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American's Guide To Pronouncing British Place Names

You all know there's some minor (though understandable) differences between British and American spelling. For example, we have 'colour' for 'color', 'favour' for 'favor' and 'harbour' for 'habor'. We have 'centre' for 'center', 'fibre' for 'fiber' and 'litre' for 'liter'. And so on. These don't usually cause us any problems, especially since they are normally pronounced the same (although with differences in accent, which is an entirely different subject!). But, British spelling idiosyncrasies go far beyond these simple examples, and never more so than in our emotive and quaint place names. British place name spelling is about as intuitive as the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics - for the non-scientists among you, that means 'not at all'. Actually, it's not the spelling that's odd (they usually retain a perfectly logical spelling based ...

The Fastest Things In The Universe

Gravitational waves can't actually be seen as in this simulation. When gazing at the night sky from here on Earth, it’s easy to picture the Universe as calm and unhurried. But in reality, out there in space, things move fast – really fast. Putting aside particle accelerators and the like, the fastest-moving man-made object was the Helios 2 spacecraft launched in the 1970s. It reached a top speed of 68.75 km/s (153,800 mph) on its mission to the Sun. But this was just a leisurely stroll compared to the fastest things in the Cosmos. So, where do we find the real speed freaks of the Universe? Here’s a run-down of the top five. 1. Expansion of the Universe Speed: Greater than the speed of light! The Universe is expanding. But the Universe isn’t filling up ‘empty space’ as it expands because it is ‘space’ itself which is expanding. Although the laws of physics say that two objects can’t move faster than light speed with respect to each other, there is no such restricti...

Who Was Ghost Story Writer "Mary E. Penn"?

The identity of Mary E. Penn, a late-Victorian author of ghosts stories and crime and mystery tales, is a complete enigma. Scholars of the macabre have been unable to discern any details of her person, origin or character (assuming she was indeed female). We only know that from the 1870s to the 1890s this author published a number of stories in periodicals, most commonly in The Argosy (Ellen Wood’s monthly publication). Some of her early contributions were anonymous (later attributed to Penn in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals ) and her name only appears from 1878 onwards. Her first story, At Ravenholme Junction , was published anonymously in The Argosy in December 1876, but was later ascribed to Penn on stylistic grounds by eminent supernatural fiction scholar Richard Dalby. Her other ghostly tales were Snatched from the Brink ( The Argosy , June 1878), How Georgette Kept Tryst ( The Argosy , October 1879), Desmond’s Model ( The Argosy , December 1879), Old Vanderhav...

Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

An engraving by R. Graves entitled 'The Ghost Story', circa 1870. In his first full-length novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), Charles Dickens gave us a peculiarly Victorian view of the Christmas tradition. The host of a Yuletide gathering, Mr. Wardle of Dingley Dell, informs his guests that “Everybody sits down with us on Christmas Eve, as you see them now — servants and all; and here we wait, until the clock strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in, and beguile the time with forfeits and old stories”. So begins a long association of the traditional ghost story with Christmas-time; a tradition that has largely died out, but one that should be revived. Of course, the tradition of telling spooky stories at Christmas is much older than Dickens. It was already well-established in the early nineteenth century. In Old Christmas (from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent ., 1819), Washington Irving describes a busy Yuletide fireside with the parson “dealing forth strange a...

Is Amazon Ripping-Off Independent Authors?

The advent of indie publishing has had the same effect on writing as streaming has had on music. As a reader, you have a bewildering array of books to choose from, by established as well as back-room authors, from all over the world, in all genres, at all prices, and many for FREE. There's an awful load of rubbish in this global digital slush-pile, but there are also many excellent independent authors writing some top-notch books. That word, used above, - FREE -, is a matter of contention for me. Amazon run an author program called 'Select' which allows authors to discount their books (or make them available for FREE) for up to five days during a 90-day sign-up period. The philosophy is that the spike in downloads increases the book's Amazon ranking (and hence visibility) resulting in more sales once the book returns to its nominal price. Cynical ploy? The disadvantage of the 'Select' program is that you, the author, give Amazon the exclusive right to se...

