29 February: Rossini

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian Composer who wrote 39 operas (including The Barber of Seville and William Tell) as well as songs, chamber music and sacred music. He was born on 29 February 1792. Here are ten things you might not know about him.

1. He came from a musical family. His father was a trumpeter in a local orchestra and his mother was a singer.
2. He was something of a prodigy - enrolled in a conservatory at 14 and wrote his first opera, La cambiale di matrimonio, at the age of 18. He was famous as an opera composer at 20, and retired from composing operas at 37.
3. He was a fan of good food and Wine from an early age. His motivation for working as an altar boy as a child was that he got to drink the left over communion wine. Later on, he dedicated some of his musical pieces to his favourite starters and desserts.
4. He could write an Opera in less than a fortnight. He claims it took him just 12 days to write Barber of Seville. He may well have been under the influence of caffeine at the time - he allegedly once commented that the effects of caffeine on the body last 15-20 days, which was enough time in which to produce an opera.
5. He was known as a jovial personality, who once claimed that he only cried three times in his life - when his first opera failed, when he first heard Paganini play, and when a truffled turkey fell in the water during a boating party. He loved to entertain and was said to be a witty conversationalist. However, he suffered from severe depression which affected his productivity, suicidal thoughts and pathological obesity.
6. His first wife was an opera singer called Isabella Colbran, who was seven years older than he was. A number of the female lead roles in his operas were written with her in mind. When her talent began to wane, he wrote a part for her intended to disguise this fact, but audiences weren't fooled. While the opera, Semiramide, was a success, Isabella was slated by the critics. She retired from opera at 42. This put a strain on their marriage, as Rossini was still very much in demand and always working. She eventually left him.
7. After that, Rossini started a relationship with a model and courtesan called Olympe Pélissier, and married her when Isabella died.
8. He died of cancer aged 76, but since he was born on February 29th, he'd only recently celebrated his 19th birthday.
9. His tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is large and impressive - but empty, since his wife had his body relocated to Florence where it is buried in the church of Sta Croce.
10. He left most of his fortune to Olympe, and when she died, it was used to set up a conservatory of music in his birth town of Pesaro, Italy, and a home for retired opera singers in Paris.

My Books 

(for more details and buying options Click Here)

The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny. 

28 February: Maria Name Day

Maria is one of the most popular names for women in Sweden, and today they celebrate their name day. The name derives either from the male Roman name Marius or the Hebrew female name Miriam. 10 famous Marias:

1. Maria Callas, Opera singer.
2. Maria Sharapova, Russian tennis player.
3. Maria Shriver, American journalist and news anchor, formerly married to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
4. Maria Cole, American jazz singer, wife of Nat King Cole and mother of Natalie Cole.
5. Maria Eagle, UK Labour politician whose twin sister Angela is also a Labour MP.
6. Maria Montessori, founder of the Montessori method of education.
7. Maria Von Trapp, matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers whose life story was adapted into the film The Sound of Music.
8. Maria Teresa, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
9. Maria, character in West Side Story, based on Shakespeare’s Juliet.
10. Maria Robotnik, a character in the game Sonic the Hedgehog.

My Books 

(for more details and buying options Click Here)

The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny. 

27 February: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Born this date in 1807 was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the American poet responsible for the oft quoted line, "Into each life some rain must fall" was born on 27 February 1807. His best known works include Paul Revere's Ride and The Song of Hiawatha. Here are 10 facts about him.

