1 December: Uranium

Martin Klaproth, German chemist who discovered uranium in 1789 was born on 1st December 1743. Here are ten things you might not know about uranium.

1. The chemical symbol for uranium is U and its atomic number is 92.
2. It's the heaviest element to occur naturally in the universe. It was created in supernovae 6.6 billion years ago, according to the World Nuclear Association.
3. Before Martin Klaproth officially discovered it, it had been found in Silver mines in the Czech Republic since the 1500s. As it was usually found when the silver vein ran out, the miners called it "pechblende" which means "bad luck rock".
4. It was named after the planet Uranus, which had been recently discovered at the time.
5. It's radioactive, which a French scientist called Henri Bequerel discovered in 1896 - in fact, he is credited with discovering radiactivity itself, after he left a uranium salt on a photographic plate in a drawer, and found it had emitted its own rays, fogging up the glass as sunlight would have done. It's also unstable, because it's so heavy. It sheds protons and goes through 14 transitions into other elements including radium and polonium, until it turns into Lead.
6. The first use uranium was put to, in the 18th century, was colouring photographic film and even colouring glasses and dinner plates. The practice of colouring crockery with it was happening as recently as 1973.
7. Thankfully, the human kidney can get rid of any uranium you might ingest under normal circumstances. Chances are you do, as it's present in trace amounts in seafood and root vegetables.
8. Only one of uranium's three isotopes can trigger a nuclear chain reaction - that's uranium-235 which makes up only about 0.72 of a sample of uranium ore. Scientists in New Mexico in the 1940s, worked in secret to harness that power. Their work, which they nicknamed "tickling the dragon's tail" resulted in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
9. Uranium is solid at room temperature. It melts at 2,507 degrees Fahrenheit/1,135 degrees centigrade, and boils at 7,468 degrees Fahrenheit/4,131 degrees centigrade.
10. It's the 48th most abundant element in rocks on Earth - 40 times more abundant than silver.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

30 November: Advent

The four weeks before Christmas, Advent, begins on St Andrew's Day according to some traditions. 10 things you might not know about Advent.

1. The word Advent derives from the Latin word adventus, meaning arrival.
2. No-one knows when people first observed it, but it was in the beginning a time of fasting and prayer. By the 5th century, monks were fasting three times a week in the lead up to Christmas and Epiphany, traditionally a time when new Christians would be baptised.
3. Some churches take the start of Advent as being the Sunday four weeks before Christmas Day, so the start date can vary. The Eastern Orthodox Church begins Advent in the middle of November, so it lasts six weeks instead of four.
4. Some churches call Advent St Philip's Feast, The Nativity Feast or Winter Lent.
5. One tradition is to make an Advent wreaths from evergreens and place four candles in them, one to be lit on each of the four Sundays leading to Christmas. A fifth candle may be lit on Christmas Day. People in Britain may remember that you can make them from a couple of coat hangers and some tinsel, a regular feature on the children's TV show Blue Peter in November.
6. While red, Green and gold are colours associated with Christmas, the colour for Advent is usually purple. Priests may wear purple during this period to represent repentance, fasting and the coming of a king. Some denominations also use Pink and blue.
7. The third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday and is more joyful because the arrival of the baby Jesus is now imminent. Candles are now rose coloured and priests will preach about joy, redemption and blessings.
8. On the last days of Advent, the days leading to Christmas, it was once the tradition for Calabrian minstrels to enter Rome and Naples and be seen everywhere saluting shrines of Mary. This was to soothe the mother of Jesus until she gave birth. These minstrels were known as Pifferari, and played instruments similar to bagpipes.
9. It wasn't the done thing for devout Christians to sing Carols during advent. They had special songs which included some of the carols we sing today, such as O Come O Come Emmanuel, but most of the familiar carols weren't sung until Christmas Day.
10. Advent is the first season of the liturgical year. In some churches it is taken to represent the time in history before Jesus came. It also represents the anticipation and hope of Christ's second coming.

A Christmas Novella

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

29 November: Newspaper Day

Today is Newspaper Day because on this date in 1814 The London Times was the first newspaper to be printed by a steam-operated press. Here are some facts about newspapers.

