The Culbin Trail

A bit of praise for Endeavour

2012-01-22T05:18:00.000-08:00

Inspector Endeavour Morse is one of favourite tv detectives. So I had mixed feelings when I heard the news that a prequel film was to be made to try out a new series of Morse adventures for when Lewis is pensioned off. I need not have worried as the care and attention devoted to detailing Morse's early years were as near perfect as this sort of show can be.

From the first moments when the kind of incidental music a young Morse should have starts up, the film did nothing wrong. We first meet Morse as a young and disillusioned man on the verge of giving up on being a copper, but a case involving all the traditional Morse themes of unattainable women, art and serial killing university dons keep him in the force and in Oxford. The premise lives or dies on the issue of whether the new actor is believable in a role that is nearly impossible to play. Shaun Evans has to be a young Morse, a young John Thaw, and be himself too. Somehow the actor achieved all that, despite looking nothing like John Thaw. There was just something about the intensity in his eyes as he watches everything and everyone while appearing both vulnerable and in control that made it work. The scene where he makes a terrible and embarrassing pass at a woman who he admires for her artistic ability was a painfully perfect depiction of everything that Morse, the person and Morse, the show is about.

This time round the young Morse is the sidekick to his boss and the choice of boss Fred Thursday is an excellent one. Roger Allam has appeared in Morse before, but this time he essentially gives his Supermac performance from series two of Ashes to Ashes. I liked him in that series and I was irritated he got killed off quickly, so I was pleased to see him again as he makes a perfect sixties copper, treading that difficult line between community policing and what would now be viewed as corruption. He got the tone right with his lecturing speech pattern and he even got to do some good old-fashioned policing with his fists. I was also amused by the fact that in Ashes to Ashes Roger Allam and Shaun Evans both played corrupt coppers and Roger had Shaun bumped off.

Also in the mix is a young Max, the pathologist, who is played perfectly by someone who is believable as a young Max. These links to the later series work well and in fact the whole episode was littered with references, including witty repeating of titles of Morse episodes. There's also hints at how Morse first becomes interested in his famous car, his first pint of beer, and the usual cameo from Colin Dexter. The only bum note for me, although I gather this was popular with viewers, was John Thaw passing on the gauntlet to his younger self. This felt unnecessary as John Thaw's daughter had already passed on the gauntlet in a perfect bit of fourth wall breaking dialogue with her moving line that she and Morse had probably met in another life.

That aside, the sixties were excellently depicted without any undue nostalgia or lingering tracking shots to show us the expensive sets. The story itself evoked the sixties nicely with links to a famous scandal of the day and amusingly one of the actors looked like, sounded like and dressed like Michael Caine playing Harry Palmer. The pace of developments was perfect with escalating tension and one of the best dramatic endings to any Morse episode. By the time Morse had become Thursday's bagman and the old Morse theme tune played over the closing title credits, I'd already started hoping that a series gets commissioned.

A bit of a whinge about Sherlock: series 2

2012-01-21T17:14:00.000-08:00

Over the New Year period I was looking forward to only two tv programs: the return of Sherlock with excitement and the arrival of Endeavour with dread. As it turned out, the former disappointed and the latter exceeded my expectations. I'll talk about the Inspector Morse prequel tomorrow, but today I'll have a whinge about Sherlock: series two.

Sherlock is the most universally acclaimed popular drama the BBC has made in decades. It's hard to find any criticism, which makes me wonder what I was missing as although I enjoyed the latest episodes, I preferred the first series. I've concluded that I'm at fault in failing to accept it's become a fantasy romp rather than being the detective yarn I want it to be. It's the tv equivalent of the blockbuster movie where you're supposed to sit back with a beer in hand and accept that nothing will make sense, but don’t worry because it's not meant to.

My problem is that it didn’t start that way. I'm not a big Sherlock Holmes fan, although I've read many of the stories and watched plenty of adaptations. My favourite version is Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, so I was prepared for liberties to be taken and, as it turned out, the pilot episode was one of the best I've ever seen. I accepted Watson in minutes and Sherlock in seconds. The story featured a perfect escapist detective yarn in which Sherlock solves a complex crime using brilliant deduction. At the end of the pilot I'd decided I'd found my new favourite tv series and although the next two episodes weren't as good, they were still entertaining. The middle episode was criticised for being weakly plotted, which wasn't deserved, and the third episode built nicely until Moriarty's audience splitting arrival.

I was in the camp that thought Moriarty didn't work, but the cliffhanger was fun and I eagerly awaited series two. Sadly, the new series got off on the wrong foot with a poor solution to the cliffhanger. If Sherlock is so clever, he should have resolved his dilemma rather than relying on the copout of the villain giving up because it's not the end of the story yet. With an eighteen-month gap between series, viewers deserve better than a feeble joke solution.

That start set the tone for the rest of an episode that featured lots of running around, quick-fire dialogue and a nonsense story. There certainly wasn't an interesting crime for Sherlock to solve and he wasn't interested in the macguffin of stolen compromising pictures. Arch-enemy Irene Adler was supposed to provide Sherlock with a worthy adversary, except she came over as an ordinary femme fatale. The nude scene came over as being put in to make Daily Mail readers froth at the mouth, which it did when the paper provided full-page pictures. But frankly a brilliant detective who can work out your dog's name from the shape of your shirt buttons should have gathered information from Adler's skin. Worse, that set up the rule that the sight of skin fools Sherlock. That made me spend the rest of the series noting every time Sherlock picked up a clue from someone's skin and add further weight to the theory that Adler was a weak male fantasy figure and not a strong independent woman.

I hated the ending that stole Adler's independence meaning that a story built around the chemistry between Sherlock and Adler didn't work for me as they didn’t have any. In fact the scenes with Sherlock and pathologist Molly were more believable and interesting. The actress who plays Molly delivers adoration and hurt, strength and disappointment without uttering a word while Sherlock with his posture alone both acknowledges that he knows what he means to her while also denying it. If there is a will they / won’t they element in future Sherlock stories, it'll work better with Molly than with Adler as it involves a situation we can all relate to. And while I'm on the chemistry subject, I grew bored of the Sherlock and Watson being a gay couple joke in the pilot episode and it's now become annoying.

I hoped for better things from the second tale concerning a certain hound, which like most people is my favourite Sherlock tale. The writer's recent excellent documentary series on horror films showed he has the same tastes and opinions as I have about film horror and so I expected an interesting take on the tale. But I struggled to watch the episode all the way through. I welcomed the slower pace that let the story breathe, but the tale was pure hokum until the even more hokum solution involving bad CGI and hammy acting. And there were too many filler scenes. There was a tedious trip around a military unit put in to justify the expense of the big set. There was wandering around in the dark being scared, which was less interesting than most scenes involving people wandering around in the dark being scared. And the scene where Watson hides in a cage while Sherlock enjoys watching him be frightened ruined the sense of their growing friendship.

The worst padding came when the story ignored the rules the show had set for Sherlock so that it could avoid him fingering a culprit who was so obvious he might as well have 'I did it' written on his forehead. One moment Sherlock's proving he's in control by working out that someone missed their train this morning from the number of sugars they put in their tea, and the next moment he can't find out where someone keeps the sugar in their kitchen, something everybody can do. And I particularly hated Sherlock's mind palace where he waves his arms around. The pilot episode superbly depicted how Sherlock's deductive mind works with graphics and clever direction, but every subsequent episode has depicted a different technique, none of which work as well. Oh and the less said about Russell Tovey's acting and accent the better.

I therefore put all my hopes into the final episode and, in the sections where Moriarty wasn't around, it worked well, but every time he appeared all credibility went with him. I usually like to see actors try something different, but that performance was too different. I never once believed in Moriarty, as I didn't know if he was deranged, or a man pretending to be deranged, so the concept that he was what Sherlock could become if he turned to the dark side was lost. And the idea of the most dangerous man in the world wandering around in full view doesn’t work. If he was that dangerous, the secret services would have made him disappear a long time ago.

As a result the ending fell flat, although I was pleased that Net pundits worked out how Sherlock could cheat death before the credits rolled. Of course, based on the resolution to series one, the actual answer will be sillier, and I have no great hope that next time Sherlock will be set in the real world. It's probably just me but I'd like him to solve interesting crimes that have defied resolution while the coppers look on in amazement and his brother acts amusingly in the background, as happened in the first series. Instead we have power games where nothing matters because nothing is real and Sherlock might as well admit he owns a sonic screwdriver while Moriarty should admit he's a barking mad regeneration of the Master.

On a more mundane level the series suffers from a classic middle act problem. This problem often affects shows featuring a genius, as writers struggle to make plots work with characters who are ten steps ahead of their adversaries. The result is that each episode since the pilot has been half an hour too long. Trimmed down to an hour, each episode would have been better. Sherlock can solve ten unsolvable cases before breakfast while completing today's Times crossword using only clues from yesterday's crossword, so it's hard to rack up the tension in the middle act. So the stories either forget he's brilliant, or wander off track, or add in yet another story, or add in yet another layer that contradicts everything that went before.

This final point also creates an odd tone. In the first series my only main criticism was that the tales didn’t connect well so that the middle episode didn't feel as if it followed the first. This is more striking this time round where the tales link together in only superficial ways and therefore miss opportunities. For example the groundwork for the final episode premise that the police begin to distrust Sherlock could have been laid throughout the series, but instead it happens for reasons that weren't any more valid than the numerous other occasions when they could have doubted him.

Anyhow, now that I've got that off my chest I'll stop whinging and say again that I enjoyed the series, even if it doesn't sound like it. I wish more programs like Sherlock were made, with care and intelligence and which are good enough to be worth criticising. The series features superb set pieces, fun exchanges of dialogue, the production values are glossy, and the leads are perfect. I love the banter between Sherlock and Watson, and between the other regulars, while the moments when Sherlock works out how many children someone has from the colour of their bootlaces are always brilliant. But somehow the sum of the many good parts is less than it ought to be and I wish I'd enjoyed it even more.

The Gallows Gang now available on Kindle

2012-01-15T01:27:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to announce that my Black Horse Western The Gallows Gang (published 2008) is now available on Kindle. The book has been republished by Hale as part of their plan to make Black Horse Westerns available for download.

I reckon this book is a decent one to read if you fancy plenty of fast-paced action. I seem to remember that my previous book had gathered the editorial comment that it had been light on action and so I decided to rectify matters with this one by cramming in as many action set-pieces as I could while still telling a story and having some surprises and twists along the way.

With this one, there were three things I enjoyed writing. Firstly, the main character Nathaniel McBain had appeared in my first novel and I'd intended him to be a recurring hero, but to my surprise after being a good guy in several books, he turned to the dark side. He finally got what he deserved in Wanted: McBain and he was sent to jail for a seven-year stretch, but I'd always thought that one day I'd find out what he did next. I had several false starts with a prison hardship novel, a dirty dozen type tale and the inevitable prison breakout story, but my heart wasn't in any of those tales and they fizzled out. But then I had an idea for a story that starts with his last day in jail...

I also like doing literal cliff-hangers; that being scenes ending with the hero dangling by his fingertips from a cliff. Riders of the Barren Plains had one and the forthcoming Beyond Redemption has another, but I think this one has the best of the three. Nathaniel is manacled to the bars of a cage that's teetering on the edge of a cliff. The only person who can help him is a raving psychopath, who is also manacled to the bars, and for good measure a stick of fizzing dynamite is rocking back and forth in the swaying cage just out of his reach... I loved writing that one!

The other thing I enjoyed writing was the character of the Preacher. My characters usually have valid motivations for doing either good or bad, but I hadn't done a completely enigmatic character before. The Preacher was that man, someone who is a raving, serial-killing religious fanatic who either knows the answer to everything, or who then again might know nothing. Nathaniel spends a chunk of the story chained to him and I loved writing their dialogue as the Preacher speaks only using Biblical quotations. Finding appropriate lines for him to say was a lot of fun.

Anyhow the book is now available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

After escaping en route to their appointment with the gallows, eight condemned men led by Javier Rodriguez blazed a trail of destruction. Wherever they went, the Gallows Gang left behind swinging bodies as a reminder of the fate they had avoided.

Four men set out to bring them to justice, but the prison guard Shackleton Frost and Marshal Kurt McLynn both blamed the other for the prisoners having escaped. All they could agree on is that they didn't trust Nathaniel McBain. Wrongly condemned himself, the Gallows Gang held the key to proving Nathaniel's innocence. None of them knew what demons drove the enigmatic man known only as The Preacher.

Can this mismatched group put aside their personal feuds for long enough to end the Gallows Gang's reign of terror?

Reginald Hill

2012-01-14T08:17:00.000-08:00

I've just heard the sad news that the author Reginald Hill has died at the age of 75. He is mainly known for the creation of Andy Dalziel, who is comfortably my favourite fictional copper and who featured in dozens of novels written over a 40 year period since 1970. His books showed how it was possible to write formula fiction without ever resorting to being formulaic.

Review of Sheriff Without a Star

2011-12-18T02:22:00.000-08:00

There's a review of Sheriff without a Star at Western Fiction Review, which is a nice double as I received my complimentary copies yesterday. The cover has instantly gone towards the top of my list of favourite covers.

Despite his four years of distinguished service Sheriff Cassidy Yates lost the confidence of Monotony’s townsfolk because his error of judgement led to the death of Leland Matlock’s son. But when the star Cassidy had worn with pride was removed from his chest, Leland claimed he knew something that would shed new light on the sheriff’s downfall.

Before Leland could reveal what he knew he was shot, but Cassidy still had the instincts of a lawman. He believed Leland’s shooting was connected to the death of his son and that if he could uncover the link it would restore the townsfolk’s confidence in him. So Cassidy embarked on his greatest challenge: to get the star pinned back on his chest where it belonged.

Read more here.

Death in Paradise

2011-12-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

The last episode of detective series Death in Paradise is on tv tomorrow and I hope it gets a second series. British cosy murder mystery tv series are usually made by ITV (badly) while the BBC usually make grittier series about rabid serial killers slaughtering people in ever more gruesome ways that recreate the Biblical plagues, or some such nonsense. And that's just the cop assigned to catch the killer. I don't enjoy that sort of thing. So I was pleased that the BBC have made a detective series that is about as old-fashioned as tv can get these days. It doesn’t try to be modern or ironic and it's not filmed with a wobbly camera and high-speed editing. In fact Death in Paradise wouldn't have looked out of place in the 1980s as a sort of cross between Bergerac and Murder, She Wrote.

The series details the exploits of Richard Poole, a British cop sent into exile on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie, a place that time forgot where modern police techniques are unavailable and crimes are solved by using the little grey cells. Richard is stuffy, pedantic and hates living in a hot climate while his team of detectives are chilled out, casual and enjoy island life. What follows is a mixture of the inevitable character clashes amongst the detective team along with a rigid story formula that lets the viewer, as much as the detectives, solve the crime. Every week there's a murder before the title credits roll and a selection of suspects are identified, all usually British ex-pats played by familiar actors. They all have a story to tell, shown through flashbacks, that build up a picture of the events, while each clue is revealed in such an unsubtle way that 'Clue number 1' might as well scroll across the bottom of the screen in big, red letters.

The detectives collect these clues with Richard making inspired deductive leaps while drinking tea and with the rest bumbling around drinking cocktails and going to beach parties. Then, with fifteen minutes to go, enough of these clues have been collected for Richard to connect everything, after which he calls all the suspects into the drawing room (sometimes he actually does this) to explain his brilliant deductive process and finger the killer. Everyone is duly amazed at his brilliance, except for the viewers who will have usually worked it out shortly after the opening titles credits rolled, but that's the charm of the series and the entertainment comes from watching a mystery that can be worked out from the on-screen clues. Everything is played straight with few red herrings and no unreliable narrators and although several of the murders involve locked room situations, the show doesn't cheat in the way that most tv mystery series do by hiding key information. As a result everything connects in a satisfying way.

What doesn't work as well as it could do is the interaction between the characters, although if the show gets a second series I'm sure that'll improve. The lead actor does well to sell the fact that he hates living in paradise, but his grumpy by-play with the rest of the cast sometimes feels forced. He's supposed to be awkward around his sultry second in command Camille, but the two actors don’t have chemistry so their scenes are more awkward than they are designed to be. As their interaction improves later in the series, this perhaps proves that actors have to have chemistry to be convincing as people who lack chemistry. What works better from the start is the by-play between the other two detectives Dwayne and Fidel, with Dwayne as the laid-back cop who wants a quiet life and Fidel as the young and enthusiastic one. Dwayne, as played by Danny John-Jules, is particularly good and his character's name alone is sure to make Red Dwarf fans chuckle. Curiously although it's claimed the role wasn't written with the actor's character of the Cat in mind, he's a cool, vain, ladies man who doesn't realize he looks silly riding around on his motorcycle combination.

Completing the cast is Don Warrington in the thankless role of the shouty boss and better is Camille's mother who owns the restaurant around which many of the scenes play out and who gets to hand out cocktails and wise advice in equal measure. The episodes are uniformly entertaining with the only weak note for me being a bizarre guest performance by Shirley Henderson, which I thought was a candidate for the worst written and worst acted performance in the history of tv. Other than that, for undemanding and gentle drama this series worked for me, especially when there was snow on the ground.

Black Mirror: The National Anthem

2011-12-05T05:21:00.000-08:00

Charlie Brooker is one of the few writers whose material I'll read or watch even if I have no interest in the subject matter. His grumpy newspaper articles ranting about the media are always fun, and his grumpy appearances on tv in Newswipe and Screenwipe ranting about the media pick their targets well. His previous attempts to cross over to the other side and write drama have been less successful, although I've always found it strange that critics haven't been more critical of a poacher turned gamekeeper.

Nathan Barley was a sitcom that laboured the fairly obvious point that people in the media are idiots. And Dead Set was a zombie version of Big Brother that laboured the fairly obvious point that people on Big Brother are idiots and the people who watch it are zombies. Black Mirror is his latest drama, which in its first episode asked the important question: is it always wrong to have sex with animals? As cutting edge questions go this isn’t all that cutting edge as The Vicar of Dibley dealt with this issue about ten years ago in an early evening popular piece of family entertainment, but nevertheless this time the answer was a resounding no.

The idea behind the title was an excellent one, that the black flat screen sitting in the corner of your living room is like the enigmatic monolith from 2001 and so a series of Twilight Zone dramas will explore what goes on behind the black mirror. Except of course when you switch off the tv, all you'll see in the black mirror is yourself, only darker. The National Anthem was the first story and it was heavy on good ideas, which is rare on British tv these days, and so close to being brilliant it was well worth watching, but it wasn't as well written as it could have been and so it wasn't as provocative as it reckoned it was.

Taking the episode as a journey into the twilight zone where you suspend disbelief was the best way to enjoy it, as the plot holes, even for a fantasy satire, were wider than a 56 inch flat screen. A member of the royal family has been kidnapped and the ransom demand is simply that the Prime Minister must appear on live tv and re-enact a scene that you'd never get to see in Peppa Pig. The Prime Minister reacts as expected and tries to silence the story, but in these days of the Internet that proves impossible. Within minutes the story is on youtube, twitter, and facebook, while the 24 hour rolling news service does its best to work out how they can break a suppressed story everyone already knows without revealing the lurid details everyone already knows.

Starting with that excellent premise the drama that unfolded was an odd one that for me failed to say anything original about the modern media and our strange mixture of disgust in and encouragement of lurid stories while the secondary aspect of the story of the Prime Minister's descent into a dark world beyond his control was riveting. Brooker first came to prominence writing with Chris Morris, who explored the world of stupid media people churning out depraved material for an even stupider general population in a surreal and shocking manner some ten to fifteen years ago. This didn't say anything that Morris didn't do better back then or for that matter, for example, Ben Elton's Popcorn did in the early 90s. All I got from the story was that news travels fast on the Internet and media people will sell their soul for a story, which isn't much of a revelation from a black mirror. Even less riveting is the satirical point that the entire population of the world is so media-obsessed and desperate for crude entertainment that we'll drop everything just for the chance to sit in front of the tv and watch the Prime Minister pork a porker.

What did work though was Roy Kinnear's dignified and compelling performance as the Prime Minister in a role that required him to lose all dignity when events spiral out of control. With his advisors and press secretaries, he's the most powerful man in the country and yet slowly as the day goes on he gets to understand that in reality he's the most powerless. Surrounded by bad advice, focus groups, spin doctors, and trends on twitter he faces the classic dilemma that no matter what he does he's doomed. Either he saves a life but destroys his marriage and his career, or he takes the risk that someone he doesn't know will die and yet he'll still destroy his marriage and his career. And all the people who are supposed to help him can do is advise him that he shouldn’t risk looking like he's enjoying himself with the pig.

As this was a Twilight Zone type fantasy there had to be a twist at the end and it was a groan inducing one when it's revealed the set up was a Turner Prize winning piece of conceptual art. It all went wrong for everyone involved as the member of the royal family was released early, but with everyone indoors cheering on the pig nobody noticed. The only deep and disturbing irony in that is that anyone would think it deep and disturbing. I reckon the real Twilight Zone would have provided a better twist and Rod Serling's narration would surely have been funnier. Although I enjoyed the first episode, with next week's episode looking pretty dire I think I'll pass on the rest of the series and start looking forward to Brooker's news summary of the year instead.

Cover for The Search for the Lone Star

2011-11-19T03:43:00.000-08:00

I've just noticed that amazon have posted the cover for my 24th Black Horse Western The Search for the Lone Star.

The cover is different to any of my others, as I've usually had outdoor scenes and bright colours, so I like the change of style. It nicely claustrophobic and suggests plenty of conflict, and the fair-haired bloke looks a bit like Chuck Connors. Anyhow, the book will be published April 2012 and my suggested blurb was:

It had long been rumoured that the fabulous diamond known as the Lone Star had been buried somewhere near the town of Diamond Springs. Many men had died trying to claim it, but when Diamond Springs became a ghost town, the men who went there had many different aims. Tex Callahan had been paid to complete a mission, Rafferty Horn wanted to put right a past mistake, George Milligan thought he knew what had happened to the diamond, and Elias Sutherland wanted revenge.

All were united by their hatred of Creswell Washington, a man who had cast a dark shadow over all their lives during his search for the diamond. Only after violent retribution will the truth be finally revealed about the Lone Star.

On the other hand, it's been a year now since I wrote those words and I can't believe I wrote that horrible last line. I hope it gets changed!

A review of The Finest Frontier Town in the West

2011-11-14T00:16:00.000-08:00

Tender Valley is a clean, friendly and law-abiding frontier town. In fact, it is such a fine town that an enterprising businessman might just designate it as the official Finest Frontier Town in the West, an award with a thousand-dollar prize...

Read more about by 2003 title at Western Fiction Review.

