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Review of Augustine: The Truth Seeker

12 Jun

Danika Cooley, of the website Thinking  Kids, has kindly written a review of Augustine: The Truth Seeker, giving advice about how it would fit into a homeschooling curriculum. Specifically she identifies these subjects as ones where Augustine would fit in well:

  • Ancient History
  • The Early Church
  • Manichean Beliefs
  • The Donatists
  • The Roman Empire
  • The Fall of the Roman Empire

I don’t actually know Danika, so you can get an unbiased view of Augustine by reading her review. Or better still, form your own unbiased view by reading it yourself! It’s available from Christian bookshops and online (Amazon, Eden, TenofThose, Christian Focus website etc.).

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Calling all truth seekers!

23 Apr

You are warmly invited to the launch of Augustine: The Truth Seeker on Thursday 1st May at 7pm in Faith Mission bookshop, Glasgow.

Augustine is being launched as part of a special prizegiving evening (which doesn’t mean they’ll be giving out prizes, it means it’s a chance to buy prizes for children to receive at upcoming church prizegivings) and there’s 15% off books on the night.

There will be drinks and nibbles, a talk about St Augustine and the book, plus a reading and the chance to chat and ask questions. The event will go on till 9pm, but feel free to drop in just for a short while if you have other committments.

I hope to see you there!

Cover smaller

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Game of (Heavenly) Thrones

17 Mar

I was very excited a couple of days ago to receive through the post my author copies of Augustine: The Truth Seeker. It’s a brilliant feeling to hold your own book in your hand, and I have been waving a copy in the face of everyone I know, with what must be very irritating squeals of excitement.

Game of Thrones

I was going to write a post telling you about the book, and how you can get hold of it. (This is still something of a mystery – I have my copies but no bookshop seems to yet. Can’t be long now.) However, I have been watching a lot of the HBO series Game of Thrones recently – all three seasons in just over a week in fact, because we got a short-term Sky Entertainment pass. And I noticed some interesting similarities with my own work. Therefore, instead of telling you all about how wonderful Augustine: The Truth Seeker is, let me tell you why it’s just like Game of Thrones – but with a PG certificate instead of an 18.

  • It’s about an ambitious young man from a semi-noble, but not monied, provincial background trying to make it in the big cities of the empire. Remind you of Littlefinger?
  • Barbarian hordes start invading from the north and east.
  • Some people hold to the old gods, some to the new, and there are weird mystery religious from foreign lands with a worrying hold over believers.
  • Pretenders to the throne keep cropping up, and at one point in the book there are three monarchs, including a King (ok, emperor) in the North who comes south to try and take the whole lot.
  • Crossing a narrow sea was quite a big deal in both Game of Thrones and Augustine’s time. Especially when you did it with an army.
  • Family members scheme to undermine each other’s power base. (I’m thinking of City Prefect Symmachus and Bishop Ambrose – and just about any of the Lannisters, Barathaons and Greyjoys.)
  • Both have an emphasis on mothers who wish they had more influence over their wayward sons (Monica with Augustine, Catelyn Stark with Rob and Bran, and of course Cersei with Joffrey).
  • There’s a lot of celibacy, in the Night’s Watch and various religious orders of George R. R. Martin’s world, and in Augustine’s Monastry in the Garden. There’s also a lot of the opposite, when Augustine was a younger man – and everywhere in Game of Thrones.
  • Illegitimate sons who are dear to their fathers have an important role to play.
  • People drop like flies. Don’t get too attached to the characters in Game of Thrones or Augustine.

Of course, I’m being a bit facetious. It’s not just the lack of dragons in Augustine that distinguishes it from Game of Thrones; there are far more fundamental differences, the key one being that in Augustine’s world there is a truth that can be discovered, and the one who sits on the heavenly throne turns out to matter a great deal more than the earthly game of thrones. There’s also a lot less nudity and swearing of course, although there is some violence and “mild sexual references”. It’s aimed at the 12 to 14 age group, or mature ten-year-olds, so nothing too graphic.

So there you have it: Augustine: The Truth Seeker, the PG Game of Thrones. I await the phonecall from HBO about TV adaptation rights.