1. The first newspapers were daily bulletins of announcements called Acta Diurna, ordered by Julius Caesar in about 59 BC. However, they weren't papers, as such - they were carved in stone or metal and displayed in public places for people to read. Later on, it was the Chinese who first printed news on Paper to be circulated among court officials.
2. The first newspaper in Britain was the Courant, first printed in 1621. However, it was 1702 before Britain got a daily newspaper - The Daily Courant.
3. Today, there are about 24 billion newspapers published around the world every year. They all have one thing in common - all their Bar codes start with the digits 977.
4. The Times may have the most famous Crossword, but The Times wasn't the first paper to publish one. The Sunday Express beat them to it by several years, on 2 November 1924.
5. Famous people who used to work on newspapers include Charles Dickens (editor of the Daily News), Michael Foot (editor of the Tribune) and Winston Churchill (war correspondent for the Morning Post).
6. The word Gazette, a common newspaper title, comes from the "Notizie Scritte" (written notices) which was published in Venice every month from 1556. The price of it was one gazetta, a Venetian coin.
7. The daily newspaper with the largest circulation, according to the Guinness Book of Records, was a Soviet newspaper called Trud, which in 1990 had a circulation of over 21 million. Today, in the UK the newspaper with the biggest circulation is The Sun at about 3.24 million.
8. The first comic strip to appear in a newspaper was The Yellow Kid, a bald and barefoot little boy whose real name was Mickey Dugan, who wore a Yellow nightshirt which was too big for him. He first appeared in the New York World in 1895. It is from him that we get the term "yellow journalism" which is the publication of sensational stories with little fact checking, for the sake of selling papers.
9. In the UK, the longest running newspaper comic strip is Rupert the Bear, which first appeared in the Daily Express in November 1920, and is still going strong nearly 100 years later.
10. 70-80% of the revenue of the average newspaper comes from advertising. You could argue that the news stories and other content is only there to attract people to the adverts!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

28 November: Pulsars

The first pulsar was discovered on this date in 1967. Ten things you might not know about pulsars.

1. What is a pulsar, anyway? It is defined as a small, dense star which emits brief and regular bursts of electromagnetic radiation.
2. The pulse effect comes from the fact that the electromagnetic radiation can only be detected when the beam is facing Earth, rather like the beam of light from a Lighthouse.
3. They are believed to be neutron stars which have run out of fuel and collapsed under their own weight, so they become smaller and pick up rotational speed rather like an ice skater does when they fold their hands into their bodies.
4. Pulsars can spin up to 5,000 to 40,000 times per minute. The faster the spin, the younger the pulsar is likely to be, since they slow down over time.
5. Some (but not all) pulsars are so regular that they keep time as well as an atomic clock.
6. They could also be used for navigation, rather like beacons and lighthouses at sea. In fact, we've already sent aliens an accurate map of how to find us by including in the Voyager space craft a diagram showing the position of our sun relative to 14 pulsars in the galaxy.
7. The word "pulsar" is a contraction of two words, pulse and star.
8. The first pulsar was discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish. They detected a mysterious radio emission coming from a fixed point in the sky that peaked every 1.33 seconds. While they were certain there was a natural explanation for the signal, it was clear people were going to specualte that it was aliens trying to communicate with us, so they named it LGM-1, for “little green men”. Its official name now is PSR 1919+21.
9. There are more than 500 pulsars in our galaxy.
10. They are so dense that a teaspoon of a Pulsar could weigh as much as the largest mountain on Earth.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

27 November: Save the Record Player Day

Today is Save the Record Player Day. People of a certain age probably owned one of these at some stage in their lives. Here are ten things you might not know about them.

