Newsletter one hundred and twenty two
Mar. 6th, 2015 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneApologies for larger than usual gap between newsletters. We were away in York a fortnight ago, having a grand time but struggling for internet access. Normal service has now resumed...
News
I was one of several authors interviewed by Sarah Frantz for an article in RT magazine. She asked, among other things, how much or how little I use British slang, to which my answer was, “As much as my editor will let me get away with, but not so much as to make the story impenetrable, or where a particularly word may lead to confusion or embarrassment.”
I’ve uploaded another story to my free fiction group.
. That’s where I keep a growing collection of short, free stories – you can just join and read. The latest offering is “The Uneven Chance”, which was in the anthology “I Do Two”. It was the first outing for Roger and Miles, who appeared again in Dreams of a Hero.
Excerpt:
“A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a civil partner.”
“That’s not quite what the sublime Miss Austen wrote,” Roger Nicholson reflected, although the girl did seem fairly enlightened. Perhaps if she’d lived two hundred years later she might have come up with a “Pride and Prejudice” de nos jours where Mr. Darcy would encounter a handsome young man full of spirit if lacking in breeding. Roger couldn’t work out if there would be more chance of a novel as good as Austen’s becoming a classic even though it dealt with the love that still encountered difficulties with speaking its name, or him meeting his own equivalent of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
He’d met a few Johnny Wickham types in his time, along with Rawdon Crawleys, yet never a Nicholas Nickleby or even a Heathcliff. Plenty of potentially uncivil partners along the way. Now he was in the position of being always the usher, seeing people to their seats and smiling politely but never the one signing the register or taking the vows. And while he realised he had no biological clock at risk of running down, unlike one of his sisters who seemed desperate to find Mr. Right before her ovaries shrivelled like raisins, at thirty-one he was hardly a spring chicken. It wouldn’t be long before the lines and wrinkles started to develop from the rudimentary to the bleeding obvious and all he’d be fit for was some sad little advert in the Kindred Spirits “Men seeking men” section of the Daily Telegraph. A dreary little piece along the lines of Well preserved male, 50, GSOH, solvent, seeks man 20-30 for fun and friendship. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Read the rest here.
Inspiration
The tubs in my garden, just an hour ago – spring has sprung a little!
News
I was one of several authors interviewed by Sarah Frantz for an article in RT magazine. She asked, among other things, how much or how little I use British slang, to which my answer was, “As much as my editor will let me get away with, but not so much as to make the story impenetrable, or where a particularly word may lead to confusion or embarrassment.”
I’ve uploaded another story to my free fiction group.
. That’s where I keep a growing collection of short, free stories – you can just join and read. The latest offering is “The Uneven Chance”, which was in the anthology “I Do Two”. It was the first outing for Roger and Miles, who appeared again in Dreams of a Hero.
Excerpt:
“A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a civil partner.”
“That’s not quite what the sublime Miss Austen wrote,” Roger Nicholson reflected, although the girl did seem fairly enlightened. Perhaps if she’d lived two hundred years later she might have come up with a “Pride and Prejudice” de nos jours where Mr. Darcy would encounter a handsome young man full of spirit if lacking in breeding. Roger couldn’t work out if there would be more chance of a novel as good as Austen’s becoming a classic even though it dealt with the love that still encountered difficulties with speaking its name, or him meeting his own equivalent of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
He’d met a few Johnny Wickham types in his time, along with Rawdon Crawleys, yet never a Nicholas Nickleby or even a Heathcliff. Plenty of potentially uncivil partners along the way. Now he was in the position of being always the usher, seeing people to their seats and smiling politely but never the one signing the register or taking the vows. And while he realised he had no biological clock at risk of running down, unlike one of his sisters who seemed desperate to find Mr. Right before her ovaries shrivelled like raisins, at thirty-one he was hardly a spring chicken. It wouldn’t be long before the lines and wrinkles started to develop from the rudimentary to the bleeding obvious and all he’d be fit for was some sad little advert in the Kindred Spirits “Men seeking men” section of the Daily Telegraph. A dreary little piece along the lines of Well preserved male, 50, GSOH, solvent, seeks man 20-30 for fun and friendship. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Read the rest here.
Inspiration
The tubs in my garden, just an hour ago – spring has sprung a little!
