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Charlie's latest newsletter
Sep. 27th, 2019 03:52 pmNewsletter 228
We survived the festival of sport that has been the last few weekends, although we are broken people. I can’t take another cricket match that goes down to the last ball of the last over. It’s like I play every match while I watch it…
News
The diary for 2020 (which seems horribly close on the horizon) is starting to fill up. There’s UK meet, so if you’re interested in finding out more, visit the event website and sign up for our newsletter. Tickets go on sale in just over a week. Before that I have two panels – one romance and one crime – at Portsmouth bookfest and I seem to have signed up for a podcast (more details of which nearer the time) so people can all hear my “posh cockney” accent. Lord love a duck and other colourful expressions.
Contract signed on the next Lindenshaw book which is provisionally titled a Carriage of Misjustice, after a notable word mix up by our youngest. (It must run in the family as I always want to call windsurfers lawnmowers.)
Both my Williams and Whiting books are a snip on kindle at £1.99 ($2.47). An Act of Detection features one old story and one brand new with my actor laddy/amateur detectives, who try to play Holmes and Watson offscreen as well as on. Pack up your Troubles draws together three previously separately published stories with a WWI theme.
Here’s a snippet from one of them, Hallowed Ground
There was me, the padre and a packet of Black Cats. And bugger all else except the pitch dark night. Me, the padre and a packet of Black Cats we didn’t dare light any of, because the Germans might have spotted the glow and that would have been that.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there, but I guess neither of us were. He’d been out to take church parade for the lads and wanted to return to base so he could do the same for another poor group of sods the next day. I’d given him a lift from the casualty clearing station, and we were both heading back, when a shell took a fancy to the piece of ground just to the left of us, the little strip we’d played cricket on just two weeks previously, before the Germans moved further forward. Up went me, the padre, the car and all, including Stevens, the poor injured lad we were taking back with us. The lad who was at present scattered all over the field, with his legs at third slip and his head lolling around square leg, if you follow me.
The padre was pretty cut up about it: he’d not long been in France and nothing he’d heard or read had prepared him for the reality of modern war. He wanted to bury Stevens there and then but he’d have ended up getting the three of us buried.
I got him settled into an old shell hole. At least, I got his body settled, because his mind took a bit longer. He kept saying that Stevens would have survived if we’d stayed put, but that was just the shock talking. I know that; I’m a doctor. That’s how I also know that Stevens would have had no chance if we hadn’t moved him and a pretty slim one even if we’d got him back. That’s why we’d taken the shorter way – my decision – because time was one thing Stevens didn’t have. I got that through to the padre eventually, but he was still uneasy. Maybe he was guilty that he’d survived and Stevens hadn’t. It happens.
Me, the padre and the Black Cats. Until I noticed my pack, which by some miracle had been thrown through the air and landed – pretty well intact – about twenty feet from where we were. I reckoned I could crawl over and get it, so long as I stayed quiet. There didn’t seem to be any of the enemy out on night patrol, but the padre wouldn’t have it.
“It’s not worth the risk,” he said, “whatever’s in there.”
“You might not think that come the middle of the night when you’d be grateful for a wee drop from my hip flask. Think of it as medicinal,” I added, because you never know with these clergy types. Some of them seem to think Jesus turned the water into wine so everybody could wash in it. “I’ve got some chocolate creams, too.”
That seemed to settle the matter, although halfway across those twenty feet – which felt like a hundred yards – hearing a nearby crump made me wonder if I shouldn’t have argued. Although I suppose if your number’s going to come up it can happen as easily in a hole as in the open. I kept going, grabbed the bag and headed back. The look of relief on the padre’s face, seen by a Very light’s timely illumination, was a picture. You’d have thought I was the Archangel Michael himself, come to bear him up to safety on a fiery chariot or something.
And finally – we're off to Lincolnshire soon to poke around a Mosquito. Same place as we had our wonderful Lancaster experience a few years back.
