The Rushford Times - A weekly newsletter from Jodi Taylor

Sent on Wednesdays to paid subscribers and Fridays to free subscribers

Jodi Taylor, Hazel Cushion, and Jodiworld Events

Jul 08, 2026

This week we have:

Jodi writing about Human Authored Scheme
Hazel writing about Surviving Britain’s Third Heatwave
Win a SIGNED hardback and one-of-a-kind signed print when you pre-order A Family Affair by Jodi Taylor
The Great Recovery Job - grab a ticket now
NEW! Writing Competition - write a short play to be performed at Jodiworld
Short Story of the Month: Christmas Past
There’s plenty to read this week and you can see everything on the blog too. CLICK HERE for the blog.

Something a little bit serious this week. As you may be aware there is a lot going on with AI at the moment. Especially the unauthorised use of copyrighted material by generative AI companies. For people who earn their living by creating – writers, artists, musicians, scriptwriters, translators, illustrators, narrators, and so forth - this is a deadly serious problem.

There are already AI-generated books available to buy. The quality of these is a little wobbly sometimes, but AI learns – and pretty quickly too – and it won’t be long before it’s possible to say, ‘Write me a book in the style of Jodi Taylor,’ and hey presto!

To be fair to them, Amazon does require AI-generated books to carry a warning clearly stating that all or part of that particular book has been generated by AI – thanks for that, Amazon – so the reader can make an informed choice.

I am a member of the Society of Authors – more about that later – who are spearheading the Human Authored Initiative.

From now on, and with the co-operation of my publishers, Headline, my books will bear the Human Authored logo. In other words, the book will have been written by me, a human being. Allegedly.

Obviously, I do use Word and Spellcheck and an online thesaurus, together with other online resources for research and fact checking, but the originality, the imagination, the thinking, the ideas, the creation, the writing, the cursing, the grumpiness, the frustration, the late nights, the repetitive strain injuries, the over-reliance on tea, cheese and chocolate – that’s all mine.

I don’t know how long it will take to update all my ebooks and print books- these things move like continental drift – but it will happen. The Human Authored logo will appear in the front matter of all my books.

Should anyone be unclear about whether the book in their hands is human-authored, a register of human-authored books is being compiled and will be available to prospective readers. I have enrolled and registered my books. It’s a long and fairly laborious process, and I will have to remember to update regularly, but it is happening, and I think it’s important that it does.

Thank you for reading this.

And now for the promised bit about the Society of Authors. Of whom I am a proud member. I also used to belong to the other SOA – the Society of Artists – and one day they sent me an online survey to complete. They wanted my opinion of various aspects of the Society, including their monthly publication, whose name it would probably be best for me not to mention.

Anyway, I was in a particularly bad mood. Hint – never complete a survey when you’re having an unrelated strop.

I’d been increasingly irritated by what I saw as the SOA’s overemphasis on watercolours- a medium I particularly dislike owing to my complete inability to produce anything that doesn’t look like mud. Why, I demanded to know, could they not produce articles on all the amazing new materials available these days. Oil sticks, metallic pastels, oil pastels, various inks in wonderfully vibrant colours and so forth. Why was every article focused on how to make one mud-coloured landscape different from any other mud-coloured landscape? And when were they going to drag themselves into at least the latter part of the 20^th century?

Feeling very much better for that, I hit send, and exactly one nanosecond later, I realised I’d sent it to the wrong SOA.

Doh!

Fearing imminent expulsion, public stoning, and worse, I defaulted to my go-to option in a crisis – ring Hazel.

I outlined the problem emphasising its serious nature because I’d really gone to town on the SOA, it’s unbalanced publication, and watercolour users in general, together with the fact I’d sent it to the Society of Authors and they were going to be not a little surprised and probably quite offended to receive nine pages of invective and criticism of a medium that wasn’t actually anything to do with them and what should I do about it?

She laughed. Yes – unbelievable but true – saying, they’re the Society of Authors, for heaven’s sake. They deal with authors. Every day. There’s nothing you can say or do that they haven’t seen a thousand times before because they deal with authors. Just write them a quick note and explain you’re an idiot. Or author as the world thinks of you.

She was right. The SOA was absolutely fine and their response was pretty much along her predicted lines. Author – idiot – idiot – author. The two terms are apparently interchangeable.

So there you are. The wonderful Society of Authors. Human Authored scheme. Idiot author.

Have a good week.

Guest Post: Surviving Britain’s Third Heatwave by Hazel Cushion

Britain is currently enduring its third heatwave of the summer, which is to say that the weather has been pleasant for slightly longer than we feel is constitutionally acceptable.

We are not built for this.

Other countries cope with heat in a calm, adult fashion. Americans produce sensible water bottles and hats. Australians lather themselves in suntan cream, move into the shade and carry on. Southern Europeans close the shutters, eat late and regard the whole thing as normal.

The British, meanwhile, stand in our kitchens in a state of damp disbelief, saying, “It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” while opening the fridge for no reason other than to look at somewhere cold.

The problem is that our houses are designed to keep heat in. This is admirable in February. Less so in July, when the bedroom has reached the temperature of the proving drawer and the sitting room feels like the tropical house at Kew Gardens.