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Read an E-Book Week 2014

3 Mar

REAW 2014This is Read an E-Book Week, and therefore you should probably read an e-book. Preferably one of mine. This is an especially good time to try out my electronic offerings because my short story collections are free on Smashwords all this week, using the code RW100.

I had thought that my first post of this month would be about the release of my new book Augustine: The Truth Seeker. However, Augustine  is a little late (possibly held up by bad weather on the Mediterranean – you know how these Ancient Roman sea journeys can be) so download a short story or two to keep you going until then. I will be sure to inform the whole world when I do finally have my shiny new book in my possession.

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A Novel Outing

22 Oct

To say today has been mixed would be understating it. It started, far too early, with a Virgin tilting train to London – probably the only kind of train that stocks sick bags, because it has to.  I’ll leave the details to your imagination, but it wasn’t a pleasant ride.

Then, at lunchtime (hence why I was on the stupidly early train) I had lunch with Paula Johnson of the Society of Authors, authors Simon Brett and Fay Weldon, and various literary and publishing types at a little restaurant in London called Chez Patrick. This isn’t something I do often, I’m afraid. (Oh, my glamorous life!) It was because I was one of the winners of the Mail on Sunday Novel Competition. Entrants had to write a few paragraphs from the start of a novel (which may exist, but doesn’t have to) and include the word “train”. This competition has run since the 1980s, but this year was the last, unfortunately.

Lunch was nice, and everyone was lovely. It was preceded by a short award ceremony and a long session of photo taking, so the food was all the more welcome when it came. I finally got to see all the other entries, and the variety was amazing, not just of the use of the word train (which can have different meanings, of course), but more of style and mood. I can’t share them with you because they’re not mine, but I will give you the authors’ names so you can look them up if you’re interested:

1st place: Lynne Greenway

2nd: Clare Funnell

3rd: Susan Hope

=4th: Deirdre Palmer

=4th: Annie Whitehead

=4th: Me!

Unfortunately the day went downhill after the lunch. It could hardly go uphill from there I suppose, but there’s just something about London that’s determined to wipe the smile off your face and make you look as grim as a character from Eastenders. The lunch went on quite late, with lots of chatting, and afterwards Annie and I sauntered off towards our onward travel, thinking there was no rush. But there should have been, for me at least. Not only did I miss meeting up with my sister, because she finished earlier than planned while I finished later, but I fell foul of the off-peak rules. Six in the morning is definitely off-peak, but in London anything between 4.30pm and 7pm is not, alas. I was offered the chance to upgrade for £92 (chortle!) but instead I thought I’d sit in a cafe, drink an extortionately priced drink, and update my blog.

Anyway, I daresay I will get home eventually, and it has been a fun day out. Meanwhile, here is my winning entry for you to enjoy. The rest of the novel doesn’t exist yet, but it probably will someday.

Barry was supposed to be on the 6.15 to Birmingham. If he had caught the 6.15, departing platform four, he would by now have been at the airport, ready to fly out to his best friend’s wedding in Marbella. Instead he had caught the 6.14 from platform five, travelling to Fort William, and promptly fallen asleep. He had noticed his mistake when he awoke at Corrour station, and scrambled off the train. Now he was staggering, half-awake in the blustery wind buffetting Rannoch Moor. One thousand, three hundred feet above sea level, four hundred and thirty miles from Birmingham, with a suitcase full of beachwear and a stag giving him a belligerent look from a nearby hillock.

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Counting My Blessings

14 Feb
Christian Aid's "Count Your Blessings" programme

Christian Aid’s “Count Your Blessings” programme

I don’t remember Lent ever starting before Valentine’s Day before, although I suppose it must have happened. It’s not a very good arrangement, since I have lots of lovely choccies and a nagging feeling that I’m not supposed to eat them. I will quash that feeling, however, since I haven’t given up chocolate for Lent and a woman whose husband books a boys’ holiday over Valentine’s Day deserves all the chocolates she can get!

This Lent I will neither be giving up something  nor taking up something. Instead, I’m going to follow the Christian Aid “Count Your Blessings” programme. At least, I am when I get the leaflet back. I blithely left it at work for other people to see, since Christian Aid’s website assured me that an app was available. It is, but it won’t download onto my phone so it’s back to the paper version.