A bunch of people living together

2011-11-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

Channel 5's first attempt to stage Big Brother ends on Friday, an event that is sure to be of mild interest to the several dozen people still watching. As I'm one of those die-hards I suppose I should comment, especially in the light of my not-very-enlightened article I wrote before the series started in which I predicted that not much would change from Channel 4's version. In some ways I was right: the music is the same, the logo is still an eye, professional Geordie Marcus Bentley still narrates, and every big twist fails badly. Most importantly it's still about a bunch of people living together, but curiously a lot has changed because now it is just about a bunch of people living together. I'll explain that comment later.

12 weeks ago, in what now seems like another lifetime, the celebrity version started to a collective cry from the audience of: who are these people? This used to happen every year, but somehow the celebrity bar was lowered to such an extent that the only person I recognized was an actor who got two lines in episode 3, series 8 of New Tricks. After 3 weeks of watching these stars, I'm hard pushed to remember who actually won. Thankfully after those non-entities had departed, the non-celebrity version started with a group of people who were slightly more well-known, including various models, reality tv stars, dancers, wrestlers, musicians, and an actress who died horribly in a popular horror movie franchise.

For the last 9 weeks these characters have done their best to rekindle the old Big Brother magic with the usual arguments over the shopping budget while in fancy dress, pretend romances, and contrived drama over hair straighteners. At its best it has provided moments that explore issues realistically in a way drama never can such as the glorious moment when housemate Aaron found out what his girlfriend's mum thought of him. She nominated him for eviction because he was messing around with her daughter, an uncomfortable scene with repercussions that only the most worthwhile reality tv show of them all could provide. Sadly excellent drama like this was in short supply and I reckon there are several obvious reasons why the show isn't as compelling as it was during its long run on the bigger station :

New host Brian Dowling's tight suits. As a housemate Brian was caustic and entertainingly camp, but as a host he isn't quick-witted or comfortable enough for live tv, although at least he isn't Davina.

The gormless editing. The show is now edited so a six-year-old can understand with constant repetition and explanations for the hard of thinking. I long for the old, deadpan style of '2.44pm, the housemates are in the garden eating jaffa cakes' rather than the new over-informative 'Jay is angry with a jaffa cake and this montage of last night's show set to music will show you why' style.

The lack of live feed. The decision not to show events 24 hours a day was inevitable as these days the OFCOM generation watch programs just so they can complain about minor things such as people taking dumps in freezers. But that's left the editors free to provide one-dimensional views of the characters and something vital has been lost. So Harry was comedy gold for 7 weeks until he came out and acted like an idiot, while Faye appeared an emotional wreck for 8 weeks until she came out and acted calmly.

Demographic targeting. An age limit of 30 was imposed on housemates with the intention of attracting young folk, thereby alienating half the audience. The lack of variety in life goals combined with people without any life experience has limited the scope of the show.

Lack of intellectual stimulus. The show used to have a fascinating psychological aspect with spin-off shows devoted to reading body language and the subtle aspects of character and language. Now the spin off shows feature swearing, rudeness and idiots.

Too media savvy. Even in 2000, some of the housemates knew what was required of them to further their media careers. Now everyone has been media trained and housemates are so self-aware of how they'll be perceived that you have to doubt everyone, especially the ones who aren’t self-aware.

They are no longer a number. The show borrowed its ideas from Orwell and The Prisoner with people challenging and being challenged by an authoritative Big Brother character. Big Brother always won and after 3 months people would emerge from the prison experience looking and sounding like a gibbering wreck, but hopefully having learnt something about themselves. Now the little media darlings get parties every night and soothing words every day, and they come out of the hotel as content as they went in to read a statement from their PR agent having learnt nothing about themselves.

I could list more issues that I hope they'll address later, but the biggest reason for the show being less absorbing now is one I don’t think they'll change as it involves a statement of intent made by Channel 5's program director Jeff Ford. He reckoned Channel 4's problem was that their version always had to be about something. His version would be freed of that constraint so that it could be just about a bunch of people living together.

I kept thinking about that statement while watching, wondering what Big Brother used to be about if it wasn't just about a bunch of people living together. 12 weeks of the new version that isn’t about anything has helped me to realize that the main selling point of the old Big Brother was that it was a wry commentary on the state of celebrity obsessed Britain. It used to display all the worst excesses of celebrity, with faded stars hoping to rekindle their careers and normal people doing anything to get their few moments of fame. But it let celebrity obsessed viewers get their fix of shallowness, while at the same time it let discerning viewers distance themselves from the unsavoury antics on screen because the format invited us to be cynical.

So we could enjoy watching Michael Barrymore end his comeback with one non-pc comic routine, or George Galloway destroy his political career with a cat impersonation. And we could delight in watching Katreya's comic cookie monster persona crumble over 3 months and enjoy seeing her evicted in her nightgown to a baying mob revelling in her distress.

It was cruel; it was cynical; it was a freak show. But it was unique and it was about something. It put up a mirror to society and that reflection was often an uncomfortable sight when it forced us to consider our opinions on race, gender, class, disability. Now that element has gone leaving something that's not vastly different to most of the other shows that celebrate the vacuous and promote the inane in the name of selling magazines. You can still find interesting insights into human behaviour, but you have to look hard because the cynicism has gone, and now we're supposed to be impressed by celebrities and the desire to be famous no matter how little talent you have.

So this year the five people who are left in the house all dream of being a celebrity despite having no talent and, like most years, they're all repellent in their own ways. In my view the least likely to win is Tom, who followed the classic under the radar approach and so who has done nothing for 9 weeks other than grin. He could be the most instantly forgettable housemate ever.

Next out will be Louise, who ploughed the tedious furrow that most glamour models have trodden post Imogen, BB7 of keeping your head down, have a pretend romance with the stupidest bloke in the house, and then when you come out bag a footballer or nine. She could well be the dimmest housemate they've ever had and she has only gone to prove that the housemates who act dim are acting because when people are really dim, they are just plain dull.

Next out will be Jay, who I had pegged for the winner on opening night, something that's irritated me ever since. Jay went for the classic warts 'n all approach in the hope of proving he was an ordinary working class bloke from Up North. His warts have provided most of the jaw dropping moments including his tales of his romantic exploits in Thailand and his bizarre obsession with bodily functions, bodily secretions, electrical appliances, and courtship rituals usually only seen on nature programs. His chances were probably ruined by his decision to use a mug in a manner it wasn't designed for (I missed that episode, thankfully), to use a freezer in a manner it wasn't designed for (the alleged dump was edited out to stop OFCOM going into meltdown), to use a pillow in a manner it wasn't designed for (I wish they'd edited out his revolutionary new bottom wiping technique), and to use Louise in a manner she had been designed for but which nobody other than Louise's agent would have expected her to tolerate for the sake of securing a magazine deal and a potential advertising contract with Andrex.

With those out of the way, it'll come down to a battle between Alex and Aaron, who are both keen students on the art of winning Big Brother and who have both employed perfect winning game plans. Alex has used a combination of several previous housemates' methods. From Sophie, BB10 she's gone for pretending you're not a glamour model by dressing in chunky sweaters, telling everyone you're not a glamour model and never will be one, and befriending the gay one. From the twins, BB8 she's pretended to like Barbie and from most winners she's pretended to be so terminally stupid she can't move and talk at the same time. This has provided some unintentionally amusing moments such as her discussion with Harry about post-renaissance Dutch painters until she remembered her character wouldn't know about such things.

Viewers love dumb blondes and they'll probably vote for her to stop Aaron winning. He's the only one who has shown vulnerability and been tested by the challenge. In fact he's probably the first housemate to show some complexity of character on the show in the last decade and without him I'd have stopped watching on launch night the moment the housemates started forgetting how their characters were supposed to behave. After 9 weeks I still don’t know what to make of him, his sweaters, his interest in boy bands, his mood swings, his long silences, his bad dancing, but for the simple fact that I don't understand him, I hope he wins. He won’t though.

After that, it's a long 8 week wait until the next celebrity version starts and I can wrestle again with the probably unanswerable question of: why on earth do I keep watching this nonsense?

The Secret of Devil's Canyon to be published in Large Print

2011-10-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've received the welcome news that my Black Horse Western The Secret of Devil's Canyon, which was published in April, will be reprinted next year in Large Print. It will be my 16th Linford Western.

When Mayor Maxwell and his daughter are brutally murdered, feelings in Bear Creek run high. Even when the killer is caught and sentenced to life in prison, the townsfolk demand a lynching. So Sheriff Bryce calls in Nathaniel McBain to spirit the killer away through Devil's Canyon to Beaver Ridge jail.

At first, Nathaniel manages to stay one step ahead of the pursuing mob; but as he loses ground, he realises he faces an even bigger problem: his prisoner may be innocent after all...

A dark secret about what really happened is buried in Devil's Canyon. Will Nathaniel be able to uncover the truth before the mob reaches him?

The Outlawed Deputy

2011-10-19T02:22:00.000-07:00

Hardback published - Aug 2001: 978-0709069553
Large Print published - Mar 2003: 978-0708994382

Through narrowed eyes, Cassidy stared at the three playing cards clutched in his right hand. He held an ace and two jacks, and with two aces on the table, he knew that his poker hand was strong. After playing for two hours, he could read the worried expressions of his three opponents, and knew that from the final deal, they didn't have anything to beat his hand. With everything being equal, he should risk betting whatever it took to win the pot.

Unfortunately, Cassidy knew everything wasn't equal….

So began my first published novel. I look back on those opening lines with a mixture of joy that something I created actually got published and horror that something I created actually got published.

The Outlawed Deputy was my second attempt to write a western. The first one started life as an sf / horror novel set on an airless asteroid where a mutant cyborg holes up in an abandoned space station and fights off a gang of crazed, zombie aliens. About half way through writing this masterpiece it dawned on me that the story might not be the classic I'd hoped it would be and, in one of those blinding flashes of logic that occasionally hit me, I worked out why. I was trying to write a version of the film Aliens, except I was sure I'd once read that when James Cameron made that movie he claimed he had tried to make Assault on Precinct 13 in space. And John Carpenter, when he made Precinct 13, said he was trying to make Night of the Living Dead in a police station. And George Romero had said that when he made Living Dead he was trying to make Rio Bravo with zombies.

This meant that the problem with my story was that I was trying to write a western in space and so if I got rid of the space bits, I'd have a better story. It turned out that I was half right. I changed my mutant cyborg to a marshal, changed the space station to a ghost town, and changed the zombie aliens into an outlaw gang. The story then made more sense, although sadly it was still a terrible one. I decided I needed to read more westerns.

I hadn't read a western since the early eighties when they'd disappeared from bookshelves in the UK, but I found to my delight that the library was full of Black Horse Westerns. I picked some at random, loved them, and then, fuelled on with enthusiasm, I tried again to make my mutant cyborg turned U.S. marshal tale work. I then hit another problem that was bigger than the fact the story was rubbish; it was already 50,000 words long and I'd only just started writing the middle bit. As this was already longer than a western's length, I decided to try the second, more sensible option.

I put that story aside and started again with something that got to its point slightly quicker. I instantly had a vision of a lawman who had been locked in his own jail cell. I didn't know who he was and why he was there, but I decided to start writing and answer those questions. Two seconds after starting writing he got the name Cassidy Yates, as I was watching Deep Space 9 at the time and I liked the name of the character Kasidy Yates. Shortly after starting writing he got a sidekick Nat McBain, named after a character who got shot up in Once Upon a Time in the West, although I later found out I'd remembered that wrong and the character didn't get named.

The story that developed involved a lawman getting wrongly accused of a crime and then going on to clear his name. It was an uninspired story and, looking back, I find it irritating that I wrote something that was so linear with few plot twists. I also tried to copy the style of several western authors rather than write with my own, albeit basic, style. But on the plus side it got published and the image on the cover happened to be quite close to how I'd envisaged Cassidy to look. Either way, I remember the novel as being messy and long-winded, but I like to think I learnt a lot from the process and the next one was a bit better.

Next month: The Last Rider from Hell.

Marshal Jake T. Devine will ride again.

2011-09-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to get the news that my cuddly, great big softy of a lawman Marshal Jake T. Devine will return next year in a new adventure.

Devine last appeared in 2004 in Devine's Law and I've been keen to write about him ever since, but I had a lot of trouble finding another story for him. He's an anti-hero character (I was joking about him being a softy. He's a brutal sadist who's nastier than the outlaws he shoots up.), and he's an uncomprising destroyer of plots. Whenever I pointed him at an interesting situation in chapter one, he would merrily slaughter the entire cast in about two pages and leave me with the problem of what to write about in chapter two.

Anyhow the new book will be my 26th Black Horse Western, and it's entitled Devine. I'm pleased to say that time hasn't mellowed the uncompromising lawman and his catchphrase is still: 'Nobody threatens me and lives.'

Hope and Glory

2011-09-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

I recently watched the school-based BBC drama Hope and Glory again for the first time since it was shown in the 1990s. I was pleasantly impressed and it was well worth the fiver it cost on amazon. Obviously a show about teachers doesn't sound like a promising idea for interesting drama, and it seems even less promising when you realize it features the standard school-based story. A bunch of work-shy, no-hope, delinquent dropouts (and the pupils aren't much use either) in the worst school in the country are helped to find their full potential by a brilliant, charismatic new headmaster. Luckily it's more enjoyable than that sounds, mixing drama with gentle comedy while just about avoiding becoming a soap opera.

The charismatic teacher in question is Ian George, played memorably by Lenny Henry. I was again amazed that this show didn't lead to him taking on more straight acting roles. Lenny was a popular comedian in the 1980s, but his old-fashioned style of comedy became outdated quickly. As a funny man I doubt anyone has laughed at his material in decades, but as a straight actor he's a revelation. His character is compelling and unusual, but always convincing. Ian is a high-flyer in the education world, who turns down a government post to become a headmaster and nothing will stop him turning his school around. He's arrogant, bossy, self-absorbed, brilliant in bursts but also prone to terrible mistakes, and he's awful with relationships, treating his several girlfriends through the show badly just because being nice might interfere with schoolwork.

Most of his teachers provide the same sort of complexity with characters that are flawed but likeable. His deputy Phil Jakes was my favourite. Played by the dependable Chris Russell, Phil is paranoid, melancholic and frequently out of his depth, but he's also had his dedication beaten out of him by decades of disappointment. At times he's the hero of the story and at other times he's the villain, making his character arc interesting to follow. The same is true of the full-blooded villain Jan Woolley, a teacher who fails to get swept along by the new headmaster's reforms. She's always the last to arrive, the first to leave and she has no interest in bonding with the little darlings. I found myself rooting for her.

The other main teacher is Debbie Bryan, who probably is an interesting character. Unfortunately she's played by Amanda Redman and she uses exactly the same voice, mannerisms and responses as she does in New Tricks, so I was frequently left confused wondering why Sandra Pullman was now pretending to be a teacher. There are also surprisingly good performances from a variety of stage school brats pretending to be tough inner city yobs, while the rest of the cast are made up with stereotypes such as the macho PE teacher and the insecure trainee. These two embark on the most underwhelming romance I reckon I've ever seen, but these minor problems don't detract from the well-played drama, for series 1 anyhow, in which the classy feel is helped by the musical score, which extensively uses familiar classical pieces.

For the first series alone the show is worth watching, although sadly it's downhill after that. The classical music ends and one by one the original cast leave, usually after falling out with Ian George, and every time they get replaced with less interesting characters. Woolley gets replaced by the annoyingly perfect Kitty Burton. Debbie gets replaced by the usually dependable actress Phyllis Logan, except her role doesn't have much to do, and Phil Jakes gets replaced by a posh and annoying new deputy. Worst though, the stories settle for providing the expected formula for a school-based drama, which the first series avoided through clever writing. So every week a new problem pupil is on the verge of being ejected, but luckily they have an as yet undiscovered talent for English, music, sport, art etc and so the dedicated teachers help them achieve their goals and avoid getting expelled. On the plus side, every week you can play spot the problem and spot the special talent.

One other thing that amused me was that the first series featured an entertaining blokey friendship between Ian George and his best mate outside school. Series one ended with the not unexpected amendment to the format of Ian employing his mate as his new deputy, except when series two starts his best mate is nowhere to be seen and he never gets mentioned again. I presume the actor left at the last minute as, with no build up, Ian's best mate suddenly becomes the school janitor, who he never spoke to in series one, and curiously all of the janitor's dialogue provides observations that his previous best mate would say.

Towards the end the show improves and breaks free of the shackles of the weekly formula story until it ends surprisingly with a dramatic final episode that restores faith in the show and makes it feel that it was a journey worth taking. If you're minded to see the show and don’t want to know how it ends, don’t read on.

The dramatic ending chosen for the show is an unusual one, although it was flagged up in the first few minutes of episode one. Either way it is effective. Having devoted the whole show to demonstrating that Ian George will do anything to help his school, he pays the ultimate price when he ignores his health warnings to avoid all stress. The actual circumstances leading up to his death are a bit weak and start when a new teacher on the edge punishes his pupils by keeping them in for five minutes after the bell. Back in my day this used to happen at least once a week, but apparently these days this is too traumatic for the little darlings and it sets off a chain reaction of events. The last few minutes are emotional and tragic with hardly a line of dialogue uttered, thereby providing an odd ending that gives not a shred of hope for the future, which is odd for a show that was all about hope and less about glory.

I was pleased to see that youtube has a classic moment from episode 1 in which Peter Davison as the outgoing headmaster loses control in his final school assembly. Hands up if you reckon we wouldn't have so many riots if we had fewer touchy-feely Ian George type headmasters and more straight-talking Peter Davison type headmasters!

A Dance with Dragons: a slow dance presumably.

2011-09-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

This review will be about the 5,439th posted on the Net in the last two months of the most eagerly-awaited fantasy novel in recent memory, A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire). I hate writing negative reviews and this one won’t say anything different to what 99% of reviewers are saying but, as I've been waiting ten years for this book, I feel an urge to add my ten cents' worth. I'll include mild spoilers although, if you've read the book, you'll know it's easy not to give much away in a review.

In short this novel isn't quite the worst I've ever read, but it is the most disappointing. Fifteen years ago, when I started Ice and Fire, disappointment was furthest from my mind. Martin appeared to be a rare author who would avoid the pitfall that often ruins fantasy of the endless series syndrome, in which trilogies become 4 volumes, become 5, 10, 20 volume epics. More quests are attempted, more parts of the map are visited, more characters are added, more sub-plots are woven in, more description is used until the story grinds to a halt.

A Game of Thrones stomped all over that attitude. Here was the first book in a projected 4-volume epic whose story was big enough to fill four volumes. It was epic fantasy without the dull bits, a high-adrenaline romp through a version of medieval history. It featured charismatic bad guys, flawed good guys and a story in which it was anyone's guess where it'd go and who would survive to the end. This was fantasy for adults, not just because of its adult content, but because it had a character based plot. Before Martin, most epic fantasy used the Tolkien model of the plot-based story in which everyone chases around a map for no good reason other than that the story says they should. But Thrones let the characters drive the story. People weren't just good or bad, they were shades of grey, like real people. Greed, lust, envy and worst of all love could motivate people to destroy a kingdom. It was compelling stuff and it's no surprise that this year's tv version was popular. I never watch filmed versions of novels I like, but I can imagine how good it was. I can also imagine that this book will annoy old and new fans so much that the tv version will ignore it and restart the story at book 6.

The warning signals first appeared in books two and three when the number of characters grew, but they didn't raise concern as the narrative was so much fun. Every time you started to see where the story was going, main characters got slaughtered and the story veered off in another direction. By the end of book three we'd reached only the end of act one of the three act main narrative as the Ice and Fire elements were only then becoming relevant. So even the inevitable news that the series was to be a five, six and then seven volume series was well-received.

Book four started the story's second act and, as often happens in middle sections, the plot stalled. Sticking your hero up a tree in act one is often easy and getting him out of the tree in act three is also often easy. But the middle bit is where you throw rocks at him, and making that interesting can be tricky. The solution chosen in this case was to slow the narrative down to the speed you'd expect from an asthmatic ant carrying a large bucket of swill up a steep hill. To add further strangeness, the story ignored the main characters and detailed the lives of the bit-part characters. And then it added in new characters who lived in ignored parts of the kingdom. Then it sent them off on long and uneventful journeys to irrelevant parts of the map to do uninteresting things.

As an exercise in risk taking and not giving readers what they expect book four should be applauded, but few readers welcomed the change of pace. It was like waiting ten years for a new Star Trek tv series and then instead of it being set on the bridge of the Enterprise, it's set in Starfleet's admin department. And it relates the adventures of a group of filing clerks in their mission to discover filing systems that are not as we know them, seek out new income and expenditure spreadsheets, and boldly track down missing paper clips that nobody has ever missed before. And then when you try it, you find it's even duller than you expected. That was book four. Book five is worse.

First, here's the spoiler that all the reviews say: I can't spoil the story in A Dance with Dragons because there isn't one. This book has no reason to exist beyond the fact that it'll sell. Like with the previous books, it's character based, but unlike with the first three in which the characters drove the plot, this book is just about characters. And they do nothing other than observe passively while thinking about how great it'd be if someone were to film what they can see and make miniature collectibles out of everyone they meet and computer games out of the scenery they pass. Which would be bad enough, except the characters act differently than the way they've acted before. Jon is Up North worrying about the ice zombies beyond the wall, but he does nothing about it. Dany is Down South ignoring her dragons while she tries to get into a slimy new character's pants. And Tyrion is going from Up North to Down South while worrying about what he did in book three, a lot.

Worse, the bold moments that filled the narrative before have been replaced with nervous cop-outs that feel as if the writer was giving himself an easy ride. I won’t spell them out, but whenever something decisive is close to happening, it fizzles away. Characters get killed, but then we find out they're still alive. Characters get clapped in irons, but their captors release them. Characters act brutally, but they were only acting. Characters face a problem, but they ignore it. If the early books had been written in this style, then with a single bound Eddard would have avoided the chopping block, the Red Wedding would have ended with a jolly sing-song, and Tyrion would have invented the Heimlich manoeuvre at Joffrey's wedding. Most annoyingly for me, it's likely that all the insoluble problems will be resolved with magic. Previously I had loved reading about a fantasy world without boy wizards and swords of power and ancient races of elven lords. But all those unreal solutions are slipping into the story to stop anyone having to make tough decisions. Admittedly there's a few compelling sections such as the return of the bit-part, in all ways, Theon, who went missing presumed chopped to bits 3,000 pages ago. But a handful of mildly interesting events isn't good enough in a book that's pushing half a million words, or as I kept thinking while forcing myself to read on, fifteen Black Horse Westerns.

