Last year (2021), I saw the Goodreads writing challenge and it seemed like a pretty good idea so I decided to have a go. I was already enjoying E C Tubb's thirty-three book "Dumarest" series (twenty-one books in) and was planning a re-read of some my favourite "Doc" Smith books so surely, I thought, it would be a doddle.

Like most authors, we have problems concentrating. In these days of the internet, of social networking, it is easy to get distracted. Facebook, Twitter and other social networks never sleep, they’re always there, always calling us; we decide to check our newsfeed (or whatever) and what seems to be a two-minute tasks leads us down the rabbit hole and ends up being an hour or more. The solution, it seems to me, is to block access to such sites during specific periods but blocking software is expensive. So I decided to turn some of my scripting skills to creating a system that would act as a barrier to such sites.

English is a weird language and G Nolst Trenité's poem, "The Chaos", demonstrates that only too well. Written from the point of view of a non-English student of the language, the poem emphasises how difficult it is for the foreign learner to pronounce many English words which is, of course, problematic since English is arguably the most important global language.

I'm a geek, an atheist and [somewhat] pro-science but I still love Christmas so is it any surprise that I love humorous pieces like this one? It's arguably one of my all-time favourite pieces of Christmas fun. Bear in mind this was first published way back before the millennium so some of the figures are a little dated; for example, there are probably around two and half billion children in the world today compared to a mere two billion back then.

Originally an idea for a sort of interview article about fellow authors but I reckoned it might be worth doing one on myself in the first instance. In this article I discuss my interest in writing, entertainment, my qualifications, my career, food & drink, my favourite colour and the basis of my personal philosophy.

Propaganda films have the aim of representing the expected behaviour of people under stressful conditions. The objectives identified in the protagonists are loyalty and success, not survival. All propaganda films have four types of character and, in order to accomplish this, they all represent only one side of the story. This article uses the movie, "Independence Day" (1996) to demonstrate how it represents a classic propaganda movie.

Having recently re-watched Joss Whedon's "Serenity", I enjoyed it rather more than I did when I saw it in the cinema. I was a huge fan of the series (still am) and, naturally enough, my expectations were high. the guy is smart! Everything about Whedon screams GENIUS to me so I was so looking forward to seeing the film and, unfortunately, I think it fails to deliver on several key levels.

Two excellent books from Erec Stebbins, the latest novels in his "Intel 1" techno thriller series. Set in both Iran and the US, the latter being the focus, "Androcide" is the fifth in the "Intel 1" series dealing primarily with a nightmare killer against a background of a US sliding to the right on a tide of popular fascism. "China Girl" is the sixth book and continues on from "Androcide" where we get to see the real nightmare of a now elected President Suite and his fascist administration.

Having seen several alternative versions of "War of the Worlds" Byron Haskin's 1953 film, "The War of the Worlds" (1953), Jeff Wayne's Musical Version, "War of the Worlds" (1978) and Spielberg's, "The War of the Worlds" (2005) none of which were the version of Wells' most famous book that I wanted to see I was very keen to see the BBC's new "The War of the Worlds" (2019). After Jeff Wayne's masterful musical version, I knew what I wanted and it looked very much like this was going to deliver it.

"Let Slip The Dogs of War", Book 2 of the "Abyssal Void War" series is near complete. It's written and is currently in various late stages of my new editing process. I am being "assisted" by the Grammarly application which, while I don't accept its recommendations all the time, helps me to spot some of the flaws in my writing. That has the advantage of allowing my beta readers, editors and eventually my readers to concentrate on my story rather than being disturbed from the narrative by entirely avoidable mistakes.