Charlie Cochrane - Mysteries with a dash of slash, romances with just a pinch of spice

They never get old. Megan's been sharing her thoughts.. Very perceptive girl about who booked the choir and who booked the butlers! If you want to see us in all our gory, sorry glory, you can do worse than look here.

It's rare we organisers blow our own trumpets (we're British!) but I have to say we work bloody hard to make that event work. We don't want praise *sings* "we don't want pity". But when we read posts like this one from the lovely T J Masters. it makes our day.

"The whole weekend was well organised and full of awesome content. There was a lot of fun to be had and plenty of networking opportunities too. All this and yet it was organised and managed by a small team of hard working fellow authors. I have been to professionally run business conventions where valuable lessons could have been learned from the amazing UK Meet team."

Happy sighs.

Anybody mentioning rugby in general or S_r_c_ns in particular will be getting a stern talking to. Suffice to say have wrung out my hankie and am looking forward to *UK Meet this weekend in Bristol. Got my hugging muscles ready for action.

News

I’ve got two releases lined up for late July, just after I get back from being a pirate – sorry, going to the Litfest – in Penzance. Second Helpings, of which you can read an extended excerpt here and Sand, from MLR.

Sand was in the anthology Last Gasp from the new defunct (and not much lamented) Noble Romance and has been titivated for release as a standalone story.

Here’s a snippet:

I sat and tried to eat, even though my appetite had gone, watching the life of the camp go on around me.
A local lad passing by with a bundle of wood had that look of intense concentration only seen on the young, absorbed in their task. He suddenly gave a shrill, terrified cry, dropping his burden and flinging something from him, something small and dark that landed near my leg. I remember coolly thinking that whatever had been thrown had been affronted at both its unexpected flight and the hard contact with flesh.
It was a scorpion, and it rapidly took its brief revenge.
Strange how time expands at a time of crisis. I also remember thinking how Mother Nature must have known how I felt about her beasts of burden and had become determined to take her vengeance on me, proving she really was red in tooth and claw. Or rather in sting and telson. I must have cried out in pain, because everyone’s attention was on me in an instant, including the attention I most craved.
“What’s happening?” Andrew had appeared almost out of nowhere, pushing his way through the small knot of onlookers which had gathered around me.
“The boy had this in his load.” One of the conservators pointed at the small, possibly deadly creature, now smashed into an almost unidentifiable heap. The curve of the tail was still recognisable, although everything was beginning to look peculiar.
“Sorry about this, Charles,” Andrew drew his knife and efficiently cut out a piece of my flesh, clearing all the area surrounding the bite. I hardly noticed the pain, too shocked to understand fully what was going on. Nothing felt real any more. “Think it’s a scorpion sting, old man. Needed to attend to the wound as soon as I could.” His usually happy face was clouded with worry.
Some part of me couldn’t help being delighted that he cared, just as another part of me thought, Poison. This is serious.
The knife had done its work when the wave of real pain hit. I felt faint, all perception of what was happening around me fading and returning as in a dream. I was vaguely aware they’d called for the resident doctor and that someone was preparing a makeshift stretcher, to take me back to the camp. The one thing I saw most clearly was Andrew’s face—full of fear and trying very hard to hide the fact.
Just how bad was this bloody sting going to turn out to be?

Inspiration:

Because in the summer one’s thoughts turn to other sports. Sometimes.



Charlie

The team are dropping into Love Romances Café today, so please come and annoy us. Registered delegates are welcome to post excerpts!

And very funny it is, thanks to clarelondon. What are you waiting for? Hie thee hence and read it!

The first instalment of a blog story the five Spice Girls organisers of UK Meet are writing together is up at the UK Meet blog. Liam's set me up with a real cliffhanger for my turn next week.

And here's my beautiful nominees' button!

They all come along at once. Horns and Haloes features a pair of red hot school governors. The sort I never seem to get on my courses...

Love these banners/icons for UK Meet c/o Clare London and Lou Harper. Don't forget that the early bird discount offer ends at the end of January.

We'll be having two twitter chats (whatever they be) in January. One on the 10th, 16.30-17.30 GMT, about our writing families, and on the 15th (same time) about our reading family. More news about these in the new year!