Engine Punk

 I know that I keep going on about it but I'm still very excited about the look of The Wormton Lamb. A large batch from the printer has arrived here at Anarchadia Publishing and soon I can start sending them out. Although two boxes full may not sound much, when I look at them I can't help but think about what it must be like to have a whole garage full. That would have been the result if I'd had a conventional print run. This is the first batch of pre-publication copies of The Wormton Lamb and I'm going to have to think very carefully about to whom I send them. Several obvious recipients are the national libraries for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Every book that has an ISBN must by law have a copy lodged with each of these national libraries. It seems like an expensive business at the time that is a consequence of having an ISBN. Personally, I think the benefits of having an ISBN outweigh the costs of sending out library copies but I know some ...

When I was a child, my parents would let out our house in Cornwall to holidaymakers. During the summer, we lived in a large caravan at the other end of the garden and late-night TV featured black-and-white horror stories on the Saturday night. My sister and I would watch these in our beds in the dining area of the caravan. Most of these were more entertaining than terrifying but there was one that had a genuine hide under the bed clothes moment. This was a film called "Night of the Demon". The Demon was really just a man in a rubber suit but you could see him coming a mile off and he was huge, preceded by a terrible whistling up of the wind. And if you are the last person to have touched a piece of paper upon which was written certain runes, then you would surely die at the hands of this monstrous Demon. MR James had provided the inspiration for this story many years before. It translated pretty well to the 1950s setting of "Night of the Demon", which either sho...

Some black and white publicity photos of the Siva Llama turned up on eBay a few weeks ago. I watched them after being tipped off about them by Graeme Pearson the editor of the Imp Club magazine. I didn't bid but they've found a good home though because they now appear on Franka's site. The registration of the car depicted is a new one on me. I have a short list of known cars and hope that this one is an unknown survivor. There's something that inspires camaraderie between the owners of obscure motor cars. At the ARCC (Association of Rootes Car Clubs) Rally at Blenheim Palace in 2000, I met an affable chap from the Clan Crusader owners club called Jim McEwan. I was attending with my Siva Llama at that particular show and he was fascinated by it. Jim was the club historian for the Clan Crusaders and we had a long and enthusiastic talk. Over the next 18 months or so, he sent me a number of articles that featured a Siva Llama. These weren't just photocopies -- th...

I had a pleasant surprise on Friday when I return from work. The proof for The Wormton Lamb had arrived. Here is, resplendent in its new cover design. I've been checking it through over the weekend and on Sunday night was delighted to be able to send Lightning Source a message accepting this proof. I had a couple of e-mails from Lightning Source today confirming the dispatch of two separate orders of copies of The Wormton Lamb. A carton of 20 will soon be arriving at my door as well as a solitary copy but I must ordered for some reason months ago. It serves to remind me how long this process has taken and what a milestone I have reached. All I have to do is publicise it so -- tell your friends!

Ray Morrisey hit the news yesterday for, at the age of 49, he has just achieved the milestone of attending 5000 separate gigs over the course of the last 35 years. On his website, he lists all the bands that he's seen. It looks as if he would go and see anyone but his great favourites are the punk bands. Nowadays, he is something of a gig-going celebrity and he can blag his way into most venues. I was talking to my punk rock buddy Gary about Ray Morrisey. It could be said that we are contemporaries of Ray and may have rubbed shoulders or moshed with him. Gary reckoned that Ray wasn't terribly discerning in which bands he saw but was willing to forgive him this in view of his consuming passion for punk rock. Gary is another of those people who keeps a close record of all the gigs that he's seen. He's well into his hundreds and points out that as Ray lives in London he has far greater opportunity of seeing a wider variety and greater quantity of bands that we do sto...

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...

