1 October: 274

Today is the 274^th day of the year. Here are 10 fun facts about the number 274:

1. 274 Philagoria is a typical Main belt Asteroid. It was discovered by Johann Palisa on 3 April 1888 in Vienna. He named it for Philagoria, a club in Olmütz.

2. The year 274 was a common year starting on Thursday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Aurelianus and Capitolinus. In this year, Aurelian had the Temple of the Sun dedicated to Sol Invictus. This religion became the state religion of Rome.

3. Area code 274 is a telephone area code for a large area of eastern Wisconsin.

4. The A274 is a major road running through mid Kent. It is 12.37 miles (19.91 km) long. The northern end of the road is in Maidstone, and it ends at a junction with the A262 in Biddenden.

5. The Heinkel He 274 was a German heavy bomber design developed during World War II, purpose-designed for high-altitude bombing with pressurised crew accommodation.

6. The Roman numeral for 274 is CCLXXIV.

7. In Binary it’s 100010010.

8. London Bus route 274 runs between Angel Islington and Lancaster Gate Station.

9. 274 squared (2742) is 75076. The square root of 274 is 16.5529453573.

10. In numerology, people influenced by this number are perceptive and astute and able to analyse problems to find viable solutions. They are comfortable engaged in literary or scientific activities. able to interact with others in a meaningful way. They may be blunt when asked for opinions regarding the execution of current projects or the feasibility of new projects.

Character birthdays

Lauren Patterson, daughter of Jade Patterson, who is the eldest daughter of Gary Winchcombe (Chain). She is in a relationship with Prince Tristan of Galorvia.

Hemmings, a butler employed by Richard and Fiona Miller.

30 September: Truman Capote Quotes

1924 Truman Capote, novelist who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood was born on this date in 1924. 10 quotes from him:

1. The brain may take advice, but not the heart.

2. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.

3. There is only one unpardonable sin – deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

4. It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

5. You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.

6. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

7. The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.

8. Most people don't find their creativity. There are more unsung geniuses that don't even know they have great talent.

9. Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.

10. You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.

Character birthday

Albany Jakes, Leader of the Innovian Ban the Bomb Movement.

Secrets and Skies

Jack Ward, President of Innovia, owes his life twice over to the enigmatic superhero, dubbed Power Blaster by the press. No-one knows who Power Blaster is or where he comes from - and he wants it to stay that way.

Scientist Desi Troyes has developed a nuclear bomb to counter the ever present threat of an asteroid hitting the planet. When Ward signs the order giving the go ahead for a nuclear test on the remote Bird Island, he has no inkling of Troyes' real agenda, and that he has signed the death warrants of millions of people.

Although the island should have been evacuated, there are people still there: some from the distant continent of Classica; protesters opposed to the bomb test; and Innovians who will not, or cannot, use their communication devices.

Power Blaster knows he must stop the bomb from hitting the island. He also knows it may be the last thing he ever does.

Meanwhile in Innovia, Ward and his staff gather to watch the broadcast of the test. Nobody, not even Troyes himself, has any idea what is about to happen.

Available from Amazon or Amazon Kindle

29 September: Michael Name Day

Today is the name day for people called Michael.

Michael is a usually masculine given name derived from the Hebrew phrase “Who is like God?” Here are 10 famous people called Michael:

1. Michael Learned: American actress who played Olivia Walton in The Waltons TV series. An example of a female Michael.

2. Michael Jackson: American singer, songwriter and dancer known as the King of Pop.

3. Michael Caine: English actor whose real name was Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. He starred in British films such as Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965) and The Italian Job (1969).

4. Michael J. Fox: American actor who starred in Back to the Future.

5. Michael Collins: Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th century struggle for Irish independence.

6. Michael Crichton: American writer and film-maker who gave the world Jurassic Park.

7. Michael Jordan: American Basketball player.

8. Michael Parkinson: English broadcaster, journalist and author.

9. Michael Aspel: English television newsreader and host of programmes such as Crackerjack, Ask Aspel, Aspel & Company, Give Us a Clue, This is Your Life, Strange but True? and Antiques Roadshow.

10. Michael Crawford: English actor, comedian, and singer, best known for playing Frank Spencer in the sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and the title role in the musical The Phantom of the Opera.

