13 October: National Face Your Fears Day

Today is National Face Your Fears day.

10 unusual phobias:

1. Arachibutyrophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.

2. Xanthophobia:  Fear of the colour yellow. Also porphyrophobia, fear of the colour purple.

3. Octophobia: Fear of the number eight (There aren’t many known phobias to specific numbers apart from this and triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13. A fear of numbers in general is called arithmophobia.

4. Ombrophobia: fear of rain. Other weather related phobias include hurricanes (lilapsophobia), snow (chionophobia), cold (cryophobia), and wind (ancraophobia).

5. Anatidaephobia: is the irrational fear that somewhere, a duck or goose is watching you. Or is that just a Gary Larson cartoon? If so, Anatidaephobia would simply be a fear of ducks.

6. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: fear of long words, which is, ironically, one of the longest words in the dictionary.

7. Aibohphobia: Fear of palindromes, ie words, verses, sentences, or numbers that read the same backward or forward, as does the name of this phobia.

8. Ephebiphobia: fear of teenagers or adolescents. It could be argued that nearly every generation of adults has a mild forms of this phobia, viewing teenagers as "out of control".

9. Kathisophobia: Fear of sitting down.

10. Phobophobia: Fear of phobias, or perhaps a free-floating anxiety, where a person spirals into a circle of anxiety due to fearing fear itself.

NEW!!

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

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:
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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

18 January: National Thesaurus Day

Today is National Thesaurus Day, commemorating the birth in 1779 of Peter Mark Roget, doctor and lexicographer, who produced his Thesaurus in 1852 after 47 years’ work. 

1. The first modern Thesaurus was written by a British doctor named Peter Mark Roget, who was born on 18 January 1779, which is why this date was chosen as National Thesaurus Day. He started compiling lists of words and grouping them according to meaning when he was about 35, but didn't publish them until 1852, after he'd retired as a doctor. He called it by the snappy title of Thesaurus of English words and phrases; so classified and arranged as to facilitate the expression of ideas and assist in literary composition.
2. Roget's original thesaurus contained 15,000 words, but each new edition has been larger as new words are added, but the classifications stay faithful to those Roget established.
3. The first thesaurus was compiled in the late 1st century, in Greek, by Philo of Byblos. He called his work On Synonyms. Sadly, no copies of it have survived.
4. The oldest Thesaurus which still exists originated in India. In the 4th century, Amara Sinha wrote a thesaurus of Sanskrit words in the form of a poem, and called it The Amarakosha. It was written in verse to help people memorise the words.
5. The word Thesaurus derives from the Greek word theasuros, which means a treasure store.
6. If you have more than one of them, should you refer to your collection as thesauri or thesauruses? Technically, it should be thesauri, but either is acceptable these days.
7. Peter Mark Roget wasn't just interested in words - he also invented the log-log slide rule. He was an avid Chess player, too, and solved a tricky chess problem called the knight's tour problem - how to move the knight so it visits every square on a chessboard; and invented a pocket chessboard. Don't get him started on phrenology, though (measuring bumps on the skull and linking them to personality traits) because he once worte a two volume book denouncing it.
8. There is an artist in America who turns the thesaurus into art by painting lists of English and Yiddish synonyms onto canvas. His works include lists of expressions meaning "crazy" and "die".
9. Roget's Thesaurus may be the best known book of its type but there are others. The Oxford English dictionary produced one in two volumes. Volume two is the index, and it's longer than the thesaurus itself. There's also a thesaurus of slang words.
10. JM Barrie once said that Captain Hook could not be wholly evil because he had a thesaurus in his cabin.

NEW!

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

7 November: Tongue Twister Day

Today is Tongue Twister Day, so here is a selection of them to get your tongue twisted around.

1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?
2. She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are sea-shells, I'm sure. For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore Then I'm sure she sells sea-shore shells.
3. Susie works in a shoeshine shop. Where she shines she sits, and where she sits she shines.
4. The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.
5. Betty Botter bought a bit of butter. The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter And made her batter bitter. But a bit of better butter makes better batter. So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better.
6. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck. If a woodchuck could chuck wood. He would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck. If a woodchuck would chuck wood.
7. A Proper Copper Coffee Pot.
8. The sign language equivalent of a tongue twister is called a finger-fumbler. The phrase Good blood, bad blood is a tongue-twister in English as well as a finger-fumbler in ASL.
9. The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.
10. Tie twine to three tree twigs.

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:

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16 October: Dictionary Day

Today is Dictionary Day, which is celebrated on the birthday of Noah Webster, publisher of Webster's Dictionary. Here are 10 things you might not know about dictionaries.

1. The first dictionary was called Table Alphabeticall, compiled by Robert Cawdrey and published in 1604. It contained no words beginning with J, K, U, W, X or Y. There have been well over 500 different dictionaries published since then, including slang dictionaries, dialect dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries and reverse dictionaries (where you look up the meaning to find the word).
2. The dictionary on your bookshelf contains most everyday words, but in the 16th and 17th centuries, dictionaries only included words deemed difficult. These tended to be words which, during the Renaissaance, were added to English from other languages.
3. In order to write his dictionary, and properly research his sources, Noah Webster learned 26 languages, including Old English and Sanskrit.
4. The sample sentences, included in dictionaries to illustrate the usage of a word, make great writing prompts, according to illustrator Jez Burrows. He has produced a number of short stories by connecting together some of these sentences.
5. There are about 600,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is usually bound in 25 volumes.
6. Someone has to write all the definitions and collect all the quotations. Among the many people who have done this for the OED are JRR Tolkien who went on to write Lord of the Rings, and William Chester Minor, a former army surgeon who was being held in Broadmoor after killing a man. Tolkien was responsible for defining words beginning with W.
7. A number of words have several different meanings. The word to have the most different meanings was "set" for a long time, but it has been recently overtaken by "run".
8. The typescript for the first edition of the OED, if laid end to end, would reach from London to Manchester.
9. How does a word get into a dictionary? The criteria for inclusion is that the word has been in common use by people of diverse backgrounds. There is a long process of collecting sources for origins of the words, definitions, quotations and so on. Lexicographers, the people who compile dictionaries, don't usually decide what should go in and what shouldn't (although there have been dictionaries which excluded certain words or meanings for moral reasons).
10. Not all the words in every dictionary are genuine. Mistakes and typos creep into dictionaries just as in any other book. "Phantomnation" was one example of a word which doesn't exist, but should have appeared as "phantom-nation". Some fake words are included on purpose, so the publishers will know if another publisher is just copying their dictionary. Esquivalience is an example of such a word. It was defined as "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities." However, if enough people start using it...