Charlie
We survived the festival of sport that has been the last few weekends, although we are broken people. I can’t take another cricket match that goes down to the last ball of the last over. It’s like I play every match while I watch it…
News
The diary for 2020 (which seems horribly close on the horizon) is starting to fill up. There’s UK meet, so if you’re interested in finding out more, visit the event website and sign up for our newsletter. Tickets go on sale in just over a week. Before that I have two panels – one romance and one crime – at Portsmouth bookfest and I seem to have signed up for a podcast (more details of which nearer the time) so people can all hear my “posh cockney” accent. Lord love a duck and other colourful expressions.
Contract signed on the next Lindenshaw book which is provisionally titled a Carriage of Misjustice, after a notable word mix up by our youngest. (It must run in the family as I always want to call windsurfers lawnmowers.)
Both my Williams and Whiting books are a snip on kindle at £1.99 ($2.47). An Act of Detection features one old story and one brand new with my actor laddy/amateur detectives, who try to play Holmes and Watson offscreen as well as on. Pack up your Troubles draws together three previously separately published stories with a WWI theme.
Here’s a snippet from one of them, Hallowed Ground
There was me, the padre and a packet of Black Cats. And bugger all else except the pitch dark night. Me, the padre and a packet of Black Cats we didn’t dare light any of, because the Germans might have spotted the glow and that would have been that.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there, but I guess neither of us were. He’d been out to take church parade for the lads and wanted to return to base so he could do the same for another poor group of sods the next day. I’d given him a lift from the casualty clearing station, and we were both heading back, when a shell took a fancy to the piece of ground just to the left of us, the little strip we’d played cricket on just two weeks previously, before the Germans moved further forward. Up went me, the padre, the car and all, including Stevens, the poor injured lad we were taking back with us. The lad who was at present scattered all over the field, with his legs at third slip and his head lolling around square leg, if you follow me.
The padre was pretty cut up about it: he’d not long been in France and nothing he’d heard or read had prepared him for the reality of modern war. He wanted to bury Stevens there and then but he’d have ended up getting the three of us buried.
I got him settled into an old shell hole. At least, I got his body settled, because his mind took a bit longer. He kept saying that Stevens would have survived if we’d stayed put, but that was just the shock talking. I know that; I’m a doctor. That’s how I also know that Stevens would have had no chance if we hadn’t moved him and a pretty slim one even if we’d got him back. That’s why we’d taken the shorter way – my decision – because time was one thing Stevens didn’t have. I got that through to the padre eventually, but he was still uneasy. Maybe he was guilty that he’d survived and Stevens hadn’t. It happens.
Me, the padre and the Black Cats. Until I noticed my pack, which by some miracle had been thrown through the air and landed – pretty well intact – about twenty feet from where we were. I reckoned I could crawl over and get it, so long as I stayed quiet. There didn’t seem to be any of the enemy out on night patrol, but the padre wouldn’t have it.
“It’s not worth the risk,” he said, “whatever’s in there.”
“You might not think that come the middle of the night when you’d be grateful for a wee drop from my hip flask. Think of it as medicinal,” I added, because you never know with these clergy types. Some of them seem to think Jesus turned the water into wine so everybody could wash in it. “I’ve got some chocolate creams, too.”
That seemed to settle the matter, although halfway across those twenty feet – which felt like a hundred yards – hearing a nearby crump made me wonder if I shouldn’t have argued. Although I suppose if your number’s going to come up it can happen as easily in a hole as in the open. I kept going, grabbed the bag and headed back. The look of relief on the padre’s face, seen by a Very light’s timely illumination, was a picture. You’d have thought I was the Archangel Michael himself, come to bear him up to safety on a fiery chariot or something.
And finally – we're off to Lincolnshire soon to poke around a Mosquito. Same place as we had our wonderful Lancaster experience a few years back.
Charlie