Character birthday

Pandora Grayson, Viper agent and former lover of Sebastian Garrett.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

28 September: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation was first broadcast on this date in 1987. Here are 10 things you might not know about the series:

1. The series takes place from 2364 to 2370.

2. Gene Roddenberry initially refused to cast Patrick Stewart as Picard, because he’s envisaged a younger captain with Hair. In fact, Stewart was advised to wear a hairpiece when he first met the production executives. They thought he was perfect for the role and although they auditioned other actors, (Edward James Olmos was offered the role but turned it down) even Roddenberry had to admit he was perfect for it, provided he didn’t wear the ridiculous wig. Before he was cast as Picard, Patrick Stewart had no idea how iconic Star Trek was and hadn’t seen any of the original series or the films. In fact, he didn’t have much confidence in it at all, being so sure it would fail that he didn’t unpack his suitcase for the first six weeks of filming.

3. Commander Data's data storage capacity is 800 quadrillion bits, or 100 PB (petabytes) or 100 000 terabytes. This is a lot, considering that the entire Internet in 2005 only contained 1-2PB.

4. Geordi's VISOR was improvised on the first day of shooting using chiefly a car air filter and a hair band.

5. The bad guys for this series were originally intended to be the Ferengi, but audiences found them too comical to be taken seriously as recurring enemies as the Klingons were in the original series. Hence The Borg became the main antagonists. The Borg were originally envisaged as insectoids, but due to budget constraints, they were cyborgs instead.

6. Sir Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard) and Jonathan Frakes (William T. Riker) are the only actors to appear in all 178 episodes of the series. Brent Spiner (Data) appears in all but one.

7. Picard and Data were portrayed as having pets in the series, but neither actor was keen on their pet. Picard had a fish, which Stewart felt went against the concept of freedom for every species that the series promoted. Data had a cat, and Spiner simply didn’t like Cats.

8. The ceiling of the transporter chamber on the Enterprise-D is the floor of the transporter chamber from the original Enterprise.

9. Michael Dorn's make-up as Lieutenant Worf took approximately two hours to apply. His prosthetic forehead changed in season two because the original was stolen.

10. Writer and co-producer Joe Menosky started a tradition of having the number 47 crop up a lot in dates, serial numbers and on screens. Menosky said that he chose that number because when he was a graduate student at Pomona College, Professor of Mathematics Donald Bentley proved, as a joke, that all numbers are equal to 47. It also happens to be Patrick Stewart’s age at the start of the show.

Character birthday

Lucy Parker, a cousin of Ivory, who married Lifter after meeting him at Ivory’s wedding.

27 September: 270

Today is day 270 of 2023. 10 fun facts about the number 270:

1. The London Underground has 270 stations. It used to be 275 but the East London Line was removed from the network.

2. 270 Anahita is a stony S-type Main belt asteroid. It was discovered by C. H. F. Peters in 1887, in Clinton, New York, and was named after the Avestan divinity Aredvi Sura Anahita.

3. The A270 is a road in England also known as Lewes Road. It runs between Brighton and Lewes, East Sussex.

4. The .270 Winchester is a rifle cartridge developed by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1923

5. Area code 270 is a telephone area code for the Commonwealth of Kentucky's western and south central counties.

6. London bus route 270 runs between Putney Bridge Station and Madeira Road.

7. ScreenX – 270° Viewing Experience is a Cineworld exclusive in the UK.

8. 270 Park Avenue, also known as the JPMorgan Chase Building, is a skyscraper under construction in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

9. The year 270 was a common year starting on Saturday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Antiochianus and Orfitus.In this year, Anthony the Great, a Christian saint from Egypt, regarded as "Father of All Monks", entered the wilderness to become an ascetic.

10. In numerology, a person under the influence of the number 270 is tolerant and compassionate and concerned about the welfare of humanity. They enjoy companionship with like-minded individuals. They tend to be able to think things through all the way to definite conclusions.

Character birthday

Carlotta Vendetta, matriarch of the Vendetta gangster family based in New York City. Although she was the most powerful woman in the family, she always felt she played second fiddle to the men, and dreamed of building an empire of her own. Once her children were grown, she left New York for England where she became involved with Desi Troyes and the Desperadoes. One of her skills is making cookies containing drugs or even poison. She appears in Over the Rainbow.

Over the Rainbow

'We're not in Trinity anymore,' says Leonard Marx, quoting a line from an old Innovian  movie. The moon is different; the planes flying overhead are different. Nobody has any idea where they are or if it's possible to get home. 