“Count Your Blessings” give you little daily facts about the developing world or conflicts and asks for tiny pledges of money every day or two. For example: “At the end of 2011, an estimated 42.5 million people were living in a place to which they had been forcibly displaced due to conflict or persecution. Give 10p for every year you have lived in your current home.” While we’re struggling with a horrible recession it’s easy to forget just how much worse off so many people in the world are. Although I said I’m not giving anything up, I am saying “no” to the occasional treat to balance out the pledges from “Count Your Blessings”, which again makes me aware of just how good life is for me.

Back to Valentine’s Day, and the e-book of Foreign Encounters from Writers Abroad is now available. This is a collection of stories about relationships, written by ex-pats or ex-ex-pats (like me), and profits go to a charity that provides books to schools in the developing world. This also requires a tiny pledge of money: £1.90 on Amazon, or $2.99 on Smashwords. Look out for my atmospheric little piece, “Sounion”.

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One Year On

8 Feb

Roughly a year ago I gave up my boring office job and released my first novel, Leda. I intended to take stock after one year and see how the old writing career is going. So how does it look?

I would like to be able to support myself entirely by writing but that still seems to be a distant goal. As well as looking after my niece I’m currently back at the office, albeit only temporarily to cover staff shortages. (It seems I am indispensable. 😉

On the positive side, out of a print run of 500 copies Leda has so far sold over 350. I think that’s not bad for the first year (a Christian children’s publisher agreed) and sales are holding up steadily rather than tailing off. Someone, somewhere must be buying this book.

Then the best news of all: I have a book commission from the aforementioned Christian children’s publisher. All being well my children’s biography of St Augustine should be published in the early part of 2014. So I may still be skint, but at least I feel like I’m getting somewhere in my impecunious career.

Coincidentally, the weekend that I am looking back on my year is also Chinese New Year. For this reason my latest collection of short stories, A New Year’s Trio, will be free for Kindle download from now until Tuesday.

It’s also my seventh wedding anniversary in a few days, a significant milestone but more memorable for me than for my husband, it seems, since he accidentally booked a boys’ holiday to Spain over it. Oh well, I suppose there’s always next year.

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Primed for a Laugh

11 Jan

Prima FebruaryThis month’s Prima features my story “A Recipe for Disaster”. It’s a very short, funny little piece about a couple working in their short-staffed restaurant after a very busy evening when famous food critic Clive St John decides to make an unexpected appearance.

“This month’s” Prima is of course February, due to the logic of magazine dating. The cover is as in the photo, and my story is on page 144. Prima is priced £2.99, and this month you can also get a Maybelline mascara, free but for P&P, meaning that it practically pays for itself.

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Shadow’s Dawn by H K Miller

8 Dec

Shadows Dawn coverI must plug this book that my cousin has just released on Amazon, not just because he is my cousin but because it is good.

I can’t tell you about the plot arc properly because I haven’t read it right to the end (something I will put right very quickly) but I’ve read large sections of it to help edit it and I can tell you that the boy can write. I’ve suffered through too many badly written books to take that lightly.

It’s a fantasy novel set in a time when humans live in primitive hunter-gatherer tribes while the elves are far more civilised, but a threat is going to force them to work together. The characters are more real and earthy than in many fantasy novels – they’re irritable, they get drunk, they worry about the future not just of the world but of their tribe’s food sources. It’s got a bit of bite and realism that makes the story matter, avoiding the “so what?” reaction that can greet world-shattering crises in fantasy novels.

If you like fantasy, and you have a couple of quid to spare (I know it’s a recession, but you can stretch to £1.93), download Shadow’s Dawn, and let me know what you think.

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Foreign Encounters Released

25 Oct

Foreign EncountersThe Writers Abroad anthology Foreign Encounters has been released. I have a short piece in it called “Sounion”, which is rather good and atmospheric if I say so myself.

Foreign Encounters is available from Lulu as a paperback for £7.44 ($9.99, hence the strange UK price), and profits go the the charity Books Abroad which provides school books to poor countries.

The anthology will probably come out as an ebook at some point, too, if you prefer your books that way.

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