It was as we were returning from Andover and making a pit stop for fuel that we spotted this splendid example of a Chevrolet Carryall. The following day was Remembrance Sunday and this Vintage Thing was prompting motorists into remembering the fallen. Just like John Sartain's Dodges, this is a remarkable survivor and is essentially a civilian vehicle that was pressed into service at short notice and without much adaptation. Its full title is a Chevrolet Series BJ Carry-All Suburban. As part of the AK series of light trucks it was rated by the military at half a ton and had the standard 85 bhp 6 cylinder Chevy engine. I am reasonably certain it's a 1942 model. How do I know? My big book of Chevrolet suggests the tailgates were different. On the '41s, it was split horizontally and the '42s had the option of a vertical split. The sheet steel pressings were essentially the same. Later versions of the Carry-All Suburban lacked the chrome on the grille. Whatever th...

Just in case you didn't know already, to see a larger image of any illustrations on either this blog or my Engine Punk blog that grab your interest or look like they might fascinate, all you have to do is click on it. And anything written in purple or blue - like Engine Punk above - is a link to something amazing. I just thought I'd mention it. Wouldn't want any of you to miss out.

As you can probably imagine, I am very excited by the prospect of seeing my new covers in real life. Lightning Source got back to me today to confirm my instructions. They just wanted to check that I really wanted to revise the files for The Horsepower Whisperer. Those for The Wormton Lamb we obviously a resubmission but as The Horsepower Whisperer was already in production they wanted to make sure that I wanted to revise it before they leapt into action. I'm glad they did this. I find there's never any harm in checking and I can only assume that they have found this out as well. Now that they have my confirmation, I can already see from my customer account area on their website that The Wormton Lamb as its new cover and a proof copy is already available for ordering. The Horsepower Whisperer, which has new files that both the text block and the front cover, is still in pre-media. The immediate timetable works out something like this. I should be able to order ...

I recently completed reading the biography of Arthur Rimbaud who apparently is famous for his poetry. At risk of sounding like a complete philistine, I knew of him as an explorer in Africa. And I'm not really keen on reading poetry even when it's written in my own language. Rambo - his name rings a filmic bell - has inspired generations of musicians, writers, anarchists, all manner of creative and experimental types and Sylvester Stallone. I can't really say why there was so much fuss about his scribblings but he certainly had an extraordinary life and this biography by Graham Robb really gripped me. I thought it would be a dry academic tome that I might dip into and out of but I soon couldn't believe what our little Rambo Rimboard was going to do next. And his life in Africa was so divorced from his life as a writer I think I can be forgiven for not knowing anything about him as a poet. Okay, so I thought Verlaine was Tom Verlaine out of American punk band Telev...

A few weeks ago, I had a comment on this very blog that mentioned voice-activated dictation software. It described Dragon NaturallySpeaking as a secret weapon when it came to formatting text documents in readiness for publishing. I've had a lot of problems with using Word and PDF generators but had got around it by using Open Office Writer. I was interested to hear about this Dragon product as another alternative to using Word. It was as I researched Dragon NaturallySpeaking that I realised that this might be an alternative to learning to touch type. I had already embarked upon a touch typing course (E-typing) but it soon became apparent that I would never be as quick as I fought or spoke. I am a reasonably fast two fingered typist but very often my ideas come spilling out of my brain and my fingers trip themselves up. In fact, I seem to be getting less accurate as I get older. I decided to try Dragon NaturallySpeaking and ordered the Preferred version, complete with a Phili...

I was near Andover at the weekend with my neighbour and tractor man Andrew. We dropped in on my scrap buddy, Rob Robinson-Collins who has a weakness for Allards. Here are Rob and Andrew in Rob and Tina's back garden. If ever Rob rings me up to tell me that he has discovered another Allard, or parts thereof, I don't dissuade him. I encourage him. I'm happy to say that he is rarely in any doubt about the desirability of any Allard or Allard parts so it is not difficult for him to follow my advice to, "Buy it!" We both realise that this is not really what having a scrap buddy is all about. What should happen, is that one of us says to the other, "Look, what you really want is just one car and one motorbike and that's it." Sometimes, one of us might actually say this but it is quickly ignored. Very often, this sentence is not uttered at all. Here, Rob is explaining the niceties of shortening an Allard chassis to Andrew's boots. You may have not...

