The other books! 

Writing is a hobby, obsession, disease, whatever.

So I write and the discoery of self-publishing was a revelation. So now I write little books that entertain me and mine, vanity volumes, whatever. Some are pretty good I think and pretty bad at times and... Well, friends are kind or silent. Books ranging from humorous to the relentlessly grim war memoir of a distant relative.

Short stories, a crime novel or two, collections of poetry, probably bad, children's books, whatever strikes me. I have posted a few and several more titles are in preparation - another little picture book, a little bookon how to quote the great Voltaire (because almost everyone gets him wrong), the crime novel I'll finally get finished and so on. There's some nice gifts here for the right person.

In each case, paste the Blurb url into your browser or just google blurb/afildes -and take it fromthere. They'll print you one or more to order.

The War Diary of Clarence George Hurley

One day while rummaging in family effects, I found a litle notebook. It was the diary of my wife's great uncle. He died at Paschendaale in 1917, wounded and gassed. A schoolteacher of little military talent, he kept a rough, little diary in pencil from arriving in theUK (with mumps) to a couple of days before he died a year or so later as a gunner near Ypres.

Many of the things he wrote about were mysterious after 100 years so on the left side of each page set, I annotated and illustrated, to bring some sense to it. Nothing before brought home to me that idea of war being long periods of boredom interupted with moments of abject terror. Transcribing the untidy scrawl over several months was difficult, both visually and emotionally - at times I had to walk away for a while. After all, as he came to ife for me in my mind, I also knew his awful fate. (Not quick and clean, but slow and obscene - Eric Bogle's sentiment).

He was not really a good soldier but I suspect ut a good enough man in an insane world. Good enough to have deserved so much more and better. A full life at least. I would wish him to be remembered.

Available as print on demand - www.blurb.com/b/10221705

As Slow As...

A Little Picture Book for Grown-ups

Facinated by the way we use bad similes to describe time (while stuck in traffic one day - 'As slow as...') I put together this little book on expressions for Slow and Quick. And illustrated it too. Even my family were impressed! I think it would make a great little gift for someone with the same bent sense of humour as me.

https://au.blurb.com/b/10890478

 

How to Cook an Omelette

A most unusual approach to an autobiography - one that throws away the truth quite openly in favour of a good yarn. This is as much what should have happened as what actually did. And the author lived through some interested times in interesting places and observed them well - he says!

The horrors of a nice English middle class upbringing, of primary school brutality, Grammar school food and surviving London and France of the late 1960's. Worse, the escape in emmigration, of teaching to extinction, survivng the Trans-Siberian when 'hard class' really was and  eventually an escape into professional photography.

It's weird, it's ordinary, it's funny, it's sad and it is certainly partly untrue, perhaps. And it even has the recipe for a proper omelette, learned in a farmhouse kitchen near Cognac as a lad. Because life is a bit of an omelette - potential great and simple but usually badly cooked and a bit of a mess.

https://au.blurb.com/b/10827395

Sredni Vashtar

If Sredni Vashtar is not among the best short stories ever written, it may well be the best short horror story ever written. No monsters here - just a boy, his awful guardian and a willing mongoose. Or perhaps, these are the real monsters. Taken to task a while ago by my adult son for never having told him about it, I prepared this compilation - the story itself, the bio of the author, H.H. Munroe, an analysis of the tale and some of the art that has been inspired by it. It is my homage to the master, the man who wrote a tale that chilled and fascinated me as a child. For what child has never contemplated a nasty fate for his adult oppressors...  

H.H. Munroe (Saki) was very popular in his time but unlike Kipling or Conan Doyle, is now little remembered.

 https://au.blurb.com/b/4788952