Last week my daughter and her husband were visiting from Canada, so we decided to take them out on the boat. It was, in many ways, a perfect Dorset day. The sea was glittering, the sky was cloudless and the Jurassic Coast looked so beautiful it could have been designed by the Dorset Tourist Board after a particularly good lunch. There are days when this coastline still takes my breath away. Chalk cliffs, blue water, wheeling gulls and that wonderful sense that, if you look closely enough, the whole of history is sitting there in the rocks.

Unfortunately, there was also no wind.

Sailors spend most of the year yearning for sunshine, then the sunshine arrives and we remember that boats are basically floating greenhouses with ropes.

By evening, the cabin had achieved the internal temperature of a successful sourdough starter. Sleeping below was clearly impossible so I took myself up on deck and decided to sleep under the stars.

This sounds romantic.

It was not.

The stars were lovely, but so were the mosquitoes, who had apparently received advance notice of my arrival. To protect myself, I covered myself from head to toe in a fitted single sheet. Not draped elegantly. Not arranged in a casual nautical fashion. Completely covered.

I looked like a dead body in a shroud.

Had another boat passed in the night, I suspect the crew would have quietly alerted the Coastguard to what appeared to be an unexplained death aboard a small vessel off the Dorset coast.

Back on land, matters are no better. We own a fan, although “fan” feels too gentle a word for it. It is not one of those discreet, whisper quiet machines that murmurs soothingly in the corner.

It has, as far as I can tell, two settings.

Off.

And Force Nine.

There is allegedly a Sleep Mode, but this remains a mystery to me. I have pressed every button, consulted the instructions and approached it with the sort of grim determination normally reserved for assembling flat pack furniture. Nothing works.

So each night becomes a negotiation.

If the fan is off, I lie there slowly becoming soup.

If the fan is on, I feel as though I am sleeping beside the engine room of a destroyer during rough weather.

At three in the morning I usually reach the stage where I no longer care whether I am hot or deaf, provided one of them stops.

Of course, we British do have our own heatwave rituals. We discuss the temperature with strangers. We compare rooms in the house as if reporting from different climate zones. We say things like, “There’s a bit of a breeze in the hallway,” and expect this to be treated as useful information.

We buy paddling pools for children and then sit in them ourselves.

We drink tea, because apparently the correct response to overheating is to pour boiling liquid into the body.

We open all the windows, then close them again because someone has read that this is what people do in Spain.

We put wet tea towels on dogs although, according to a recent article, this is not a good idea.

We eat salad for several meals and then realise we are literally staving.

And throughout it all, someone will always say, “It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.”

This is a sentence that allows the British person to sound meteorologically informed while continuing to complain at full volume.

The truth is that we quite enjoy a weather emergency, provided it does not go on too long. It gives us purpose. We can check forecasts, compare thermometers, issue warnings about leaving the butter out and say “apparently it’s going to break tomorrow” with the authority of a government scientist.

And it will break, of course.

It always does.

In a week or so, we may well be back to grey skies, waterproofs and someone saying, “Well, the garden needed it.” The fan will be shoved back in the cupboard. The fitted sheet will return to its proper function. The boat will once again require jumpers, waterproofs and optimism.

And we will look back fondly on those strange few days when England became the Mediterranean, only with fewer shutters, louder fans and an overheated woman sleeping on deck in a fitted sheet/shroud.

And then what will we have to talk about?

Win a SIGNED hardback and one-of-a-kind signed print when you pre-order A Family Affair by Jodi Taylor

Everyone’s favourite time-travelling bounty hunters are back in A Family Affair, the twisty and hilarious new Smallhope & Pennyroyal adventure!

We are offering one lucky fan the chance to win a hardback copy of A Family Affair and a one-of-a-kind A4 art print, both signed by Jodi Taylor herself.

To enter the prize draw, simply pre-order your copy of A Family Affair in any format, from any UK retailer of your choice, and upload your proof of purchase via the link below. You’ll be automatically entered. Good luck!

CLICK HERE TO ENTER

Our next big adventure is The Great Recovery Job, taking place on 19 September. If you’ve ever fancied stepping inside one of Jodi’s worlds rather than simply reading about it, this is your chance. You’ll become part of a team of Recovery Agents, solving puzzles, gathering intelligence, uncovering clues and attempting to pull off an audacious historical heist. It’s shaping up to be something rather special, and we’d love to see you there.

There are still tickets available, so if you’ve been thinking, “I’ll get round to booking...”, this is your gentle reminder! BOOK NOW

New Writing Competition! Write a short play to be performed at Jodiworld

This is your chance to put words into the mouths of two figures from history — and add a little Jodi Taylor chaos to the mix.

The Brief
Your play must feature two historical figures meeting for afternoon tea. What they talk about, argue about, or discover they have in common is entirely up to you.
The play must be set within or make use of one or more of Jodi Taylor’s fictional universes.
Entries may be comic, dramatic, heartfelt, chaotic, or any combination thereof — but should feel at home within the spirit of Jodi Taylor’s worlds.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?