My latest Substack post, Hotter than July, marking two years of Substacking, is about the pure pop perfection of ‘Beach Baby’ by The First Class, and ‘For Once in my Life’ by Stevie Wonder. June was indeed ‘Hotter than July’ this year (we can only hope), the phrase being a Stevie Wonder album title by, and part of the lyrics of ‘Master Blaster’. One of those album titles that doesn’t reflect a track title.
It’s been so hot that my writing shed has been out of bounds, due to being in the sun all day and not being insulated. The USB desk fan is just not enough some days. I am happy to report that this post is coming to you from the writing shed, which is only (!) 26 degrees at the moment. Fan on, windows open, blind down.
In spite of the heat, I have been writing and reading. Every week, I have no idea for a Substack post, yet every week an idea comes to me. I have also been working on my first new short story in over three years. I truly thought fiction-writing had left me, but I was spurred on by a story competition (having vowed not to enter competitions anymore!). As ever, my stories don’t come from pure imagination. This one stems from an encounter with a friend, as a teen, who had heard that I was dead. My sister had been in an accident, and was very much alive, but the whispers had gone round, and by the time it reached poor Kevin, it was me in the accident, and I had died at the scene. Poor chap, the blood drained from his face when he bumped into me in the High Street. I have also included in the story a child doing a jigsaw, trying to fit the wrong pieces into place by thumping them with their fist, which is something a young cousin used to do. Funny the things you remember, which can come in handy 50 years or so later. It feels really good to be writing fiction again, whether or not it gets placed in the competition.
As for reading, I finally got round to reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez which had sat on my shelf, unread, for more than 7 years. Immensely rewarding, a masterpiece of magic realism, funny, but rather confusing. There are 22 characters called Aureliano. To save flicking back and forth to the family tree at the front of the book, I copied it, and used it as a bookmark.
I sometimes wonder who reads stuff on my website, but have been happily surprised by a couple of approaches recently. One from the holiday home I am going to in a few weeks, which is owned by Beach Haus Creative in St Leonard’s. They want to feature me on their ‘socials’. The holiday home looks amazing, the walls covered with the work of local artists. The owner went to my website after seeing the footer of my email, with links to website and Substack.
I am already known to SaveAs Writers, who didn’t need to go to this site to find out about me. I have been a winner and runner-up in their poetry and prose competitions, and was the judge of the prose comp one year. They have invited me to be the guest writer at their regular event in Canterbury on 9 August 2026, at the Cosy Club, Canterbury. I hope to see some of my readers there. There is also an open mic.
I should also mention less welcome approaches that result from AI scraping of this website. I now receive at least three emails a week from ‘book clubs’, all in the USA, and people who can ‘help me promote my books’. One was from an ‘online book festival in Texas’, which said that I didn’t need to appear in person or online, as they would do all the promotion. Hmm, I don’t think so. Some emails don’t even bother to mention me or my books by name; others are more sophisticated, going into some detail about the books (info scraped from reviews and text on this website and on Amazon). It is getting rather tiresome. I did respond to one, telling them to ‘Go away’, and pointing out that the book they offered to promote is out of print, so any amount of work would not result in greater, or any, sales. Authors, please watch out for this sort of thing. Replying isn’t the best idea, and I haven’t done it since. Money may not be mentioned in the first approach, but you can be sure it will be in subsequent emails.
There is a new guide from the Society of Authors, How to Protect Against Scammers: An Author’s Guide
