Author Archives: emmacalin

Escape To Love – Cover Reveal

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It’s been a while since I’ve been here. My only excuse is that I have been writing. It started out as a novel, but in the way of the universe, gravity drew it back from that cloud of gas and cooled it into a 10,000 word story. So much editor’s red ink has been spilled on this desk that the office looks like a crime scene. 

There is also a full length novel on the slipway, so I have felt free to indulge my passion for shorts in “Escape To Love”. I have drawn upon my own South London life and experiences. It is a story of love, set in a landscape of urban deprivation and social disadvantage. A woman on the run from an abusive relationship with no one but her handicapped child as a companion, stumbles into a life changing moment. Decisions must be made and so often in her past she had been wrong. It is a story about trust and the blinding nature of lust and passion. 

Now, I do like a bit of Do It Yourself. I’ve done my own cover. Even more demanding, I’m doing my own audio book. Usually, I chicken out and get Oscar to do them. In this case the “voice” of the story is so much that of the woman, that there is no way out. Well, I could have hired an actress, but all the ones I know personally were busy either singing in “Les Miserables” or collecting awards from The Queen.

Oooh, I must tell you about my Lez Miz experience. It’s a lovely lovely film. I went on Saturday and went into sob overdrive. The film is so long and emotional that I’m sure that my excess tears were diverted to my bladder. During the scenes of waifs singing in heavy wet wet tinkling splashy releasing rain near the end, believe me – I knew their pain. (Now, style purists, tell me that adjectives have no effect!) When I got home, the movie soundtrack haunted me and I dived onto You Tube. I found there a little gem which just kinda says something about genuine people and their hearts.You know, I loved the folks in this clip and if I had to have a picture of an audience, it would be them. 

My Emma Thinx today is a lift from Escape To Love. It kinda sets the tone.

Emma Thinx: Love is hands up when no one has a gun. 









Freedom Of Choice – The Chosen Goes Clix For Nix.

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I am not a tidy person. Over Christmas I reached a crisis of confusion in which whatever job I wanted to do, I could not find the kit to do it. When stuff is piled so high you can’t see the hoover, you have an issue. Worst of all was my work space. It had become so cluttered that I could no longer work. I thought of writing a story about a kid who gets lost in his own front room, something like Harry Trotter And the Pig-Sty Of Doom. 

A couple of days ago I attacked at dawn. I got out the garden incinerator and had a bonfire of the insanities. First to go was the accumulated school-work of three kids. It was amazing to learn that 20 years ago they were doing stuff at school that I thought was still in the future. I was delighted to learn from a religious education test that a prophet was an old word for a sharp business man and that a disciple was a man who followed another man in the street. The pupil is at University now, but not doing theology. 

I’ve been smokin’ with my pokin’

All of this is nothing to do with anything really. But it’s that time of year when we rip it all down and let in the fresh air. I will confess to some sentimental moments as I fed the flames. After two days I unearthed the hoover and my desk. There’s gonna be no stopping me now!

First up is my free days on Amazon KDP for my short story “The Chosen“.(Separate link for Amazon UK)  It’s a regular tale of two low level semi criminals trying to go straight in a world that’s bent against them. Oscar Sparrow did the audio. My free days on “Knockout” reached about 8,000 readers. Once I have the full analysis I’ll do a scribe-a-thon techno de-brief of follow up sales etc. For now, let’s see if I can get some visibility for this very grungy tale of lust in the dust….please…it’s FREE. Buddy, can you dime a spare?……

Emma Thinx: You burn souvenirs. Memories burn you. 







Fire Up Your Follicles

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Scales fell from my eyes

Ooh – I’ve just been throwing out the junk after all the food-fest. First thing that’s going in the trash is the bathroom scales. That’s the first problem solved. Second problem is that the programme on my righteous virtue training machine has gone wrong. All this bloody software! Computers are like men – you choose them cos you like the look of the  hardware and as soon as you get’em home and try to plug ’em in they develop a software problem. 

Never mind, life is beautiful quand même. I’m missing my home in France to be honest. I’ve been thinking of the river Charente and writing a love poem. Mainly I’m writing a story. I’m terrible really, constantly distracted by love, desire and chocolate. Well, let’s just say chocolate shall we. It’s all research you know. 

I had always said that I was never gonna give it away again. For a few months I have been trembling on a cold street corner of literary virginity. Punters have stopped, sighed, squeezed and occasionally had a nibble. But Hell, it’s Christmas and a wise woman gives out the goods. “Knockout!” is only sex, love, intrigue and police action drama but it’s FREE. There’s a new hot book soon out so take this chance to fire up your follicles in preparation. 