1. He was born in Portland, Maine, and was the second of eight children. He was descended from pilgrims who arrived in America on the Mayflower.
2. He was a published poet at just thirteen when the Portland Gazette printed his poem The Battle of Lovell's Pond.
3. When he was 18, he embarked on a grand tour of Europe that lasted three years. The trip was funded by his father and cost $2,604.24. During the trip he taught himself French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.
4. Up until he was 47, and retired to become one of the first people in America to live off the proceeds of his writing, he had a day job - teaching modern languages at Harvard, and running the department. He taught French, German, Spanish and Italian. He became a professor of modern languages after writing books and critical essays in six languages.
5. His first wife was his childhood sweetheart, Mary Storer Potter. He married her in 1831. She died four years later, aged just 22, from complications following a miscarriage. His poem, Footsteps of Angels, was about her.
6. A few years later, on a trip to Switzerland, he met Frances Appleton and began courting her. She wasn't interested at first and it took him seven years to win her round. During that time he frequently crossed the Boston Bridge when walking from his home to hers, a 90 minute walk. When the bridge was replaced in 1906 it was renamed the Longfellow Bridge. They had six children. At the birth of their daughter Fanny, Frances became the first woman in America to be given an anesthetic during childbirth.
7. Frances died in 1861. She was sealing an envelope with hot wax when her dress caught fire. It's not known whether this was caused by hot wax, dropping a lighted candle or a match. Longfellow rushed to help her by throwing a rug over her, and when that proved too small, used his own body to stifle the flames. It was all to no avail, however, as Frances died from her injuries the following day. The incident left Wadsworth himself badly burned, so he wasn't able to go to her funeral. The burns on his face meant he could no longer shave, so it was from then that he grew a beard.
8. His poem, The Hanging of the Crane was sold to the New York Ledger for $3,000 - the highest price ever paid for a poem.
9. In his later years, he didn't enjoy good health, and didn't go out much. Nevertheless, he was extremely popular during his lifetime. When the famous "spreading chestnut tree" mentioned in one of his poems was cut down, local children had it made into a chair, and presented it to him.
10. He died from peritonitis in 1882, aged 75.

See also: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

Settling the Score

Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

Available on Amazon:
Paperback            E-book


A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

Available on Amazon
Paperback

E-book

26 February: Typefaces and Fonts

Giambattista Bodoni, Italian printer and typeface designer was born on this date in 1740. Here are 10 things you might not know about fonts and typefaces.

1. What's the difference between a typeface and a font? Is there one, even? Actually, yes. What we often refer to as fonts - Times Roman, Garamond, Arial and so on are technically typefaces while the font is size, weight and style of a typeface, eg. Times Roman 12 point bold. The word font comes from a French word for something that has been melted, such as casting metal at a type foundry.
2. Before we had computers and desktop publishing, publishers and printers had to have typefaces made out of wood or metal by a type foundry. The foundries would employ, or commission, designers to come up with new and better ones.
3. Studies have shown that if you want people to believe and trust what you say, the best font to use is Baskerville, because it appears formal and solemn. This typeface dates to 1757 and was created by John Baskerville for the Cambridge University Press.
4. Giambattista Bodoni was the court typographer for Charles III of Spain. He designed many different typefaces during the late 18th century and published several books full of his designs. The Bodoni typeface we use today was adapted from his designs by Morris Fuller Benton in 1907.
5. Helvetica has been found to be one of the easiest fonts for people with dyslexia to read. Courier, Arial and Verdana are also good. While it's often said that serif fonts are easier to read than non-serif ones, a plethora of studies have been done which lead to the conclusion that it actually makes no difference.
6. Helvetica was originally called Haas-Grotesk when it was first released in 1957. It was so called because it had been commissioned by the Haas Type Foundry and was based on an earlier typeface called Akzidenz-Grotesk. The name got changed to the Latin word for Swiss, Helvetica, to make it more marketable. It obviously worked as Helvetica is one of the most popular typefaces around. It's used for US government forms and New York Subway signs, among other things. It was even used in the film Titanic for pressure gauge labels, which annoyed the purists.
7. Times New Roman is another ubiquitous typeface which was designed by Stanley Morrison in 1929 because the Times newspaper in London had been criticised for being hard to read. Ironically, the paper doesn't use Times New Roman any more. It has chopped and changed since 1972 and at time of writing uses Times Modern.
8. If you read Harry Potter, Dr Seuss or my novels, you'll have seen Garamond, a typeface based on the designs of French designer Claude Garamond, who lived in the 16th century.
9. The one people love to hate, Comic Sans, has only been around since 1994. It was designed by a Microsoft employee named Vincent Connare who didn't think that the speech bubble for a cartoon dog looked quite right in Times New Roman and after looking at some comic books, designed Comic Sans within a week. A 2009 Wall Street Journal article claimed Connare is "alternately amused and mortified" at the many (not always appropriate) uses of his design.
10. I'll finish with a few words associated with typefaces, fonts and typesetting and where they come from. Leading is the word for the space between lines of text and comes from the fact that typesetters used to use strips of lead to separate the lines - Lead being a soft metal that would compress as lines of text were crammed in. Kerning is adjusting the spaces between letters in order to make them look better. This word comes from the French word "carne" meaning the angle of a quill or pen. Italic type is a sloping font used for emphasis or to distinguish some of the text. Unsurprisingly, this style was first used in Italy, by Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1500.