In this strange new world, people from the highly technical Innovia and the less advanced Classica must co-operate in order to survive. In addition, travel through the inter-dimensional wormhole has given some people unusual and unexpected powers.

Innovia mourns the loss of its superhero, Power Blaster, last seen carrying a nuclear bomb to the upper atmosphere away from the inhabited Bird Island. They don't believe he could possibly have survived.  Power Blaster has survived, but is close to death and stranded in the new dimension. He is nursed back to health by a Classican woman, Elena. She has no idea who he is, only that she is falling in love with the handsome stranger.  

Shanna sets out to discover what happened to Nathan Tate, who didn't return from his hiking holiday, not knowing her life is about to be turned inside out and upside down. 

Meanwhile, Desi Troyes, the man responsible for the catastrophe, is at large on the new world, plotting how he can transfer his plans for world domination to the planet he now finds himself on - Earth. 

Available from Amazon and Amazon Kindle

26 September: Olivia Newton John

Singer and actress Olivia Newton John was born on this date in 1948. Here are 10 things you might not know about her:

1. She was born in Cambridge. Her father, Brinley 'Bryn' Newton-John, had been an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park and was involved in the arrest of Rudolf Hess. By the time Olivia was born, however, he was the headmaster of a boys’ school in Cambridge. Her mother Irene was born in Germany and had come to the UK in 1933, fleeing the Nazi regime. Irene’s father was the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Irene was also descended from Protestant theologian Martin Luther.

2. She was named after screen legend Olivia de Havilland.

3. She had two siblings, Rona, who is also an actress, and Hugh, a doctor who invented the first portable iron lung. She is also a third cousin of comedian Ben Elton.

4. When Olivia was six, her family emigrated to Australia, where her father worked as a professor of German at the University of Melbourne.

5. She formed a band with three classmates when she was 14. The all-girl group, Sol Four, used to perform at a coffee shop owned by her brother-in-law.

6. At one point, she considered becoming a vet, but didn’t have the confidence that she’d pass the exams, so decided to concentrate on performing instead.

7. In 1974 she came fourth in the Eurovision song contest with Long Live Love. The winner that year was Waterloo by ABBA. Olivia admitted later that she didn’t like her song.

8. Her biggest hit was Physical which sold over two million copies and spent 10 consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100. It was the first winner of the Grammy award for video of the year, but was banned by a radio station in Utah for “suggestive lyrics.”

9. She’s well known for her role as Sandy in Grease, but she almost didn’t take the role. “I could not play a high school student at 28," she recorded in her autobiography. However, co-star John Travolta persuaded her to change her mind. While filming, the zipper broke on the famous tight black Trousers, and she had to be sewn into them to finish the scene.

10. Following her cancer diagnosis, she became an advocate for cancer awareness, but she got behind other good causes, too. She cancelled a concert tour of Japan in 1978 to protest the slaughter of Dolphins caught in Tuna fishing nets, and was listed as president of the Isle of Man Basking shark Society between 1998 and 2005.

Character birthday

Broderick “Tiny” Vendetta, a member of the Vendetta gangster family of New York. He is an expert in weaponry, especially explosive devices. His short stature is thought to be the result of his mother, Carlotta, experimenting with a new drug cocktail while pregnant. Although Tiny takes advantage of his size and uses it to hide in and gain access through small spaces, he is nevertheless sensitive about it, and prone to rage at anyone who makes comments on his size.

25 September: 268

Today is the 268^th day of the year. Here are 10 fun facts about the number 268:

1. The Roman numeral for 268 is CCLXVIII.

2. In the year 268 the Roman emperor Gallienus was killed by his senior officers at Mediolanum (Milan) while besieging his rival Aureolus. Marcus Aurelius Claudius, who may have murdered Gallienus, became the new emperor of Rome, Claudius II. Pope Dionysius died and was succeeded by Pope Felix I.

3. +268 is the telephone dialling code for Swaziland.

4. 268 inches of 1/8 inch Copper wire weighs 1 pound.

5. The A268 is a road in Sussex, England, which runs between Flimwell and Rye.

6. Pakistan International Airlines Flight 268 was the worst crash of Pakistan International Airlines. It took place on 28 September 1992 as the Airbus A300 approached Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport. All 167 people on board were killed.

7. Lyfe 268‒192 is the debut album by American recording artist Lyfe Jennings. It was released in 2004 and has sold at least one million copies in the US. "268–192" was the identification number Lyfe was given while in prison.