I should say something positive as I wanted to enjoy this book and I tried to accept the story on its own terms. The best I can manage is that Martin can still write a well-constructed chapter. They all start with an arresting image, then they fill you in on the back story, develop with introspection and dialogue, and end on a cliff-hanger. But sadly, they have no tension. Suspense was one of the many things that made A Game of Thrones unmissable. A typical Tyrion chapter would start with the dwarf about to have his head chopped off. He'd talk his way out of that only to be thrown in a dungeon without food or water where he'd be offered a way out, but only if he completes an impossible task in which he's sure to be killed. And so it'd go on with everyone always in danger and with the suspense unbearable because anyone can get the chop.

In A Dance with Dragons a typical chapter starts with Jon worrying that the stores are running low on toilet paper. He meets the storeman who gives him an inventory of every item in the store, and the chapter ends with the cliff-hanging revelation that they might get short of sausages in three years. I accept that the novel is providing introspective angst and descriptive world-building instead of mounting up problems for the main characters with swordfights aplenty. But the ennui and the lack of anything that I reckon most readers find entertaining highlights the annoying writing style that didn’t matter before when the story was compelling in which 20 words (and often 200) are used when 10 would do, and when 10 would be more effective. For example, I longed for someone to just once have a sumptuous feast or a frugal meal rather than having to read about every item in every course of every meal. If the characters ate off-screen instead of breaking their fast every chapter, this book would be about 50 pages shorter.

I could say more to make the pain in my arms seem worthwhile after supporting this monster for so long while hoping it'd lead somewhere, but I'll give up. I still hope that the author or an editor or a tv producer accepts that this once great story has gone astray and drags it back on course. There's still time. I'd recommend that everyone involved prepares for book six by reading a western to see what a story is, and to see how books can tell that story in a twentieth of the length this one used. I know I intend to.

Happy Birthday to me!

2011-08-31T09:01:00.000-07:00

Today my 22nd Black Horse Western The Prairie Man is published and I've only just realized that this marks ten years to the day since August 31, 2001 when my first BHW The Outlawed Deputy was published.

So, as this blog is my only presence on the Net and, as there has to be a small chance that one day someone, somewhere will tap the title of one of my books into a search engine, I've decided to be self-absorbed and post some information about my past titles. From next month, I'll start posting a monthly article on my titles, starting with the first one and carrying on until I get to the most recent. I'll look at what I was trying to do with the story, whether I was happy with the result, and what I think about the story now.

If I manage to keep this up and find something new to say about each story, I should get up to date around about 2014!

Dead by Sundown to be published on Kindle

2011-08-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Following on from the news I announced in June, I'm now pleased to announce that Hale will publish my 2006 title Dead by Sundown in Febuary 2012 as an e-book. It will be available on all the usual formats and will retail at £3.99. This will be my second Kindle title after The Gallows Gang, which will be published in December 2011.

Dead by Sundown was my 11th Black Horse Western and I always quote it as having my favourite title and my favourite cover. Below is the blurb:

When Galen Benitez killed Mike Donohue's wife, Mike vowed to get his revenge that very day. But it took five long years before he tracked the outlaw down to the inhospitable region known as the Cauldron.

Here, Mike meets the beguiling Lucy Reynolds who is searching for the legendary lost city of Entoro, a place rumoured to have its streets paved with gold. As Mike suspects that Galen might also be searching for the treasure, he decides to help her.

With Galen still at large, and now Lucy's jealous admirer determined to kill him, Mike will need his trusty six-shooter to ensure that he isn't the one who is dead by sundown.

A review of The Prairie Man

2011-08-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

A very welcome review of my 22nd Black Horse Western, which is published later this month, is available at Western Fiction Review.

Big Brother got back to us, after all.

2011-08-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

A year after Channel 4 buried the reality show Big Brother for ever with the mixed signals of a funeral and the words 'Big Brother will get back to you', the hoped for resurrection on the other side has materialized. To the disdain of the chattering classes, who all claim they've never watched the show, this Thursday it claws its way back on to our screens on everybody's least favourite main station Channel 5. Whether it finds an audience there is a good question that only the next 17 weeks can answer.

The initial signs are good. Channel 5 is owned by Richard Desmond, a media tycoon who inhabits the murky parts of the media that are too disreputable for even the Murdoch family to delve into. I gather Desmond made his fortune publishing magazines such as the pottery periodical Big Jugs monthly and the premier magazine for cat-lovers Asian Pussies. After that he developed several magazines devoted to celebrities nobody has ever heard of. Then he took over two newspapers, which give new meaning to the word in that they are printed on paper but they don't actually contain news. Whenever I've seen one of the headlines on his tabloid I've never been able to work out what it actually means as it usually says something like: 'Loos looz Roos booz.' Presumably some people know what this means as it sells well. The only news item in his other paper is about the twists and turns in the Lady Di conspiracy story, an editorial policy that at first sights is a bizarre one as there hasn't been any new developments in this non-story for a decade, except strangely it's popular too.

Recently he branched out into television ownership. He took over the most downmarket and loss-making station in the country and promised to turn it around by taking it even more downmarket. A year on, the station makes money and so now he hopes Big Brother will aid his ascent. Based on his past triumphs, the expectation is that he'll fill Big Brother with screeching glamour models whose only interests in life are fake tan and hair straighteners, and brain-dead hunks whose only interest in life is getting into celebrity magazines by pretending to have a romance with a glamour model who likes fake tan and hair straighteners. Accordingly, reports from the auditions suggest that rejections were handed out to anyone who had more than one brain cell or who could do simple tasks like moving unaided or finding England on a map of England. This all promises that Desmond's version of Big Brother won't be the place to go to hear interesting debates on such matters as the Eurozone crisis. Or in other words, he won’t change a thing.

My prediction, for what it's worth, is that the show will succeed. The one thing that was obvious throughout the ten year run on Channel 4 is that the station hated the show and they did everything in their power to kill it off. Many anecdotes have been told over the years of the Nathan Barley types who run the station and their disgust at having their media chums associate them with the most brain-numbingly inane show in British tv history. Sadly they'd prefer to be known as the station that transmits such glitteringly intellectual shows as, er, It's me or the Dog celebrity special, Come Dine with me celebrity special, and My two-headed transplant celebrity special. Of course, as anyone who actually likes Big Brother knows, the show was never brain-numbing or inane. In a world where reality shows avoid reality in favour of scripted talent shows for viewers with low expectations and even lower attention spans, one show bucked the trend and was about something, namely people. Desmond is astute enough to know that and, unlike the Channel 4 bosses, he needs the show to be a success.

So hopefully he won't kill off the things I liked about the show in his quest to rebrand the format, and at first glance the initial celebrity version sounds promising. For a start I've not heard of most of the leaked names, which is comforting, and even after I'd read up the explanation of who they are, I still can’t see why they might be deemed celebrities. The only one I do know about is Sally Bercow, a politician who makes Sarah Palin seem normal. There's something called Jedward (this week's pop sensation amongst the under 12s apparently) and there's several people who have slept with people who would like to be famous. And there's the mum of someone who is famous for being famous. Also, Charlie Sheen and Mike Tyson probably won’t appear. As I said earlier, it looks as if Desmond hasn't changed a thing.

A Very Peculiar Practice

2011-08-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

This month sees the long-awaited release on dvd of the 1980s drama A Very Peculiar Practice. Like most of the BBC's finest dramas, this series appears to have been forgotten about. To my knowledge it was never repeated and a dvd of the complete series has been an age coming. Series 1 was released about 7 years ago, but series 2 just never appeared.

The show is an unusual one that isn't like anything else, being an occasionally surreal political, black comedy-drama. Unlike most shows that were made in the 1980s and which were about life in the 1980s, it hasn't dated as it concentrates on its memorable characters rather than making political points. The story of its creation is a good one and I hope it's true. The writer Andrew Davies opened his post one morning and found he owed the BBC £17,000. Apparently he'd been paid an advance to write a TV adaptation, but the show had been cancelled and they wanted their money back.

Unfortunately he'd spent the money. So his only hope was to pitch them another idea and, seeking inspiration, he used the writer's traditional method of looking out the window. As he was a lecturer in a depressing inner-city university, all he could see was life coming and going in a depressing inner-city university and so he pitched that idea and, surprisingly, it was commissioned.

The end result was what sounds like a very unpromising format for riveting drama of: life in a doctors' surgery as a metaphor for the state of Britain. Thankfully, it's more entertaining than that sounds. The hero is Doctor Daker, a new recruit to the university's medical staff. He's a painfully shy, naïve idealist who's out of touch with real life because he has this strange notion that doctors are supposed to make sick people better. He arrives without any ambition other than to do a good job, to care for his patients, and to get through the day without embarrassing himself too often. I don't think Peter Davison has ever been better and, to this day, I reckon he's the only actor I've ever seen who has the ability to go bright red with embarrassment.

The show relates how his idealist ways are tested by his fellow doctors, who all have no interest in wasting their time with sick people. The boss of the surgery is the decrepit Old Jock, played gloriously by Graham Crowden. I enjoy watching this actor in anything and so I was saddened when I just checked up and found out that he died only recently, although that was at the ripe old age of 87. As Jock spends the whole show seemingly at death's door, this is a testament to his acting. As a doctor, these days he'd be a walking lawsuit. He's the sort of doctor who'd recommend taking a lie down to a patient who's just died and most episodes feature him missing obvious ailments like broken legs and appendicitis. Instead, Jock spends his time plotting against the vice-chancellor Ernest Hemingway, who he's convinced is plotting against him, although in reality the vice-chancellor is a corrupt money-grabber who is more interested in fleecing foreign students. And when he's not ignoring patients and drinking himself to death, he dictates his magnum opus, the sick university, a rambling and incoherent treatise on everything that's wrong in society.

What he should be spending his time on is stopping his subordinates stabbing him in the back. The first of which is Doctor Rose Marie, played by Barbara Flynn. She's a familiar actress on British TV and again I reckon this is her best role. Rose Marie is a radical feminist lesbian who has no interest in doctoring, but who has worked out what's wrong with the world, and that's men. No matter what illness her female patients have, it's the fault of men, and her vulnerable patients are ripe for being converted to her world view.

She's a saint when compared to the final, and best, character in the show, the force of nature that is Bob Buzzard. Played by David Troughton, Bob is a man without a single redeeming factor. He became a doctor for the money and the social standing, and he'd never soil his hands by actually looking at a patient. His consultations last about 10 seconds and go like this: 'Got yourself a dose of the old clap there, matey. Must have stuck your John Thomas where you shouldn't, you randy sod. Well, take these two times daily and it won’t drop off. Any questions? No. Next!'

Instead of helping patients, Bob spends his time wrestling with his rinky-dinky computer, playing golf, glad-handing pharmaceutical reps and taking backhanders. He's a character whose every line is crass, arrogant and ridiculous and he's one of my favourite characters in anything.

There are several other running joke characters, including a fourth wall breaking writer who wakes up one morning to find he owes the BBC £17,000 and who can predict every twist in the story as he's writing a drama series about life in a university surgery. And there's two nuns who are always rooting around in bins, joy-riding and getting drunk. The only weak elements are that the show apparently gave Hugh Grant his first acting role, and Daker's girlfriend, who is supposed to be arch and witty, but who comes over as annoying, but then again when the actress played a pathologist in Inspector Morse she annoyed me too. Thankfully she gets replaced in series 2 by a Polish girlfriend, although as I haven't seen series 2 for over 20 years, I'll reserve judgement on whether she's annoying. The only thing I remember about series 2 is that it was more surreal and funnier than series 1, and so I'm looking forward to seeing these episodes again.

Sadly, the show's perfection was tarnished by a weak spin-off film set in Poland and featuring Daker's continued adventures riding the European gravy train, but that aside, the 14 episodes of Peculiar Practice are a quirky and original tv series. And for good measure it had a superb original theme song sung by Elkie Brooks. Here's the trailer for series 2, as shown on the BBC a long, long time ago. You can tell it was made a long time ago as there aren’t about five cuts a second!

It's Poddamaquassy, no, Paquamasoddy, no, no, Passamamassy?

2011-08-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

The following article appears at The Tainted Archive's Wild West e-Monday.

'Get out, you quack, and don't bring those phoney remedies here again!'

Two months ago Fergal O'Brien returned for his sixth western adventure The Miracle of Santa Maria. As with the previous books, I was asked several times about the inspiration behind the stories and luckily I had a ready answer. But recently I became aware of another source of inspiration, and it's an embarrassing one. Today, I reckon the time is right to share my embarrassment.

Fergal O'Brien is a snake-oil seller. He sells a tonic, which he claims will cure all ills. Not surprisingly, its only effect is to make the victim run to the toilet, although in one book he did make a pig happy. His partner Randolph McDougal helps him convince sceptical customers to part with their money by drinking the tonic and then being 'cured' of various fictitious ailments. Over the years he's been cured of lameness, a wooden leg, an extra leg and, if the publisher likes the seventh book, a severe attack of death. In short, Fergal is a devious, double-crossing snake and I love writing about him.

''I've been bringing cures from Pilgrim Heights to Province Town. Treated rabid fever down on Queen Anne Road. Gout or gastritis, mumps or bronchitis, bites and burns and blue abrasions, got a pill for all occasions!'

Fergal first came to mind when I mused about whether the popular 1980s BBC sitcom Blackadder would ever return for a fifth series. In the four series the devious, double-crossing snake Blackadder and his dangerously stupid sidekick Baldric had lived through Medieval times, Elizabethan times, Georgian times, and finally the First World War. I wondered what would happen if Blackadder and Baldric ended up in the Wild West...

Baldric: 'Ooh, Mr B, that nasty gunslinger says he'll be waiting for us outside the saloon at high noon.'

Blackadder: 'Right, Baldric, that means one of us will have to strap on a six-shooter, go out on to that windswept street and get filled with more lead than a particularly thick pencil. And let's face it, Balders, that man's you.'

Baldric: 'Wait, I have a cunning plan!'

Blackadder: 'Baldric, your last cunning plan was to sell toys to Billy the Kid, which was the worst cunning plan since Wyatt Earp thought the O.K. Corral sounded like a particularly quiet place for a vacation…'

I amused myself with this nonsense until the thought came that I might be on to something. Two idiots who arrive in the Wild West and try to make their way sounded like a story I'd like to write and for some reason I thought about a medicine showman.

'I wiped out impetigo on the banks of Buttermilk. Flu is under firm control in Powderhole!'

I had a clear vision of this man, his clothes, his stature, his features, the way he walked, the way he talked. I assumed I must have seen him in a film or a tv series, but I didn't know where. As I'd already decided Fergal was Irish, I was free to ignore that vision, but enough of it remained to give me a start and so Fergal, the devious snake-oil seller, was born.

Over the next ten years I wrote a Fergal adventure every other year and each time, as I got into a Fergalesque frame of mind, I'd ponder on the question of who was that medicine showman. As the snake-oil seller is a stock, colourful western character I hoped he'd appeared in a good film, perhaps a less familiar John Ford western, and that a great character actor had played him. But I felt doomed to never resolve the mystery until, that is, I did, and then I wished I hadn't.

'My specialities are Audiology, Mycology, Sarology, Teritology, Embryology, psychology, zoology! And every other 'ology you can think of!'

I won't detail the process as it involved dead ends, Internet detective work, and much wailing when I finally found my man on youtube. It turned out that the actor I'd envisaged was the legendary western star Jim Dale, who had first come to the attention of western fans with his well-crafted performance as Marshal P. Knutt in the existentialist western Carry on Cowboy.

Ten years later, he returned to the western genre to play Doc Terminus, a snake-oil seller who with his sidekick Hoagy, played by Red Buttons, plies his trade in Passamaquoddy. I can't say any more as I can't remember seeing the movie, but I guess I must have caught a scene. I hadn't remembered Terminus's beard, Fergal favours green, and Randolph McDougal isn't Red Buttons, but the Fergal O'Brien in my mind is Jim Dale.

'It's Poddamaquassy, no, Paquamasoddy, no, no, Passamamassy, uh, Quoddamapoddy, p...p...Passamadaddy, q...q...q... Quoddamapassy..., Quoddamaddy, Dappadaddy, Dappamossy, Quoddapossy, Quassapossa, Passaquossa.'

And the embarrassing thing that made me bang my head on the desk and cry, 'Why oh why did it have to be him?' Well, the classic western movie that gave me the inspiration for a character I've spent more time writing about than anyone else was… Pete's Dragon, a Disney musical about an annoying freckle-faced orphan and his cute pet dragon.

Passamaquoddy, my arse.

Sheriff Without a Star

2011-07-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

I've just received an advance sighting of the cover for my Black Horse Western Sheriff Without a Star, and I have to say I really like the composition for this one with its two pictures for the price of one. The book will be published in December.

Separated at birth?

2011-07-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of the covers that the Black Horse Western series and the Linford Western Library provide for their books. One of the fun games to play is spotting the film actor (it's usually Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood). But this month's batch of Black Horse Western covers made me scratch my head.

I was sure I'd seen the main character who appears on the cover of Greg Mitchell's Crooked Foot's Gold before, but I just wasn't sure where. Then, I suddenly got it. He featured on my The Gallow's Gang.

I now can't help but see this bloke as being like one of those amusing animals that suddenly pop up in the foreground before the camera in people's holiday snaps. I wonder which picture he'll jump in front of next!

Cryptic Friday #10

2011-07-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

Last month's clue was: Local ranch where Incas ate perhaps. 8 letters.

And the answer is... actually I've forgotten. It was clearly an anagram of Incas ate, but I hadn't heard of the word back then, and I can't remember it now!

Anyhow, this month's clue is one I was extremely ashamed not to get (but which I have remembered) :

They never get miscast in Westerns. 7 Letters and begins with L.

New Tricks - Series 8

2011-07-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to see that my favourite ongoing tv cop show New Tricks returns on Monday.

For anyone unfamiliar with the show, it's a cold case series in which a group of retired cops have been hired to solve long-forgotten cases using modern forensic techniques, although in reality they use the old fashioned techniques of experience, knocking down doors, and drinking beer. The show is an excellent piece of cosy light entertainment that features actors who have been around since the days of Black and White tv, and good writing with stories that make sense and characters who act in consistent, believable ways. Having recently made the mistake of trying to watch an episode of Luther, a cop show that prides itself on its lack of plot, substance or anything that'll live in the memory for more than a nanosecond, it's heartening that these virtues are still allowed on the BBC.

Despite this, last year I reported that I wasn't particularly looking forward to series 7 as the previous series had been lacklustre with a distinct feeling that the format had run out of steam. But thankfully that turned out to be a blip and series 7 was one of the strongest since the early days. Not everything was perfect though, as the stories still didn't feature enough of the characters' private lives. Gerry's extensive family didn't appear again. His numerous wives, kids and grandchildren used to torment him continually, but now his real life daughter (playing a woman who isn't his daughter although she once thought she was) is the only part of his family we see. Jack's house only appeared briefly in the final episode and Sandra hasn't had a bad date, an argument with her mother, or a massive curry in years. Even Brian's long-suffering wife Esther had fewer appearances than usual, although she got the year's best scene and best lines in an amusing aside featuring Brian and his perfectly innocent experiments with condoms.

Having said that there wasn't a poor episode out of the ten with the particularly good ones being Brian going all obsessive, for a change, at a library and the final episode featuring corruption in the police. The series also got its gentle comedy back on top form. I particularly enjoyed Brian discovering twitter and getting more excited about picking up new followers than solving the crime. When Jack reckoned he could sum up what Brian had achieved today on twitter in three words, I decided then that I'd never waste another moment of my existence at that place, and I haven't. But the drama also ratcheted up a notch with the highlight being Jack in Dirty Harry mode trampling all over a poor criminal's human rights, and then best of all not having even a moment's pang of guilt afterwards. The cast even spent time in the pub again and Sandra's dog shooting joke from the pilot episode had a welcome return.

Hopefully this year can continue to be strong and the good news is that there isn't a cliff-hanger to resolve. The show has many strengths, but end of series cliff-hangers isn't one of them. They started in series 3 with Jack finding his wife's killer and deciding to kill him. Series 4 started with the rest of the gang arriving in time to stop him. That poor resolution turned out to be the show's best one. Series 4 ended with Jack destroying his friendship with Sandra by revealing a terrible secret about her father, thus making it impossible for them to work together again. Series 5 forgot about this until episode 4 where Sandra and Jack had a chat in a car and decided it wasn't serious. Series 5 ended with Brian going back to the booze, thus destroying his career and ending his marriage, except he was cured by series 6 and it was never mentioned again. Series 6 ended with Sandra discovering she had a secret evil twin brother, but in series 7 she decided that wasn't important. I cheered when series 7 had a non-cliff-hanger ending and I'll cheer again when series 8 begins.

The Gallows Gang to be published on Kindle

2011-06-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to announce that later this year my 2008 Black Horse Western The Gallows Gang will be made available for downloading through all the major devices such as Kindle, Sony Reader etc. The novel will be published by Robert Hale Ltd through the Faber Factory. I understand that I'll have plenty of company with several other Black Horse Western e-titles being published at the same time.

This exciting development follows on from the publication earlier this year of BHW: Collection No 1 featuring 4 novels by Tyler Hatch, Abe Dancer, Scott Connor and Dean Edwards. This collection is available here.

More details will of course be announced later.

Review of The Legend of Shamus McGinty's Gold

2011-06-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

It is a short read as well as an easy page turner. I have not read much of the western fiction genre. Most of my experience would be from non-fiction and from Hollywood movies. Therefore I cannot compare this to other fiction writers works. I can say it was a pleasant read...

Read More at Gnotions.

Now that unexpected review cheered me up!

Bleached Bones in the Dust

2011-06-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to get the news that Bleached Bones in the Dust will be published in Large Print. It'll be my 15th Linford Western and I assume it'll be out next summer.

For twenty years, bounty hunter Montgomery Grant searched for Lomax Rhinehart, desperate to make him pay for an atrocity he committed during the dying days of the war.

So when Grant's friend, Wallace Sheckley, told him that he had found Lomax, Grant followed him to Sunrise, but Arnold Hays and his gunslingers were holding the town in the grip of fear. Nobody would help him and, worse, Wallace had gone missing and Lomax was nowhere to be found.

With Arnold Hays the key to Grant finding out what has happened to both his friend and his enemy, he must turn to his gun to get the answers he needs...

Cryptic Friday #9

2011-06-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

Last week's clue was: Layer backs a horse for example. 6 letters.

The answer was: Lamina (You might need a dictionary for that one. I did!)

This week's answer was a new word for me :

Local ranch where Incas ate perhaps. 8 letters.

Silver Horse Western

2011-06-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

I've received a contract for my 25th Black Horse Western Beyond Redemption and it should be published later in 2012.

