Engine Punk

There aren't many engines that burst out of the engine bay and assume a life of their own but the flathead Ford V8 is definitely one of them. Look - there's one that's escaped even now, wriggling across the pebbles of my scrap buddy's drive. As Rob puts it, this engine won World War 2. That's a bit of an exaggeration but it was really what the flathead Ford V8 got up to afterwards that makes if of interest to me and marks it out as a Vintage Thing in its own right. You've probably heard of the phrase Anglo-American Bastard? It was coined by Michael Sedgwick and covers a wide variety of British cars that used big, low-stressed American engines in stripped down chassis and lightweight bodywork. This trend began before World War II with things like the Brough Superior and Railton and carried on right up into the sixties with the Gordon-Keeble, Bristol and Jensen. Some of these cars weren't so much Anglo-American bastards but more love children. Liberat...

I imagine my introduction to H P Lovecraft's work was similar to that of most people. I found "The Haunter in the Dark" in a collection of short horror stories. It stood out as one of the best and in searching other anthologies for more of the same I tripped over "The Thing on the Doorstep" and encountered "The Rats in the Walls". By then I was hooked and had to have all three of his anthologies. Howard Phillips Lovecraft is one writer to whom I often return. I really like the idea of ancient towns such as Arkham being in such a modern nation as the USA and Miskatonic University is so obviously full of reading matter that ought to have been burnt due to insane and unworldly messages it contains that I want a reader's ticket. He's a master at discreetly building tension. Some of his throw away lines are just dreadful - quite literally full of dread. His writing style is so fevered as to be quite over the top but it works beautifully and I...

Like many people, I enjoy reading Clive Cussler's adventure novels. Dirk Pitt is a proper hero. He's just about believable and manages to get out of the most amazing scrapes using technology and his own skills. He's an all-action man with intellect and meets an rescues some very beautiful and intelligent women. He's also a car nut so I feel that I have a good deal in common with him but really that's where the similarity ends. Back in 2006, I heard about the court case in Hollywood featuring Clive Cussler. He'd fallen out with the principal backer of the film, billionaire Philip Anschutz. Cussler claimed the script wasn't true to his original story and Anschutz reckoned Cussler had deceived him over how many books he'd sold. They ended up counter-suing each other and have probably spent more in legal fees than the 5-8 million dollars they've been awarded by various courts and judges. What could have been an exciting new film franchise was practic...

At the 2008 Exeter Kit Car Show, I was particularly struck by the range of electric cars on offer. It seems that the kit car industry, by virtue of its smaller size, is in a position to respond to environmental pressures more quickly than mainstream manufacturers. The Battery Vehicles Society had a stand at the show and featured among the more obvious alternative technologies this Mulliner bodied Wilson, which was built from 1935 to 1936 in Leicester. As built, this car would have had a 40 mile range for every charge and a top speed of 27 mph. Only 40 were made but the owner of this example has another and rumours persist of others languishing in gardens in places like Birmingham. He told me that the realistic range for this car is now down to 20 miles because the batteries are a bit tired. I think that is allowed. A drop-off in performance is only to be expected after 70 years but that is definitely what I call sustainable motoring. The guys on the electric vehicle stand were ve...

My earlier blog about submitting files to Lightning Source prompted a comment from none other than Aaron Shepard, doyen of self publishing authors and the man behind Aiming at Amazon . Aaron has tried just about every alternative when it comes to producing books over the Internet and is a regular contributor to the self-publishing and print on demand discussion groups on Yahoo. If it hadn't been for his book I would still be metaphorically banging the rocks together and going "Ook!" instead of already having the first part of the Soul Trader Trilogy available on Amazon. I was so impressed with Aiming at Amazon that I gave it 5 stars when I reviewed it on Amazon. You don't believe me, click on link. Aaron must be cruising the Internet, righting wrongs and fighting corrupted files wherever he can find them for he found my blog entry soon after it was published and left a comment. His advice was to stop messing about with Open Office Writer and to use Adobe Acrobat...

Yesterday I went up to Exeter for the Kit Car Show at the Westpoint Showground. This was my first visit after a lapse for a few years and, considering the economic gloom that pervades the UK at the moment and the fact that kit cars must inevitably be funded from disposable income, I found the mood very upbeat. There was a great variety of machinery on show and plenty of people about, too. Previous shows had consisted largely of Lotus Seven variants -- what some of my friends call Locost Caterfields -- or AC Cobra replicas that this year there seem to be more original designs. The standard of construction was also a vast improvement over what I had come to expect. I chatted to several stallholders several aspects of the current kit car scene struck me. I've already mentioned the dramatic increase in the quality of the product. Manufacturers have now realised that well finished cars that result from an easy build reflect well on their brand name they can generate more s...

 Last night, I checked into the customer area on the Lightning Source website to check the status of my uploaded files for The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb. The proof was ready for The Wormton Lamb but today I had a message from my customer rep to tell me that the text file for The Horsepower Whisperer was corrupted on pages 5 and 6. These pages are the ones that feature the maps at the beginning of my books. They consist of layered drawings and if any part of the pdf was likely to become corrupt this was it. However, all my files at home look okay so I can only assume that the CD that went to Lightning Source in the states was damaged in some way. I would've uploaded a new file for The Horsepower Whisperer and ordered a proof for The Wormton Lamb tonight but the Lightning Source website is being maintained at the moment. I regenerated a text file pdf for The Horsepower Whisperer just to make sure there were no problems but notice something odd in the proces...