Settling the Score

Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

Available on Amazon:
Paperback            E-book


A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

Available on Amazon
Paperback

E-book

25 February: Yes Minister Quotes

40 years ago in 1980, the sitcom Yes, Minister was first broadcast. To celerate here are 10 quotes from the show: 

1. It used to be said there were two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of Minister: one sort folds up instantly; the other sort goes round and round in circles.
2. Well, "under consideration" means "we've lost the file"; "under active consideration" means "we're trying to find it".
3. Hacker: Humphrey, do you see it as part of your job to help ministers make fools of themselves? Sir Humphrey: Well, I never met one that needed any help.
4. Hacker: Why is it that ministers can't ever go anywhere without their briefs? Bernard: It's in case they get caught with their trousers down.
5. I gather he was as drunk as a lord. So, after a discreet interval, they'll probably make him one.
6. Sir Humphrey: How are things at the Campaign for the Freedom of Information, by the way? Sir Arnold: Sorry, I can't talk about that.
7. Sir Arnold: So, will our next Prime Minister be our eminent Chancellor or our distinguished Foreign Secretary? Sir Humphrey: That's what I wanted to ask you, which do you think it should be? Sir Arnold: Hmmm. Difficult, like asking which lunatic should run the asylum.
8. It would be different if the Government were a team, but in fact they're a loose confederation of warring tribes.
9. Underpaid? Backbench MPs, Darling? Being an MP is a vast subsidised ego trip. It's a job for which you need no qualifications, no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards. A warm room and subsidised meals for a bunch of self-opinionated windbags and busybodies who suddenly find people taking them seriously because they got letters "MP" after their names.
10. Man: In such an awful country, they cut people's hands off and women get stoned when they commit adultery. Sir Humphrey: Unlike Britain, where they commit adultery when they get stoned.

Settling the Score

Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

Available on Amazon:
Paperback            E-book


A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

Available on Amazon
Paperback

E-book

24 February: Calendars

Gregorian Calendar Day: Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull in 1582 adopting the Gregorian calendar. It is the most widely used calendar in the world today and was named after him. 10 things you didn't know about calendars.