As I'd reported a few months ago, the title slipped into my mind after writing The Search for the Lone Star, and as I couldn’t get the phrase out of my mind I had to see if I could make a story out of it. The story bumbled along slowly for a while with several unrelated plot threads that refused to find a connection. Then Booklife asked me to do an interview and in answering a question about my attitude to writing bad guys I mentioned that I was pleased with an editorial comment I'd once had that my bad guys were never beyond redemption. In one of those dolly zoom moments I realized why the phrase had lodged in my mind and instantly I knew what the story was about, namely whether or not my bad guys were really beyond redemption. Anyhow here's my suggested blurb:

As a child Jeff Dale witnessed the terrible aftermath of an atrocity. Elmer Drake killed three members of a family and when the surviving girl Cynthia went missing, Jeff vowed that one day he'd find her, no matter how long it took.

Ten years passed and the adult Jeff had become a bounty hunter when he found his first clue about Cynthia's fate by recovering her locket from the thief Wilfred Jarrett. So Jeff followed the clues to the frontier town of Redemption where stalked a gunslinger who carried a gun in one hand and a cross in the other, a man with a rope burn around his neck called Elmer Drake.

Dalziel and Pascoe - Demons on our Shoulders

2011-05-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

Demons on our Shoulders is an episode from the 12th and final series of my favourite cop show Dalziel and Pascoe, and I'd like to celebrate it for its unrelenting entertainment value while poking some fun at it for its role in bringing the show to a premature end.

Demons was the 44th movie length episode of Dalziel and Pascoe. The previous 43 featured a bluff Yorkshire cop solving routine murders in the small mining town of Wetherton while scratching his nuts and trading insults with his partner. The makers of Demons somehow missed the previous eleven years of the show and they appeared to be under the impression they'd been hired to remake Cannibal Holocaust, except with a bigger budget and more gore. The result is a movie that starts off as a cozy Murder She Wrote type tale develops into Silence of the Lambs, takes a detour through the more surreal corners of Twin Peaks and ends up having a shot at Night of the Living Dead.

For such a delirious story, the episode starts quietly to lull the viewer into a false sense of security. A man blasts his wife in two with a sawn-off shotgun, with the crime being reported while Pascoe is celebrating his birthday with his best friends, which means he hasn’t invited Dalziel. For the next twenty minutes Pascoe devotes little time to the murder as he tries to stop Dalziel finding out about the party leading to the feeling that this episode will feature the usual D&P mixture of blokey friction and cop procedural. Then Richard E. Grant appears and everything spirals out of control. From that moment on, every time you think the plot can’t get any more bizarre, it promptly wrongfoots you with yet another jaw-dropping twist.

The story, as best as I can piece it together, goes like this: Wetherton's leading hypnotherapist, who is a devil worshipper specialising in curing smoking, was dumped by her boyfriend 20 years ago while at university. This ex-boyfriend, played by Grant, is now a famous tv magician, while she's stuck in Wetherton having to cope with the indignity of being only a beautiful, glamorous, rich, successful businesswoman living in a mansion. After a nervous breakdown, experimental drugs give her a psychological condition with a long name that makes her plot revenge against Grant. And so she comes up with a cunning plan to commit the perfect murder. She tracks down a secret medieval grimoire (as Pascoe says in one of the many quotable lines - you don’t get to see many grimoires in Wetherton) that was written back in the days when witches were real witches and which includes a forbidden text to contact the dark side. This text calls for her to roam around Wetherton armed with a blood-soaked chainsaw dismembering people. She collects a body part from each victim. Then she plans to stitch the body parts together and reanimate the corpse. When she reads the forbidden text, her soul will transfer into the creation and turn her into a demon. Then she can kill Grant.

Fans of the cozy cop show genre will already have spotted that this plan has a small flaw: it's just too simple. So to complicate things she tracks down a man who took part in a trick on Grant's tv show. In this trick Grant hypnotised the man and made him shoot his wife with a toy gun he thought was real. Strangely, this hasn't affected their marriage because the couple are the leaders of Wetherton's second most popular white-collar devil-worshipping cult and they enjoy that sort of thing. The killer hypnotises him again, but this time she makes him shoot his wife for real. This has two results. It fools Dalziel into thinking that Grant's original hypnotic suggestion caused the murder, and it incurs the wroth of the devil worshippers who plot their own revenge against Grant. The devil worshippers are a fun bunch with suicidal goths, several embezzlers (although that plot strand mysteriously disappears) and a great bloke who speaks only in Latin and who keeps his embalmed wife in a glass case in the living room. He's a bit of nutter that one, Dalziel decides.

Although to the untrained eye the devil worshippers just like getting naked and chanting, they cast a spell that actually works and it turns off the lights in Grant's house, which spooks him so much he hides in the middle of a runic pentangle made with luminous paint. With the killer's plan working she steps up the psychological warfare by systematically chainsawing to bits the devil worshippers who are ruining her nemesis's life, on the basis that this will make Dalziel think Grant is killing them.

This leads to a classic scene in which Dalziel and Pascoe stand in the middle of a murder scene that looks like a slaughterhouse and quiz a camp pathologist, who appears to be channelling Larry Grayson, about how the victim died. The camp pathologist reports that the victim was electrocuted, drugged, had a massive dose of mercury injected into her eyes and brain. Her lungs and heart were removed and runes carved into her body. Her spinal column was cut out and she was sliced in half with a chainsaw. But that's not what killed her. She actually died from being injected with an overdose of top secret breathable water specially imported from America. The cops debate if they know of anyone in Wetherton who has been importing top secret breathable water from America recently and it turns out that Grant has been doing just that to use in his act. Grant is a master of illusion and his big trick is to 'drown' himself in a vat of water while hiding the fact that the water isn't really water but is actually breathable water. Dalziel deems this trick to be bollocks and arrests him (Dalziel's reaction to just about everything in this episode is bollocks and I can’t blame him.).

Things are looking bad for Grant. But with every scrap of evidence pointing to him being the crazed chainsaw killer, the real killer makes Dalziel release him by manipulating Grant into planting a post-hypnotic suggestion in Dalziel's mind to follow the station's new health and safety procedures and give up smoking. This makes Dalziel seek out Wetherton's leading smoking hypnotherapist, the crazed psychokiller herself.

While curing him of his smoking habit, the killer takes over Dalziel's dreams and makes him dream of incorrect solutions to the murder mystery that leads him back to the devil worshippers. The cops arrive at their coven just as the devil worshippers are having another go at turning off Grant's electricity. Their spell goes awry (I think the killer swapped grimoires, but I'm not sure) and it makes one of the members turn into a zombie with massive glowing eyeballs. Dalziel calls for an ambulance and in other classic scene where you wonder how the actors kept straight faces he quizzes a nurse as to whether she's seen many zombies with massive glowing eyeballs in Wetherton. And it turns out she has. It's quite a common medical condition in fact called anti-hysterical metabolic syndrome in which the accepted cure is a dose of prescription drugs and the only side effect is that the victim is left paralysed and blind even though they can move and see. It's at this point that the story gets seriously strange.

I could describe what happens next, but as I have no idea what was going on, I probably shouldn’t try. Ever more gruesome body parts turn up, bloody chainsaws whirr, Dalziel drives along in the day time, gets out of his car in the dark and then walks along in daylight. He has dreams and then dreams within dreams about things that have happened, things that didn’t happen, and things that will happen or then again perhaps not while the surviving devil worshipper has naked fun on his own. In the end Dalziel gets so confused he gives up and goes down the pub. Grant arrives and promises to solve the crime. Pascoe refuses, but then Grant proves how clever he is by reading his mind and then giving him the names of several characters who left the show about five years ago. Pascoe is so impressed he lets Grant lead the investigation - I think the makers put that in to prove they had watched the show before. It didn’t work.

Grant's technique for solving the crime involves sitting in his glowing pentangle and waiting for the murderer to phone up and confess while his new girlfriend seeks the truth with tarot cards that all have death written on them. Amazingly this works when the killer sends him a video showing him where to find her. Grant heads off into Wetherton's darkest wood at midnight where he finds fires forming a circle, runic symbols and lots of body bits. He phones up Dalziel and tells him he's cracked the case, but by then it’s too late.

The killer leaps out from behind a tree and whips off her disguise of a dark wig, which is perhaps the most inexplicable event in the whole episode as she hasn't worn a disguise before. She then delivers the immortal line, 'twenty years ago you refused to give me you hand, and so now I'll take your head, your head, your head, mwhahaha!' She gives Grant the chainsaw treatment, stitches up her patchwork body creation, and then tries to turn into a demon. Sadly she fails and when the cops arrive she's a broken woman, gibbering and foaming at the mouth.

The cops decide that when her stitched-up corpse failed to re-animate and help her take on demonic form, the trauma was too great and it completely unhinged her mind. Everyone agrees and they wander off to get ready for next week's case (which incidentally involves Wetherton's leading maverick bio-chemist who has discovered the secret of eternal life. This involves injecting nanobots into the small titanium molecules in zinc sun cream, except there's a catch that if the nanobots get into the large titanium molecules your skin explodes, so she decides to become a serial killer specialising in animal activists.)

In an episode as excellent as this one, it's churlish to find fault, but I must admit I was disappointed that there wasn't a Night of the Demon type ending, but that would have made the show perfect and having small flaws to pick at makes it more enjoyable. There's also the strange fact that the dvd version cuts out the original twist ending in which it's revealed that in reality the killer was innocent all along. Every event in the whole episode was an elaborate illusion designed to hide the truth that she was being manipulated with tarot cards by Grant's girlfriend, who is the leader of Wetherton's third largest devil worshipping cult. Oh, and during the zombie with massive glowing eyeballs scene my wife pointed out that Dalziel's plan to get the Charity Commission to investigate the devil worshippers was doomed to fail. Apparently, the financial irregularities committed by the latin-speaking zombie with the embalmed wife in his living room weren't severe enough to warrant a special audit. But that's always the way, writers who aren't careful with their research are destined to be let down by the small things.

Anyhow, shortly after the demon episode, the eternal life episode and the really weird one where Pascoe starts killing off suspects, the BBC cancelled the show, and to this day I have no idea why.

Interview at Avalon Authors

2011-05-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

Sandy Cody interviewed me for Avalon authors at Avalon Authors.

Dalziel and Pascoe - The snappy shark butty years

2011-05-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

After looking at the best years of the long-running cop show Dalziel and Pascoe last week, this week I'll look at the less than glorious years. Spotting the moment when a show jumps the shark can be a lot of fun and I don’t think there's any doubt that this show did just that, but it's not obvious at which point it did so. I think in truth it was a slow process where a number of changes were made to the show's format and sadly, every change made the show worse. Oddly this demonstrated the strength of the format as despite every knock down it remained enjoyable right through to the end.

The start of the end came with Mens Sana, the second episode of the 7th series. Although this is one of my favourite episodes, after 6 years of perfection, it started the rot with a significant change in the format. I can still remember the review at the time that pointed out that after 6 years of being a cop show someone had suddenly decided the show was a comedy. This episode featured Dalziel recovering from yet another heart attack at a sanatorium where too many people are dying, and fun though the set piece comedy routines were, the writers had started the process of not treating the characters with respect.

At the end of series seven, Wieldy left starting a revolving door for the third copper role, none of whom had as much screen time or personality as he had. Then the set changed from the cramped and filthy inner city cop shop to something high tech and soulless, presumably so that it wouldn’t look out of place amongst all the glossy American imports. Then the show was split into two-parters as apparently attention spans could no longer cope with sitting still for 90 minutes waiting to find out how that long dead twin feigned his death 40 years ago. The need to have something that made sense even if you missed part one slowed every story down. Then directors who thought they were destined for greatness arrived and were stylish and annoying with strange experimental techniques. The episode where Dalziel sees his memories played out on screen without a cut was a theatrical idea that the director should have learnt never to do when he was still at art school.

And then, finally and most disastrously, Dalziel got a new haircut. This may not seem important but somehow that changed everything. His posh new suit and immaculate coiffure made him irresistible to the ladies (on the other hand he always was), but after several years of being near to death his poor health was forgotten about and Dalziel became fitter than Pascoe. He even stopped scratching his nuts. But to compensate Warren did forget how to act.

Pascoe also changed as, with his wife now gone, he had nothing dramatic to do leaving the actor looking bored. But the really bad thing was that the plots became head-swimmingly convoluted with no feeling that the writers were aware of the novels and how they made even the most complex of plots work. There were a few classic episodes left to enjoy including the one where Pascoe is in hospital and falls in love with Nurse Deadmeat (known in our house as the - is she dead yet episode) and the one where Detective Deadmeat takes up a new hobby of solo underwater cave exploring (known in our house as the - is he dead yet episode). But for the most part the final years show a steady and then a sharp decline.

The 12th and final series loses all sense of reality with incredible plots featuring nanobots, the search for eternal life and devil worshippers. So to conclude these articles next week I'll look at Demons on our Shoulders, which in my opinion is the worst episode of any tv series ever made. And bear in mind I've seen the Star Trek: Voyager episode where Tom Paris turns into a lizard, mates with Captain Janeway, and produces baby salamanders.

After the 46th and final film, in which Pascoe ignores how he's behaved for the previous 45 films and forms his own one-man vigilante organization to kill off suspects, the BBC put it out of its misery. Bad ending or not, the show, at its best, was as good as the cop show could get.

Cryptic Friday #8

2011-05-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Last week's clue was: Compelled to turn a nag wild on the prairie. 7 letters.

The answer was: Mustang

This week sets new heights in crypticness :

Layer backs a horse for example. 6 letters.

Dalziel and Pascoe - The full bog roll years

2011-05-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

As the 12th and final series of my favourite cop show Dalziel and Pascoe has just been released on dvd, I thought I'd look back at the show in a three part article. This week I'll consider the early, great episodes. Then I'll look at the decline of the show in its later years and finally I'll review an episode (the worst one!) with which I have a bizarre fascination.

I came to the series late, catching it for the first time in the 4th series. The show holds the record for the fastest I've ever liked anything. I flicked on to it in mid-episode and in the five seconds I'd allocated before flicking elsewhere Warren Clarke looked at the screen with his bizarre one eye closed and the other eye boggling expression and said, "He's three sheets short of a full bog roll, that one." I was instantly hooked, but the story of the show began some time before that.

The format started life as Reginald Hill's novel series in the early 1970s, a series that's still on-going today. Sadly I have to admit I don't like the novels. I've tried a few and I really wish I'd liked them because I can see why many others love them. They are well-written, avoid the trapping of formula fiction by not having a formula, are complex and often take risks with fantastical plots. And yet the fact that the author never uses one word when several hundred will do has stopped me becoming an addict.

The hero of the books is Andy Dalziel, a fat, annoying, abrasive tyrant whose obnoxious persona is a façade to hide his keen detective mind. In my mind he's a cross between Columbo and Hank Quinlan from Touch of Evil. Helping him solve crimes in the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton is the wet behind the ears idealist officer Pascoe who would be destined for great things if he wasn't saddled with an annoying boss. Although it's a chalk and cheese relationship, the stories are cleverer than that.

In the early 90s ITV decided to make the novels into a tv series and in a terrible move someone thought they'd make a vehicle for the strangely popular at the time 'comedy' duo Hale and Pace. The pilot show was a stinker, getting a critical mauling from everyone including the author and so the idea was shelved. Luckily the BBC then bought the rights and in 1995 they gave the show the respect and budget it deserved. Over the next 12 years they made 46 full length movies.

Warren Clarke was cast as Dalziel and although I believe the author and some fans had misgivings about casting a thin man in a fat man's role, it rapidly became clear that an actor who'd been a droog in A Clockwork Orange could easily play an anti-hero. Amusingly the show often wrote in lines about him being fat and he was still referred to as the fat controller. With hindsight Warren was born to play this role with his lived-in face and easy Yorkshire wit (nobody ever succeeded with good looks and charm, Warren once said in a Blackadder episode).

Dalziel's character was neatly summed up by Dalziel himself in the opening episode: 'I use foul and abusive language. I pick my nose and I scratch my balls. I fart louder than is biologically necessary and I do it all in public. I've got sod all going on in my life, more's the pity, so I do my job, collect my wages, and go home for tea, generally in the middle of the night. And you'll already have seen I don't know any funny handshakes.'

I was never quite able to see Colin Buchanan's Peter Pascoe as being anything other than his Hodge from The Preston Front, which wasn't helped when co-stars from that show turned up in various episodes, but he provided an excellent foil to his boss. Also in the mix was Detective Wieldy, who managed to be one of the best-written gay characters on tv by the simple process of rarely mentioning that he was gay. There was also Novello (named Ivor by Dalziel) as a female detective who had little to do and so she was changed frequently without anyone particularly noticing. The other interchangeable roles were the shouty boss who never had anything to do other than shout at Dalziel and be the boss and the amusing pathologist who never had anything to do but be amusing in the morgue.

The characters were allowed to have private lives (which always plays well with me) with Pascoe's life mainly involving arguments with his miserable wife. Ellie Pascoe is the only thing I didn't like about the show. It was nice to see Steptoe's real life daughter on screen, but her role was thankless with her endless complaints about Pascoe coming home late and him not doing something more upwardly mobile with his life. Worse, she was a writer and so that meant she was always quoting from books and talking pretentiously about literature. I cheered when she left him.

Dalziel's private life mainly involved him arguing with old flames and then drinking (always Highland Park, my favourite whisky too) and smoking himself to death, and so he was always on the verge of collapsing from ill health. Several heart attacks and a shooting provided the very real risk that he wouldn't get to the end of some episodes, presenting a sense of danger for a weekly series. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had keeled over, and when the series went downhill I wished he had.

The stories, in the first seven series anyhow, were faultless with not a single bad episode. I've watched them all many times and I always find something new and interesting. The plots were as convoluted as you'd expect from a cop show with the ultimate solution to the murder involving such things as an evil twin feigning his death 40 years ago and then coming back from the dead disguised as... oh you know where this is going. But despite this, all the characters would be believable with nobody coming over as deadmeat character, femme fatale character, red herring character etc. Although if anyone understands the story with Tom Bell and Leslie Phillips and the secret moles staging a murder to cover up a real murder that never happened because everyone was busy framing someone for another murder I'd welcome an explanation.

Entertainingly Dalziel didn’t always solve the crime, but he could always be relied upon to offer plenty of wit over the corpses. And the show often played on his anti-hero status in which it was easy to believe he would do unthinkable things leading to stories that were never formulaic.

Although they had a huge range of styles and story types, the stereotypical Dalziel story involved a downbeat tale set in a dingy Yorkshire pit village where it never stops raining and it's always dark and the miserable 'around here we hate folks who ain't from around here' villagers who are all suffering from miners' lung disease huddle in the cold local working men's club dribbling into their empty glasses while a pervert plays with himself in the wood watching a local lass failing to pay off her impotent blackmailer and then kills a child and dumps her body down a mine shaft to cover up the fact he kicked a dog to death while Dalziel who is scratching his nuts at the time, gets told to sod off by his sister who refuses to tell him she's dying of cancer and so Dalziel drinks himself senseless and then kills someone while drunk driving while Pascoe is sent on a secret mission by shadowy forces that'll end his career no matter what he does in which he has to destroy Dalziel for taking backhanders during the miners' strike and then covering it up by killing the boss of the impotent blackmailer except Pascoe is too busy trying to stop his wife leaving him while his daughter lies dying in hospital so the only suspect hangs himself out of shame even though he didn’t do it and the only decent bloke in the whole episode drowns at the bottom of a pit and nobody notices. It's always fun to watch a cheery episode of Dalziel and then watch Morse immediately afterwards!

Anyhow, the first 25 or so films were as good as this sort of thing gets, but then it all went horribly wrong and although I loved the show to the end, I'll offer some thoughts on its decline next week.

Review of The Secret of Devil's Canyon

2011-04-30T02:22:00.000-07:00

I.J. Parnham presents the reader with a book that starts off like a straight-forward storyline but with the introduction of more and more characters, such as the bone-hunter Jim Dragon and his enemy Pierre Dulaine, and Emily Chambers who is searching for her missing father, all of whom seem to be involved in different threads to the story, it isn’t long before the plot throws up twist after twist that makes this book impossible to put down until the reader discovers how everything is resolved.

Read more at Western Fiction Review.

Review of The Secret of Devil's Canyon

2011-04-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

I love the cover to this book as it reminds me of the old pulps and Jeff Arnold and The Riders Of The Range Annuals. The Secret Of Devil's Canyon has Nathaniel McBain and Shackleton Frost escorting convicted killer Cooper Metcalf to the Bear Creek pen. Of course, the prisoner protests that he is innocent - and maybe he is but Mayor Maxwell is dead and his daughter, Narcissa, is missing believed killed...

Read more at Broken Trails.

Thanks, Ray.

And, in other news, I learnt today that Sheriff without a Star will be published in December.

A Fistful of Interviews

2011-04-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

An informative three part interview with many of the contributors to the anthology A Fistful of Legends is available at Booklifenow.

Why do I like Westerns so much? Why do Western stories — the characters, the settings, the situations, the writing styles, the tropes - resonate so profoundly with me? Anthologies like Express Westerns’ A Fistful of Legends edited by Nik Morton and Charles T. Whipple always get me thinking about the power of Western fiction. Legends came out in 2009 and contains 21 original Western stories.

Read more: Part #1 / Part #2 / Part #3.

The anthology itself can be bought here.

Dear John - John Sullivan's finest sitcom

2011-04-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

By a horrible co-incidence I wrote the post below this morning aiming to come back to check for spelling later, by which time it'd been announced that the writer John Sullivan had died...

I've just watched the tv series Dear John for the first time in over 20 years and I was pleased that I enjoyed it as much as I remembered I had. I should say first that I'm talking about the UK series and not the US remake.

It was strange to see how the memory works in that I could remember very little of the specifics of the show and yet the moment an episode started I could remember the whole storyline and all the jokes. The two main things I knew in advance is that the sitcom is one of those very nearly great series. Only 14 episodes were made even though the format was good enough to run for a decade, but the tragic early death of the lead actor brought the series to a premature end. The other thing I knew is that it's strangely neglected. The writer John Sullivan's fame largely stems from his sitcom Only Fools and Horses, which is always voted as Britain's favourite sitcom while Dear John never gets a mention. Odd that.

Watching it again made me realize a few others things. I'm willing to lay a bet that the writers of Father Ted were Dear John fans. The character of John has a Ted quality (the only sane man in a world of idiots and whose only fault is not to know he's an idiot too) and there are other similarities in large and small ways. Humour often springs from John telling a small lie, and then when that's found out, he has to tell bigger and bigger lies to more and more people, which is something that Ted did a lot. Then there's the joke of the terrible disco with only one record that got re-used in Ted and Mrs Arnott, a character that get laughs because she never says anything feels like a trial run for Father Jack.