1. There are a number of different words which have been used for these devices. In their early years they were known as phonographs (from the Greek words for sound and writing), or gramophones (from the Greek words for letter and voice). The term "Record Player" emerged in the 1940s and in recent times, they're called turntables.
2. As early as 1857 there was a device that could record sound, although Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph couldn't play the sound back. It merely traced sound waves onto a piece of paper.
3. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison, although the records played on his device looked different from the ones we're familiar with today - they were cylinders. Disc shaped records were invented By Emile Berliner in the 1880s but it wasn't until 1902 that they became more popular than cylinders.
4. Phonographs could record sound as well as play it back. Modern turntables can only play back sound on records produced in a factory.
5. Edison used tinfoil to record sound, which wasn't ideal as the recording would be destroyed when it was taken off the machine. In time, wax cylinders were used instead, solving that problem.
6. How did it work? Sound, spoken words or music entering the mouthpiece made a needle vibrate and make indentations on the foil or, later, the wax. Running a needle attached to a speaker over the groove reproduced the sounds.
7. Early record players for home use had a large horn attached to amplify the sound to a level where it could be listened to. Eventually the Victor Talking Machine Company in the US came up with the Victrola, in which the horn was tilted downwards to allow people to keep their record players in a cabinet.
8. While vinyl records and record players declined in popularity with the advent of CDs and digital formats, they're experiencing a revival of late. Many say the quality of the music is far better in the analogue vinyl format.
9. The needle, or stylus of a record player needs to be able to withstand a lot of pressure and be reisistant to wear. Thomas Edison's first styluses were made from sapphire. From 1910, they were made from diamond and rarely needed changing if they were handled correctly. Steel, tungsten, Copper and even Bamboo were used in some models as well, but these needed to be replaced often, ideally after each use, for a worn stylus could actually damage the record grooves.
10. A turntable can be used by DJs to produce unique sounds, almost like a musical instrument in itself. Manipulating a records while it is being played is called turntablism and the best known technique in turntabling is "scratching".

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

26 November: Casablanca

On this date in 1942, the movie Casablanca premièred in New York. Here are ten things you might not know about this classic film.

1. The film was based on a play called Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, which, at the time the film was made, had never been produced. When Warner Brothers offered them $20,000 for the rights to the story and the characters they jumped at it, only to change their minds 40 years later and try to sue Warner Brothers to get their characters back. They failed, but Warner Brothers did give them more money ($100,000 each).
2. They also got the right to produce their play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, which was produced in 1991 in London, but closed after a month. Two TV series in 1955 and 1983 based on the film fared little better.
3. Casablanca has spawned more movie quotes than any other film. The AFI's movie quotes list, compiled in 2005, has six quotes from the film: "Here's looking at you, kid"; "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship"; "Round up the usual suspects"; "We'll always have Paris"; "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine" and "Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By". The words "Play it again, Sam" are not uttered by any character at any point in the film.
4. Before the film was released there were a number of rumours circulating about the cast and crew, which weren't true. Ingrid Bergman was teachinig Humphrey Bogart to speak Swedish; Paul Henreid had adopted to little girls who were refugees from Europe; and at one point it was rumoured that Ronald Reagan was going to play Rick.
5. Humphrey Bogart, at 5'8", was two inches shorter than his co-star, Ingrid Bergman. Hence he had to film several scenes standing on boxes or sitting on cushions so he'd appear taller.
6. Sam isn't actually playing the Piano. The actor who played him, Dooley Wilson, was a drummer, not a pianist. The music in the film was recorded by someone else, and there was someone in Dooley's line of sight who could play and was making the hand movements so Dooley could copy them and look like he was really playing.
7. A number of people in the film, some of the actors playing Nazi soldiers, and many of the extras, had escaped persecution in Nazi Germany in real life.
8. The idea of a sequel or a remake have been pitched on several occasions but none have been made. One of these was by Madonna, who wanted to re-make Casablanca with herself as Ilsa and Ashton Kutcher as Rick. Every studio she pitched it to turned her down on the grounds that "That film is deemed untouchable."
9. The airport scene was filmed on a sound stage using a small cardboard cutout of a plane, with small people playing the crew preparing for take-off. This was because World War II was still going on at the time and so filming at an actual airport at night wasn't allowed.
10. Bergman and Bogart rarely spoke to one another in real life. The only time they really spoke off screen was at a lunch with Geraldine Fitzgerald when they discussed how they could get out of making the film because they didn't like the dialogue or the plot. Their on-screen chemistry, however, was so convincing that Bogart's wife Mayo Methot thought they were having an affair and several times went to Bogart's dressing room and caused a scene, putting Bogart in a bad mood when he arrived on set.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

25 November: Poul Anderson

25 November is the birthday of the science fiction author, Poul Anderson. Here are some quotes:

1. The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organisation which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.
2. I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
3. Timidity can be as dangerous as rashness.
4. A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.
5. A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.
6. Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.
7. He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.
8. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.
9. What else is life but always bidding farewell?
10. Time is the bridge that always burns behind us.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

24 November: Ted Bundy

1946 Ted Bundy, American serial killer who confessed to killing over 30 women between 1974 and 1978. There could have been any number more that he didn't confess to.

