Engine Punk

The cover depicted here may not be what you get. Do let me know what comes in the post if you order one. The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb are still available on Amazon but I am re-launching both books with new covers. This is because I have finished writing the rest of the Soul Trader trilogy and will be gradually releasing two new books that continue the misadventures of Hob the Horsepower Whisperer and his chumrades. If anyone orders hard copies of either The Horsepower Whisperer or The Wormton Lamb, they will receive a book with the old cover until any stock is used up. Any print-on-demand orders for The Wormton Lamb with Amazon should already feature the latest cover design. This has not happened in the past. I know that a relative bought a copy of The Horsepower Whisperer from Amazon last year and it had the very first ever cover, dating back to 2008. I am now up to cover number three. I can only assume Amazon ordered a stock of my books on publication and they may st...

1.                 The story begins with a growth hormone experiment that goes horribly wrong. 2.                 The tale of The Wormton Lamb asks us what are we doing to rural communities and our environment through the unseen effects of self-interest by people who have sold their souls. 3.                 The book introduces the traffiscope, a means of predicting the future by studying the traffic. What road sign are you? 4.                 It is set in the wider Wold around the flock market town of Wormton. 5.                 It also introduces the Mithering Brethren who believe souls can be improved if they are th...

I’ve finished the Soul Trader trilogy and will be re-relaunching The Horsepower Whisperer very dreckly. Possibly soon than that. This means new covers, ebooks and audiobooks. The Wormton Lamb will probably re-launch first. This is not part of the Soul Trader trilogy but a spin-off featuring some of the same characters. The reason this refresh might happen sooner is I want to check for consistency across all three parts of the Soul Trader story.

I hadn’t looked at my website for a long time until today and I couldn’t find it. All links led to this blog and I was mystified. Even the icon on my favourites had become the Blogger logo. I think this may have arisen from an abortive attempt to sex up my blog. Having seen some others that had a great look about them, I decided to see if I could improve its appearance. Blogger suggested that this could be achieved if I set my blog up on their blogspot and not on my own domain. I’d had a go at this a few weeks (alright months) ago and then run out of time. I don’t think I’ve glanced at my website since then. I went back to my website files and uploaded them on to the net again but they still didn’t appear. I indulged in creativity diversion by purging the references to my old Anarchadia blog on my web pages and uploaded that, hoping that the first lot would have flowed through the net by then and that the first problem would have fixed itself in a kind of switch-it-off, switch-...

Ideal holiday reading? Both The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb enjoyed a small burst of popularity over the summer and I recently received these photos from Mr Graham Poyntz who chose The Wormton Lamb as his holiday read. Here it is on a balcony overlooking the Amalfi coast. Having been to Amalfi myself, I know what competition there is for one's attention from the scenery so I'm very pleased that Graham managed to drag his eyes away from the view to look at what I've written. Now that the evenings are drawing in, I feel more inclined to write again, although before I do that I have to do an awful lot of planning. And I know that I haven't publicised my existing books as much as I would like. Regular readers of the old Anarchadia blog will knmow what an uphill struggle this is, especially if you do the obvious things. It seems everyone is doing those and it's easy to get lost in the noise. So I'm thinking about the less obvious ways to do this, ...

I've just been advised of this extremely positive review on BookPleasures for The Wormton Lamb. I am particularly pleased because I wasn't entirely sure if the Anarchadian Engine Punk thang would translate for American readers but it seems that in this country we've been led to expect the worst. Obviously, this particular reviewer is a highly intelligent woman of considerable taste. And before anyone asks, no i don't know her. In the UK we hear so many stories of British TV programmes being re-written and re-acted to suit the American sense of homour - hell the folks in the parish beyond the Scillies even spell it differently - but they are people like you and me. Some jokes they get and some they don't just like Europeans, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Australians. So I am re-assured that it my stuff will appeal to the American market and could even go global. It's quite easy being a megalomaniac, y'know.