As for the characters, the down-at-heel and put-upon John is more interesting than I remembered. There's a darkness to his character after his divorce, perhaps helped by the fact Ralph Bates was such an odd choice to play a sitcom lead after starring in all those lurid Hammer horrors. It's good that everyone he rubs up against are unremittingly awful with a selfish ex-wife, and unpleasant friends who are worse than enemies. With such a terrible life, he seeks out solace in the 1-2-1 club where other sad divorcees join up to discuss their failings and annoy each other. First time round I was rooting for John to get together with Kate, but this time I found Belinda Lang's character to be horrible and there didn't seem to be any tension between them at all. She doesn't get any sympathetic lines and she disappears from the show before the end. Also Ralph, the sad loner whose only friend is his terrapin (which strangely hasn’t grown large like terrapins do), was also not as entertainingly dull as I remembered him to be. But then again there's a lot of competition in sitcoms for his type of character.

The undoubted star is Kirk St Moritz, a character who, if the series had gone on for longer, would have become a comedy great. He's a man without a single redeeming quality, being an arrogant, stupid, egotistical fantasist whose every line is crass and insulting. But what makes him so brilliant is that it's all an act and he's really a sad loner who lives at home with his mum (who for no good reason is Irish and sounds like Mrs Doyle from Father Ted) and who is essentially Ralph without the charisma. The fact that John knows this but can’t tell anyone is a comic set-up that could have been used dozens of time.

The other undoubted star is Louise, the leader of the group with her legendary catchphrase of 'were there any sexual problems?'. The glee on her face as she encourages people to bear their soul to ridicule is endlessly fascinating. Sadly though the series ended before it could get started, but 14 great episodes is better than most sitcoms manage in longer runs.

Woolly Maggots

2011-04-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

One of the difficulties of living so far away from the place you write about is getting in the Wild West mood.

One small thing that helps me is that the local farmer usually puts cows in the field next to my house. After watching them waft at flies, belch, fart, and squirt vast streams of manure over each other for a few minutes I'm usually in the right frame of mind to, well, write about absolutely anything but cows. In fact, I've never felt an urge to write a cow drive story or a range war over cows story, and I blame it all on the smelly things outside my house.

But despite this the coming of the cows always cheers me as it says that spring is here. Except this year the farmer hasn't brought back the cows. Instead we have sheep and so I'm writing this with the window open and listening to a cacophony of baa, mer, meer, baaa, meerrr, meeerrr.

It's been only a few days, but already I'm disappointed in them. They do all the things that cows do, but so far none of them have behaved like my favourite sheep: Aardman's Shaun the Sheep. They've shown no inclination to build a light aircraft or to stand on top of each other to climb a tree. They just stand there looking gormless, falling into the brook and worrying passing dogs. On the other hand they're quite good at escaping overnight so perhaps when everyone goes to bed they form a sheepy pyramid to get over the fence.

Anyhow, I'm not sure yet if this'll affect my writing and whether I'll find it harder to get in the Wild West mood. Perhaps it'll make me want to write about cows.

Beneath Dark Waters by Marcel Admiraal

2011-04-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

I receive offers to review books on a fairly regular basis. Usually I quickly decline as my to be read pile has taken on a life of its own and currently looks like it might outlive me. But when Marcel Admiraal's collection of horror stories Beneath Dark Waters arrived in my in-box I realized I hadn't read any horror for years and I couldn’t resist having a look, and I was pleased I did as I read the tales in one sitting.

As the author is Dutch there are a few times when sentences lose something in the translation, but I enjoyed the tales enough for this not to matter. Marcel's stories have a gentle, old-fashioned structure that I like in horror in which real people are given time to find their voice before something nasty happens. And then the something nasty is revealed in creepy ways rather than as a gorefest of the kind that drove me away from reading horror in the first place. The tales have a sense of place, namely Holland, which is lovingly described and makes the situations all the more believable (I live in a flat, rural area so that added to the effect!).

Of the tales, Those Strange Beautiful Fishes is my favourite with its simple tale of a day spent fishing, except all is not as it seems...

You can read more about Marcel and his fiction at Floating Robes.

Cryptic Friday #7

2011-04-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

Last week's clue was: Saddle will take the horse around midnight. 5 Letters.

The answer was: Ridge (think about it!)

This week's clue is a bit dodgy to my mind but here goes:

Compelled to turn a nag wild on the prairie. 7 letters.

A more important matter than tea

2011-04-10T01:57:00.000-07:00

Writing colleague Charles Whipple has put together a slim volume of short stories set in Japan. It's available on Smashwords for just 99 cents and all profits will go to help the victims of the recent quake. I've read the title story, which was the deserved winner of an international literature competition. In writing style and content it reminded me of something Guy Gavriel Kay could have written and I can't think of any higher praise. I urge you to check out the collection. Below is a few words from the author.

I have put together a slim volume of my stories set in Japan. One, A Matter of Tea, won the 2010 Oaxaca International Literature Competition. Naturally, it headlines the book. This book is available on Smashwords and costs only US 99 cents. All the income from this book will go to help victims of the 3/11 quake. They lost homes, belongings, and even family members. This is my best shot at helping them. And I'll make sure your contributions go to help real people, not the bureaucracy of a charitable organization. Please help. Order here.

I've got shelf buddies

2011-04-08T01:32:00.000-07:00

As the two western lines I write for sell most of their books to the library trade along with selling through on-line retailers I'd largely given up on that dream all authors have of walking into a bookstore and seeing one of their books on the shelf - that being one that just happens to be there and didn't require a sneak raid in the middle of the night or holding the store manager hostage. That still hasn't happened, but as reported in Dark Bits and in Joanne Walpole the British bookstore Waterstone's have started their Yee haw! promotion in which they are selling Black Horse Westerns. And below is the picture to prove it.

Mine is the book on the bottom row, second to the left. Oh, the joy, oh the happiness. What makes it so special is that the store is in Nottingham where I was born, bred and left and unless the store has moved I used to go in there a lot. Actually, if I'm being truthful I went in there a lot and then always went down the road to this beardy, new-age, leftie bookshop to actually buy books, but still I was there and now I'm in there. Hopefully not for long as it'd be nice if someone bought the book!

Interview at Booklife

2011-04-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the publication of The Miracle of Santa Maria, which is sort of todayish, I have an interview at the excellent Booklifenow.com site.

There's many informative articles about writing and the writing life at Booklife and I'm sure you'll find plenty to interest you there.

The end of hair shirt month

2011-03-31T02:52:00.000-07:00

I'm happily taking off my hair shirt today and locking it away for another couple of years. The shirt's not had much use recently as the last time I wore it, it only got used for an hour, although on the other hand I did once wear it for several years... perhaps I should explain. Radiohead have a new album out.

I don't follow modern music much any more, although a combination of Radiohead, REM and Elbow all issuing new material presents a rare opportunity for me to listen to something new. But of all the bands I listen to, the gloomy ones have always provided me with the most hair shirt moments ever since their second album came out and it failed to deliver the melodic, indie rock I'd expected from their first album. This led to me locking myself away to listen to the Bends for several dozen times trying to work out if I liked the new sound, which I did eventually. And this is a ritual I've enjoyed doing every few years since. The shortest hair shirt period was for In Rainbows which I liked on the first listen (still worries me that) and the longest was for Kid A, which took several years of navel gazing before I became depressed enough to enjoy it, and which is now my official favourite album.

As for the latest King of Limbs, I was going to review the songs, all of which I'm pleased to say left me non-plussed on the first few dozen listens. But then I made the mistake of reading a review to get a feeling of how it'd been received. The review used the words dichotomy and juxtaposition in the first sentence and, frankly, I can’t compete with that, so I'll stick to saying I like it now. It features good chilled-out music to play in the background while doing other things like thumbing through the dictionary for the definition of dichotomy and juxtaposition, while being gloomy of course.

Cryptic Friday #6

2011-03-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

Last week's question was: Took a ride round the Wild West show. 5 letters.

The answer is... Rodeo.

This week is a slightly harder one:

Saddle will take the horse around midnight. 5 Letters.

Dressing for Breakfast

2011-03-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered the delights of Channel 4's on-line service 4OD in which they offer many of their past programs for free although you do have to suffer the same flaming adverts again and again and again. So for the first time in 15 years I've just watched the largely forgotten 90s sitcom Dressing for Breakfast. I've deemed it to be largely forgotten as google failed to show me anyone who had been moved to write about it and so I thought I'd redress the balance.

Dressing for Breakfast ran for 21 episodes over 3 series in the mid 90s and I'm guessing it was pitched to the station as being Women Behaving Badly, being a female take on the popular BBC sitcom Men Behaving Badly. The result was a series that featured strong female characters and a format that I reckon inadvertently provided a template for many of the sitcoms that have come since, although none of them captured this show's easy charm.

The main character is Louise (Beatie Edney) who at 30 finds herself single and not happy with that status. For help in getting her life sorted out she has two guides: her best friend Carla (Holly Aird) who is in a stable but boring relationship and who is always on hand to provide jaundiced support. And her mother (Charlotte Cornwell) who can always be relied upon to bolster her confidence in that peculiar mother / daughter way that only goes to destroy it. The stories are always slight, but they feature witty dialogue and enthusiastic performances from the cast. Unlike many shows of this kind the, shall we say, adult nature of the conversations and subject matters always manage to be witty and relevant to the plot rather than smutty and designed to be shocking.

The show is also one of those shows that is a connections nexus. There's that game Six Steps to Kevin Bacon and I can’t help but think that Six Steps to Dressing for Breakfast would work just as well. Just about every bit part actor in the show is someone who has appeared elsewhere in things I've watched. So, for instance, a young Philip Glenister appears as Louise's boyfriend playing essentially a young Gene Hunt from Ashes to Ashes. This comes over as odd because Louise's annoying friend Rose is played by the actress who was Alex Drake's mother-in-law in Ashes while the creepy bloke in the flat next door was the creepy clown in Ashes. Stuff like this can drive you nuts.

As for the show itself, unusually for the time (and since) there is some continuity between episodes with on-going stories and plots that develop over the years such as her mother's failed relationships and a doomed love triangle. This means the show has the time to cover some not particularly funny issues such as bereavement and infidelity. Of the three series the first is perhaps the best. It's rough and awkward but it has charm whereas the second series is slicker, but spends too much time on new and annoying characters. I'm undecided on the merits of series three where clearly the success of Friends led to a rebranding with the mother disappearing (bad move) and the emphasis changing to being a wacky flat sharing comedy.

Despite numerous faults, this show stands up well today, and so now I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can find on 4OD. I'm guessing not much.

Cryptic Friday #5

2011-03-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

Last week's question was: Have the police party gone to the ship? 7 letters.

The answer is... Possess. (please don't ask why)

As that one was pretty tricky, this week is an easier one:

Took a ride round the Wild West show. 5 letters.

Well, it is for charity.

2011-03-10T23:57:00.000-08:00

In Britain we have our fair share of worthy television charity events that do great work in finding employment for celebrities nobody has ever heard of. But this year, two minutes into a mildly amusing dance routine in a Comic Relief dance competition, I amazed myself by smiling. For me it was like seeing Laurel rising up from the dead to poke Hardy in the eye for one last time.

I've enjoyed Ade Edmondson's career ever since Rik Mayall first hit him over the head with a frying pan back in the 70s when they were The Dangerous Brothers. Later, Ade's comedy evolved in The Young Ones when Rik would set fire to Ade's pants while hitting him over the head with a frying pan. Later still, his comedy evolved further in Bottom when Rik would break Ade's legs and set fire to his pants while also hitting him over the head with a frying pan. And then finally, the comedy reached its logical end in the Bottom live shows where Rik would superglue himself into a blow-up doll, break Ade's legs, set fire to his pants and still manage to hit him over the head with a frying pan.

But then they got too old to play themselves and they split up. So Bottom fans were left to wonder whether Ade would ever get hit over the head with a frying pan again for just one last time... for old time's sake.

Beaten into Kindling

2011-03-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

The excellent anthology Beat to a Pulp (featuring one of my yarns amongst one hell of a lot more) is now available for download on Kindle at Amazon for the amazing price of $5.99.

So...… what is a story?

2011-03-06T06:51:00.000-08:00

I was guest blogger for the day at the Avalon authors blog with my article on writing So... what is a story?

Cryptic Friday #4

2011-03-04T22:46:00.000-08:00

Last week's question was: Capture her with love. 5 letters.

The answer is... Lasso.

This week is a lot more cryptic (and by that I mean that I struggled to get it even with all the other clues filled in):

Have the police party gone to the ship? 7 letters.

Dragon time... honestly

2011-03-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

And so it came to pass on the 3rd of March, 2011 that the author George RR Martin did announce that the publication date for book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire would be July 2011. And there was much joy in the world for verily we fans have been waiting so flaming long we've all completely forgotten what the heck Tyrion and the lads were up to.

Good news though. Hopefully Book 6 will appear in my lifetime!

The Prairie Man cover

2011-03-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

Below is an advance sighting of the cover for my forthcoming Black Horse Western The Prairie Man, which amazon are claiming will be out in August.

If you've read my previous comments about covers, you'll know that I'm always pleased when a cover depicts a scene from the book or captures a feeling of the story or title, and so in this case I'm especially pleased. For a start it's a Prieto Muriana cover and that means in the full picture there'll be plenty of extra details, but even better, the simple scene does actually happen in the story. Now, I know it's hard to write a western without having a scene featuring 'bloke on horse' but in this case there is an important moment in the story that has been effectively depicted. In fact I hope readers might like this moment as much as I did and then glance at the cover...

More details on the book nearer the publication date.

Cryptic Friday #3

2011-02-25T02:56:00.000-08:00

The recent question was: The end of the thaw for the mixed up lout? 6 letters.

The answer is... outlaw.

This week's question relies on a crossword convention that I've never understood:

Capture her with love. 5 letters

Now... where was I?

2011-02-22T01:11:00.000-08:00

I received a contract for The Search for the Lone Star, which will be my 24th I.J. Parnham Black Horse Western. It should appear sometime in 2012.

That leaves me with the exciting task of starting work on what I hope will be the 25th. And the words Beyond Redemption have just flitted into my mind, and that sounds like a story to me...!

Anyhow, here's my draft blurb for The Search for the Lone Star:

It had long been rumoured that the fabulous diamond known as the Lone Star had been buried somewhere near the town of Diamond Springs. Many men had died trying to claim it, but when Diamond Springs became a ghost town, the men who went there had many different aims. Tex Callahan had been paid to complete a mission, Rafferty Horn wanted to put right a past mistake, George Milligan thought he knew what had happened to the diamond, and Elias Sutherland wanted revenge.

All were united by their hatred of Creswell Washington, a man who had cast a dark shadow over all their lives during his search for the diamond. Only after violent retribution will the truth be finally revealed about the Lone Star.

Cryptic Friday #2

2011-01-21T02:41:00.000-08:00

Last week I set the question:

A noisy thief? 7 letters.

To confirm, the answer was... Rustler.

This week the question gets a bit more cryptic:

Will he end the thaw for the mixed up lout? 6 letters

It makes me laugh - In praise of The Preston Front

2011-01-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

I've just finished re-watching the 1990s BBC tv series The Preston Front. This is the first time I've watched all three series in one go and this near-perfect drama / comedy impressed me even more than when I saw it originally.

I find it hard to understand why the series has been largely overlooked. The BBC have never repeated it, most of the actors haven't appeared in much since (although I did see Diesel dressed as an orange in a tv advert), and even IMDB can’t be bothered to list the cast list correctly. Despite this, I can’t think of many shows I've enjoyed more, as it harks back to those dim and distant days when tv series weren't filmed in shaky vision, and the price of petrol in Diesel's garage was 55p a litre.

The premise, or at least the premise on which the series was sold, was that it's about a group of people in the Territorial Army (part-time, volunteer soldiers), and explores how they cope with having different levels of responsibility in their two very different careers. In reality it was a look at life in a small town, featuring normal people who grew up in the small town, are destined to spend their whole lives there, and who will never achieve anything because they're quite happy with their lot. Unlike most BBC productions that have used the small town premise, the series isn't twee and neither does it portray everyone as country bumpkins from up north. Instead, the characters are believable and the comedy always develops naturally from their behaviour.

The cast work as an ensemble with several main characters and about twenty other memorable recurring roles with each episode usually centring on one of the main cast. The first central figures are best mates Eric and Hodge. I reckon it's likely that when writing the early episodes Eric Disley was meant to be the central character, but quickly it was realized that having a passive, moody, no-hoper as a hero wouldn't work, which is sad as Eric is an interesting character. He has no job or ambitions through a stated reason of having to help look after his ailing father, but his responsibilities come over as an excuse for why he's always failed to grasp opportunities. All his enjoyment in life comes second-hand from the exploits of his popular mate Hodge, who works at the local garden centre. Eric keeps him company in the rare interludes when he doesn’t have a girlfriend, an achievement that seems as if it'll always be beyond him.

Then there's schoolteacher Spock, so named because he's less stupid than everyone else, who tries to champion being called Kirk. But he's not one of life's Kirks, so it doesn’t take. The improbably large 'walking eclipse' Lloydy, whose catchphrase is 'it makes me laugh' and who has a secret job before he invents the board game Gurkha Tank Battle, can always be relied upon to counteract Spock's cleverness by being stupid. While my favourite character (not sure why) Polson is a short, put-open, aggressive failure both at the army and at life. Then there's Spock's sister who is stuck in a bad marriage while pining after Polson's boss while Polson's boss pines for her and her best friend pines after Eric who is oblivious to... Or as the title music (the superb Here I Stand by the Milltown Brothers) says, round and round and round we go and around again once more, never stopping to think just who we are.

For 19 episodes the series details their interacting lives with stunningly good writing, although I was amused to see that the dvd extra acknowledges that the opening scene of episode one features a terrible bit of tv writing. It's usual for the first episode of a series to hit the ground running and in the opening ten minutes set up the scene, the characters, the situation and provide a hook that'll keep you watching. Unfortunately the writer Tim Firth hadn’t written for tv before and he didn't appreciate this requirement. So the opening scene involves the army on a silent and unspecified manoeuvre in an unknown location, in the middle of the night in pitch darkness, with everyone in camouflaged clothing and blacked-up faces. After ten minutes it's anyone's guess what’s happening!

Happily the series quickly settles down and demonstrates some of the best foreshadowing and plot developing I've ever seen. A minor character, for instance, might repeatedly state for no apparent reason that 'they just never read the sign' until later in the episode at a key moment someone gets wheel-clamped and you realize which sign wasn't getting read. Or there'll be a kid who only says 'na-na na-na' until you find out later that he sets fire to things because he likes to hear the fire engines go 'na-na na-na'. Except he didn't because the teacher who ran out of the school to shred a book of poetry set off the fire alarms as she was having an affair with… oh the stories always eventually fit together in clever ways without you even realizing it. Even a key plot point shown in the opening title credits of the opening episode doesn’t get explained until the final episode.

Also, the series is a perfect example of how to make every single character memorable, even if they get only one line, such as the restaurant owner who's the second most famous Black Scouse Chinese Marvin Gaye impersonator... in Ormskirk. Or the bloke whose only line every week is to turn up at an inopportune time and ask 'is this a bad time to discuss grass seed?'. Or Freddie 'Parrot-face' Davies (once a familiar face on tv) who offers deadpan comments such as 'what colour were his eyes?' after being asked if he's seen a suicidal, drunk German dressed only in a black bag with a bin strapped to his back running down the street.

The German episode is probably the best one and it always leads to me saying 'Opposite the hotel' (the German is told that this is a common British phrase) for days afterwards. And the best scene perhaps comes in the final episode where Polson, after drinking several pints of wine at a dire wedding reception, climbs on the table and launches into a stirring speech about how Eric may be the most useless, worthless, stupid, inane and pointless piece of pond life that has ever crawled out from under a rock, but he's a soldier and he's been trained to die for his friends and that means he's a better man than every person who has ever sneered at him. But in truth there's not a bad episode or scene in a series that could have run for years, except it ended all too quickly and so ultimately, what was filmed was perfect.

Cryptic Friday #1

2011-01-14T10:22:00.000-08:00

I have a daily ritual of attempting the cryptic crossword in a Scottish newspaper. One of things I like is that the compiler must be a western fan because occasionally the clue or answer incorporates a western element. An example would be 'Hot trademark?' 5 letters, with the answer being... Brand.

So, for a bit of fun, I've been noting down the western cryptic crossword clues recently and for the next few weeks I'll post a question. If anyone wants to provide an answer, please do so in the comments, but if nobody gets it, I'll reveal the answer next Friday along with a new clue.

So, to repeat, the answer is either a word familiar to western fans or incorporates a western element, and I'll start you off with an easy one:

A noisy thief? 7 letters.

Sharpshooter McClure - Linford Western

2011-01-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

My complimentary copies of the large print version of Sharpshooter McClure finally battled their way through the snow, ice, cold, blizzards and all those bank holidays to land on my doormat, and I'm delighted to see it.

Usually the only thing I need from a cover to make me happy is that the cover image depicts a scene that could have happened somewhere in the story. In this case the picture is of a bloke with a gun along with someone who has been shot up and, yeah, even though I can't remember much about this story now, I'm fairly sure that it does feature a bloke with a gun and someone getting shot up. So I've got no cause for complaint.

What really pleased me though was that the image of Mike McClure is of a fresh-faced young man, and the fact that he's fresh-faced is vital to the plot... Anyhow, here's the shortened blurb for this Linford Western that will be available in all good libraries at the end of January for anyone whose eyesight is even worse than mine:

US Marshal Jesse Cole sends deputy sheriff Mike McClure to infiltrate the hired guns harassing the homesteaders of Harmony. But a night of bloody carnage ends in failure with the marshal dead. Mike escapes but, trailed by the gunslingers, Mike assumes a new identity, working with Brandon Webb's Wild West Show. However, memories of that terrible night ensure his return to Harmony. He'll need all his gun skills to bring the guilty parties to justice.

Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust...

2011-01-05T17:49:00.000-08:00

...if Xavier doesn't take any wickets, then Hilfenhaus certainly won't.

Last month I made some considered and well-thought out predictions on the likely result of the Ashes test match series based on a lifetime following the game and my embarrassingly vast knowledge of cricket statistics. I was so utterly wrong I don’t know why I bothered, other than to prove once again why I actually like the game. Few sports can match test cricket for its ability to make fools out of armchair pundits.

I predicted Cook would fail miserably again as he doesn't deserve the title of FEC (Future England Captain) that he had foisted on him from the moment it was discovered he could speak properly and he was called Alastair (always a good cricketing name). Accordingly, Cook set a new record by batting for longer in a series than any cricketer in history at around a day and a half. This is even longer than Boycott batted in 1970-71 and slightly longer than all the Australian batsmen put together.