I hope you all had a great Christmas. Next year will bring its own problems of course, but we’re learning all the time aren’t we?  Just think -in 2013 mankind will know more than she has ever known – except what to do with all that knowledge. 

Links to free book:


Emma thinx: Giving it for free is business. Giving it for nothing is love. 






Freeze Frame – Published.

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I’ve been invited to a virtual party. You know, I really should stay in more! Once again I have been helping out in the final thrust of Oscar’s Freeze Frame poetry project. To be honest it is a labour of love – just to see something unique out there. I had forgotten about being a poet – you know that kind of earnest endeavour for that one inspired word. I can’t believe I used to do that stuff. I can still do LOVE but the old wino, the innocent kid,the walk in the country, the big philosophies of time,the intellectual abstracts, the rainy nights in a northern English town, an old couple crossing the road -all that is far from my grasp now. The signals are tiny and the receptors are dull. Far from being disheartened, I am very happy to do full fat big breakfast lust. There is a great happiness in it. 

At last the Freeze Frame collection is out there. It is a wonderful anthology and I’m proud to have been around it. For this last time I am posting Oscar’s blog on here. What do you think of his beard? He’s not getting a mistletoe snog from me with all that lot on there!

Freeze Frame Anthology – Published

Santa maybe

Santa may-be
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am a reasonably serious old bloke who has scribbled poems for about 50 years. Finding myself posing in a Santa hat holding a Kindle Fire device for a picture to be captioned with punny quips made me wonder if I had lost the plot. If I appear disrespectful to poets and poetry I do apologise. O brave new world that has such peep-shows in it. Such is the circus of the modern book world. Apparently some fiction writers are so busy on the road that all their stuff is done by ghost writers. Seemingly it’s the brand that matters. It is incredible to me. Perhaps I won’t beat myself up over the Santa hat. If it makes poetry more accessible and unstuffy then it has to be a Google plus. I defy anyone to ghost write in the style of any of the six Freeze Frame writers.
Far more importantly, the book is out there and up on Amazon. It was delivered without anaesthetic during the night, about 24 hours premature but at a good weight and with powerful voice. This is not the end of course but at least everything is all together and in one place. The stars are the poets who had enough faith in me to join in and risk all to be part of the Freeze Frame project.
Tomorrow evening 1800 hours UK (GMT)  – 12 noon USA EST – there will be a launch party at which all can meet the poets. There will be readings and comments and hopefully a few silly hats.  This takes place on Facebook with a live link to a Google+ ‘Hangout’ – you can watch us all having our virtual champagne and reading a selection of poems from the collection.  Here’s the link:
Ho Ho Ho!
Emma Thinx: Poems live on pages. Poetry lives in hearts.




Guest Blogger Oscar Sparrow

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 A glorious blue sky winter Sunday. There is beauty on this Earth and perhaps we are the only entities of the universe to possess the emotional and intellectual pathways to discern it. In the bare trees around me, the merciless crows scrabble for nothing other than survival and dominance. Unlike mankind, they know not cruelty but only indifference. Surely we are both saved and shamed by beauty for what we do is in its presence. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Gauguin did not know and we are no nearer the answer today. 

The poet Oscar Sparrow loves to quote these lines. He comes to mind because his collection “I Threw A Stone” is free today on Amazon KDP.  I am delighted to use my little blog to display his own take on the matter. Don’t forget there is a full audio track for free with the e-book. Any one who witnessed him revealing his “Erectile Dysfunction” at the Bedford Festival of Romance now has the chance to re-live the moment. 

