Engine Punk

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...

Vote for me! Thanks everyone for your messages of congratulation on my re-election as MP for Harrow East. I will admit to being a little surprised but am encouraged to think that I’ve been doing something right recently – although, on reflection perhaps I should say, instead of "right", the ethically proper thing to do. However, I am saddened to see my views so mis-represented in the press, the TV and other anti-social media. My views on gay marriage have been completely mis-represented . Let’s be quite clear – I am in favour of it. As a heterosexual man, I see marriage in the cultural and historically British sense as being a field of open and underhand conflict in which one spouse stops the other from doing the things they like. See how marriage is depicted in the media, the language on the street and moaned about in the workplace. Let’s face it – marriage needs reforming. Two people, who genuinely harbour affection for each other, should enable and support t...

Well have you? I have. It seems that there are many other Bob Blackmans, far more famous than I am. The most famous Bob Blackman of all is listed on Wikipedia and was an innovative American football coach who died in 2000, aged 81. I'm not listed on Wikipedia yet. Apparently you're not supposed to list yourself. I have tried. I also tried to persuade some of my famous friends to mention me, on the promise that I will mention them but they are being too British and modest about this. I'll keep one of them and eventually they'll agree, especially writing yet the point across about the importance of being listed on the Internet when you're authors like they are. Having said that, my first amateurish attempt at a promotional video appears alongside an entry for the football coach Bob Blackman on FamousWhy . Now that I've got my voice back (I'm dictating this again on Dragon NaturallySpeaking), I'm really going to have to prioritise making a better vide...

Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't check ranking on Amazon. Not very much. I had some visitors today and was just showing them my website when they asked me how did it look on Amazon and when we looked The Horsepower Whisperer was ranked 29,683 overall. I couldn't believe it. It is also currently (as I write) No.32 in Contemporary Fantasy and No.97 in Sci Fi Adventure! That last statistic is a new one. I've never been in the Sci-Fi Top 100 before. And I'm just a gnat's whisker away from getting into the Fantasy Top 30!

Today I featured in a Little Interview in The Herald, The Voice of Plymouth. I only just qualified for inclusion as I live in Liskeard but when I pointed out that I work in the dockyard Features Editor Martin Freeman relented and sent me his questions. What was particularly instructive for me was that only one of my publicity photographs was of a suitable size and quality for reproduction in the paper. So no scary pictures of me blowing up oil refineries like there are on my blogs. I'm pleased with the result, though, and had to restrain myself from showing everybody on the train this evening my picture in the paper. I might one day manage to be blase about this kind of thing but even if I could I doubt if I will. I still think it's something to be excited about. Click on the adjacent pictures to see larger images.

The Wormton Lamb has appeared on Amazon a couple of days after setting the title up. It has its full subtitle listed on the UK site and is number two in a list of books Bob Blackman in the US. Number one is by one of the other Bob Blackmans but, yes, I've crossed the Atlantic without knowing it. Amazing. But there's no sign of The Horsepower Whisperer in the good old US of stateside. Both are listed in Canada, however. These anomalies may change once updates to Nielsen bookdata flow through their system apparently.

Any resemblance to St Piran's Cross is purely intentional. The noteworthy thing about this cross, which stands in dunes above Perranporth, is that the arms of the Celtic wheeled cross have rotated. The arms have become spokes and the cross is more than a wheel than ever. Anarchadia Publishing is an independent small publisher that’s publishing the first part of the Soul Trader trilogy, entitled The Horsepower Whisperer. Between each part of the Soul Trader trilogy, stand alone stories featuring some of the characters from The Horsepower Whisperer will also be published. The first of these, The Wormton Lamb, is currently in the editorial process and will follow soon after the launch of The Horsepower Whisperer. All these stories are set in and around Anarchadia, an anarchic arcadia and temperate archipelago somewhere off the north west cost of Yerp.    There's an element of self parody to some of my work but the books are real enough Books from Anarchadia wil...