliamentary office is located in a remote area of the building, accessible by only a single corridor, all the more difficult for assassins to reach it and for his bodyguards to protect him. He must leave in an armoured police car to a safe house especially designed to be bullet proof. He can meet his wife only once a week. When he wants to go out, even for electioneering, he must give his protectors one day's notice, and then wear a bullet proof vest and be accompanied by six plain clothes policemen. So why do so many people talk and act as if he were the villain, and not a victim?

Walking Through Walls and Rationing Days

     When I was learning French at high school almost fifty years ago, one of the short stories we studied was L'Huissier ["The Bailiff"] by Marcel Aymé, about a hard-hearted bailiff who, having died, is sent back to earth because he had not received a fair trial at the Pearly Gates. The commentary explained that it came from a book entitled, Le Passe-Muraille, and that Aymé's method was to take a fantastic and whimsical idea - in that case, a person returning from the dock of heaven - and build a completely logical story around it. Astute readers may recall that this was H. G. Wells' prescription for science fiction: let the reader accept a fantastic proposition by a suspension of unbelief, and then play it straight. The only difference was that Aymé's propositions were more whimsical.
     I therefore considered myself fortunate to discover, while rummaging around a second-hand book exchange, a copy of the original book in French - with the corner sliced off to indicate that the bookseller would not be prepared to exchange it again. It was written in 1942 and published in 1943 ie during the German occupation, which is significant for some of the stories. If you ever get a chance to read it, either in the original language or in translation, I would highly recommend you do so.