1. The Gregorian calendar wasn't popular with everyone at first, even though it was more accurate than any other calendars in use at the time, differing from the solar year by just 26 seconds. Because it was being promoted by a pope, non-Catholic countries didn't get on board because they believed at best that the pope was trying to control them and at worst that this new fangled calendar was the work of the Devil or the Antichrist.
2. For this reason Germany didn't start using it until 1700 and the UK until 1752. Greece didn't start using the Gregorian calendar until 1923.
3. Gregory's main reason for introducing a new calendar was to make sure that Easter fell in Spring each year.
4. Regular readers of this blog will know that I sometimes use celebrations from the French Revolutionary Calendar. This calendar was devised because the French didn't want to use the calendar the pope was proposing and came up with their own. It was a secular calendar attempting to decimalise time. It had twelve months of 30 days, named after weather and nature appropriate to the season (eg "Brumaire" meaning fog, which began towards the end of October). It was divided into 10 day weeks called décades. The Catholic church had a saint assigned to each day, and the French calendar wanted to get away from that, too, so instead, they assigned a plant, animal, tool or substance important to the rural economy to each day of the year.
5. Talking of weeks, why does a week have seven days? We have the ancient Babylonians to thank for that - they observed a holy day every seven days. Days of the week were named after the Sun, the Moon and the five planets known before telescopes were invented, which all corresponded to a deity - the Romans named them for their gods Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. That explains Saturday, Sunday and Monday and the names for days of the week in other languages (eg Mardi and Mercredi which are the French words for Tuesday and Wednesday). Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday come from the Germanic and Norse deities Tiw, Woden, Thor and Freia.
6. Ancient peoples first measured time by observing the phases of the moon. This is where the word month comes from. It was important to them because they needed to know when to plant and harvest crops and keep track of their animals. The Ancient Egyptians deemed the year to begin on the day that the star Sirius (which they associated with the goddess Isis) rose with the sun, which it does every 365.24 days.
7. No calendar has ever been completely accurate, because there are so many factors at play - the seasons, the rotation of the Earth, its orbit around the sun and so on. Most calendars have to factor in something called "intercalary" days so that the calendar and the seasons remain in synch. This is what February 29 in Leap years is for. However, even that doesn't solve the problem entirely, as a tropical year, the time it takes the Earth to go around the sun, isn't exactly 365.25 days. Hence every fourth year is a leap year, but every 100 years, if the year isn't divisible by 400 as well, we don't have a leap year. 1900 wasn't a leap year, but 2000 was. Other cultures came up with different solutions. The Mayans, for example, had five intercalary days which they believed were unlucky. Other calendars added a thirteenth month every few years.
8. Muslims use a different calendar which is a lunar calendar, based on the phases of the moon. They don't use intercalary days. That's why the festival of Ramadan doesn't happen at exactly the same season every year.
9. When Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the date jumped from September 2nd to September 14th. It's often said that the British people took to the streets and rioted because they believed the government were taking away eleven days of their lives. While Brexit proves that large numbers of British people probably are that stupid, historians now reckon that the ordinary people accepted the change more readily than previously thought.
10. It was at this time, too, that New Year began to be celebrated on January 1st. Before this, March 25th, aka Lady Day or the feast of the Annunciation, a celebration of the Virgin Mary, was New Year's Day in Britain. It was Julius Caesar who first selected January 1st as the first day of the year.

23 February: Iwo Jima Day

Iwo Jima Day is the anniversary of the day the US flag was raised on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, 75 years ago today in 1945. 10 things you might not know about the event.

1. The Battle of Iwo Jima took place between 10 February and 26 March 1945. It was a major battle of the second World War in which American forces captured the Japanese island. The Americans wanted the island because it had three airfields and would make an ideal base for subsequent attacks on Japan.
2. The invasion of Iwo Jima was the first time the Americans had attacked Japanese home territory. The Japanese forces refused to surrender, which led to the five week battle in which over six thousand Americans and about 18,000 Japanese troops lost their lives.
3. There's an iconic photograph taken during the battle of a group of American soldiers raising a US flag in the middle of the battle, on 23 February 1945. The picture was taken by Joe Rosenthal on top of Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano and the highest point on the island. It was over a month later before the battle was actually over.
4. Iwo Jima means "sulphur island" and is located about 650 nautical miles/1,200km south of Tokyo. The island is volcanic in origin. Nobody lived there until the 19th century when Japan built a sugar mill and a sulphur mine there. Its area is just eight square miles.
5. After the battle, the US occupied the island until 1968. During the remainder of the war, it served as an emergency landing site for US aircraft. Nobody lives there now apart from some Japanese military personnel at a naval base. Special permission is required to visit it, although since the island smells of sulphur and has little vegetation, and there's the risk of stumbling upon live ordnance, it's not an ideal holiday spot, anyway.
6. The Japanese defence forces were led by Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who chose to keep fighting in order to do as much damage to the Americans as possible and dent their spirits, while at the same time buying time for the rest of Japan to get ready for an invasion. His strategy was to build eleven miles of tunnels under the island for bunkers, ammunition stores and for making concealed attacks.
7. The Americans had thought that Iwo Jima's beaches would be easy to negotiate, but when they got there, they found the Black volcanic ash didn't provide a good footing and there were steep slopes to climb up. To cap it all, there were Japanese troops waiting until the American troops were all on the beach before opening fire.
8. Over 800 messages were sent and received during the battle, and for that the Americans used Navajo code talkers. The Navajo language is so complex it was impossible for the Japanese to break their codes.
9. 22 US Marines and 5 members of the US Navy won Medals of Honor - America's highest military decoration - for their part in the battle. That was over a fifth of the Medals of Honor awarded to Marines throughout the whole of the war.
10. While most of the Japanese forces surrendered, two Japanese soldiers remained hidden on the island for six years. They finally surrendered in 1951.