I predicted that Anderson would fail in the unhelpful conditions down under. Accordingly, Anderson took the most wickets in the helpful conditions down under.

I reckoned Pietersen would be a prima donna again. He hit his first double hundred. And I didn't expect anything from Bell, and he was sublime.

On the other hand I thought our only possibility of winning would come from Swann bowling everyone out, but he had his worst ever series. And I thought Collingwood might save us from ignominy with his robust batting, except he was so bad he wouldn’t get in the Australian team and he's now faced with the decision of whether to retire or to wait for the selectors to retire him.

Ah well! But anyhow, a big well done to the players for keeping the Ashes in England until 2013. I might do the sprinkler dance later (don’t ask) to celebrate, or then again I might settle for getting some sleep.

A big fat bah for all humbugs

2010-12-23T04:11:00.000-08:00

I noticed a festive meme at Laurie Powers that's been designed to get you in the Xmas mood, and so I thought I'd have a go. Please feel free to use the questions for your own blogs.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
I'm not sure what Egg Nog is, but if it's like Advocaat, then it makes me want to throw up. Hate hot chocolate. Chocolate should be cold and solid, not hot and foaming.

2. Does Santa (meaning you) wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
I'm a bloke. We are genetically programmed to be incapable of wrapping anything. Either way, I don't have a tree, or presents for that matter.

3. Coloured lights on tree/house or white?
Don't have Xmas lights. Hate Xmas lights. Hate seeing Xmas lights on the outside of houses and trees. Hate lights outside houses. Period. Dark is good because then you see the real pretty lights: the stars and the Milky War. Everything natural is beautiful and everything artificial is ugly, especially when it's coloured and flashes on and off.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No, although people who hang mistletoe should be hanged.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
I am pleased to say I have never put decorations up. I am available to tear them down for no charge.

6. What is your favourite holiday dish?
Don't have one. I like beer though.

7. Favourite Holiday memory as a child:
Spending three hours watching the turkey grease congeal while my dad toured the pubs trying to find my gran before she passed out. He failed.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
The day I was forced to spend two hours queuing up in the rain to sit on the knee of some pervy old git with bad breath and a false beard who ignored me and tried to chat up my mum instead. I cried a lot that day.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Nope. We don’t bother with gifts in our house.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
Don't have a Xmas tree.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Last night we had another inch of snow and it was minus 17C. That's as cold as the freezer and I walked the dog for a mile through the knee-deep snow in the dark when I was the only idiot out there and the only tracks were the ones I'd made yesterday. My beard froze and the hairs in my nostrils clogged up so I had an icicle growing. I've got a numb finger that I'm worried could be frostbite from dragging a frozen log back home to stick on the fire that's been on so much the chimney's clogged up and the house is full of smoke. I've just found out my toilet's overflowing and it's made a ten foot icicle. The shops have no basic food items in them because the A9's cut off and everyone was buying enough stuff for a siege. The gritters don’t come within a mile of my house because the councillor doesn't live in the area and even the four wheel drive owners are struggling, and yet do we get any travel news and sensible weather forecasts on the radio and tv? Heck, we don't. It's all about poor old beleagured Londoners not getting on their holidays because a couple of snowflakes drifted by somewhere to the south of Watford. And for good measure I wrenched my back getting a mince pie out of the packet (honestly!) and so I've spent the last hour lying on the floor groaning and now I'm sitting like a question mark. I hate feckin' Xmas.

12. Can you ice skate?
If falling over and bruising your bum is called skating, then yes.

13. Do you remember your favourite gift?
Never had one. I hate getting gifts. If I want something, I buy it. Although that Tim 'smug git' Minchin dvd sold for good money on eBay and I bought something I did want.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Getting some work done.

15. What is your favourite Holiday Dessert?
Hate creamy and sickly desserts. Give me beer. Now.

16. What is your favourite holiday tradition?
Being grumpy.

17. What tops your tree?
Don't have a tree. All the real ones have snow on the top and irritatingly cheerful robins bouncing in them. I hate robins.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Neither. I hate wasting money on crap and I hate having to be cheerful about receiving crap from people who probably can’t afford to waste their money on the aforementioned crap.

19. What is your favourite Christmas Song?
Videotape by Radiohead or something a bit more depressing.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
What the hell is candy cane? It sounds awful, just like Xmas....

Anyhow, Merry Xmas, one and all. Have a good 'un!

The ITV Xmas panto series

2010-12-20T07:09:00.000-08:00

The Xmas Pantomime is a peculiar British tradition that is used to introduce children to the theatre, or in my case used to put them off it and instead start a lifelong clown phobia. I don’t think the panto exists in many other parts of the world, but I thought I'd celebrate one aspect of the art form that hasn't been lauded much: the ITV Xmas panto series.

I'd guess every country has an annual Xmas tv tradition, which usually involves watching depressing non-seasonal things such as It's a Wonderful Life or The Wizard of Oz. But in Britain, for a small and content group of people (some of them even being the children the programs were made for), Xmas only really starts when the nightly ITV panto series appears. This year they're on every night this week on ITV 27 or some such minor channel at around 6pm.

Four feature length shows were made around ten years ago featuring the stories of Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington and Cinderella. They stared what were then the top echelon of British comedy talent. Sadly, as all the new tv comedy made in the last ten years has been completely devoid of talent and laughs, they probably still remain the cream of British comedy. They were written by Simon Nye back in the days when he could still write funny sitcoms and he provided a perfect mixture of comedy, story and a well-judged use of the more enjoyable traditions of pantomime. Nearly all the scenes work on two levels, providing custard-pie throwing slapstick to entertain the adults while still providing plenty of risqué double-entendres to keep the children giggling.

In truth they do go downhill with the earlier ones being the best, so the first, Jack and the Beanstalk, is my favourite. Jack is played by Neil Morrissey as essentially Tony from Men Behaving Badly, Ade Edmondson as Dame Dolly is Eddie Hitler in a dress, and Julian Clary camps it up with every possible variation on 'he's coming up behind you'. The humour works from knowing what's not being said because the audience is children. So when Denise Van Outen as Jill asks Jack what he's thinking, Jack will pause for just long enough to let us know he's wondering if she's a natural blond (the best line from Men Behaving Badly) before providing a more appropriate answer. And you know Dolly is only just resisting the urge to whip out a chainsaw and saw Baron Wasteland's legs off. It even captures Julie Walters at a time when she was funny, features the cult figure Peter Serafinowicz and makes good use of Paul Merton's droll delivery as the narrator.

Second up was Cinderella, in which the rudeness was sadly reduced, but which was probably the more accomplished panto. Paul Merton and Ronnie Corbett are the ugly sisters providing traditional old-fashioned comic routines while Frank Skinner is surprisingly good as Buttons, especially as at the time his comic persona involved very adult material. Samantha Janus as Cinderella for once manages to avoid being irritating and, as it was filmed around the time she was involved in the fondly-remembered comedy Game On, her timing is excellent. The only sour notes are provided by Alexander Armstrong, a smug comedian whose popularity escapes me, as a charmless Prince Charming and one-trick pony Harry Hill who makes no concessions to the format as he trundles out his dreary 'comic' monologues.

Those two shows provide excellent entertainment, but the goodwill isn't maintained for the final two shows, which run out of steam quickly. Aladdin is messy, with the other half of the Men Behaving Badly team Martin Clunes not working as well as Neil did and Ed Byrne as Aladdin seeming unsure what pantomine is all about. But Julian Clary and Paul Merton are again excellent and anything with Leslie Phillips in it can never be all bad. The final show Dick Whittington is a chore to sit through and I don’t think I've ever managed it all in one session. By now the comedy had been purged of all risky innuendo for fear of complaints to OFCOM, and instead inexplicably popular kiddie pop stars of the time appeared. Sadly what makes it fall completely flat is James Fleet. His stiff but gormless aristocrat role that worked so well in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Vicar of Dibley fails on stage and just comes over as, well, stiff and gormless.

Despite the diminishing returns, the shows are small and perfectly formed Xmas tv fare. Ten years on, they're still ideal for those times when you have a mince pie in hand, a port in the other, and your expectations are low, especially if you haven’t got any children who can take you out to see a live pantomime!

Review of Bleached Bones in the Dust

2010-12-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

Review available at Western Fiction Review.

The story so big they named it twice!

2010-12-18T06:17:00.000-08:00

I've just received the complimentary copies of my 20th Black Horse Western, which has been printed in a special version to appeal to those who are in two minds as to whether or not they like the sound of it. The front and back covers claim that the book is called Bleached Bones in the Dust but the spine decided to have a second go and came up with the better title of Bleached Bones in the Sun.

I like this approach. As I mentioned here last year the inspiration for Bleached Dust in the Sun came when I incorrectly remembered the title of tv detective Hamish Macbeth's favourite western novel, which turned out to be Chuck Sadler's Bleached Skulls in the Sunset. Who knows, if I'm lucky and Boney Bleach in the Dust goes to large print it might finally get the title it should have had all along.

Available now on Amazon and all good on-line retailers: Dusty Bones in the Sun, the story so big they named it twice!

For twenty years, bounty hunter Montgomery Grant searched for Lomax Rhinehart, desperate to make him pay for an atrocity he committed during the dying days of the war.

So when Grant's friend, Wallace Sheckley, told him that he had found Lomax, Grant followed him to Sunrise, but Arnold Hays and his gunslingers were holding the town in the grip of fear. Nobody would help him and, worse, Wallace had gone missing and Lomax was nowhere to be found.

With Arnold Hays the key to Grant finding out what has happened to both his friend and his enemy, he must turn to his gun to get the answers he needs...

The Miracle of Santa Maria

2010-12-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

I was pleased to get an advance sighting of the cover for my forthcoming Avalon Western The Miracle of Santa Maria. I've been lucky in the past in that Avalon have always provided me with evocative and appropriate covers, but I reckon they've excelled themselves this time.

It has a nice image of the setting with an appropriately miraculous feel and it even uses an interesting font type for the title. Although I hope that anyone who reads it expecting an inspiring Christian tale won't be too put out when they find instead a bishop who makes Bishop Brennan from Father Ted look reasonable, a cowboy version of Romeo and Juliet, a serial killing box and the Wild West's first and worst planetarium. Anyhow the book is out later in 2011 and here's the blurb:

The Mission Santa Maria catered to Sundown’s needs until bandits murdered their nuns. The young Maria is the only survivor, yet the massacre she witnessed sends her into an endless sleep. For two years she lies unconscious in the mission, gradually becoming weaker, before Bishop Finnegan notices. Unsympathetically, he decides to close the mission, which is sure to speed her demise.

With her outlook quickly becoming bleak, the devious snake-oil seller Fergal O'Brien rides into town. Although Fergal is typically interested in making a quick dollar, Maria's plight touches him. He attempts to wake her with what he claims is his universal remedy. Not surprisingly, though, his tonic fails.

An undaunted Fergal vows to help her by persuading Finnegan to keep the mission open. The bishop, however, decides that the lawless Sundown is too dangerous for a mission. The only options are to hope for a miracle or clean up Sundown with fearless gun-toting skills. Unfortunately for Fergal, though, he has never used a gun in his life.

A graceful bow to the muse Calliope

2010-12-13T15:02:00.000-08:00

I've posted a short and fairly pointless article on writing serendipity at Avalon Authors Blog.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

2010-11-24T02:13:00.000-08:00

... if Xavier doesn’t get you, Hilfenhaus must. That rhyme doesn't scan as well as when Lillee and Thommo were playing. But still, it's time for the 133rd year in that endless and most important battle of them all in the cricket world: that is, trying to go without sleep for two straight months while listening to our cricketers find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Cricket is a game played in the summer when the grass is growing and the rain is never far away, but somehow for me it's at its most enjoyable in the middle of winter. When you're snug in bed in the dead of night, with snow on the ground and you're listening to a radio strapped to your ear with the volume turned down low and Geoffrey Boycott is burbling along about how 'tha' t'wer roobish. Me flamin' mam coulda played tha' we 'er pinny.'

Most of my fondest cricket memories have come that way. Staying up all night in 1977 to listen to Derek Randall take on Lillee and nearly winning the match single-handed, and then falling asleep at school the next day in every single lesson. I remember Mike Gatting grinding out the dullest century in history for several days and repeatedly waking up after a doze to find he was still on the same score. There was that glory night when I was full of beans and ready for an all nighter only for Warne to bowl us all out in about 20 minutes. And I'll never forget the utter masochism of four years ago where we somehow contrived to find a way to lose a match that even Pakistan with the entire team on retainers from their bookmakers couldn't have lost.

It's not all about the pain though. There are moments of joy at 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm struggling to think of a single one right now, but they do come, as all late night cricket fans know, when you doze off. I remember staying awake until 5 o'clock only to pass out and wake up an hour later to find that cricket's most famous drug-smuggler Chris Lewis had bowled the aussies out. And I have a distinct recollection of dropping off to sleep just before we won the ashes the last time way back in the mists of time when the aussies were embarrassingly bad and our captain could eat more pies than anyone on the planet.

This time round the pundits are all proclaiming that this is our best chance of coming home with the small urn since the days when the current commentators were players, and that makes me worried, perhaps more worried than four years ago when we lost 5-0. Australia always say that they can rely on our management to help them out. Last time Duncan 'jobs for the boys' Fletcher dropped in-form spin demon Monty Panesar for out-of-form specialist number 8 trundler, but all round decent chap, Ashley Giles. And this time the management obligingly sent the team off to build up their cricket skills with a week of tiger-wrestling and dodging machine-gun bullets, ending up with our best bowler breaking a rib falling down a mountain.

And then there's the team itself. This year we've wiped out the Bangladeshis (then again Boycott's mum really could beat them with her pinny) and scraped home against a team of Pakistani bookmakers. Those matches proved we're quite useful against poor teams on our home turf and that to win in cricket you need a good bowling side. On aussie turf we're not so good and I can’t see Anderson reversing his usual pathetic form down-under, or Broad stopping trying to prove he can be more arrogant than his dad for long enough to actually take some wickets. Neither can I see Cook dispelling the doubts about his technique or Pietersen stopping acting like a celebrity to actually do the thing that made him a prima-donna in the first place. Success will depend on whether Swann is allowed to bowl ten one over spells per innings, and perhaps on ten foot Finn keeping his bowling hand hidden in low cloud cover. As for Australia, it does come down to the erratic Mitchell Johnson's form; none of the others seem much use to me, although as a statistics and trivia fan I'm still excited about someone called Xavier playing.

So predictions… I can't make one right now as it's usual in the ashes for the first day to accurately predict how the next 24 days will go. Two times ago Simon Jones tripped over his own feet on the first day and destroyed his career. Last time Steve Harmison bowled the worst first ball in history that not only missed the pitch but missed the next three. So this time, who knows? Only insomniacs, night-shift workers and idiots with radios strapped to their ears while dozing will find out, although as usual I'll predict it'll be 2-1, but I'll wait until tomorrow before saying who'll get the 2.

Railroad to Redemption

2010-11-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

I received the welcome news today that Railroad to Redemption, which was published in August, will be reprinted in large print as a Linford Western. I guess it'll appear around November 2011.

Beaten to a pulp by a pulp beating monster

2010-11-12T01:23:00.000-08:00

My complimentary copy of the anthology Beat to a Pulp arrived this morning. The weary postman staggered up the drive and dumped it in my hands having failed to work out how to hammer this monster into my postbox. I don't know yet if any of the stories inside are scary, but the size of this thing sure gave me a shock. 380 big pages all crammed with stories that even on a flick through look like they'll be providing me with some good bedtime reading for a while to come.

I have to give a special mention of the striking cover. I hadn't appreciated from the thumbnail image that both sides give the impression of it being a torn and battered old book. This works perfectly. It's retailing at $15.95 and is gradually becoming available at all the on-line retail sites. At that price this is great value for money.

The Miracle of Santa Maria

2010-11-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

I was pleased to find out that my Avalon Western The Miracle of Santa Maria (the 6th Fergal O'Brien novel) will be published in June 2011. This is especially pleasing as this week I finished the first draft of what I hope will be the 7th Fergal novel. It doesn't have a working title yet, but I've decided that when I find out what that is I'll know what the book has been about.

The Secret of Devil's Canyon

2010-11-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

I learnt today that The Secret of Devil's Canyon will be published in April 2011, and above is an early look at the cover. It'll be my 21st BHW. The story features the return of Nathaniel McBain, who was last seen in The Gallows Gang, and it details his new life going straight after a stint in jail. I haven't seen the final blurb, but my suggestion was:

When Mayor Maxwell and his daughter are brutally killed, feelings in Bear Creek run high. Even when the killer has been caught and been given a life sentence the townsfolk demand a lynching. So Sheriff Bryce calls in Nathaniel McBain to spirit him away through Devil's Canyon to Beaver Ridge jail.

At first Nathaniel manages to stay one step ahead of the pursuing lynch mob, but before long he faces a bigger problem: his prisoner could be an innocent man. A dark secret about what really happened to the mayor is buried in Devil's Canyon and Nathaniel will need hot lead to protect his charge and to uncover the truth.

Still Crazy

2010-10-23T03:42:00.000-07:00

Made in 1998, the band movie Still Crazy doesn't appear to have been heralded much or be well-known. Hopefully one day it might get the acclaim it deserves.

I'd always thought The Commitments would forever remain my favourite band movie as it has everything. It has great writing in which every character is memorable and believable, even if they have only a few lines, along with a perfect mixture of comedy and drama, all culminating in an avoidance of the Hollywood style ending. And it has superb music too (Here's The Dark End of the Street). I was therefore pleased to accidentally come across Still Crazy recently and after watching it a couple of times I reckon it is at the very least as good as Alan Parker's film. What's strange is that even though I like the work of pretty much everyone involved, I'd somehow never been aware of it before.

The story is a familiar one. The Strange Fruits were a 1970s rock band. They never achieved the fame they reckoned they should have got, mainly because their lead singer and only talented member died (in a Little Chef) and the new lead singer turned out to be a pretentious idiot. Artistic differences split the band and they all vowed never to play together again. 20 years later a concert organiser, who is putting together a nostalgic concert of old bands, bumps into the keyboard player, who is doing his current job of filling a condom machine, and suggests he puts the band back together. Everyone has gone their separate ways, mainly downhill and outside the music business, or is dead. When the survivors meet up a spooky sign from beyond the grave (involving sheep and their song Tequila Mockingbird) encourages them to try again, but it's not long before their initial enthusiasm dies out and all the old arguments that tore them apart resurface. Added to which is the problem that they're all too old to be rock gods again, they weren't that good in the first place, and the practice gigs they land are all in terrible venues. So can these broken-down has-beens who never were anything much in the first place somehow overcome their failings to pull together for one last triumphant performance…? Can they, heck!

The slightness of the story doesn't matter as it's not that sort of film. Written by the two giants of realistic British drama / comedy Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, this is a film, like most of their other works, about ordinary blokes bickering, being a cross between their previous The Commitments and Auf Weidershen, Pet. From Pet there's Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall, both of whom play characters that are the direct opposite to their Pet roles of headcase Oz and lemon Barry. Nail plays the sensitive and sullen guitarist who thought he should have been the lead singer, while Spall plays Beano, the all-farting all-boozing wild man drummer. On the other hand there are some obvious similarities with the reunion series of Pet with the theme of characters getting back together after years apart as well the minor part of the European wife (Ingrid in Still Crazy & Tatiana in Pet) being pretty much the same character. Also in the mix of well-known faces is Bill Nighy (who also appeared in the reunion Pet series) playing the dim-witted lead singer doing his usual off-centre performance where it's hard to tell if he's a terrible actor or a brilliant one. And there's keyboard player Stephen Rea who still pines for ex-groupie Juliet Aubrey, narrator Billy Connolly, and the legendary Bruce Robinson in an appropriately enigmatic cameo as a man who was too fragile to cope with fame.

Most of the film follows them travelling around Holland, playing badly and getting on each other's nerves while delivering the great dialogue and interaction you expect from the people who did The Likely Lads and Porridge. There's plenty of well-judged satire about music and nostalgia from Nighy and his obsession with big hair, platform soles and all the trapping of bad glam rock while Nail encourages a more pared-down musical style. Even the clunky bits such as Juliet Aubrey being too young to play an old groupie, the occasional terrible line like, 'let's bury the past before it buries us.' and Jimmy Nail's singing are excusable in such a good-natured film. Actually I'm joking about the latter as I don’t subscribe to the traditional view that Nail was a joke figure in the music business. He along with Bill Nighy sing very well and the original songs get the flavour of 70s rock just right with bombastic guitar solos, pretentious lyrics and the occasional genuinely tuneful rock anthem. But having said that the music is secondary to the main point of the film, which is about friendship, getting old, insecurities, regrets and listing all the bands that are named after body parts (Cockney Rebel gets two points).

Anyhow, youtube has the last scene, so don't click if you don't want to find out if the Fruits stop arguing for long enough to come back from the dead and ensure there's not a dry eye in the house by delivering one last gut-wrenchingly emotional rendering of the song they vowed never to play again The Flame Still Burns.

Review of The Legend of Shamus McGinty's Gold

2010-10-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

Review at Western Fiction Review.

Thanks, Steve.

The Treasure of Saint Woody - review

2010-10-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Review in Dutch at Western Romans.

Dank Je.

Beat to a Pulp - Round 1

2010-10-09T00:55:00.000-07:00

The best anthology of pulp short stories you'll read this year is published today and is now available to buy. Most of the stories are original and written exclusively for the anthology with a few having seen print on the Beat to a Pulp e-zine. There's sci-fi, horror, fantasy, westerns... well, there's something there for everyone. I'll report on it later when I've actually read the stories (including my own, which as usual I haven't been able to bring myself to even glance at since I wrote End.).

Anyhow, for now roll on over to David Cranmer for the details of where you can buy, and a big well done to everyone involved for all their hard work.

Goodbye, Mr Pitkin

2010-10-05T01:06:00.000-07:00

The veteran British comic actor Norman Wisdom died yesterday at the age of 95. He had a long and memorable career starting back in the 1940s and continuing up until a few years ago, and that longevity means that in an odd way another bit of my childhood now feels gone forever.

Norman was one of the comic film actors I loved when I was young along with Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, WC Fields, The Marx Brothers, Will Hay. And I'm happy that I can still enjoy their superb comic timing and their innocent, inoffensive humour. But most of those actors were long dead before I was even born and yet Norman kept on going, still somehow running around and doing comic pratfalls well into his 80s.

The two facts that are always quoted about him are that Charlie Chaplin thought he was a better clown than himself (he was, but then again that wasn't hard) and that he was Albania's national hero. I've always hoped the latter was an urban myth, but bizarrely it was probably true. Albania didn't allow any foreign films to be shown except for Norman's films as his Mr Pitkin character represented something deep and political about the downtrodden proletariat ridiculing the ruling classes. I suppose this only goes to prove you can read anything into anything. Who knows, maybe one day the French will hail Jerry Lewis as a film auteur.

