I haven’t written a huge amount today … BUT I have spent quite some time in Scrivener reorganising past and present scenes so I have a semblance of the final novel structure 🙌🏻
It’s all progress. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
”Impressive asset” vs ”not fit”.
Just the usual hatchet job when it suits them. Doing the job their paymasters require. 🤬
Thanks! I find the inspiration for the historical fiction comes from the history itself. Early/mid 20th century is a fascinating and turbulent time (much like current events).
Brain: Young Mr R is occupied, why don’t you try and write some Book 2?
Me: Great idea. *sits down and opens laptop*
Brain: *silence*
Me: Come on. This was your idea. Surely you’ve got something?! A scene maybe?
Brain: *shrugs* not really. And don’t call me Shirley.
😭 😭
This is a crucial report, shining a spotlight on the funding links between Russia, Hungary and the British mainstream right
A copy of “EARLY COLD WAR OVERFLIGHTS SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS Volume I: Memoirs Editors: R. Cargill Hall and Clayton D. Laurie” The cover is mostly grey, with greyscale images of US and UK aircraft and aircrew. The US and UK flags are in colour across the middle of the book.
A copy of “EARLY COLD WAR OVERFLIGHTS SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS Volume II: Appendixes Editors: R. Cargill Hall and Clayton D. Laurie” The cover is mostly grey, with greyscale images of US and UK aircraft and aircrew. The US and UK flags are in colour across the middle of the book.
A greyscale map of Europe, showing part of the Soviet Union. It’s titled “28-29 April 1954 RAF Overflight Routes”. Various lines cross Europe, into and over Soviet territory, from RAF Sculthorpe in Norfolk, England.
Part view of a copy of a typewritten memo dating from August 1954. It’s headed: “MEMORANDUM FOR: DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE, USAF SUBJECT: USAF Clandestine Intelligence Collection Program”
My marvellous husband tracked me down these to help with Book 2 research 🥰.
I may be slightly TOO obsessed with getting the details of my 1955 plot accurate and making sure the direction it goes is plausible … 😬
I’m thoroughly enjoying learning about early Cold War reconnaissance, though!
This article by @yarotrof.bsky.social strikes me as a well balanced description of where we are in the US/Israeli attack on Iran. Both sides think they are winning and both sides could miscalculate. www.wsj.com/world/middle...
Me too. It’s a genuine pleasure to read.
Things may have improved, but we still have a long way to go, It is not that long ago that women were not allowed to open their own bank accounts or take on a job without their husbands permission. This ingrained prejudice is still present in people’s minds.
@jolk.bsky.social @bylines.scot
2/ #IWD
I don’t think it’ll be too much longer before he can bake on his own!
Pretty sure everything he bakes will have chocolate, Biscoff, or both in, mind 😆
6 chocolate cupcakes sitting on a cooling rack. They’re iced with swirls of chocolate buttercream and dotted with milk and white chocolate chips. We used a star shape icing tip to avoid the cupcakes looking like poos. No one wants to eat a cake that looks like one of those.
Young Mr R loves baking. So we made some chocolate cupcakes today. I then asked if he wanted to ice them. He said yes. So we made chocolate buttercream as well.
Considering it must be at least 10 years since I made any kind of icing, I think we did good 😄
Churchill has retrospectively been turned into a cartoon like superhero who could do no wrong and who we all owe a debt of gratitude forever.
The gold standard of leadership.
A man of supreme wit and gifted with statesmanship unrivalled by any other
It's far more complicated and interesting 1/3
Alex is getting grumpy in Book 2. He’s just told his US Air Force counterpart he has neither the time nor the crayons to explain something to him 🙈🤣😬
These two have *history* …
#AmWriting #WritingCommunity
A 500 piece jigsaw puzzle on green felt, partly done. The edges are complete, and so is the large Hawker Hurricane in the foreground. Also complete are three smaller Hurricanes … but not much else of the British countryside scene.
Young Mr R occasionally enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles with us. This is the first 500 piece one we’ve started.
I find myself going to it for a few minutes, adding a couple of bits, then going back to whatever I was doing. Clearly my brain is tuned for recognising Hurricanes and very little else 😂
Me holding the hardback edition of Canberra: The Greatest Multi-Role Aircraft of the Cold War, Volume 1, by Ken Delve and John Sheehan. Two Canberras in flight adorn the cover.
It’s been a good writing day. Not only have I written more of the 1950s plot (and developed a deep dislike of Tom, one of the other Canberra pilots), I enjoyed reading some of this brilliant book. Definitely recommend this one if you’re interested in anything EE Canberra related.
#Writing #Author
One of the most disgusting, brutal and unpunished child‑abuse networks in the world…
And the usual voices who claim to care about ‘women and girls’ have nothing to say.
We see you.
Another Epstein to Bannon text from May 2019 predicts Boris Johnson’s leadership victory - and then enigmatically refers to a ‘Peter’ making contact with an ‘Eric’ about the turbulence. Any clues which Peter or Eric? There aren’t that many in this political sphere
Our important work at Kent Council to spend £600k on a car park to provide free parking for Reform councillors while staff have to pay, is all part of our 'We don't give a shit about anyone but ourselves' policy.
I’ve FINALLY got the beginning of Book 2 into a state I’m happy with 🙌🏻
Part of me is panicking that the word count has dropped with all the recent edits.
The other part is glad the rest can now be written from a solid start. So I guess it’s progress 🫠
#writers #authors
Digital artwork of a Fairey Swordfish biplane attacking the battleship Bismarck. POV is behind and below the Swordfish, showing the torpedo slumg beneath the fuselage, with Bismarck sailing away and to the left, roughly parallel to the course of the Swordfish, while streams of flak tracer shoot all around the aircraft. Above is thick cloud which the aircraft has just emerged from
Annoyance time
This artwork by Piotr Forkasiewicz was created for the cover of my Fairey Swordfish book from Mortons. We decided on the composition after studying all the accounts from the aircrews involved and photos of the op
But whenever it is posted online, people decry it as inaccurate…
We've spent ten years being proved right about all the things the loudest, biggest voices in the UK media insisted, often obnoxiously, we were wrong about. The real kicker is that there's no consolation whatsoever in being correct. Brexit, Putin, Johnson, Truss, Trump, Twitter, Netanyahu etc etc...
It’s been frustrating, but equally I’ve had to recognise this is how my brain works.
Some people are happy with multiple projects and ideas going at the same time. I’m not. (Nothing wrong with either, and neither is objectively “better”; the world needs people of all types.)
Lesson learned: my writing brain cannot focus on two different projects at once. I’ve been pushing to get a short story done (for an anthology later this year). That has taken up ALL my writing run time for the last 6 weeks.
Despite itching to get on with Book 2, I just couldn’t switch tracks 😖
This notion of 'politics as drama or entertainment', and then the chase for audience numbers, rather than 'how our society is structured' is where things went wrong at the BBC.
If you have any doubt that Farage is the British pro-consul for Trump’s Dark Empire, read this story about the rehabilitated Putin stooge Manafort
BBC report at a headline level that Grok will now not make sexually exploitative images any more. An actual reporter comes on and explains that it will do no such thing, and will just make the images invisible in the UK. These are two very, very different things.
You cannot back Donald Trump and support Ukraine. Trump has helped Putin by starving Ukraine of air defense (which the Russians understand). Trump is helping Putin freeze Ukrainian cities, turn off Ukrainian lights and, ultimately, kill Ukrainians.
And he has been doing this for almost one year.
Given all the other recent Conservative defections he's accepted, "I've always thought Robert Jenrick was a fraud" reads more like a recommendation than a criticism