I'd never seen one of these before. I saw it on the industrial estate at Doublebois just up from Adrian Booth's workshop and didn't know what it was, so just had to find out. And after a deal of scrabbling about, I managed to identify it as a Honda S-MX. If you wanted a cube on wheels with an automatic box and fold down futon-style beds inside then this is the car for you. It's a good example of the kind of speciality cars the Japanese do so well. Any other car producing nation would never even try something like this. "Oh no they would say, there'd never be any call for something like that." So despite the slush box, I start to like it because of the odd niche that it's aimed at. There's a kind of "can-do" approach that the designers have followed and I like that. I was dropping an A series cylinder head off at Adrian's to be reconditioned and he said there was a whole set of camping gear available as standard from the factory w...

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...

It seems I was a little premature in writing off blogging as a novelty. Blogworld Expo in the states examined, among other things, how blogging can be made more profitable. One way of doing it is to have affiliate links so that any on-line purchases resulting in a sale from following a link from your site will earn you money. It’s blogging’s ability to share that’s being exploited and delegates were keen to emphasise the value of making lots of small connections that add up world wide. I am not sure this would be appropriate for my blogs. I think it would compromise my freedom to express myself freely if I had to get in a brief word from my sponsor. I have affiliate links with Amazon already on my website but only for my own books. This makes sense for the Anarchadia blog and I could expand it to include books I’ve enjoyed or artists that have inspired me. And the Engine Punk blog could offer links to sites selling examples of the tasteful music I enthuse about. But the whol...

It's happening again. First there was the giant lamb born to one of Caroline's ewe. In fact, they're Jacob's sheep but belong to Caroline. This means that as sheep they are usually quite modestly sized. Then there's been all the soul-destroying influences we've been subjected to. We can't do anything fun because it damages the environment. We have to think about everything before we do it, audit our actions and ensure they stand up to scrutiny. Whose scrutiny? Why the Conformorians of course! Did you ever doubt they didn't really exist? And now here's Monika-Sandra, a third instance of real life following my fiction (although I suspect the Conformorians have been around for years before I ever wrote about them). You know the character called Heidi in The Horsepower Whisperer had a pet bat? A friend of mine called Heidi has rescued this little person. Unfortunately Monika-Sandra the Pipestrelle bat had a broken wing and died a few days after the...

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...

There's been a hive of activity here recently at Anarchadia Publishing. Over the Christmas and New Year period, I worked up The Wormton Lamb into a state where it can at last be sent to Caroline Petherick (Magic Words), my editor. And now I've got it back! It seems that having collaborated on The Horsepower Whisperer we know how each other works and the whole process has been reduced, in terms of time, by a factor of at least ten. Now I have to go through and approve or discard her recommended changes. This is actually very enjoyable work and I'm looking forward to it but first I need to do some more publicity work. Most of this is for The Horsepower Whisperer. This book needs its chance first. But that's no problem because I can barely contain my excitement about what I've been up to recently! I'm not sure if it can be done but if not I can use the drawings for something else. Meanwhile the book cover has been developed with Red Snapper (Rebecc...

The cover design has moved on a bit since this photo was taken. Consequently, these early versions are collector's items Things are really taking off here at Anarchadia Publishing. And I don’t mean because of the windy weather, either. The first batch of books has just about gone already. Thanks to everyone who bought one. I sincerely hope the luck pennies work for you all. There was a quite a buzz at work on Friday. Thanks to Allie Dawe in particular for enlightening me what happens at proper book signings. It’s remiss of me I know but I’ve never been to one until now and that one was my own! Apparently, the way to do it is to sign and date the book but write any personal message on a separate piece of paper. This makes the signed more desirable by collectors. I was even asked to sign off copies of the banned e-mail! (see earlier blog). Anyway, I hope this of you have supported me from the start can sell these numbered and signed copies for a fortune when I’m famous ...

A background sketch from the Anarchadia website is this working drawing for the Cadillac Platinumide I’ll have a go at most things and this website is largely my own effort but after years of doing–it–myself and practising self–reliance, I have discovered that sometimes – sometimes – it’s better to get an expert to do it for you.  It depends whether you want to learn how to do it or not. You may never need to do it ever again. It also depends how long it takes to reach a reasonable standard. Do you have the time or do you want a quick result? And, most importantly in my opinion, it depends if you enjoy it. If you don’t I believe it shows. With the website, I was lucky – beginner’s luck, I suppose. I had a brilliant book to refer to. I wouldn’t have got anywhere without Build your website the right way using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd. Not only was I able to get the something together that worked but I began to understand how it worked. If I had any problems I used the S...