Obsidian's Ark

Teenage years bring no end of problems. Daniel Moran's include getting hold of computer games his parents don't think he should have; a full blown crush on the beautiful Suki from Zorostan; maintaining his status as a prefect and getting his homework done. He must also keep from his parents and sister the fact that he is a superhero with a sword from another world.

Trish wonders how to get science whizz Tom to notice her; how to persuade him that the best way to stand up to the school bully is to fight back. She doesn't want her friends, especially not Tom, to know she is a genetic variant with superpowers. Little does she know that Tom has secrets of his own.

Suki struggles to make friends at school when she cannot understand everyday cultural references, and they all suspect her of being a terrorist. She, too, has a secret, but is it what her classmates assume?

When Daniel stumbles upon a plot by an alliance of supervillains to plunge the world into war, he tries to alert the established superheroes, but none of them believe him. When the Prime Minister's only daughter, Yasmin Miller, is abducted, Daniel knows the villains' plan is underway. It seems humanity's only hope may be Daniel and the ragtag bunch of teenage superheroes he recruits. Can he pull together, not only his own team, but the older heroes as well, in a bid to save the Earth from a devastating war?

Themes: 

Superheroes; Coming of age; Leadership; Kidnap and rescue; Aliens; Friendship and rivalry; Terrorism; Secrets.

Available from:

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26 September: European Day of Languages

Today is European Day of Languages - so here are ten interesting facts about languages.

1. How many languages are there in the world? Somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000. There are about 225 languages spoken in Europe.
2. Not to mention any number of fake languages created for films and TV, such as Klingon. The Lord of the Rings films feature 12 made up languages.
3. The language which has the most native speakers is Chinese. 1.2 billion people have Chinese as their first language. In Europe, the most widely spoken native language is German.
4. Some languages have over 50,000 words, but most people only ever use a few hundred of the words in their language.
5. Over half the people in the world are bilingual, which means they speak two or more languages fluently.
6. Languages borrow words from each other - English has many words and expressions which have their roots in other tongues. Equally, other languages borrow words from English. "Le weekend" springs to mind here.
7. The book which has been translated into the most languages is, not surprisingly, the Bible. The Little Prince and Pinocchio are the most translated non-religious books.
8. The alphabet of the Cambodian language Khmer has 74 letters. At the other end of the scale, Rotokas, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, has just 12. Chinese uses characters rather than letters, and has 50,000 of them. However, you only need to know about 2,000 of them in order to read a newspaper.
9. There are people in the Patagonian region of Argentina who speak Welsh.
10. People using sign language have accents, just as people using spoken languages do. People who have used sign language from birth can tell whether another signer is deaf or not, and if they are new to signing. People in New York sign faster than most.

NEW!

Obsidian's Ark

Teenage years bring no end of problems. Daniel Moran's include getting hold of computer games his parents don't think he should have; a full blown crush on the beautiful Suki from Zorostan; maintaining his status as a prefect and getting his homework done. He must also keep from his parents and sister the fact that he is a superhero with a sword from another world.

Trish wonders how to get science whizz Tom to notice her; how to persuade him that the best way to stand up to the school bully is to fight back. She doesn't want her friends, especially not Tom, to know she is a genetic variant with superpowers. Little does she know that Tom has secrets of his own.

Suki struggles to make friends at school when she cannot understand everyday cultural references, and they all suspect her of being a terrorist. She, too, has a secret, but is it what her classmates assume?

When Daniel stumbles upon a plot by an alliance of supervillains to plunge the world into war, he tries to alert the established superheroes, but none of them believe him. When the Prime Minister's only daughter, Yasmin Miller, is abducted, Daniel knows the villains' plan is underway. It seems humanity's only hope may be Daniel and the ragtag bunch of teenage superheroes he recruits. Can he pull together, not only his own team, but the older heroes as well, in a bid to save the Earth from a devastating war?

Themes: 

Superheroes; Coming of age; Leadership; Kidnap and rescue; Aliens; Friendship and rivalry; Terrorism; Secrets.

Available from:

Amazon

Amazon Kindle

16 October: Learn a Word Day

Learn a Word day is the birthday of Noah Webster, who created the first American dictionary. Here are ten of my favourites from the new words I've learned over the past few months:

1. Chatoyant Like a cat’s eye.
2. Tintinnabulation Tinkling.
3. Librocubularist One who reads in bed.
4. Pluviophile A person who takes great joy and comfort in rainy days.
5. Barbigerous Characterised by having a Beard.
6. Cattywampus in disarray.
7. Callipygian possessing a shapely derrière.
8. Susurrous Whispering, hissing.
9. Hornswoggle to dupe or hoax.
10. Tatterdemalion raggedly dressed person.