Settling the Score

Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

Available on Amazon:
Paperback            E-book


A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

Available on Amazon
Paperback

E-book

22 February: The Flintstones

Today is said to be the birthday of Pebbles Flintstone in 10k BC. Here are 10 things you might not know about Pebbles and her family.

1. Until 1997, this animated show, with 166 episodes, was the most aired prime-time cartoon. In 1997, The Simpsons overtook them.
2. The show was almost called The Gladstones or The Flagstones. The Flagstones was rejected because there was already a comic strip of the same name. Early discussions also considered setting the show in a different time in history - a Roman family and a Pilgrim family were among the options explored.
3. Designer Ed Benedict originally drew the characters to look more like Neanderthals, too, but Joe Barbera rejected that look and tweaked them to look more modern and clean cut.
4. Fred Flintstone's trademark yell, "Yabba dabba doo!" was the invention of Alan Reed, who voiced the character. He thought it sounded better than the "Yahoo!" the scriptwriters would have him say. Some sources say Reed's mother used to say, "A little dab'll do ya," and he adapted her saying. Others say it came from a Brylcreem advert.
5. For a while in the 1960s the Flintstones were used to advertise cigarettes, and Fred and Barney would be shown smoking at the end of each show. However, in the 1970s cigarette ads on TV were banned and the characters switched to grape juice.
6. Pebbles and neighbour kid Bamm-Bamm didn't appear until series four. Pebbles was originally going to be a boy, "a chip off the old rock", but the producers changed their mind when the Ideal Toy Company approached them about a marketing deal for a girls' toy. Pebbles was born at the Bedrock Rockapedic Hospital on February 22 10,000 BC. Her best friend was the Rubble's adopted son Bamm Bamm, who she later married. She had a career in advertising and has a son called Chip and a daughter called Roxy.
7. Some sources claim that Fred and Wilma were the first animated married couple to be shown sharing a bed on TV.
8. Some sources say the theme tune, Meet the Flintstones, was derived from a piece of classical music - the second Tempest movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No 17 Op. 31, to be exact. Although we associate the tune with the show now, it wasn't used until season three. The first two seasons opened with an instrumental piece called Rise and Shine.
9. Part of the appeal of the show is the juxtaposition of modern day life into a stone age setting. Primitive technology or animals are used instead of machines, such as a brontosaurus used as a crane and a woolly mammoth used as a petrol pump (although mostly cars are powered by people running inside them). People have small dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats as pets (like the one Fred is seen throwing out of the house during the end credits).
10. Although the show was cancelled in 1966, the characters have returned many times since then in different incarnations. There have been spin off TV series such as The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show, about the two kids as teenagers, live action movies, comics, video games and proposed re-boots of the series, none of which have aired as yet.

Settling the Score

Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

Available on Amazon:
Paperback            E-book


A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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