What was more obvious was that his films belonged to a bygone age that didn’t rely on gross-out humour or that feeling of smug, emperor's new clothes that I get with most of what claims to be comedy these days. The films usually involved Mr Pitkin in an ill-fitting suit falling over a lot, gurning, laughing, singing for no good reason, throwing buckets of paint around and shouting 'Mr Grimsdale' at his comic foil Eric Chapman. I can still sit down whenever one is on and I have no trouble in raising a smile, even if the films are very dated. In fact his films were deemed dated by the mid 60s. People didn’t want simple humour, apparently, even back then and so Norman made a couple of efforts at more grown-up comedy staring in The Night they raided Minsky's and an odd adult British comedy before he went into semi-retirement.

In later years he occasionally turned up in serious roles and he was always very good. Only last weekend I watched an episode of the cop show Dalziel and Pascoe where a 90 year old Norman turned up playing an old bloke in a sanatorium. Effectively playing against type he turned out to be the killer, and yet he still found time to do his trademark infectious laugh and comic fast turn away from the camera. Anyhow, RIP, Norman and one last time for old time's sake:

Mr Grimsdale! Mr Grimsdale!

Sheriff Without a Star

2010-09-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to receive a contract today for my Cassidy Yates western Sheriff without a Star. This'll be the 8th novel in which Cassidy has featured and my 23rd Black Horse Western. My suggested draft blurb is below:

After four years of distinguished service an error of judgement that led to the death of Leland Matlock's son shattered the confidence of Monotony's townsfolk in Sheriff Cassidy Yates. But when the star Cassidy had worn with pride was removed from his chest Leland claimed he knew something that would shed new light on his downfall.

Before Leland could reveal what he knew he was shot, but Cassidy still had the instincts of a lawman. He believed Leland's shooting was connected to the death of his son and that if he could uncover the link it would restore the townsfolk's confidence in him. So Cassidy embarked on his greatest ever challenge: to get the star pinned back on his chest where it belonged.

E. C. Tubb - RIP

2010-09-16T01:09:00.000-07:00

I learnt today that the veteran British writer EC Tubb died last week.

He was born in 1919 and he had a writing career that spanned some 60 years and which produced well over a 100 novels. He was best known for his science fiction in which he wrote short, action-packed novels that were always entertaining no matter how quickly he must have written them. He penned my favourite science fiction series The Dumarest Saga, an adventure yarn concerning all-action hero Dumarest's quest to find the forgotten world of Earth. The series packed a lot of quick-paced set pieces and story into the short novels, which ultimately ran to 31 books with another 2 later limited edition self-published works.

On a personal note I admire his writing style. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say he influences my own style as I'm nowhere near as good a writer, when writing I do often think of his no-nonsense, get on with the story and stop fannying about approach.

In addition to his sf Tubb also wrote 11 western novels and many of them were reprinted by Robert Hale, who have published my own westerns, with large print versions also being published as Linford Westerns. With his books still being reprinted quite frequently even in the last year, it was a proud moment for me when I went into a library a few months ago and saw one of my own books sitting right next to an E.C. Tubb novel.

Tubb was 90 and apparently he passed away on the day that he received an acceptance for his latest novel. Other than to be remembered fondly, is there a better way for a writer to go?

The Last Cover from Hell

2010-09-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite covers is for my second Black Horse Western The Last Rider from Hell. So I was highly amused when a Dutch Western fan kindly got in touch to point out that my cover has some similarities to a reprinted 2008 western novel by the best-selling German author G.F. Unger, who apparently wrote 742 westerns. See what you think, hombres!

Review of Railroad to Redemption

2010-08-23T01:55:00.000-07:00

There's a kind review of my most recent book at Western Fiction Review. Thanks!

It's Cassidy Yates month!

2010-08-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Writing is often like the proverbial bus. You wait hours for one then two come along at once. Yesterday I received complimentary copies of my latest Sheriff Cassidy Yates story Railroad to Redemption and then today I received the Large Print version of my previous Yates yarn Riders of the Barren Plains. The latter was a pleasant surprise as I wasn't sure when it'd get published, so in response to this welcome double here's a brief summary of the story so far.

Cassidy was my first western hero. I wanted him to be clean-cut, brave, resilient... essentially everything a white hat wearing good guy should be. Nearly all of my other western heroes are deeply flawed so the idea was that I could use him for tales that didn't need any moral ambiguity. He would face problems, but he would always do the right thing. He was named after Kasidy Yates, Sisko's girlfriend in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, purely because I liked the sound of that name.

His first adventure was in The Outlawed Deputy in which he finds himself as a good man on the wrong side of the law and he makes friends with the man I hoped would become his sidekick Nathaniel McBain. Nathaniel provided the ambiguity in that he was a young outlaw who could go bad but who chose to join Cassidy on the right side of the law.

I was happy that the first novel was published, but I was less happy that the story was a traditional one and that I used a verbose writing style I thought would get published rather than my usual tighter style.

Cassidy returned in The Last Rider from Hell, a tale that I was much happier with in which Cassidy tries to solve the mystery of a missing wagon train along with the identity of a mystery man with no name.

For my third western I gave Cassidy a rest and wrote a tale purely about Nathaniel and to my surprise Nathaniel became bored with working for Cassidy and turned to the dark side. This ruined my plans for the two to become a crime-fighting duo and so I left Cassidy alone for a while.

He returned in Yates's Dilemma with a tale of an old 'Wild Bunch' type gang getting back together for one last hurrah. This was a fairly routine action tale constructed around a mystery of whether or not the mysterious Wendell Moon is a good guy or a bad guy. It got one of my most action-packed covers.

Cassidy's fourth adventure was Wanted: McBain, the inevitable one I knew I had to write in which Cassidy sets off to find Nathaniel and bring him to justice. Since then the two men haven’t met up again, but Nathaniel faced up to his own demons in The Gallows Gang and will return again next year in The Secret of Devil's Canyon.

With Cassidy's major personal crisis resolved I struggled to think of what I could do with him next. So it was several years before he returned in Bad Moon over Devil's Ridge in which he again faces a personal crisis in the form of the activities of his wayward brother. Riders of the Barren Plains saw him pursuing a good man gone bad and this month Railroad to Redemption sees him pursuing a, well, good man gone bad with extra added nuns. I guess there might be a theme there somewhere with my Yates tales! But that's fair enough.

Yates provides assurance in difficult times that he's a man who will always make the right choices while the antagonists he faces are ordinary men who make the wrong choices. Cassidy forces them to face up to their failings, leaving them as better men than when the story started, which I find more interesting than the lawman leaving behind lots of dead bad guys.

As I enjoy the themes in my Yates tales I hope he'll ride some more. The current tale I'm writing is provisionally entitled Sheriff without a Star in which, for once, Cassidy doesn't get it right. I hope the variation will give him an interesting challenge.

Extract from The Treasure of Saint Woody

2010-07-25T02:52:00.000-07:00

Joanne's series of daily book extracts continues today with an extract from The Treasure of Saint Woody.

Big Brother 11 - Half time report

2010-07-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

With the final UK Big Brother series halfway through its 11 week run it's a good time to report on how the show is doing, and against all expectations it's going well. Viewing figures are up, the show has been fun, the professional OFCOM complainers have been strangely quiet, and the stench of death that I assumed would hang over the series isn’t there.

This year the housemates are relatively ordinary with no great characters such as last year's Marcus, Freddie or Bea, but then again there are no depressingly dull housemates such as Charlie, Rodrigo or Sophie. The housemates also provide an interesting barometer on the nation. Ten years ago it was deemed a significant moment when a gay man won the show. A few years ago every show had to have a token gay person. Now almost everyone in the house is either openly gay, gay but haven't admitted it yet even if they're so camp they make John Inman look like John Wayne, or lied about being gay to get on the show. It's refreshing to see people be outed as straight.

In addition the production values are fairly high and best of all a change to the way housemates nominate each other for eviction has led to the uninteresting characters being evicted early. So we've lost Beyonce lookalike Rachael, teenage brat Govan, foul-mouthed Nathan and bald Ife. The only unfortunate losses have been trainee doctor (!) Sunshine, a vegan who didn't eat vegetables whose capacity for annoying everyone was so huge she sadly crashed and burned quickly after an argument about crisps. And Shabby, an erudite and lively bit part actress, who treated the show as an extended audition for her acting abilities, but who sadly decided to stage a walkout and nobody followed.

This leaves 11 housemates in the house and using my ten tips for how to win the show, I thought I'd look at who is using each method.

1. Go on a journey

Andrew is the only one attempting the journey route. We can tell that because he tells everyone he's on a journey about three times a day. He's modelled his journey on Glyn from BB7 of being the shy teenager who is trying to shyly grow up and get over his shyness by being shy and cute and a bit more shy. He's the only one in there I hate.

Prospects: Like Glyn he'll probably come second.

2. Represent a hitherto unknown socially disadvantaged group

Steve was hand-picked to take this role as the producers actively sought an amputee soldier. He's either a good choice or a bad one depending on how you look at it. The moment he clambered out of his wheelchair to go in the house every viewer and every housemate decided they might as well end the show there and then as he was clearly going to win. It's a testament to him that after five weeks viewers rank him as the most hated housemate and he has no chance of winning. But his presence has provided an interesting social experiment of the kind the show used to regularly provide. It's shown that if you're cute and 19 you can tell a woman you'd like to divide her legs and everyone will laugh, but if you're 40 and have no legs you can’t look at a woman without viewers deciding you're a disgusting pervert. And it's shown that if you're disabled, people will be nice to you and deem you a great bloke even if you're a dullard.

Prospects: Frankly he hasn’t got a leg to stand on (Steve would find that funny, honest). I expect him out in a shock eviction in 3 weeks.

3. Pretend to be stupid

This year there's a few intelligent housemates and the stupid ones are stupid in a boring way. Loud and annoying Corin is trying for the active stupid role with her fake tan, fake hair, fake bolt-ons, fake annoying accent, fake character, fake monologues in the Diary Room, and fake catchphrases. Claiming to have a vocabulary of about fifty words has proved tough for her and so she did slip up and suddenly used 'controversial', but the viewers didn’t mind. They love her, but then again they don't have to live with her.

Prospects: She'll probably win and in some small way the country will get a little dumber.

4. Start and end your faux-romance

Faux-romances have been mainly headed off at the pass this year. Rachael clearly wanted one and she got evicted. Corin tried to start one with Nathan, but he got evicted, so we're left with Josie and John-James trying the variation that hasn’t been done before of unrequited love on the part of the woman. I don’t know what to make of this as Josie is the only housemate that regularly makes me laugh. She's normal sized, which on reality tv means she's fat, and she's normal and real in every way, which means she often comes over badly on reality tv.

Prospects: If she forgets about the fake romance she'll win, otherwise she's doomed to go before the end.

5. Break the fourth-wall

Dave is going for this one in a big way in his attempts to promote his religious beliefs. He supports an unusual religion that as far as I can make out consists of running around shouting, jumping on furniture, dressing as a monk, and pretending to be drunk. I'm not sure whether his method can be deemed to be working as he's the sole member of his own religion and when he comes out it'll still have only one member. I'm amazed he's still there.

Prospects: Even the hand of God reaching down into the mire couldn’t elevate Dave's chances to the depths of hopelessness.

6. Remember your target demographic

Teenage girlies who write in txtspk and smiley faces on Facebook love grumpy Aussie John-James this year. He has the look of a surfer dude, but he enjoys belittling women, has issues, is aggressive, rude, arrogant, stupid, humourless, self-absorbed and he could start an argument in solitary confinement while asleep and gagged. In other words he has everything the teenies love.

Prospects: Will win if he keeps his shirt off.

7. Remember that most people only watch the highlights

Although Corin is the master of doing nothing for 23 hours and 58 minutes a day then providing 2 minutes of entertainment for the easily pleased, I've already mentioned her so this category will go to Rachel. She's a loud, chirpy Scouser TM and so she must be annoying to live with, but she comes over as only mildly annoying in two minutes clips a day.

Prospects: Negligible. Will get evicted next week.

8. Stick to the script

Do what the producers ask you to do and you'll get preferential treatment is a fundamental rule of this show, and this year reality tv veteran Ben is filling that role well. He's posh, lazy, selfish, self-absorbed and so dim he tried to tell 'war hero' Steve that Hitler was a decent chap. But he's filling the camp role he was picked for (essentially Freddie from last year without the warmth or humour) to perfection and so is strangely popular.

Prospects: Will probably go in a shock final eviction.

9. Have a no game-plan game-plan

Dull, alien loving geek Mario is trying to go for the under the radar approach of doing nothing for the first half of the show and then gradually exposing himself. Unfortunately now that we've all seen Mario's dangly bits several times I think he might have peaked too early.

Prospects: Will make the final and be first out.

10. Be a Alt-hero

The two remaining housemates Caiomhe (pronounced differently) and Keeley are fighting for this role. They'll both probably be up for eviction this week and whichever one survives has a shot at being the alt-hero.

Aloof Caiomhe hates the show, has never watched it, is too cool to have friends who'd watch such nonsense, and she hates the other housemates. So her couldn’t give a stuff attitude is gradually gathering a cult following.

Prospects: Zilch

Small Keeley arrived late and managed to annoy everyone within ten minutes, which is always a good sign. She actually had a job, so she's deemed to be bossy. The men in the house drool over her so she could become an Internet phenomenon. Unlikely to pick up any female votes though.

Prospects: Less than zilch.

Bleached Bones in the Dust

2010-07-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to get an early look at the cover to my Black Horse Western Bleached Bones in the Dust. It's a different composition to the ones I've had in the past so I like it, even if it doesn't have any bones, bleached or otherwise, or dust! The book will be out in January 2011.

The day British news sold its soul

2010-07-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

In the early hours of this morning a man from the NE of England shot himself. He was wanted on suspicion of killing one person and wounding two others. That was the news. But when did the facts ever get in the way of a good story? The real story was the spectacle of the rolling news coverage's chase for ratings by making true crime and suicide into entertainment.

We are told here in Britain, by the media, that our news service is the most responsible in the world; that we're spared the sensationalist dumbed-down nature of news elsewhere. I don't think that claim can ever be made again and I don't think I'll view British news in quite the same way again, as this morning I feel dirty. I feel as if I helped a man to die because I watched the coverage of 'The Hunt for Moat, Britain's most Wanted Man!' and worse, I found most of the coverage amusing. In my defence I'm a fan of media satirists Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker and I have long viewed the news as the best deadpan comedy show on tv, but perhaps I should stop doing that now. Someone died and I was laughing at the media.

It started a week ago. A prisoner came out of jail. He went round to his former girlfriend's house. He shot her, killed her new boyfriend, and then as he'd got the idea that she'd had an affair with a policeman he shot a random copper. Then he ran. As stories go it's horrible for everyone involved, but its newsworthiness is minor. At least once every few weeks something like that happens in Britain and it usually gets a brief mention on the news long after the big things going on like wars and the Tory government trying to ruin the country. And as it happened Up North and far from London where all the proper news happens it was even less likely to get on the news. Except for the fact that a few months ago a gunman went on a killing spree Up North. Although that man shot everyone before the media arrived, he still provided plenty of non-stories with which to fill up the schedules. That meant that this gunman deserved to be followed because he was still on the loose. He could kill again! So unlike the previous time where the media could cover only the aftermath, now they could cover the rising death toll as it happened, live on screen in a sure-fire ratings winning spectacular.

The first couple of days were entertaining. We had a chief constable with a perm that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1980s cop-show Juliet Bravo. We had bluff northern coppers delivering press conferences in which they talked for half an hour in amusing copper speak (t' public are oor eyes 'n ears) to report that nothing had happened other than them getting a new incident room. And we had southern reporters struggling to pronounce northern town names.

With the media taking an interest, and with budget cuts and senior jobs on the line, the police realized they needed to catch this man quickly, so they employed several thousand more coppers. The media then realized this was a big story because thousands of coppers were running around fields frightening sheep and tripping over cowpats, so big-gun reporters and presenters were turfed out of their plush London offices to visit that weird world north of Watford. So the police sent every copper in the country along with the SAS... Within a few days the media were reporting on their own over-reaction and the gunman had become Britain's most wanted man, despite having done nothing new and despite being in hiding. With it looking as if NATO would get involved the media frenzy descended on a small picturesque Northern village with plenty of nice looking pubs and hotels where the gunman was rumoured to have holed up.

The media were desperate for the body count to rise so they could spread fear, and yet nothing was happening and nobody was dying and nobody was particularly frightened. With everyone going about their business, the media tried harder. When the gunman phoned the police to say he wasn't a nutter and he wasn't a threat to anyone, the media and police reported that the gunman is a nutter who is threatening everyone so stay indoors wherever you live in the country as there's an armed nutter on the loose. The news agenda was 'a pall of fear hangs over the frightened, cowering villagers like a giant fearful pall of scary fear'. Except the images behind the media circus were: woman walking dog, farmer tending sheep, children skipping, old ladies chatting, man waving at camera. Reporters shoved mikes in the faces of locals and demanded: 'How utterly petrified are you at the terrifying thought of a heavily-armed crazed nutter on the rampage in your very own garden?' To which they got the reply that: 'Wy-I-man, I'm a canny lad, me, and t' daft bugger ain't note t' fear, pet.' While the local wandered off to do his shopping the reporters decided that was Geordie for the pall of fear was descending ever lower. We even had a BBC reporter asking a local what terrible, scary things were happening in the village right now and being told that he had no idea as the pub's tv couldn't pick up Sky News.

It became clear that the real story was one the media didn't want to report: The gunman was a local man who'd gone off the rails. The only people in danger were people who had crossed him. Everybody felt sorry for him and nobody was worried about anything other than the sight of thousands of heavily-armed police officers guarding the local chippy in case he came in for a fish supper and the scary vision of media-vampire Kay Burley from Sky News on their village green. Everyone hoped he'd give himself up, preferably after shooting up Kay. After seven days of blanket coverage of nothing happening other than locals doing their shopping, kids playing, dogs peeing on camera stands, and reporters reporting on how everything was chaotic because of all the reporters everywhere, it all came to a head last night. It turned out the gunman had been hiding in a hole on the village green where the reporters were all week and the entire British police force plus the media had missed him because they'd been too busy giving press conferences.

Hours of continuous coverage followed of the gunman threatening nobody but himself. We had excited reporters excitedly reporting that the petrified villagers had been told to stay indoors, while being jostled by happy villagers enjoying ice-creams and filming footage for youtube. We had reporters blocking the road reporting on the fact they were blocking the road and had been told to stop blocking the road and then blocking the road some more. We had reporters trying to scare random people outside the pub with rumours that their mothers might be a mile away from the gunman. We had the joy of flicking between channels to get multi-angle panoramic views of reporters from one channel interviewing reporters from other channels while being told to bugger off by police. We had a ten-mile exclusion zone that was keeping everyone from venturing within 200 yards of the scene. And we had reports from bedrooms within the exclusion zone that were more detailed and calm than anything the real reporters could manage.

After several more hours of nothing happening other than reporters running up and down the road getting in the way of the police and scaring holidaymakers, a couple of locals arrived to ask: 'Wy-I-man, why y' daft buggers settin' up t'cameras 'ere? We been watchin' t'shoot-out up yon track, pet. It's reet borin' so we're off down t'pub.' Cameras were dispatched and the footage changed to film of a tree. As darkness descended and it started to rain it got surreal. A boozed-up Paul Gascoigne, a suicidal ex-footballer with severe psychological issues, arrived to talk the gunman into giving himself up in exchange for a dressing gown and a fishing rod, and I realized I was better off watching the more realistic events on Big Brother on the other side.

I gather it went on for a few more hours until 'a shot or shots' were fired, but somewhere along the way something else died last night. Now I guess it's only a matter of time before the media are promoting a new most wanted man seeking his few moments of celebrity. Apparently shooting yourself live on tv gets better ratings than Big Brother does these days.

Review of a Fistful of Legends

2010-07-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

Review at Western Fiction Review.

Also, last week Matthew Mayo attended the annual WWA conference in which he was honoured for his short story Half a Pig which appears in the anthology. More on this later, perhaps with some pictures.

You can't teach an old dog brand new tricks

2010-06-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

The 7th series of British cop show New Tricks starts next week. As Ashes to Ashes has ended, I've given up on Dr Who, and Big Brother is in its final year, there's little I watch on tv these days. So I thought I'd say a few words in praise of probably the only on-going series I still enjoy.

New Tricks follows the activities of UCOS, a team of old cops who take on cold cases. Murders that have remained unsolved for decades are passed on for them to re-open the investigation and see what modern forensics and new policing techniques can reveal. Thankfully the stories aren't as dry as this format suggests they'll be. Every week the cops solve the unsolvable crime, but they don't waste time with forensics and modern techniques. They rely instead on old-fashioned policing methods that prove that the theme tune is wrong; you don’t need to teach old dogs brand new tricks, because the old tricks are better.

The weekly mystery stories are both as well-written and as groan-inducing as you'd expect from a cop show these days when viewers are familiar with every plot twist the mystery format has to offer. Usually you can solve the mystery before the title credits have rolled by randomly picking the least likely solution or by seeing who is the most well-known guest actor, but that's not the point of the show. Instead, it's about enjoying a seamless mixture of drama and comedy in which plots are moved on by the characters interacting and by using their own idiosyncrasies to solve the crime in a way that only these people could.

Heading up the team is Sandra Pullman. In the pilot episode she gets the job of looking after the bunch of old codgers as punishment for accidentally shooting a dog leading to the running joke of her grumbling that, 'you shoot one dog...'. Sandra has become more serious over the years. In the early seasons she was a delight, stuffing her face with fast food, having a continually failing love-life, and always being irritated by the antics of her team. More recently meatier stories have been thrust upon her involving family problems most of which haven't worked well, although that might be because the actress appears to have become a fan of unnecessary cosmetic enhancements that means she reacts to everything with the startled rabbit look.

Her three-man team are all well-drawn characters. Her main confidant is Jack Halford played by the dependable James Bolam who has been a regular face on British tv since the 60s. He's a former hard-man who solved crimes with fists and intimidation, but who retired when his wife was killed in an unexplained hit-and-run accident. Now returning to regular work well into his 60s he's bitter and a shadow of his former self, but he still has a copper's instincts. He provides the emotional core of the show. Again his character changes over the years and we see less of his melancholic side nowadays, although an arc story that ultimately, and inevitably, finds his wife's killer explains that change. Last season he got some necessary cosmetic enhancement when he finally got his eyes sorted out. In this case he looked better for it.