8. 268 Adorea is a large main belt asteroid discovered by A. Borrelly on 8 June 1887 in Marseilles. The name refers to adorea liba, the Latin name for spelt cakes produced from meal and salt offered by the Romans as a sacrifice; the name was controversial among astronomers, as all previous asteroids had been named for humans or mythological figures.

9. In London, the 268 bus runs between Golders Green Station and the O2 Centre.

10. In numerology, 268 resonates with inner knowledge, especially ancient inner knowledge accessed with personal introspection. A person influenced by the number will use the knowledge to help them live a balanced life, and solve problems. The sharing of knowledge will be important to them.

Character birthday

Kingfisher, the son of Speedy and Aqua. He can fly and also breathe water. He lives at Ultra Grav’s Darrowburn mansion with his family.

24 September: World Wasp Day

Today is World Wasp Day Here are 10 things you might not know about wasps:

1. There are 30,000 identified species of wasps. There are about 9,000 different species in the UK alone. Of these, only nine live in nests. The rest are solitary. Nor are wasps always Black and Yellow. They come in a variety of different colours.

2. They belong to the insect sub-order Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera. Black and yellow wasps (yellowjackets) and hornets are in the family Vespidae.

3. The largest wasp is the Asian giant hornet, which can grow to to 5 centimetres (2.0 in) in length. The smallest is the fairy wasp which is just a millimeter long and is therefore not only the smallest wasp but the smallest insect known to science.

4. People often ask, what is the point of wasps? All they seem to do is gatecrash picnics. Well, they are important pollinators, even though they’re slightly less good at it than Bees. They can be quite specialist: almost every one of the 1000 species of tropical Fig trees has its own specific fig wasp (Chalcidoidea) that has co-evolved with it and pollinates it. Some wasps prey on pests such as aphids. In fact, nearly every pest on Earth is preyed upon by a species of wasp, even clothes moths. They’re also scavengers, munching on dead insects and collecting them to feed their larvae. So they do have a useful function.

5. Worker wasps feed protein rich food to the larvae and in turn the larvae produce sugars and carbohydrates to feed the workers. It’s when the larvae have all matured that the workers have to go looking for sugary food elsewhere, around late August. Their natural choice would be rotting fruit, but human picnics are a handy source of sugars as well.

6. Only female social wasps sting, and only in self defence. The stingers are actually a modified egg-laying organ. Solitary wasps use their stingers and venom for hunting.

7. Wasp sting venom has a “smell” which can be detected by other wasps, and this is left behind when a wasp stings a person, effectively marking that person as a threat, and making other wasps more aggressive towards them.

8. Wasps can recognise each other by their unique facial patterns.

9. Wasps first appeared in the fossil record in the Jurassic, and diversified into many surviving superfamilies by the Cretaceous.

10. An irrational fear of wasps is called spheksophobia.

Character Birthday

Jade and Gloria Johannesjaegervitch, twin daughters of King Christopher III and Queen Helena of Galorvia. When a rebellion threatened to overthrow the monarchy, the King arranged for the twin princesses to be smuggled out of the country by his old university friend, Ildas McNair. The King and Queen were killed in the rebellion and McNair ended up bringing up the girls with the help of his housekeeper. Throughout their childhood and young adulthood, the girls were in constant danger of being assassinated by republicans wishing to wipe out the royals for good. This meant that they lived incognito and moved around frequently to avoid threats. The Galorvian royals are genetic variants and have the ability to fly, shoot zap bolts, and with any other member of the family, create a forcefield. The twins were no exception. Their powers were discovered by the Chain Gang, when Jade, the eldest, was dating Gary Winchcombe (Chain). When the couple split, Jade began dating Basil Reynard (Fox) a bank robber the Chain Gang were trying to apprehend. Jade ended up marrying him. In due course, the twins decided that with the help of their genetic variant friends and the Resistance in Galorvia, to take back the throne. Jade then became Queen with Basil as her consort. They had two children and named them after Jade’s parents. Gloria married the Galorvian Olympic skier Boris Kostellov, and together they established a ski resort, Borisville, in Galorvia as part of the drive to attract tourists to the once closed country. They have twin boys, Arthur and Hector.

