Engine Punk

I've had a lot of problems getting my cover image on Amazon. Use this link to click on the page for The Horsepower Whisperer and you will see that there still isn't one. There used to be one but it was the original cover image that has now been superseded by a spruced up revision - except that it hasn't on Amazon. Currently, you can't see anything of my book on Amazon. I removed the original naively believing that it would be simple to get the new one on there. That was back in January. I managed to upload the new image on there but the Amazon page insisted that it was a customer image uploaded by Mr R D Blackman. That last bit was true but I'm the bloody publisher. And I'm the bloody author. And the images were such pissy bloody little bloody things. I never found out why they were viewed down the wrong end of a telescope. I removed them - once I'd managed to get my mouse to rest on them in their minuteness. I'd rather no image appeared at al...

When is a Mercedes not a Mercedes? When it’s a Wartburg. You may not have heard of a Wartburg . Some of us who grew up in the seventies will remember the angular Wartburg 353s as bargain basement family saloons from East Germany. They featured front wheel drive, a freewheel transmission and had three cylinder water-cooled two-stroke engines of 993cc. They were briefly immortalised (!) in the UK thanks to a comedy sketch by Jasper Carrot – lemme take you for a ride in ma Wartburg! Nowadays, it’s not difficult to understand that the Wartburg marque had a problem with brand identity. The Carrot picked up on the unfortunate name but Anglo-Saxons have mixed feelings about two-stroke engines as well, often mixed feelings of the pre-mixed petroil variety. Many disapproved of strokers when used in motorcycles and smoky little passenger cars going “ring-ding-ding” were deemed frightfully downmarket. Some of us (not me) are still highly suspicious of front wheel drive despite Issigonis cla...

Setting up as a publisher is bound to mean a certain amount of paperwork. It's the stuff the books are printed on after all but even if you're into e-books (and I intend to be, dreckly) there's some to deal with. Or with which to deal if there are any grammar world champions out there. I've registered my business - Anarchadia Publishing - with the authorities but HM Revenue and Customs are even more convinced than I am that I will make a loss this Financial Year. I have mixed feelings about this reaction but I am happy it was so simple to apply for an exemption for National Insurance contributions. When I bought my ISBNs from Nielsen UK , I bought a block of ten for just over a hundred quid. I could've had a hundred ISBNs for just under £200 but that seemed greedy to me. As a direct result of this, I had a listing on Amazon and on Waterstones websites and they're just the ones I know about. Having an ISBN means anyone can order my books and they wil...

How can you have a one-page book? These are my little promo devices that have been taking up my time recently. They mirror the Anarchadia Publishing in-house style and really are one page books even though that would appear to be a contradiction in terms. The reason they've taken a while to do is that I've been drawing illustrations from both The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb. Pictures will feature heavily in the one page books and the one page books will themselves be downloadable as a pdf from a new page on my website dreckly (a great word - it's Cornish for manana if you didn't know already). Some of the drawings will feature on this blog in the coming weeks by way of teasers. To see how you can have a one page book, you just have to download an example and print it off on your printer. It won't take up much ink - it's only one page. In fact, I'm looking for volunteers to download the one page books because I want to check the print...

Turbonegro's image is questionable - why would a Scandinavian wear an American flag - but they rock, no question. And is that a steam punk on the right I knew about Turbonegro before, of course, but recently I re-discovered them. I'd bought Scandinavian Leather and enjoyed it but don't have any of its tracks on my pay lists. Searching for the soundtrack of Repo Man I stumbled across Turbonegro's cover version and thought it was great. It's a very courageous thing to do, follow a class act like Iggy Pop but Turbonegro managed it and matched it. Phew! Euroboy can't walk on water but crowds are easy Next I stumble across them on YouTube doing Suffragette City by David Bowie live only - dare I say it - better. And I'm a big Bowie fan. It's Bauhuas doing Ziggy Stardust all over again with a version that is higher powered and just that little bit faster - one of the few instances of a cover version being better than the original, in my humble opin...

Stranger than fiction My latest read was part of my research into parallel universes. These figure highly in my own anarchic sci-fi writing although most of my limited knowledge of the subject had been gleaned from Douglas Adams. I am also planning my Meet The Author video. Looking at the other contributors I met Marcus Chown talking about this book, liked what he said and now I've read his book. With Quantum Theory cannot hurt you, Marcus Chown has achieved almost the impossible. He doesn't need to resort to a single equation or diagram to explain E=MC squared since he makes the subject so accessible and easy to understand. That's even when hyper-intelligent mega-beings like Einstein say that the only thing anyone understands about quantum theory or relativity is that nobody understands it. So after reading this book do I understand more than Einstein? I doubt it although this book might have convinced me that I do. In fact, in a parallel universe, I do understa...

Just to the left of here, I went to school - 50 years too late to see this motorsport event but better late than never I found this wonderfully evocative picture the other day. It shows a speed trial taking place on a public road in Cornwall in the 1920s and I can’t help thinking that this is the way things should be today. Here's a close up of the start - smell the fumes, hear the snatches of conversation A group of people have got together to answer that eternal question posed by street urchins to motorists the world over, to wit “What’ll she do, mister?” In finding out, it looks like they’re having a lot of innocent fun. It appears organised but in a delightfully spontaneous way as if the above question has just been answered by a “Well, let’s find out shall we?” Back then there were no nimbies. In Cornwall at any rate they were all yombars – yes, on my back roads! Except that this isn’t actually a back road. It’s the A3075 from Newquay to Redruth. The start line is ...

Definitely not a Vintage Thing When my washing machine went wrong I thought no problem – if I can fix my old cars then a washing machine will be a mere bagatelle. But I learnt that I have no enthusiasm for mending washing machines. They don’t have engines or wheels and all look the same to me. To cut a long story short, I bought a new one after having got as far as taking the back off to confirm that the belt wasn’t broken. On principle, I would have liked to have fixed it but do I want to spend my time doing something I don’t enjoy when I could be doing something more fun? Well, would you? Now it’s incredible – but true – that some people view cars and motorbikes in the same way. They treat them as domestic appliances or fashion accessories that say something about them as a person. There may be someone somewhere who feels about washing machines the way I do about things with engines and wheels but frankly I doubt it. You can’t go on holiday with a washing machine. They do...

Jack Turner who drew up the body for the Turner Imp This is a Vintage Thing that nearly reached production but didn't. I recently came across an Imp derived car that I’d never heard of. I wasn’t expecting to find one, either, because I was reading Turner Sports Cars by Peter Tuthill. These were sports racing cars of the traditional British front engine/rear wheel drive variety. In fact the Turner 803 was probably what spurred BMC to produce the Austin–Healey Sprite. Unfortunately, the rear-engined Turner sports car never got built. The illness of the company’s founder, Jack Turner, brought about the voluntary liquidation of the company in 1966. By that stage Jack had drawn up an attractive little car with a Kamm tail and what looks like a front mounted radiator. Jack was a personal friend of Wally Hassan the Coventry Climax development engineer. Many competition Turners featured Coventry-Climax 1216cc engines so Jack would have been more than familiar with the Imp engine’s...