Sandra's problems usually come from Gerry Standing, who describes himself as being always a bad boy, but never a bastard. He has a history of being involved in dodgy dealings and corruption, although most of his past ultimately turns out to have a logical reason. Gerry is played by Dennis Waterman and in essence his role can be viewed as being his George Carter character from 70s show The Sweeney now older, but not wiser. The ups and downs of his character are usually related to the state of his teeth which have varied from painful looking to nice and white. Gerry gets most of the funny lines as a reward for singing the theme tune... as always.

The show's weird character is Brian Lane. He's a former alcoholic with severe psychological problems, a photographic memory, and obsessive tendencies, although as yet he's the only one not to have had obvious cosmetic surgery. As a character he's not even slightly believable as someone who would be allowed to investigate criminal cases, but as we get to see plenty of his home life with his long-suffering wife Esther, he is right for the show. His interaction with Esther always delivers great scenes in the short space of time they're on screen.

There are also several other recurring characters such as the inevitable shouty boss, Jack's nemesis Ricky Hanson, and Dennis Waterman's daughter that provide a nice feeling of continuity between the seasons. But sadly the general direction of the show has been to get darker, so I hope the new series steps back into the light. Dark isn’t necessarily good and last year, after 5 consistently superb seasons, the format showed signs for the first time of running out of steam. Several plots tried to make unwelcome and poorly-executed political points about the mistreatment of East European workers and there was a bizarre story that tried something different with an X-files parody but which didn’t work. Also the personal issues that are being foisted on the characters are getting more desperate.

It was inevitable that Brian would turn to the booze again, but having done so the show didn’t know what to do with him next, so it did nothing. Jack got the man who killed his wife, but that left him with nowhere to go, Gerry's ran out of daughters to annoy, and Sandra's now got a cliffhanger concerning a long-lost evil twin foster-brother, or some such nonsense. So I hope this year the show forgets about contrived personal problems and serious political messages and instead reverts back to its pre season 6 style as I need a weekly smile at the antics of UCOS.

The World Cup may be coming home

2010-06-28T00:36:00.001-07:00

If you like sport and are English, yesterday was a great day. I never thought I'd live to see the day when a very real possibility dawned that England may actually win the World Cup, but today that possibility feels real. Yesterday we beat Australia, thereby winning a series against the old enemy for the first time in, well, several decades. In fact last year I think it was 7-0 to Australia, and that flattered us.

Admittedly we scraped home by one wicket, most of Australia's best players are injured, and it needed the ECB to deem that being English now means having a grandparent who knows what a Yorkshire pudding is so that we can fill the team with South Africans and Irishmen. But still, a victory is a victory. And in fact, in some ways, England are already the holders of the World Cup, but that was in the 20 over version of the game and I still haven’t got round to thinking of that as a proper sport.

So strangely, 50 years after inventing the limited-over game it now finally seems that England have worked out how to play it. We've had moments before. There was that time in 1975 when we had Australia at 39-6, but then Gary Gilmour (not the serial killer) strode to the crease and stuffed us. Then in 1979 Boycott and Brearley forgot they were playing in a limited-over match and ground out a painstaking 50 odd in about 30 overs. And nobody can ever forget Mike Gatting proving conclusively that the reverse sweep doesn't work 25 years before Pietersen decided it would be his chosen method of getting out. But since those glory days of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory we've never really had another sniff of getting anywhere in limited-over cricket. But now suddenly Eoin Morgan, Kevin Pietersen, Craig Kieswetter and a couple of token English players to make up the numbers look like they've formed a team to be proud of. So next year we could be in with a shot at the trophy that has so far eluded us. Presumably this optimism will die next week when we take on the mighty Bangladeshis, but for now there's reasons to be cheerful.

Footnote: I've just spotted that apparently yesterday England lost in some other game involving fake tans and designer hairstyles, but I'm not sure that one really counts as a proper sport.

An interview with Derek Rutherford

2010-06-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

I've posted up a transcript of an interview carried out last weekend by a group of authors with Derek Rutherford. The lengthy answers are fascinating as they go into great detail about the author's creative process. I think it'll make interesting reading for both writers and readers.

Interview here at the Black Horse Express.

What Doctor?

2010-06-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

The latest series of the British fantasy show Dr Who ends this weekend and as I wrote a review of the first episode I suppose I ought to say something. Although what I can say will be limited as I've given up on the show, possibly forever.

I found the first episode to be fresh and interesting with a new Doctor, new companion and new production team, but my enthusiasm died quickly and after a few episodes I gave up on regular watching. I dipped in occasionally while searching for a channel that wasn't showing a bunch of millionaire fashion models mincing around a field with a round thing. But those flashes always irritated me within minutes and I didn't stay. I've just had a look at the Who forums and it seems the series is popular and the last episode was apparently: Like. The. Best. Episode. Ever. But that tends to happen most weeks so I'm still not sure if it's a weak show, it's me failing to grasp its subtleties, or it's just the sad fact I'm now a lot older than the target demographic. I think it's probably the latter.

My main problem is the new companion of Amy. The character is inconsistent and unappealing, which I gather is deliberate because there's supposed to be something mysterious about her that makes her act oddly. But I found it hard to care as I'd never seen her behaving normally. She reminds me of one of those sitcom characters whose role is to deliver one-liners and do weird things in every episode. I also don't think the actress is any good. I think I could probably get used to the new Doctor Matt Smith with time, but, to me anyhow, he comes over as a weak actor too. I've never, not once, believed in him. He gives a performance as a madcap character in which every nuance, every gesture, every line is delivered to convey that he's madcap while never once inhabiting the role. I get the feeling those two had a great time filming the show, but sadly that didn't translate into something I enjoyed watching.

But I guess it's not their fault and it's more to do with the way the series has been produced to appeal to children rather than to the inner-child in all of us. The stories make less sense than they used to, the sonic screwdriver is now a magic wand, and the bad guys are there mainly to be made into models and toys. I could moan some more, but the show doesn’t deserve criticism. It's a quality show, and it's time for me to accept that the days of quirky sci-fi from thirty odd years ago won't return and leave the children to have their fun.

Review of a Fistful of Legends

2010-06-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

Review at Writealot.

The Prairie Man

2010-06-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

I received a contract today from Hale for my western The Prairie Man. This will be my 22nd Black Horse Western and it'll appear sometime in 2011. I was pleased they accepted this one as the story is slightly different to my normal style with a strong murder mystery element. It has my usual big plot twists and is set in one of my standard fictional towns, but it's less action-orientated than usual. Usually when this happens with the first draft I beef-up the action with a few extra shoot-outs and punch-ups, but somehow that didn’t feel right for this story. So I was delighted it was accepted. Although I guess that means I'll end up redressing the balance for the next one by having as much mayhem as I can cram in. Here's my draft blurb:

Tales about the spectre of the night known as the Prairie Man were told to frighten children, but one day those tales nearly led to a tragic accident for one young boy. Hank Pierce saved Temple Kennedy's life that day and so Temple promised that one day he would save Hank's life.

Fifteen years later the two friends grew up to lead different lives. Hank became a respected citizen while Temple ended up as an outlaw, but when Hank was wrongly accused of murder the call of his childhood promise gave Temple a chance for redemption. He vowed to save Hank or die in the attempt. But when he sought to unmask the real culprit his investigation led to a man who wasn't even supposed to exist: the Prairie Man.

Novel diary - #3

2010-06-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

When I started this diary chronicling the writing of a story I said I thought it might be a fated project, and three weeks in that's now feeling possible. The welcome news I received last week that Avalon will be publishing my last Fergal O'Brien novel has meant I've spent most of my time thinking about Fergal might do next and not about this story. But I set out to chronicle a story through the good times and the ennui and so I'll soldier on. Either way this chronicle might become more intermittent if I spend more time with Fergal as I won't bother saying anything if I've written nothing.

Last time I had a few paragraphs in which an abandoned stage was found. I wrote the rest of that scene from the viewpoint of someone finding it and exploring the area searching for clues as to what had happened. He didn’t find any, sadly, as that would have helped the story develop. But when I read through what turned out to be a very flat scene afterwards to see if I could work out what might happen next I realized I'd got confused over names. The man had started out as just a name and then suddenly he'd become a sheriff halfway through. So I decided to make the stage be discovered by two people, one a lawman and one someone else.

This change enabled me to have some dialogue and so re-writing the scene made everything flow in a more interesting way. The two men, now provisionally called Sheriff Jameson and Nathan Wright, argued and had plenty of friction, although I don't know about what yet. The sheriff has a chip on his shoulder about something, and Nathan feels guilty and he wouldn’t meet the sheriff's eye. Best of all, the rewrite provided the one clue that should have been flaming obvious to me from the start bearing in mind the idea that had started me writing. So Nathan finds a book entitled Legend of the Six in the stage and he hides it from the sheriff. It has be Six rather than Seven, which is the title I started with as I now realize that Legend of the Seven sounds like a sequel to the Magnificent Seven. The scene ends with the lawman leaving Nathan in disgust and heading west and something about the book persuades Nathan to head east back the way the stage had come.

So I know have 1,500 words with some hints of various mysteries about some characters along with a potential next scene in which Nathan follows the stage route back to some location and he hopefully finds something interesting.

10% off A Fistful of Legends

2010-06-09T01:30:00.000-07:00

In June Lulu are offering 10% off the Western Anthology A Fistful of Legends featuring the 2010 Spur Award finalist short story Half A Pig. That means it retails for $14.35. The offer is open to anyone, but US buyers also have a free shipping offer. If you'd like the code to get 10% off (which incidentally can be used to buy other books at the same time up to a maximum of $100), contact me at iparnham@btinternet.com and I'll give you password.

How to win the last ever Big Brother

2010-06-08T04:31:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow for supposedly the last ever time several hundred housemates will enter the Big Brother UK house in a forlorn attempt to forge a media career. Although the omens aren’t good for a long career as these days the media forgets about BB winners faster than the previous serial killer, the omens are good that the show may bow out with a bang not a whimper.

There's a heavy nostalgia factor, I hate football, and the Internet buzz is enthusiastic after the show re-introduced 24-hour coverage so fans can enjoy watching people silently picking their noses whenever they want. And the show appears to have rediscovered a sense of fun, as against all odds the last celebrity version was entertaining and it even had some intelligent conversation. Best of all the show is planning its worst ever opening night twist with more housemates cramming into the house than there'll be people in the baying mob of a crowd. Then based on some random process their numbers will be whittled down. Now, the last time BB picked a housemate randomly, the randomness somehow randomly resulted in the random housemate being the media-obsessed wife of a millionaire media mogul who had reportedly said he'd pay anything to get his wife in the house. Four years on conspiracy fans still debate that random moment and the coverage of that girl who almost wore dresses picking a random ball has been more carefully analysed than the Zapruder film. So picking all the housemates randomly is sure to get the show off to a highly-debated disaster and BB always works best when its close to collapse.

So once those random housemates have entered the house, how can one person come out as the winner several months after the last football has been kicked? After ten series the rules of winning are fairly well known, but here's my take.

1. Go on a journey

I don’t mean an actual journey like those two aliens who disguised themselves as human beings (or it might have been the other way round) to go around London last year did. I mean it's important to do something that the producers can interpret as an emotional journey. It doesn't have to involve any real emotion, but it helps to do things like boil an egg in week 3, or have slightly less arguments in week 7 than week 6, or give up smoking when the fags run out. You can come out of the house the same obnoxious, self-absorbed, work-shy idiot you were when you went in. But as long as you've done something that will let Davina use the word journey when she's gushing over you, you could be the winner.

Note of caution: If this fails and you get kicked out early, try to avoid using the word, although four years on I still fondly remember one housemate wailing, "but my journey is not yet complete!"

2. Represent a hitherto unknown socially disadvantaged group

At first sights this is a tricky one to accomplish if you're not a member of an obviously socially disadvantaged group such as being a virgin, a transsexual, or a cross-dressing crusty with tourettes. But luckily social disadvantage exists purely in the eyes of the viewers. Two years ago a housemate with poor hygiene appeared to have it in the bag from the start, but the viewers revolted against his revolting behaviour and voted instead for the less obvious disadvantaged group of girls next door. Last year they went for the even less obvious disadvantaged group of pneumatic, brain-dead glamour models, so this only proves everyone is disadvantaged and the winner just has to work out what their disadvantage is and position themselves accordingly.

Note of caution: Being posh will never be viewed as a socially disadvantaged group.

3. Pretend to be stupid

This gets harder every year as the bar was set very high early on by some depressingly stupid people. Luckily the capacity for viewers to enjoy watching loveable idiots who are too stupid to find France on a map of France or to count up to one even with the aid of a calculator is unlimited. It's not even essential to keep up the act. You can discuss the allegorical allusions in post-modernist art a few moments after claiming you've never heard of Shakespeare, or calculate to the penny how much your agent will deduct for you showing various parts of your anatomy in lads' mags immediately after claiming not to know who the President of Britain is. Viewers accept this as part of the game and even the merest hint of knowing something about the world that can’t be found in a celebrity magazine is sure to lead to an early exit. This is doubly important to remember if you do actually have a job, so, for example, trainee teachers should show they know less than their pupils do.

Note of caution: There are no prizes for being the second most stupid person in the house. That just looks stupid.

4. Start and end your faux-romance

Pretending to have a romance with the most photogenic housemate used to be essential to ensure you could sell your non-story of your non-romance to the non-thinking part of media. Now that the media send all their investigative reporters on missions to tease out the truth about other reality shows, the rules of romance have changed. Now it's important to pretend to have a romance and then pretend to end it. This gives you plenty of coverage on the highlights and then it provides plenty of sympathy when you separate and you make it look like the pretend break-up wasn't your fault. Either way, if you're a woman remember that WAG is now a profession with a higher standing than doctor, lawyer and accountant, so ensure you make it clear that you're training to be a WAG. If you're a bloke, make sure your pretend romantic object is unrequited or appear to be too self-absorbed to know someone is pretending to fancy you.

Note of caution: Do not start and end faux-romances with every housemate in the house, especially if you are already conducting a faux-romance with someone from another reality tv show.

5. Break the fourth-wall

Appealing directly to viewers always goes down well. Having a divine revelation that you'll stop believing in God if you don’t win or stating that if you don’t win you might not be able to afford a new boob enhancement will always bring in the votes. Direct to viewers speeches are always best done in the diary room where the other housemates won't get to see you being witty, clever and bitchy. They won’t find out you’re a threat until it's too late or until you annoy a producer and they show the footage to everyone in the house. If you're not erudite enough to do this, just mumble. Subtitles give the highlights a sophisticated European film feel even when every other word is like.

Note of caution: Simon Cowell has raised the bar on mawkish appeals to viewers so dead hamsters, relatives with colds and the trauma of a particular leaky zit is not enough. The fate of the entire planet now needs to hang in the balance in your appeal.

6. Remember your target demographic

Most viewers who are old enough to pay their own phone bills don’t vote, and most viewers who are male don’t vote either, so remember who you’re trying to appeal to. If you're a bloke, try to look cute by taking your shirt off. Teenage girls don’t care if you're so obnoxious you try to pick a fight with someone when you're in the middle of getting a formal warning for picking a fight with someone. As long as your shirt is off, they'll excuse you. If you're a woman it's harder to appeal to teenage girls, but being unattractive and so not being a threat appears to work best. So pretend to be drunk a lot, worry about your looks, claim to be unlucky in love, and put on as much weight as you can. Either way avoid housework as the young voters think that's a boring thing that adults do. It'll prove you have the right priorities in life and it'll make everyone else look bad when they shout at you for being a lazy poseur.

Note of caution: Teenage viewers don’t watch BB any more. You might spend 3 months with your shirt off and all you'll get is a cold and a gay following.

7. Remember that most people only watch the highlights

Being entertaining 24 hours a day is a sure fire way of ensuring the other housemates will remove you very quickly no matter how often the producers change the rules. So pace yourself. For the first 12 weeks spend 23 and a half hours a day in bed to ensure you don’t get into arguments, but do ensure you provide two minutes of great tv a day. This means picking the moments that'll be shown on the highlights to be animated such as tasks, other people's arguments, anything involving music and dressing up, and being the last one to go to sleep at night. But remember not to leave your two minutes until after you've been evicted. Going surfing across a crowd who move out of the way will ensure you're remembered, but there are no cameras in the Casualty department.

Note of caution: Dressing up as an old woman every night will only make the highlights if you dress up as a funny old woman every night and you're not an ignorant twerp.

8. Stick to the script

The producers picked you for a reason, so do it. If they put you in because you claimed to be loud and annoying, start fights. If they put you in to be bullied, distance yourself and be a victim. If they put in you because you’re an arsonist, set fire to something. If they put you in because you said you were barking mad, be creepy enough to ensure the viewers with OFCOM on speed-dial start complaining. And when you’re in the house, listen to the coaching. If you're asked who you fancy or hate in the house, find out who the producers want you to fancy or hate. If your ex-partner gets surprisingly put in the house, be surprised. If you're walking by the diary room door and a random person is asked to come to the diary room, know that you're the chosen one and stuff those chillies down your throat until you vomit. In short, do what you’re told and the producers will love you, give you plenty of coverage, and they won’t deport you too quickly when you get kicked out for pervy behaviour.

Note of caution: Not remembering your lines is the worst BB crime. The producers will change every rule in the book to get rid of you, your best bits footage will consist of you getting evicted, Davina won't say you were a legendary housemate, and George Lamb will forget your name.

9. Have a no game-plan game-plan.

The show is based on the idea that after 3 months the viewers get to know everyone thoroughly and so they can decide who is the nicest person. This is a dangerous area for housemates because after 3 months everyone becomes boring and worse, most housemates are boring people anyhow. So create interest by having a game plan to be someone else, preferably someone more horrible than you are. Then, when you revert to being your usual boring self viewers will like you. Make sure you ruthlessly eliminate your rivals, stab everyone in the back, and seek allies everywhere to avoid being nominated. You cannot win without a game-plan, but whatever game-plan you choose, do not on any account ever admit you have a game-plan or even look as if you have a game-plan. Even stating that you don't have a game-plan means you've thought about it too much. Nominations should cause you more pain than dental torture and it's a bad idea to shake a fist in triumph when people you hate are evicted. You must appear that you've just turned up to have fun, that you have never, ever, not once thought about winning, and that when you strategically voted for your nearest rival in the final week it was a pure accident.

Note of caution: Include a small part of your own character in the housemate and catchphrases you create, so Thai cookie monsters and chirpy 'I'm only having a laugh, me' geordies are a bad idea.

10. Be a Alt-hero

If all else fails, position yourself as the Alt-hero. Work out who the teenage girls will vote for, then try to be an Internet phenomenon instead. Being quiet, boring and asleep will help as viewers will decide you have hidden depths as after doing nothing for 3 months you must surely be a very deep person. Being dull will ensure you don't get mentioned on the spin-off shows and so it will look as if the producers don't want you to win, appealing even more to the fans of alt-heroes. Even better, when you do something such as eating a cake or dressing up as a cake or making a cake or being in the same room as a cake, it'll appear to be comedy gold. This plan does need preparation though, so get the website set up beforehand, get the facebook campaign started, and get friends to spam the BB forums with support. Then sit back, do nothing, and wait for viewers to bestow hidden depths upon you.

Note of caution: Sadly, you'll be forgotten about ten seconds after Davina troops off to the dole queue, so all in all it might be best to get kicked out in week one and get a job instead.

A few words in your shell-like, pal, about Gene Hunt

2010-06-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

The Tainted Archive's TV Cops weekend are running my article on Gene Hunt.

Fergal O'Brien rides again.

2010-06-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

I received the welcome news today that Avalon will be publishing my western The Miracle of Santa Maria. This will be my 6th Avalon western and the 6th in the Fergal O'Brien series. The story follows on directly from the events in The Treasure of Saint Woody and it's a tale I'm particularly delighted will be published as I really enjoyed writing it.

Fergal is a snake-oil seller, a purveyor of a universal remedy to cure all ills who along with his side-kick Randolph McDougal inevitably gets into scrapes when he tries to pull off outlandish money-making schemes. In this story though, for the first time ever, Fergal's motives are noble as he comes to the aid of a run-down mission, so it was nice to show his kinder side, an element of his character he usually keeps well-hidden. The story also finally resolves the sub-plot that has been developing since The Flying Wagon concerning the mysterious Woody and his even more mysterious closed box. I've always had the ending to this plot in mind since Woody's box first drifted onto a blank page about 5 years ago, but I had wondered whether I'd ever get there. The story also combines the usual, for my Avalon westerns anyhow, mish-mash of odd things such as an astronomical angle of the Pike's Peak eclipse, some bad Shakespearean acting, swordfighting, nuns, and the miracle of the title. Oh and I'm pleased that a prime contender for the worst joke ever to appear in a western might now see print.

The book will be published in 2011, and there'll be details here about it later. And now that Fergal will be riding again I guess I'll have to ask him what he wants to do next.

Novel diary - #2

2010-06-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

I've still been working on another tale so I've made little progress with written down words this week, but some ideas are bubbling away happily. In a previous article I talked about how making connections is the important thing for me in writing. Although I wouldn't go so far as to call it a system, I usually need to connect at least three ideas before I have something that feels substantial enough to start writing. And usually those three ideas turn out to be a character idea, a plot idea and something real.

The real thing that came to mind is western dime novels and the way that real people who would later be viewed heroically lived at the same time as fictional heroes were being created. I used that idea for comic effect in The Treasure of Saint Woody, but that idea had started out with serious intent so I've felt it has more mileage even if I haven't been able to think of an angle. As it turned out I watched an old episode of the tv cop show Morse this week where tabloid reporters try to destroy Morse because of his bookish ways. It included a scene I've always liked where he solves the murder from the blurb of an old book, letting him deliver the proud line at the end that he got the answer from, "something I read in a book."

That made me think it'd be nice to get that line into a story somewhere. So I'm thinking now that my working title of The Legend of the Seven refers to an old book, but somewhere in it is the solution to a mystery. So that's two ideas of something a bit real with early western literature and a plot point of someone reading a book. I just need a hint of a character. And sometimes when nothing character based comes to mind I resort to the simple solution of having a bloke ride into town. I don't know who the bloke is or where the town is, but I hope I'll find out quickly.

I tried that and for variety I decided my bloke would be on a stage. So I wrote a stage, but I struggled when I came to think of who the colourful folk inside would be. I had a walk round the garden and when I came back I decided if I didn't know who was on the stage maybe I shouldn't try. Maybe nobody is on the stage. So that's what I have: about three paragraphs describing a stage standing alone and abandoned somewhere. How it got there, where it was going, what happened to it, and how that links in with a book and a legend involving the number seven I don't know yet. But it's a start and I'm intrigued enough now to carry on.