1. He had a troubled childhood. He was brought up by his grandparents, believing that his mother Louise was his sister. Although a man is named on his birth certificate as his father, Lloyd Marshall, was a salesman and Air Force Veteran, Louise claimed she was seduced by a sailor called Jack Worthington. However, there is no record of anyone by that name in the Navy. It's even possible that he was fathered by his grandfather, Samuel Cowell, a violent, abusive man who was obsessed with pornography, although there is no evidence to prove or refute that particular claim.
2. His name at birth was Theodore Robert Cowell. In 1950, Louise was persuaded by her cousins to leave home and live with them. She went to a singles night at their local church, where she met Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a hospital cook, and married him. He formally adopted the young Ted, and did his best to include his adopted son in family activities with little success. Ted later summed Johnny up as "not very bright" and "didn't make much money."
3. As far as the records are concerned, Ted started killing in 1974, at the age of 27. It's possible, though, that he was killing way before that. There is some evidence to suggest he killed an eight year old girl when he was 14, but Ted always denied killing Ann Marie Burr of Tacoma in 1961.
4. He was, however, known to the police during his high school years with a record for petty theft (which was written off, according to the law, when he reached 18). He stole credit cards and money. He was a keen skier, indulging in the sport using equipment and lift tickets that he had stolen.
5. At university in 1967, he became romantically involved with Stephanie Brooks, and the couple got engaged in 1973. However, when Ted dropped out of college and took on menial jobs, Stephanie dumped him citing his “lack of ambition” and “immaturity". Soon after that the murders started - and all his victims resembled Stephanie - they were all white, middle-class students with long dark hair parted in the middle.
6. Typically, he would use his good looks and charm to attract women. He'd pretend to be injured or pose as an authority figure in order to lure them to his car and kidnap them. He decapitated 12 of them and kept their heads in his apartment. Others he dumped in the woods and would return to the scene repeatedly and desecrate their corpses.
7. A defence attourney at his trial described him as “the very definition of heartless evil”. Bundy described himself “the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet”. Yet even he did good things occasionally. According to one story he once jumped into a lake to save a three year old boy who had fallen in. He even worked for a suicide helpline for a time, and according to co-workers, was actually rather good at it. In prison, he co-operated with the authorities to help catch Gary Ridgeway, The Green River Killer.
8. He got married during his trial in Florida. In Florida, there is an obscure law which says that a marriage declaration in court, in the presence of a judge, is a legal marriage. He made such a declaration to Carole Boone, his character witness, while she was on the witness stand and she became his wife on the spot. He'd first met her while they were both working at the Department of Emergency Services in Washington State in the early 1970s. At the time, she believed he was innocent. Ted persuaded the guards at the prison to allow him some private time with his new wife, even though it wasn't usually allowed. Legend has it that Bundy and Boone consummated their marriage on the floor behind a water cooler. Nine months later, Carole had a daughter. In due course, Carole realised Ted was actually guilty, divorced him and moved away, changing her name and that of her daughter. Nobody knows where the daughter is now.
9. He insisted on representing himself in court, despite having no law degree. As such, he was excused from being cuffed and shackled. Bundy took advantage of that by asking to be allowed to do some research in the courthouse law library, then jumping out of the window. He was on the run for six days, eventually caught by a traffic cop who noticed his car weaving in and out of its lane, due to the ankle injury he'd sustained jumping out of the window. He also escaped from prison by sawing a small hole in the ceiling of his cell, losing weight and squeezing through. This time, he was on the run for over two months and committed at least one more murder.
10. He was brought up as a methodist but in 1975, was baptised into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) but never attended services or kept any of the Mormon rules. The church would later excommunicate him when he was convicted of kidnapping.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

23 November: National Cashew Day

Today is National Cashew Day. 10 facts about cashew nuts you might not know:

