Well, OK, maybe not: crying is the thing. We just assumed there would be more dark mischief in Scotland, or more Culture shenanigans. As much as anything it was that dark, dark humour that drove home that there was just one more to come.

As a long standing SF reader it is his Culture novels that held me. If you want to know why – or just want to get a flavour of Banks at his best – then grab Look To Windward and do three things:

• Read the book
• Note the publication date
• Note the dedication

Science Fiction is often credited with prescience when it comes to technology, but this book show prescience when it came to humanity – even if it had at heart more optimism than the real world was able to deliver. It does what great writing does: illuminate.

Ian Rankin said on 5Live yesterday that he hoped to have more time to drink with his friend before he “wanders off down the road”, a lovely peaceful image. Whenever I’ve heard Banks interviewed he has always struck me as someone who you wouldn’t mind getting quietly sozzled with.

The world needs more people like that, not fewer.

So it was, a few years ago, when Julie Mayhew came to VWC (at the behest of Jenny Barden if I recall correctly) and read an extract from Red Ink, published last week. It was screamingly obvious that here was a special talent. It wasn’t just the confident reading, born of her other life as an actress – we have plenty of confident readers and confidence does not cover up flaws.

There was (and is) a fearlessness in use of imagery, an boldness in following her lead (and deeply fractured) character’s thoughts to their conclusion and the audacity to realise that a tale of a fractured person needs telling in a fractured way.

And then there was the prose. It would be a cheat to pull out an extract, so next time you are in WH Smith or Waterstones just read the first page (The Recipe), let yourself be seduced then buy the damned book. It is marvellous.

Of course there was a lot more to do than deliver great writing. Like Jenny Barden and Jonathan Pinnock, VWC members who have also tasted the joy of publication in the last year or so, Julie understood the need for sheer hard graft and the iron will never to give up. As someone once said, “The harder I work the luckier I get”.

For reasons best known to themselves (probably a high fever), all three of the above were  kind enough to include me in their acknowledgements. If I have been some small help in getting three hugely diverse tales into print, then it is because Verulam Writers’ Circle gives an opinionated dilettante like me a platform to unleash my fanaticism for great writing and inclination to nag people into being as good as they can be. But it is quite extraordinarily gratifying to be acknowledged by people you admire and take inspiration from. Now get out an buy the books.

By the way, Jenny, Julie and Jonathan are all giving workshops at this years Get Writing Conference, brought to you by VWC and held at the University of Hertfordshire on 20 April 2013. Book now. You will not regret it.

The Parapet

by

Ian Cundell

I didn’t see it coming. Didn’t have a chance to avoid it.

I popped my head above the makeshift parapet, and searing, shocking pain exploded in my right eye. I rolled back underneath the blackboard and someone shouted “Tom! Are you OK?” I was lucky I didn’t lose the eye, I suppose. Who would have thought a catapult made of a rubber band and some folded paper could be so painful? God, it hurt like hell.

I didn’t cry of course. The boys would have done me in if I had. And my black eye didn’t get me out of the caning we all got for making the common room into a battlefield. I didn’t cry then, either.

Old Nurse Kitchen wasn’t sympathetic. “You needn’t think you’re getting out of PT, Atkins” she said. “Perhaps you’ll be more careful in future.”

How could I be more careful? I didn’t see it coming.

Still, I bragged on it for days, and got plenty of attention for my ‘war wound’, although I was pretty cross that whoever did it never owned up. But now… well, I reckon maybe he didn’t know what he’d done, was just firing blindly.

Heh. I’m used to that now.

So here I am. The Pals are back together again, the three-oh-threes are ready, bayonets fixed. Tin hats on. The boys are lined up, all pursed lips and silent prayers.

“B-Company! One Step Forward!”

Time to stick my head over the parapet again. There’s nothing makeshift about this one.

Good luck, lads. And don’t look so nervous.

You won’t see it coming.

(c) Ian Cundell, 2012. All rights reserved.

The quote: “The harder I work the luckier I get”, has been attributed to various individuals, including Thomas Jefferson (well, similar sentiments – different form), Sam Goldwyn and Gary Player, but that maxim could justifiably have originated from the keyboard of my good friend and guest today on Is that the time? Lord…, Jonathan Pinnock.

Jon’s writing has won him numerous prizes and accolades, including the prestigious Scott Prize the direct result of which is his first collection of short – and very short – fiction, Dot Dash, published this week by Salt Publishing, publishers of the 2012 Man Booker finalist The Lighthouse, by Alison Moore.

Read on…

Jimmy Savile: a decade on trial - the views, of course, are mine but I will be moderately surprised is anyone at VWC disagrees (and I am sure they will pipe up)

 ”Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler, and speaks even when not asked.” Euripides, 480-406 BC 

February 2012: Detective Superintendent Derek Burridge is shocked to learn that his estranged wife, Vicky, has been involved in a serious car accident, knocking down a woman and narrowly missing a man. He is even more shocked to learn that the woman is inexplicably in a coma and the man, Rathbone Kydd, thinks he has travelled through time. Derek launches an investigation into Rathbone’s claims, many of which are made  whilst he is a compulsory patient in the mental health department of Plymouth Royal Infirmary. When Derek checks into the alleged suicide of Rathbone’s father in 1972, he seriously considers the possibility that Rathbone is telling the truth.

Derek and Rathbone soon uncover a conspiracy of, quite literally, quantum proportions.

 A would-be 1970s rock star; a renegade biker gang; international drug smuggling; a Greek crime lord and his man-eating daughter; the Russian and Greek secret services; British Military Intelligence; quantum physics and a modern day detective all combine in a thriller like no other.

For full details, including samples, click here.

CONTENT WARNING: Contains sexual references, drugs and bad language. Not suitable for those aged under 16 years.

Priced at £6.99 ($8.99 in the US, €7.99 in Europe), it can be obtained via Amazon across the known world – the world known to Amazon, that is: .CO.UK, .COM, .IT, .FR, .DE, .ES

And as a special offer to VWC members [EDIT - and anyone else attending that night, even if not yet a full member], I will be able to supply copies at the VWC end of season party on 11 July for the knock-down rate of £5.50 – yes, a MASSIVE wholly reasonable £1.49 discount and the chance to have it defaced/ruined signed!

If you want to take advantage of my generosity this offer, please e-mail me on < pike at kjbennett.co.uk > (in the normal e-mail address format, of course) so that I have an indication of demand.

In case you are in doubt what you may be signing up to, check out the book trailer -

Pike’s Quest book trailer

Admire the quality!

Check out the first post: Auction Hunters or view the YouTube video that goes with it – I told you it was multi-media!