Flat Earth Fallacy

I'm an accepting kind of person. I generally allow people to think what they want, believe what they want and (pretty much) say what they want, within reason. But occasionally an opinion is so far-fetched, insulting or incorrect that it debases human intelligence (all human intelligence, not just mine). And then I feel I must speak up. One such 'opinion' is the belief in a 'flat' Earth. Although this topic has a substantial history (see for example Christine Garwood's Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea ), it has so far not been publicly contested in any great depth. Even Phil Plait, author of the ever-popular Bad Astronomy Blog , declined to give such a preposterous proposition any real air-time. And I don't blame him. It really is the most absurd idea. But it should be denounced, for any number of reasons. The basic premise of the 'flat-Earth' protagonists is that ancient cultures were right, the Earth is flat , a circular disk bo...

Are Indie Authors Destroying The Market?

You're probably aware that we are drowning in an ocean of mediocrity. Yes, I know, there's mediocrity all around us; the TV, the music business, in fact everywhere you care to look. But I'm talking about mediocrity in 'literature', as if that term actually means something these days. Once upon a time, not so long ago, 'literature' was a respectable part of the art world. Authors were mysterious intellectuals, removed from society, tortured souls poring over their foolscap notepads with quill in hand. They were just names, often widely-known ones, like A-list celebrities with no public face, controversy or paparazzi. The authors' agents, dark figures sifting through their ever-growing slush pile of tales, held sway over a global industry from behind locked doors. The authors' publishers were equally elusive, a forbidden realm for those with literary aspirations, with the ability to put their clients names right into the homes of the reading public...

12 Ways To Make Your Music Pants

Lou Reed's 'Metal Music Machine' sucked, but it was meant to! So, following on from my recent post about the things bands do to make themselves feel they're getting somewhere (bless 'em!), I'd like now to wax lyrical about the things they do that actually make their music suck! To start though, a little diversion... A friend of mine manages one of the biggest bands to come out of Manchester in the 90s (I'm not mentioning any names!). This 'man-in-the-know' once recounted to me that he had witnessed a young band starting to create that ubiquitous 'buzz' in the Manchester scene. Word got out that these lads were good, they had an incredible stage show, they really pushed the boundaries. But most enticing of all, they were mysteriously unidentifiable; they wore masks on stage, they didn't have an online presence, they couldn't be contacted. Wow, radical! Don't ask me how, but word of this great new band (dare I say it, this...

15 Ways To Make Your Band Believe They Are Going Somewhere

It's a struggle being in a band. You spend all of your spare cash on equipment, room hire and studio time. You spend all your free hours practicing, writing songs, trying to hone your skills and come up with stuff that you are happy with and that you hope other people will enjoy. It's hard work, and often the only return you get is a few people nodding their heads in appreciation of your live set. But, given all this hard work, what do most bands want? They want to be recognised, taken seriously, successful even. And how do they measure that success? By playing sold-out shows? Selling enough merchandise to keep them in guitar strings? Having three people download their EP? Headlining Glastonbury? The measure of success is different from band to band. But, after many years spent in the regional 'music scene' (if there is indeed such a thing), I find it easy to spot those bands that don't have any measure of success (or talent), but make the mistake of trying to g...

The Anglo-Saxon/Latin Rule, Again!

It's one of those rules we're often told as writers. Don't write in Latin, write in Anglo-Saxon! This so-called 'rule' has been around quite a while. In Politics & The English Language (1946) George Orwell wrote "bad writers... are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones". But, what does this mean? Do we have to check the etymology of every word we scribble down in our manuscript books, weeding out the obnoxious foreigners and replacing them with good, solid, stalwart Germanic conciseness? Or does it mean we should write in an archaic style and pepper our prose with lovely words such as erstwhile , forsooth and threap ? Are we banned from using words such as obfuscate , perambulate, egregious and impecunious ? Well, let's think about this for a moment, with a couple of examples. Here's the opening line of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book Paul Clifford ; It wa s a dark and stormy nig...

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