Jim Bish

Thanks both – I can honestly say I have never experienced the stress/panic I did yesterday. Once I knew I was safe – ie at the school – I was OK. Quite cathartic to write it all out though and wonder why I responded like I did when I don’t usually react in this way.

Oh dear Squidge. My sister lives in Coventry and I go to great lengths to avoid driving on any part of the Ringway so I sympathise. Sounds as though your day went brilliantly though!

So here it is – Part 3, the conclusion of the story of my publishing nightmare, and how I finally recovered the rights to my novel from an intransigent and uncaring publisher. It was financially costly – but not nearly as costly as it might have been, and taught me a great deal about what not to do next time. Final blogpost, with as much in the…[Read more]

That’s great news Stevie. Wonderful to hear of a RWAV story hitting success so early, it bodes well for the field in general

Congratulations, Stevie. Great news and very well deserved 😊

Congratulations Stevie!!

Castle class are lovely. My first Hornby train was a Castle class. Wish I could remember which one.

…In fact one of my few relatively clear memories of my grandfather are holding his hand while we stood on the (very crowded) footplate of the Oliver Cromwell, a BR Standard 7 Class locomotive, for a short run up and down the rails at Bressingham in the early 1980s. All I remember is a glimpse of the fire in the furnace, being closed in on all…[Read more]

This is fascinating.

My grandfather, on my mother’s side, worked on the railways but I know virtually nothing of what he did, to my embarrassment. I gather he was responsible for maintenance of a section of track, and when he started, had something to do with using horses to shunt rolling stock into and out of sidings, this being before that…[Read more]

Just nipped into the Den in the middle of a busy week to discover another of your interesting blogs, Richard, so had to stop and read. Thank you!

Another fascinating blog Richard. And unlike so many of them, where there were obvious risks being taken or safety features omitted, with this one it’s so unlikely as to surely have been unforseeable. Do you think the signalmen were reassured by all the built-in the safety features that nothing like that could have happened, freeing them to run t…[Read more]

Sounds like my kind of novella, Stevie 😁

Thanks Richard. I’d never heard of him but have down loaded a collection of his and will have a look – maybe not at night with the wind howling round the house like it did yesterday evening!

That’s definitely one of the problems Bella – people, self included, really want these things to go well and can easily blind themselves to the problems. There’s that siren voice of ‘yes, but you’ll be published…’ – as if that means anything by itself

Go for it, Stevie. I bet you can knock out more words in 5 months than you think. And worst case scenario, you’ll still have the makings of a story if you don’t hit the deadline.

Thanks @philippaeast – you’re most welcome. I feel very silly having made all these avoidable errors, but I wouldn’t want anyone else to fall into the same trap. Mostly I don’t want people to get stuck with publishers who act in bad faith.

Would you mind retweeting the link the next time you’re on Twitter? Just to get the highest circulation…[Read more]