![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Charlie's newsletter
Aug. 3rd, 2018 04:23 pmWell, it didn’t come home, but I did. And if that makes no sense, the first part refers to the football world cup, although the England lads did much better than expected, while the second part refers to our return after our trip around parts of the east of Scotland. Oh, I do like a holiday, but you can’t beat coming home.
News
Forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but people do ask, so here are the re-issue dates for the Cambridge Fellows mysteries books with Endeavour media.
9th October Lessons for Survivors
26th October Lessons for Idle Tongues pre-orders
2nd November Lessons for Suspicious Minds
23rd November Lessons for Idle Tongues
7th December Lessons for Sleeping Dogs
There’ll also be a novella length story in December, via The Right Chair press which is my own imprint.
Lindenshaw book 4 – working title Old Sins – is nearing completion, while my weird book that defies categorisation is now through polish up stage and I’ll be looking to find it a home. Writing and submitting takes second place to preparing for UK Meet at this time of year!
As usual, Cochrane Central currently reverberates to the sound of sports events on tellys and ipads and laptops. I had the swimming on earlier, which made me think of Tumble Turn, my Olympics themed story. Here’s a snippet:
Matty gave his mum a great big hug and a kiss, so I gave her one as well.
“What are you two daft beggars doing?”
“Celebrating of course, Mum.” Matty gave her another smacker. “London got the Olympics, even though old misery guts said that they were bound to give the Games to Paris.”
“I never did,” I protested. “I just said we weren’t to count our chickens before they were hatched.” Matty nutmegged me for that; I swear my scalp was sore for days, but I didn’t care. We had the Olympics and I’d already done all the calculations—I’d just have graduated from Uni in summer 2012 so there wouldn’t be anything stopping me watching the Games every chance I got, remote in hand to flick between the rowing and the modern pentathlon. We won the team gold in that in Montreal, 1976—my dad told me all about it, including the tale of some Russian army officer getting caught for cheating. I used to think he’d made that bit up until I found the story on Wikipedia.
“What a pair. I suppose you’ll want to go, won’t you?” Mrs. White rolled her eyes. “You’ll have to ask your dad to pay. I can’t afford it.”
“I don’t want just to sit in the stands, Mrs. White. I want to be taking part.” I high-fived Matty. “I’ll make sure he gets tickets, so he can watch me.”
“Oh, Ben.” She rolled her eyes again. “I’ll just get you lads a sandwich, you must be starving.” Mrs. White turned on her heels, looking back over her shoulder as she reached the door, to give me her “Oh, Ben. You poor lamb” look.
I like Matty’s mum, I like her a lot, and she’d been a real rock to him when he was feeling a bit lost after his dad left, but she likes to put labels on things and stick them away in compartments.
“Second wives are like cats, only in it for what they can get. Once they spot a better home they’ll up sticks and go there.” The second Mrs. White came in for a fair bit of the first Mrs. White’s labelling.
“Matty’s from a broken home, so he can’t ever be expected to do as well as the other boys at school.” That was another one of her favourites, closely followed by “Ben’s got cerebral palsy, poor lamb. Of course that means he can’t do what the other boys do.”
I gave up arguing with her. I used to hear her tell Matty something along the lines of him making sure he looked after me when we went to parties, because I had cerebral palsy—I think she thought Matty managed to wake up each day and forget that—and so I wouldn’t be able to join in any fun that was going on. If she’d seen me on the dance floor giving ABBA some welly I suspect she’d have pretended not to notice as it would have shaken her preconceptions.
Matty was different. As soon as his mum had left the room that auspicious day, he’d just rolled his eyes, winked and said that if I didn’t get him the best seats in the house to watch me in 2012, then he’d thump me. I punched him a couple of times and we started to laugh, because life’s good when you’re fourteen and you don’t know your limits. Matty always believed in me.
And finally
Has to be a snap from bonny Scotland.
Charlie
News
Forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but people do ask, so here are the re-issue dates for the Cambridge Fellows mysteries books with Endeavour media.
9th October Lessons for Survivors
26th October Lessons for Idle Tongues pre-orders
2nd November Lessons for Suspicious Minds
23rd November Lessons for Idle Tongues
7th December Lessons for Sleeping Dogs
There’ll also be a novella length story in December, via The Right Chair press which is my own imprint.
Lindenshaw book 4 – working title Old Sins – is nearing completion, while my weird book that defies categorisation is now through polish up stage and I’ll be looking to find it a home. Writing and submitting takes second place to preparing for UK Meet at this time of year!
As usual, Cochrane Central currently reverberates to the sound of sports events on tellys and ipads and laptops. I had the swimming on earlier, which made me think of Tumble Turn, my Olympics themed story. Here’s a snippet:
Matty gave his mum a great big hug and a kiss, so I gave her one as well.
“What are you two daft beggars doing?”
“Celebrating of course, Mum.” Matty gave her another smacker. “London got the Olympics, even though old misery guts said that they were bound to give the Games to Paris.”
“I never did,” I protested. “I just said we weren’t to count our chickens before they were hatched.” Matty nutmegged me for that; I swear my scalp was sore for days, but I didn’t care. We had the Olympics and I’d already done all the calculations—I’d just have graduated from Uni in summer 2012 so there wouldn’t be anything stopping me watching the Games every chance I got, remote in hand to flick between the rowing and the modern pentathlon. We won the team gold in that in Montreal, 1976—my dad told me all about it, including the tale of some Russian army officer getting caught for cheating. I used to think he’d made that bit up until I found the story on Wikipedia.
“What a pair. I suppose you’ll want to go, won’t you?” Mrs. White rolled her eyes. “You’ll have to ask your dad to pay. I can’t afford it.”
“I don’t want just to sit in the stands, Mrs. White. I want to be taking part.” I high-fived Matty. “I’ll make sure he gets tickets, so he can watch me.”
“Oh, Ben.” She rolled her eyes again. “I’ll just get you lads a sandwich, you must be starving.” Mrs. White turned on her heels, looking back over her shoulder as she reached the door, to give me her “Oh, Ben. You poor lamb” look.
I like Matty’s mum, I like her a lot, and she’d been a real rock to him when he was feeling a bit lost after his dad left, but she likes to put labels on things and stick them away in compartments.
“Second wives are like cats, only in it for what they can get. Once they spot a better home they’ll up sticks and go there.” The second Mrs. White came in for a fair bit of the first Mrs. White’s labelling.
“Matty’s from a broken home, so he can’t ever be expected to do as well as the other boys at school.” That was another one of her favourites, closely followed by “Ben’s got cerebral palsy, poor lamb. Of course that means he can’t do what the other boys do.”
I gave up arguing with her. I used to hear her tell Matty something along the lines of him making sure he looked after me when we went to parties, because I had cerebral palsy—I think she thought Matty managed to wake up each day and forget that—and so I wouldn’t be able to join in any fun that was going on. If she’d seen me on the dance floor giving ABBA some welly I suspect she’d have pretended not to notice as it would have shaken her preconceptions.
Matty was different. As soon as his mum had left the room that auspicious day, he’d just rolled his eyes, winked and said that if I didn’t get him the best seats in the house to watch me in 2012, then he’d thump me. I punched him a couple of times and we started to laugh, because life’s good when you’re fourteen and you don’t know your limits. Matty always believed in me.
And finally
Has to be a snap from bonny Scotland.
Charlie