1. The scientific name for the cashew tree is Anacardium occidentale. It is native to Central and South America and the Caribbean.
2. The cashew tree is an evergreen which can grow up to 46 feet (14m) tall. It belongs to the same family as mangoes and pistachios.
3. The largest cashew tree in the world is in Brazil and covers an area of 81,000 square feet, or 7,500 square metres.
4. The word Cashew comes from the Portuguese name for the tree. The word caju literally means "the nut that produces itself." Anacardium derives from the fact that the fruit of the tree is Heart shaped.
5. Cashew nuts are technically seeds which grow on the bottom of the fruit, which is known as the cashew apple. The cashew apple is edible, too, and can be made into jams, chutneys and alcoholic drinks.
6. The Mayans used the leaves and bark of the tree to make a tea for treating diarrhoea.
7. In 2017, the country that was top of the cashew production table was Vietnam, followed by India, Cote d'Ivoire and the Philippines.
8. Cashew nuts are good sources of Vitamins B6 and K, Copper, manganese, phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc and magnesium.
9. When first harvested, still in their shells, the nuts are surrounded by a toxic resin called anacardic acid, which can irritate or even burn the skin. Hence they are always treated by roasting, boiling or steaming to get rid of it, before they're sold.
10. They can be made into cashew oil, which is dark yellow and can be used for cooking. They can also be made into cashew cheese or cashew butter, which is like Peanut butter, only with cashews. Even the shells come in useful as ingredients for lubricants, paints and waterproofing.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle

22 November: George Eliot

The author George Eliot was born on this date in 1819. Known for books such as Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede, here are some things you might not know about her.

1. Her real name was Mary Anne Evans and she was born in Warwickshire where her father worked as a rent collector for the owners of Arbury Hall and Estate. Hence, she was born on the estate.
2. She was better educated than most women of her time but not necessarily for the right reasons. Her father sent her to school, not only because of her intelligence, but also because of her looks. She wasn't physically beautiful, so her father didn't think she had much chance of attracting a husband, so he invested in her schooling instead.
3. She lived with her father untll he died when she was 30. By then, the family had moved to Coventry and her mother had died, so she acted as her father's housekeeper. She'd become friends with a family called the Brays, who were free-thinking radicals. Mary Anne was questioning her religious faith, which angered her father, who threatened to throw her out of his house, but never did. Five days after her father's funeral, she went to Switzerland with the Brays and stayed on alone after they went home, spending her time reading and going for long walks.
4. When she returned to London she got a job which was unusual for women of the time - editor of a literary magazine, although she was officially an assistant to the nominal editor, she did most of the work. She wrote essays for it using the name Marian Evans. She also translated foreign language books into English.
5. Despite not being beautiful in the conventional sense (Henry James described her as "magnificently ugly", "horse faced" with "a vast, penulous nose"), she didn't fail to attract men. There were a number of dalliances and a marriage proposal, which she turned down, before she met the love of her life, George Lewes. Even Henry James, for all his criticsism of her looks, ended up charmed by her. He went on to write, "In this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind" and said he ended up falling in love with her.
6. George Lewes was a married man, although his marriage was an open one, and his wife had several children by another man as well as the ones she'd had with him. Mary Anne and George lived together for 20 years, until he died. They never married officially but they considered themselves married. Mary Anne called herself Mary Anne Evans Lewes, and legally changed her name to that after he died. Her pen name of George was in homage to him. The Eliot part? "a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word" according to Eliot herself, although some say it was also inspired by her lover ("To L(ewes) I owe it").
7. She did marry, at the age of 60. Her husband was 20 years younger, her lawyer and accountant, John Cross. They remained married until Eliot died not long after. Something odd happened on their honeymoon, though. They were in Venice when Eliot noticed her new husband seemed unwell, losing weight, depressed and agitated, so she called a doctor. While she was talking to the doctor, Cross threw himself off the balcony of their room into the Grand Canal. He survived, rescued by a member of the hotel staff and a gondolier. Was it a suicide attempt? Was he suffering from mental illness? Was the heat getting to him? Nobody knows.
8. She invented some words which are in common use today. One was the word "pop" as in popular music. She wrote about a concert she attended, complaining that there was "too much pop" which spoiled her enjoyment of the more classical pieces. She was also the first to use the word "browser" as meaning someone who casually looks around, such as in a book shop. Before Eliot used the word in her novel Romola, it meant an animal that looked for leaves and twigs to eat.
9. She was critical of other female writers of her time. While she did like some novels by women, such as Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, she lambasted others for their shallow characters, unrealistic plots and contrived romantic endings. She wrote an essay entiled "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" putting forward those views.
10. She died aged 61, following a throat infection exacerbated by the kidney disease she had suffered from for a number of years. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle