This week we have:
An update from Jodi Taylor
Win a SIGNED hardback and exclusive dinosaur stickers when you pre-order OUT OF TIME by Jodi Taylor from any retailer
A David Sands Writing Competition entry: Wasted Trips by John Currier
This Week in History: The Birth of Trench Warfare in WW1
Jodi Taylor Book Recommendation: These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer💙📚
A joke from the #SillySunday thread in Jodi’s Fans and Readers Facebook Group
The Book of the Month is About Time by Jodi Taylor
There’s plenty to read this week and you can see everything new on the blog too. CLICK HERE for the blog.
Hello everyone.
I’m just taking a moment away from the typeface to scribble a few words for this week’s newsletter. Plus – Hazel’s back from her honeymoon so no more slacking!
A couple of things to mention
Firstly – and imminently – the Murder Mystery Weekend on the 27th and 28th September. I believe all the tickets have now been sold, and I’m looking forward to seeing old friends again and making new ones. And not from the floor this time. I’m not the corpse for this one, so I am very much looking forward to actually being able to eat the scrumptious afternoon tea and not choking on my own fake blood. And no, Karin, the teaspoonful of cocoa did not improve the flavour even the tiniest bit!
Secondly – and slightly less imminently – the launch of Out of Time at Battersea Power Station on the 8th of October. The bookshop there were polite enough to say they’d love to have us back! I’m really looking forward to it. Does anyone know if Lift 109 is open after dark? Imagine seeing all of lit-up London spread out before you.
Caimh McDonnell is the other guest – his latest Stranger Times story – Ring the Bells is out on the same day. So two authors for the price of one ticket! You can’t help feeling sorry for the unfortunate soul hosting that event, can you, Hazel? Mwah – ha - ha!
If you have any questions for either me or Caimh, use the leave a comment button below.
Both of us will be signing copies of our books on the night and I’m really looking forward to it. See you there (or you enjoy the video of the evening in due course.)
What next? Yes – I’m just finishing off Smallhope and Pennyroyal 2 – A Family Affair. That goes off to Headline next week, and I draw breath and turn to the next one – St Mary’s 15 – Well, That Could Have Gone Better.
In other news, I should be seeing the first drafts of the cover for Murder at Martingale Manor soon. I’ve seen a rough sketch dash which I loved – asked for my comments I scribbled MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD! all over it. I shall be interested to see how much blood my publisher deems appropriate.
Best wishes everyone,
love Jodi x
Win a SIGNED hardback and exclusive dinosaur stickers when you pre-order OUT OF TIME by Jodi Taylor
The Time Police are back in Out of Time, the brand new novel from Jodi Taylor!
And even better, we’re giving you the chance to win a hardback signed by Jodi herself and some exclusive dinosaur stickers.
Simply pre-order your copy in any format you like, from any retailer you like, and upload your proof of purchase into the form below. You’ll be automatically entered. Good luck!
Wasted Trips by John Currier
I'm not entirely sure how I did it. I haven't been able to re-create it. Maybe it had something to do with the location, or with the radio transmitter station that sat outside my back fence. Whatever it was, I can't recapture it. I brought all my equipment with me and even tried to reposition it all, just as I remembered it, but no luck.
Even if I never get it to work again, at least I can say I've actually traveled in time. Not many people can say that. I can even prove it. Or I have some pretty good evidence, anyway.
Time travel was never the goal, you understand. I was just killing time. I was right out of college, looking for something to take my mind off a dead-end job. Being a delivery boy is okay, but it's not very fulfilling. Not much room for advancement either.
I was playing with some electrical equipment I'd scrounged up--some wire, an old oscilloscope, radio tubes, a transformer and such. I didn't even know what I was going to do with it all. Well, I had something of a plan.
I should add that this was back in the 1980’s. I was trying to create a stereo speaker that didn't need actual woofers and tweeters. I wanted to come up with a way to produce an electronic field around the listener, around me, which would allow me to shut out external noise; hear perfect sound, unhindered by the limitations of speaker materials; and do it in such a way that it couldn't be heard outside of a specific, and very limited, radius. You could say I wanted to create headphones without the need for headphones. Pretty ambitious for its day I suppose, and I had no clue how I might go about it. I had just enough electronics savvy to be dangerous. In fact, I probably could have killed myself. But I didn't. I traveled in time!
Actually, I was pretty stupid about the whole thing. I'm more and more convinced about my lack of brains now that I find there's no way to make the journey anymore. I could have seen great events in history, met famous people, changed the outcome of battles. God! Who knows what I could have done? But I, in my adolescent short-sightedness, decided to play games.
This Week in History: The Birth of Trench Warfare in WW1
On 18 September 1914, during the First Battle of the Aisne, the armies of France, Britain, and Germany began digging the first permanent trenches of the First World War. This marked the moment when the war, which many had expected to be swift and mobile, transformed into the long, grinding conflict that came to define the Western Front.
In the opening weeks of the war, German forces had swept through Belgium and northern France, driving back the Allies in a series of fast-moving engagements. By early September, however, the Allies had checked the German advance at the Battle of the Marne. The Germans withdrew north to the line of the River Aisne, where they entrenched themselves on high ground.
When the Allies attempted to dislodge them, they too found themselves forced to dig in. By 18 September, both sides had constructed elaborate defensive earthworks, complete with firing steps, parapets, and barbed wire. What had begun as improvised cover quickly evolved into the distinctive trench systems that would dominate the next four years.
Jodi Taylor Book Recommendation: These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer💙📚
The wit, eloquence, and historical finesse of the incomparable Georgette Heyer. There's no one quite like her for writing comedies of manners. Despite the delicious froth of some of her narratives, an underlying realism and writerly genius makes these books endure.
Have you enjoyed this book too?
A joke from the #SillySunday thread in Jodi’s Fans and Readers Facebook Group
This week’s joke is from Hazel Harper:
Why do the French eat snails?
Because they don’t like fast food.
The Book of the Month is About Time
This is the fourth book in the Time Police series and for reasons which now escape me, I thought it would be a good idea to cram all the action into one 24-hour period.
[I do sometimes wonder about my thought processes]
Anyway, I threw everything at everyone in this book. Jane’s family trauma – her grandmother – the breakup of Team 236 – America – the unbelievable but unbeatable team of Max and Varma – Callen – everything happens in this one. Great fun to write but complicated. I had charts, diagrams, timelines, major plot points and bits of dialogue scribbled all over the walls and scattered across the floor. And there were a great many sleepless nights as I wrestled with resolving enough issues to satisfy my readers while also making it very clear there was a lot more still to come. I definitely had a few Max moments during this one. You know – those moments when she wonders why on earth she didn’t take that nice job at the abattoir.
It was done eventually and I was quite pleased with it. I did enjoy writing Jane’s horrible grandmother and suggesting she was a truly unpleasant person without going overboard about it. The best bit, though, was trying to calculate how long it would take someone to hit the ground when thrown out of a helicopter.
Many of you will have noticed that maths is not my strong point. I always put it like that because it implies I do actually have strong points, which according to my family is debatable.
I am aware of the thirty feet per second per second thingy, although how to apply it was well beyond my simple abilities. The whole story is told in the Author’s Note at the end of the book but once again I’d like to thank Messrs Hammond, Clarkson and May for their practical advice concerning caravans, helicopters and the dropping of one from the other.
My careful research however was rubbished by Headline who apparently have proper mathematicians, who, presumably, have nothing better to do than criticise their author’s erratic calculations. At this point I should say that their version was nowhere near as dramatic as mine but eventually I merged the two theories – so the ending manages to be both exciting and inaccurate. Which is quite a feat.
Enjoy …