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If it’s on Google it MUST be correct!!!
But it doesn’t really matter, if, within the context of what you write, it IS correct. As long as you “hang a lantern” as Harry Bingham of Jericho Writers, puts it, your readers will believe you. Go for it!

Yes, so damn annoying. I expect we’ve all been here with our stories in one way or another. Just when I sat back happily, thinking I’d at last finished my story, that thought about plausibility came to me. And it won’t go away. However…
Last night I tried carefully writing into the story the stop-start from repeated redialling and thought it…[Read more]

Yes, but… Who would repeatedly ring a number that kept going to voicemail? Some might try twice but no more than that, surely.

And I suspect that perhaps the caller is no longer in a position to make repeat calls any more than the receiver is able to answer, but I’m just guessing.

I still think the simplest answer is to establish early on that…[Read more]

That’s exactly the sort of detail-conundrum that gets my knickers in a twist, too! I agree with @philippaeast on this. I’m hearing a mobile that rings and rings, cuts out and then almost immediately rings and rings, cuts out, etc etc. Without knowing exactly what that signifies in your story I think it has the same level of hopeful/hopeless effort…[Read more]

Damn don’t you just hate when reality gets in the way of a good turn of phrase! I do love the sound of that last line.

I wonder if you could play with the idea of someone repeatedly redialling so that the ringing sound becomes continuous even if each call begins and ends. Perhaps you could tweak the last line slightly to read something like…[Read more]

Thanks for your comments Daeds and Tony Lyttle. My mobile won’t just ring and ring, but whether it is or isn’t possible with mobiles generally, maybe most readers would just think (if they thought anything), ‘Oh, my phone doesn’t do that but other phones might’. I do want my story to be realistic, but perhaps I’m getting overly fussy in my old age!

It sounds a wonderful last line and conjures up all sorts of possible scenarios; I can understand why you want to be able to use it. I wonder whether you can, though.If, as Daed suggests, you can prove it works by testing turning off your own voicemail, fine, but I suspect phone companies have a system that will automatically disconnect a call…[Read more]

Very good question. You could have a play with the settings on your own phone to see if you can stop it going to voicemail, or set it for a greater number of rings before it does? I’m sure I’ve known mobiles that ring for ages before the go to voicemail, and also as the caller you can cut off the call and ring back almost instantly if the pho…[Read more]

@jillybean you MUST!

Mantra.

I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Such is the mantra, spoken quietly in hope during clandestine gatherings, or whispered in the darkest moments outside of them, when dreams of life lived to the full fall beyond my control and are squashed like bugs in the mud.

For certain, this mantra is against the teachings of…[Read more]

Thanks Elle and Mad 🙂

And Kaz, I am now tempted to do exactly that. ‘Ironside’s Guide to the bizarre Middle Ages’ :’D

Thanks all. Will post a link when the ebook’s published x

This is brilliant news, congratulations!

Congratulations, sounds like a fascinating story!

This looks absolutely brilliant! They both do actually and thank you for the reminder about book 1 – I’ve just downloaded both of them and am really looking forward to getting my teeth into them.

Contraception details! Sheep wool beards!! Are you planning on releasing a kind of “Ironside’s Notes’ on your research rabbit holes to accompany your…[Read more]