Both The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb are now in revision at Lightning Source. I can enter my account area to monitor progress and once the revisions have been accepted I will order proofs. It's a case of checking every day now. Once that stage is complete, I should get proofs in a couple of working days. In the meantime, I've been working on the next part of the Soul Trader trilogy. The title for this is The Grey Ones. This is also the title of a short story by J B Priestley, which I really enjoyed. The story is completely different but if anyone challenges me about it I'll say I'm paying "an homage" to it. I probably mentioned this before, but I raved about this story on a car club forum a few years ago. Everyone was griping about the growing police state and the sense of big brother watching you and slowly grinding our spirits down. I recommended J B Priestley's story to those in need and many years later at a meeting in Edinbu...

This 1940 Dodge D15 truck belongs to John Sartain and is a companion to his half ton Dodge ambulance (VT No. 32) . It has the commercial pattern cab that was superseded by the more easily repairable military pattern and would originally have had a general-purpose steel body and can reverse tilt cover. It was built by the Chrysler Corporation of Canada Ltd in Windsor, Ontario in 1940 and many examples of this type of truck were exported to Russia as well as Britain. The engine was a six cylinder 95 brake horsepower side valve 230.2 cubic inch unit shared with the US examples but those had three speed boxes while this one has four forward speeds. Due to the large numbers produced, spares are not as much a problem as you would think, even after all this time. John has found some replacement front wings in preparation for a forthcoming restoration. He's also acquired a spare engine even though there's nothing wrong with the one's that fitted. I don't think the ch...

While on a quest for tractor parts in Hampshire last weekend, Andrew the tractor man and I came across this fine example of World War II Dodge ambulance. It belongs to motorcycle enthusiast John Sartain and dates from 1941. Its official nomenclature is a T215-WC27 and 6422 of this type of ambulance are recorded as being supplied to the US Army and the UK under Lend-Lease. T215 is the model type and WC27 denotes the ambulance body. It has a six cylinder flat head 230.2 cubic inch engine with a 3.25 inch bore and 4.625 inch stroke. This equates to 82.55mm x 117.475mm and 3772cc. This design was essentially a stroked version of the engine in the late 1930's Dodge passenger car range and produced 92 brake horsepower at 3000 rpm and 170 ft lbs at 1200 rpm. The idea of Lend-Lease was to pull the resources of the Allied forces without a formal engagement of United States of America in the Second World War and the US made available material valued at more than $42 billion to 44 co...

While looking through some old photographs I found this shot of a dirt track Douglas at Wiscombe Park hill climb back in 1998 (I think). This shot reminded me why I like this design so much - for such an old bike, it looks like it's doing a 100mph even propped up against a Transit. The bike wheels and low slung engine all shout speed to me and although it's a hard tail and I prefer sprung frames any attempt to give it springing would alter the simple lines of the bike. The handle bars look like a bit too practical. I'd like to see this machine with drop handlebars like a racing push bike. And the gearchange on the tank and the shape of the tank itself make you realise this is an old bike. But the concept of the dirt track Douglas seems so modern to me. Because it has a front brake this is probably the road going version of the dirt track Duggie - the SW5. The speedway biked lacked any sort of front brake and the gearchange was usually locked in one position. Me? I ...

Stephen Pate has sent me some more images of the special brakes for the A series Vincent TTR that he's restoring. Again, they are things of beauty and were sourced by the Japanese and American TTR owners working together. When I saw the pre-restoration state of the machine I thought how unnecessary but now that I realise its historic nature, I appreciate the responsibility that goes with owning something like this. Without the special TTR forks and brakes this bike was close to being "only" another A series Vincent. Now that the right parts have been sourced, just bolting them on wouldn't be right. Besides, earlier restoration work on this bike did not come up to standard. There's an opportunity here to review the condition of the whole machine and ensure its survival for many years to come. In fact, Steve says that the condition of the special forks was a real mess and that after shot blasting he ended up building a jig and then disassembling the forks befor...