Not just Sherlock Holmes
Tomorrow (May 1, 2019) there’s a “Coffee Morning with Local Authors” at Lichfield Library from 10 to 12. If you haven’t visited the Library yet, it’s well worth the visit, believe me. It’s a medieval church that’s been brilliantly converted.
Yes, I’ve conflated the titles of two Sherlock Holmes novellas here (“conflated” – did I really write that word?).
I confess to not having read The Valley of Fear for a long time, and it’s been some time since I read A Study in Scarlet. There are some real similarities, though. Both involve a murder of a particularly unusual kind, and both involve a flashback sequence to an American past.
What is really striking about the central portion of both books is the attitude of Conan Doyle to American society.
Our local paper, the Lichfield Mercury, just ran this story on me. Very pleased to see this.
Continue reading “Read all about it! I continue to make the press (Pt I)”
This came from the Blackpool Gazette.
I recently discovered yet another site which listed many of my titles as being free to download. The site itself does not appear to be hosting the titles but seems to be aggregating content from a number of pirate sites, many of which are listed as hosting malware (browser hijackers, etc.).
At least ebooklibs.co has a page devoted to the steps that anyone alleging infringed copyright can take – so I took them.
DO NOT attempt to download the books from the site mentioned here. It links to some very dubious places, and unless you want to spend half a day scraping malware off your hard disk and re-installing software (and/or sending all your credit card details to Eastern European mobsters, I do not recommend downloading from there. By all means use this site here (HughAshtonBooks.com) or any reputable retailer to download my books, but don’t put your digital health at risk by supporting piracy!
Dear Sir
The following titles, whose copyright is owned by me and by my self-publishing operation, are listed as being available on the eBookLibs site as being made available:
Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD
The Darlington Substitution
Beneath Gray Skies
Secrets from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD
More from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD
Without my Boswell
Notes from the Dispatch-box of John H. Watson MD
Further Notes from the Dispatch-box of John H. Watson MD
Red Wheels Turning
At the Sharpe End
The Deed Box of John H. Watson MD*
The Bradfield Push
Tales of Old Japanese
The Reigate Poisoning Case: Continued
The Death of Cardinal Tosca
1894
The Trepoff Murder
Keiko’s House
The Last Notes from the Dispatch-box of John H. Watson MD
Sherlock Ferret and the Missing Necklace*
The Adventures of Sherlock Ferret*
The Untime
Leo’s LuckThese titles may be listed by using the following URL:
https://www.ebooklibs.co/book/search/hugh-ashton/I hereby declare that I and my self-publishing operation j-views Publishing own the copyright to all these titles, following the reversion of copyright from the now defunct Inknbeans Press. No permission has been given for these to be freely distributed through ebooklibs.co, including from some sites which are recognised by security professionals as being vectors for malware infection (e.g., UIrbookdownload).
Please also note that the metadata information is incorrect, and many of these were published as ebooks, but are no longer available as such, and furthermore titles marked with a asterisk were only published in paper format and were never released as ebooks – they have therefore been scanned and reproduced illegally. In addition, these were never offered for sale in PDF format, which is the format in which they are offered from your site.
I therefore await your speedy confirmation that links to downloads of these titles have been removed from your site.
We will see what effect, this will have, if any. Unfortunately, this is a whack-a-mole business – there are hundreds of these pirate-supporting sites (even if they are not pirates or fronts for pirates themselves, they are actively supporting theft). Please do avoid them.
I recently read Cold Comfort Farm for the first time, and was brought up short by the publisher’s note on typography and orthography, particularly the use of -ize as opposed to -ise as a word ending.
My introduction to alternative history was Philip K.Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which I read when I was about 20. I hesitate to call it my favourite, though.That prize goes to Len Deighton’s SS-GB, which combines an interesting alternative timeline where the Nazi invasion of Britain takes place with a detective/espionage thriller. Since Len Deighton has also written some pretty good popular historical books on related subjects (e.g., Fighter and Blitzkrieg), I took his ideas as being fairly accurate.
And now here comes Derek Robinson, whose books I also enjoy, who enjoys getting to the heart of matters – at least as he sees them – which he has done in novels such as A Piece of Cake and Damned Good Show, in which he explores the myths that have grown up around the historical episodes he is writing about. So Invasion 1940 is there to prove to the reader that the Battle of Britain, though important, had very little to do with stopping Operation Sealion (the planned Nazi invasion of Britain).
I suppose quite a few people are familiar with this phrase (the one about the woodshed, I mean), and some people might even know where it comes from – I used it myself just the other day. However, I’d never read Cold Comfort Farm until now, and I regret not having done so before.
As a non-fan of D.H.Lawrence (as a novelist, though I do like a lot of his poetry), I particularly enojoyed the book, and it actually had me laughing out loud on the train as I read it.
Continue reading “Something nasty in the woodshed – REVIEW of Cold Comfort Farm”
Another short exercise, this time: “While babysitting for her neighbours, your character goes snooping through their cupboards and finds a disturbing photo.”
Warning – contains words that some may find offensive (and that’s the point, actually)
Recently I saw a post on Facebook which gave a list of euphemisms sometimes used in the US to avoid using certain swearwords. They struck this Brit as being quaint and amusing (even the term “cuss words”!).
25% off all sales from this site…
On Smashwords, on Read an Ebook Week (March 3 through 9), most of my books will be on sale at half-price. The rest will be free. What are you waiting for?