From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

Available from: Amazon, Amazon Kindle

23 September: Budgies

The Budgie Society AGM takes place on this date in 2023, so here are 10 things you might not know about budgies:

1. Budgies are one of the smallest members of the parakeet family. The scientific name for the Budgerigar is Melopsittacus undulatus. Melopsittacus is Greek for ‘melodious Parrot’ and undulatus is Latin for ‘undulated’, referring to their scalloped wing patterns.

2. The common name, Budgerigar, is derived from an Aboriginal word, ‘Betcherrygah‘, which is thought to mean ‘good food’. It’s unknown whether this meant that the bird itself made a nice meal, or if people followed the budgie migrations knowing that they’d be heading for places where there was lots of food and water.

3. They’ve been known by various other names including canary parrot, shell parrot, zebra parrot, warbling grass parakeet, and undulated parakeet.

4. They are native to Australia. They migrate north in the winter, covering huge distances and usually in flocks. Wild Budgies live in savannas, grasslands, open forests, grassy woodlands and farmland.

5. Budgies move and see out of each eye independently. This gives them an incredible quality of vision. A budgie can register over 150 images per second, compared with just 16 for humans. They also have a third eyelid.

6. Budgies have a very high resting respiration rate, ranging between 65-85 breaths per minute. Their Heart rate is also very high at over 300 beats a minute.

7. They are social birds and mate for life. Breeding occurs at any time of the year, but typically after Rain.

8. When a budgie is happy and relaxed, it will grind its beak, similar to a cat purring.

9. A Budgie’s scope of hearing ranges from 400-20,000 Hz. A Budgie can remember sequences of sounds, and sometimes mimic them, including human speech. They might not know the meaning of the sounds they copy but they can remember a lot. In 1995, The Guinness Book of World Records acknowledged a budgie named Puck as “the bird with the largest vocabulary in the world”. Puck knew 1,728 words.

10. One budgie owner, Ryan B. Reynolds of Canada, claimed that his budgie, Victor, could not only talk but could predict the future. Reynolds made recordings of his “conversations” with Victor in 2001, in which the bird allegedly predicted its own death. Needless to say, it hasn’t been possible to prove this budgie was a soothsayer.

Character Birthday

Speedy, aka Elizabeth “Lizzie” Hopkins. She is a genetic variant capable of running at incredible speeds. As a teenager, she competed in athletics contests, but was suspected of using performance enhancing drugs. One of the judges, Peter Mayfield (Ultra Grav) suspected Lizzie’s talent was down to a genetic variance rather than doping, and insisted on a drug test. The test was negative. Ultra Grav put it to Lizzie and her parents that she could be a variant and offered to train her. Lizzie was keen, but her parents were set against it. It would later be revealed that this was because Lizzie was adopted and they’d never told her, and were afraid the secret would come out. Lizzie gave up on athletics after that and took up dance, but vowed that when she reached 18 she would seek out Peter Mayfield and ask him to train her with a view to competing in the Olympics. She did find him, and joined his group of variants, the G Men. She would later discover that Ultra Grav was her biological father. She is in a relationship with her team mate, Aqua.

Running in the Family

An alien craft approaches Earth. The alien on board is a fugitive, fleeing from an arranged marriage to freedom on our world. She befriends James, a genetics student, and shares her knowledge about the future of the human race with him. 

A science experiment gone wrong gifts James with superhuman abilities; but they come at a price, leading him to mentor others like himself. He founds a group of amateur heroes called the Freedom League.

The Freedom League suffers a string of losses and tragedies; it seems doomed to failure; but one of its members, Peter Mayfield, has vowed to form a group of his own. He is determined to keep his vow, despite having lost Rosemary, the one person he wanted by his side to help him.

Lizzie Hopkins is a talented young athlete and dancer. Peter sees her in action and guesses her exceptional abilities are far more than they seem. He offers to train and mentor Lizzie - but her mother is violently opposed to his suggestion.

As soon as she is old enough, Lizzie takes matters into her own hands; she seeks out Peter and his group for herself. She soon makes a discovery which shakes her world at its very foundations. Her search for the truth will resolve many unanswered questions, but it will also stir up old heartbreaks dating back to the Freedom League's early days.

Available from:

Amazon Paperback;   Amazon Kindle

22 September: 265

Today is the 265th day of the year. Here are ten fun facts about the number 265:

1. 265 Anna is a typical Main belt Asteroid, discovered by Johann Palisa on 25 February 1887 in Vienna and was probably named after Anny Weiss (née Kretschmar), the daughter-in-law of astronomer Edmund Weiss.