I threw a stone cover for AmazonA few years ago I went to a public auction with a friend who was looking for some furniture. Whilst we were waiting for his lot to come up, an enormous quantity of cuddly toys came under the hammer. It seemed that it was the entire contents of a bankrupted shop. The price started somewhere at the edge of the cosmos and came down to something I could afford by raking about amongst the fluff covered boiled sweets in the sofa. Within a few seconds I owned several hundred cuddly giraffes, tortoises and some things that looked like socially disadvantaged wildebeest at the end of a hard day in the stampede.  I applied for a pedlar’s certificate and set out on a career as a door to door salesman. The giraffes and tortoises flew out of my sack. I sold only one wildebeest to a guy spaced out on wacky baccy who thought it was an alien.
Plan B in my retail conquest of the planet was a market stall. That weekend I was at the town tat-fest with my trestle table loaded with cuddly alien cattle. I figured that since the goods were not selling I would offer them at 50 pence each. After lunch I reduced the price to zero but still the poor beasts could find no homes. Then, a fellow trader wandered over and looked at the creatures and declared that they were from a top designer label and that by giving them away, people thought they were junk. Accordingly I increased the price to £5 and added a sign saying “Top Designer Brand”. By dusk, the herd of alien wildebeest had gone. I shared the spoils with a guy who had lent me a truck to transport them and the market stall authorities. There was enough left for a good old fish and chip nosh up and a week’s  caravan holiday. (It rained and the kids were sick). So much for my flirtation with Capitalism.
So it is with some worldly experience that my poetry collection “I Threw A Stone”  is offered for free until the close of play on the 18th December. It is of course a top designer brand. So far I have shifted one copy in the UK and have zoomed up 900,000 places in the charts. Sales are probably not helped by the fact that Amazon UK have removed all but one review apparently on the basis that people liked the book. (One could become quite annoyed about all this but poet karma keeps my thoughts on a higher plane).
Here are the links.
There we are then – Roll up! Roll up! There ya go my love, cheap at half the price me old China, perk ya selves up wiv a poem or two. Roll up! Roll up .

Emma thinx: See with your inner eye. Hearing is believing. 

Freeze Frame cover Reveal

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I’ve been working. My dear mate Oscar has been editing and compiling a collection of poetry. I’ve actually done some work on the audio – but only because I’m so bloody nosy about how people sound. Recently I went back into poetry myself to do a couple of YouTube videos. You know, poetry is still a really cool medium. I would be the first to admit that the commercial bish bosh bash has weakened my ability to go into full poet mode.

Listening to these guys I kinda zoned out of all the clatter. There’s Paul Tobin, a real deal poet who gets inside the fence and under the radar. He’s  – just so calm and persuasive. Jo Von Bargen – an American poet with a life soaked softness that is – well – beautiful. There’s a guy called Jeff Hansen who comes up with abstract stuff in a direct voice that offers ideas without any messing about. There’s Claude Nougat who speaks quite hauntingly about Rome in a captivating Scandiamerifrancitaliano  accent that must be unique to her and the world. There’s Oscar in his full Thespian/cockney truck driver/British posh. Finally, there’s Candy Bright who digs it out from the woman’s heart and certainly gets hold of mine. 

Today the cover of the collection Freeze Frame is revealed and I am proud of my very small part in this project. The cover was created by a young designer, Will,  who freelances for Gallo-Romano.  They tell me the e-book will be up on 21st December and the paper edition in January. It has its own Facebook page and if you feel so inclined you could follow the link and like it. 



Emma thinx:  Go undercover – hibernate with a book. 







Une Passion Parisienne

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There is  often a conflict in my mind between the artistic and the commercial. Recently I have been working on some poetry and videos to publicise my next book and my last one. Poetry was my first teenage expression of myself as a writer. I remember how I used to look at drab terraced urban houses and watch the red of passion bleeding out into the grey pool of everyday. The folk who queued with me for tube trains and buses had known first kisses, and shared with me the aching expectation of wholeness that LOVE, and only love, would bring. 



Like many women, I have known the desert and the jungle of love.  Somewhere deep down in me has always been the defeatist clerk, telling me to forget the Romance and warm my lips on the cold bottom line. I think this voice is in a lot of us. It is the reason I write  Romance. When I wrote “Knockout” I took my readers to Paris to some moments I had lived myself. A week or so ago, I completed a video in which the text is taken from the book. It’s not a sell. It’s a truth of my life just a little overdressed.


Emma thinx: Love is letting go, but get a grip on him first. 




Festival Of Romance 2012

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I’ve just been reading Louise Allen‘s “Seduced by the Scoundrel” (Mills and Boon). A shipwrecked young lady finds herself naked and defenceless on a beach in the midst of a mob. Ooh, I now know just how she must have felt. On Saturday I ended up in a terrified state of emotional nudity in the  Harpur Shopping Centre in Bedford. All I had to do was to read from my book to passing shoppers. Having never been shipwrecked or had to read aloud in a shopping mall, I think I would have gone for the shipwreck if there had been a choice! At least I would have been trembling with cold as opposed to terror. 