2. In London the 265 bus runs from Putney Bridge Station to Tolworth / King Charles Road.

3. In Roman numerals, it’s CCLXV.

4. +265 is the dialling code for Malawi.

5. The year 265 was a common year starting on Sunday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Valerianus and Lucillus.

6. The 265th Air Defense Artillery Regiment is an air defence artillery regiment in the Florida Army National Guard.

7. Pope Benedict XVI was the 265th pope.

8. The A265 is a road in England which runs between Hurst Green and Heathfield.

9. The square root of 265 is 16.278820596099706.

10. In numerology 265 represents balance, understanding, happiness, freedom, change, evolution, and mobility.

Character Birthday

Daisy O’Donnell, Boulder’s sister and Mahogany (Luke) Stone’s mother. Boulder’s genetic variance was discovered when he took Daisy to hospital when she was in labour.

21 September: Miniature Golf

Today is World Miniature Golf Day. 10 things you might not know about mini golf:

1. Miniature golf is an offshoot of Golf which focusses on the putting aspect of the game alone. It’s thought to have originated as a way for women to play golf in an era when swinging a golf club was thought too unladylike.

2. The oldest known mini golf course in the world, the Ladies’ Putting Club of St. Andrews, is in Scotland, right next to St. Andrews Golf Course, a regular site of the British Open.

3. The first miniature golf course in the US is generally recognised as the one which opened in Pinehurst, California in 1916. The course was called Thistle Dhu, a play on words, indicating that if you can’t get to a full sized golf course, “this’ll do”.

4. Miniature golf is also known as Mini golf, crazy golf, putt-putt, goofy golf, shorties, midget golf and mini putt.

5. It’s usually played on courses consisting of nine or eighteen holes where the tee is no more than 10 yards from the hole. In many courses, the last hole will actually swallow the ball so you can’t go round again without paying. That said, if you get a hole in one on the last hole, you might get a discount on another round or even a free one.

6. Early courses used simple everyday items such as pipes, barrels, rain gutters and old tyres as obstacles. Themed courses with automatic obstacles came later.

7. It’s actually a professional sport with a governing body, the World Mini Golf Sports Federation (WMF). There are more than 40,000 registered players from more than 30 countries.

8. In 1920s New York, miniature golf was very popular and there were something like 150 courses in the city, some of them situated on the roofs of Skyscrapers. However, when the Great Depression came along, most of them closed.

9. In Scandinavia, they invented glow in the dark mini golf, so people could play during the long hours of darkness in winter.

10. In the UK, the playing surface is usually felt, which became a popular surface in the 1960s. It’s used here, and in Scandinavia, because it’s the best surface to play on when it’s raining.

Character birthday

Hercules, aka Brian Watson, one of the original Freedom League members. He was an overweight, ungainly child living in an orphanage. He was passed over for adoption many times because of his age and weight. However, when James and Julia Lovell applied to adopt a child, they saw Brian’s potential and took him in. At first, he resented the diet and exercise regime his adoptive parents imposed, but soon found he felt better for it, and grew into his genetic variant power of great strength. He eventually left the Freedom League and joined the cosmic force known as The Constellations.

Running in the Family

An alien craft approaches Earth. The alien on board is a fugitive, fleeing from an arranged marriage to freedom on our world. She befriends James, a genetics student, and shares her knowledge about the future of the human race with him. 

A science experiment gone wrong gifts James with superhuman abilities; but they come at a price, leading him to mentor others like himself. He founds a group of amateur heroes called the Freedom League.

The Freedom League suffers a string of losses and tragedies; it seems doomed to failure; but one of its members, Peter Mayfield, has vowed to form a group of his own. He is determined to keep his vow, despite having lost Rosemary, the one person he wanted by his side to help him.

Lizzie Hopkins is a talented young athlete and dancer. Peter sees her in action and guesses her exceptional abilities are far more than they seem. He offers to train and mentor Lizzie - but her mother is violently opposed to his suggestion.

As soon as she is old enough, Lizzie takes matters into her own hands; she seeks out Peter and his group for herself. She soon makes a discovery which shakes her world at its very foundations. Her search for the truth will resolve many unanswered questions, but it will also stir up old heartbreaks dating back to the Freedom League's early days.

Available from:

Amazon Paperback;   Amazon Kindle