The occasion of course was the Festival Of  Romance. This was my first time at such an event. There I was, not even a dairy maid on the Milky Way or a knobbly asteroid in the Romance Universe. Around me were all manner of authors, some of whom I knew only as names on the covers of books I had read. My greatest impression of the whole show was that everyone was so friendly, helpful and willing to share their experiences. 

You know who you are (I hope)


The festival was organised by Kate Allan and it was a triumph of hard work, logistics and enthusiasm. I think everyone involved in the organisation should be really proud of the result.

I’ll be coming back to different aspects of the weekend over the next few blogs. One the highlights for me was Mandy Baggot from the “Love a Happy Ending” group picking up the prize for Innovation In Romance at the prize giving ball. The frocks were fabulous too.  I shall never forget Nicky Wells performing an ad lib singing performance of “You Give Love A Bad Name” at the Rock Star party. Oh for that kind of confidence!

I had some lovely table mates at the book fair so thanks to Cara Cooper, Caroline Bell Foster and Gilli Allan. Dear old Oscar was there too because he knew I would never be able to construct my poster display without his help. He is my favourite poet and some of his poems aren’t too bad. He is a knight of the cable tie and a Prince of masking tape. 

I had a lovely lovely time meeting all the other writers. I’ll be coming back here to digest some of my more technical impressions of the business from my  independent viewpoint. In the meantime….thanks for having me, it was wonderful to be had. 



Emma thinx: Sisters are doing it for their shelves. 










A Romantic Love Poem From My Heart

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OK, I went down to the water and jumped in. Well, not quite. I went down to the river and made a bit of a film. I had decided to write a poem after many years abstinence. Then, never content to do something simply, I shot some video, did an audio track, badgered some fabulous young innocents into being actors and musicians and splashed it up on You Tube. The footage is from my beautiful home town at Saint Savinien in France.

Now the reason for all of this is that I am writing a novel in which the heroine re-finds love after a long period of both sexual and emotional uncertainty. She looks back to first love as a way of recapturing a standard by which to measure her current feelings. In order to write this up as well as I can, I needed to get my own mind back to that place. As a young writer, I wrote many poems. I was a short story writer who enjoyed poetry by true poets. All the same, when it comes to love, nothing works like poetry. I believe this is because in times of emotional overload we cannot provide any objective view of our own state. Poetry scores by taking the love victim outside of themselves by talking to them about what is inside them. I think this makes sense. I am always in love at some level. I don’t think I could write Romance if this were not so.

Here it is then; my poem from the shoes of my heroine through the eyes of my own life. 


Emma thinx: Love gets better, but seldom stronger.





Horny Popcorny – Geddit?

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An Emma cow shot of a local French horny lovely

I arrived back in the UK to rain and gloom. Work tomorrow but before the horror of the pre-dawn stumble to the depot, I wanted to share with you a truly wonderful piece of cinema directed by Emmanuel Gras.

At the “Florida” (the local Saint Savinien cinema) on Thursday night, there was an entertainment which probably could only happen in France. It was a folk concert, followed by a silent film about the life of cows. Entitled “Bovines, ou La Vraie Vie Des Vaches”, it is a beautifully photographed one hour and five minutes all about a herd of Charolais cows. French critics have awarded it many accolades but to me it says something about the unseen beauty of these animals. I have always loved cows and often photograph them myself. Of course, there is a sadness in their lives; always the menace of the livestock trailer and the abattoir. After a short period with the herd, the young males  are taken for slaughter. We eat them. Then we take the milk from the mothers for ourselves.

In the wild, the old, lame and young would be dragged down and devoured by predators. I do accept all this and often reflect upon it in a ridiculous hypocritical sirloin loving, leather shoe wearing angst. This film is not any sort of vegetarian propaganda or butcher’s promo. It is about acceptance, the cycle of existence and a  reminder of the power wielded by man over his fellow creatures. More than anything it is about the notion of mind and consciousness. Watch the clip and I guess some will be surprised about what cows might think and their power of reasoning. 

The music, (please note my selfless struggle with the devil in the pundergrowth of obvious quips), was fresh, clear and completely out of my normal territory. They are brilliant musicians and I loved it. Following such a wonderful evening I was forced to reflect how lucky I am and how diverse we are. My main luck is to savour life in two distinct cultures and amongst such talented international people ranging across romantic novelists, poets,musicians, world commentators and thinkers with brains that must wear out their neck muscles. You know who you are and I love you. But when will you bloody well save me from the banal tosh of it all?


Emma thinx: Acceptance is both sanctuary and prison. Hide a key.