Author Archives: emmacalin

I’m Fifty not Thrifty – Still Giving it all Away

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First of all it was Woolworths. This wonderful shop from which I had purchased my first 45 rpm record (T Rex singing “Ride a white Swan“) closed a few years ago. Oooh – I was only 8years old but Marc Bolan was the prettiest bloke I had ever seen. I had been given a record token (who remembers them?) for my birthday. It was a few months later that I heard him singing and my love affair with men wearing tight pink clothing began. Ever since I’ve been addicted to the Giro d’Italia cycle race.


And now, 42 years later, as the Giro rolls across Italy, I am approaching the big Five Oh No. To coincide with this event “Clintons Cards” announces the closure of about half its outlets. Seemingly they are a victim of the e-card, rather in the way that dead tree books are becoming a victim of the e-book. I am not sure how I feel about any of this. In order to celebrate my birthday I’m giving away digital copies of “Knockout” on Amazon Worldwide ( USA UK FRANCE GERMANY ITALY & SPAIN) during Thursday 17th and Friday 18th May in the hope of reaching the big 50 in the charts as well as in my bones, teeth and soft components. As a special salute to “Clintons Cards” and the dead tree book industry, I am also giving away signed copies of my paperback on Goodreads – all entries to be in by Sunday 20th May.

Now, another year slips by and all that. I do just wanna say that I’ve had more fun and frolics since I turned forty than I had ever had before. Wow – let’s ratchet it up for the next decade. Maybe a little extra chilli and garlic, maybe a slightly deeper red wine over a longer lunch. Slower breaths and longer kisses have been the wisdom of my ageing.  Really truly, this is a deeply serious comment. The English summer is cold and wet so far. The Euro creaks. The money beast bellows. From Greece come stories of mounting suicides and new born babies being held as security in hospitals when mothers cannot pay. Let us not forget love, comradeship and pleasure. It is allowed.

Emma thinx: Comrade humans – if not us, then what is humanity?

Going For Gold

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Heavy Sabre

There are three types of sword used in the sport of fencing. They are the foil, épée and sabre. My readers will probably suspect that I have not done a lot of fencing. However, I am very well acquainted with the noble art of parry and riposte since I used to be the bus driver for a famous public school. One of my missions used to be driving the fencing team around to equally famous public schools so that the young gentlemen could duel with each other.


 Now, as you will know comrades, my sympathies and background are somewhat proletarian. The accents and demeanour of the young blades and their masters seemed almost from a different planet. They exuded wealthy effortless self confidence and played esoteric japes in Latin with their peers and instructors. I always felt I should have disliked them. In reality they behaved towards me as absolute gentlemen and when food was served they ensured that I was treated equally. When packed lunches were provided, I received exactly the same. When they got off the bus they cleared every item of litter and thanked me for my service. Every time I got home I had to go to my secret naughty drawer and fondle my copy of the communist manifesto just to relieve the tension.

Plus ça change
Olympic Torch
And the point of all this is to announce the arrival of the new Olympic sport of sabre rattling. As the London 2012 games approach on the anti aircraft radar, our News bulletins are filled with accounts of battleships, snipers, commandos, missiles, and socket repelled grenades. In the air helicopters, Euro fighters, Tornado attack jets and AWACs planes will circle and hover over the city. Soldiers in masks practice kidnap and hi jack operations on riverboats. Thousands of extra security staff are being recruited and trained to say “No!” Oooh – it’s come a long way from a few sexy Greek boys doing a bit of running and hurling their shafts. I know all this stuff is necessary but it does bring home to me the actual nature of the world we live in. Like everyone I will be watching our pure boys and girls attempting to defeat the drug fuelled ugly foreigners. Luckily I will be in France and their cameras are programmed to ignore all competitors other than their own. Even the 100 metres is a solo event. We Brits are not like that of course. Please please let us get through the coming ordeal with nothing more than a few dreams, prides and records being broken.

When I wrote “Knockout”, the Olympics were just a TV news item showing a lot of cheering important British folk with glasses of champagne and lots of glum looking foreign important people. It was at that moment that I decided to write an account of the darker aspect of sport and corrupt gambling. I called an old friend at Scotland Yard and asked for some inside info. He asked me if I was free for dinner and what I was doing afterwards. I tried to work on an objective account of serious international crime but in the end everything got kinda mixed up with love and sex. It was much the same story when I came to write the book.

Emma thinx: Is there a gold medal for Nationalism?

Beg Steal or Burrow

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It’s that first insecure Wednesday. Things should be OK this month because I woke up shortly after midnight yesterday morning and before I said anything else I uttered the magic word “RABBITS”. I know that some folk say white rabbits but I believe that this weakens the spell. Of course some of you will have no idea of what I talking about. I hesitate to use the word superstition because that makes it all seem kinda – well – nuts. An old English custom of saying “rabbits” on the first day of the month was drilled into me by my mother. If at some point during the next four weeks I dropped some china or failed an exam (regular events) she would sigh and shake her head resignedly saying “It’s you own fault – you didn’t say your rabbits.” All I could do then was to cling on – expecting to fall at each hurdle until the next 1st of the month. As the broken china, failed exams, missed buses, lost boyfriends and publishers rejection slips piled up in  the hallways of my life, I guess I often forgot to say “rabbits”. 


When I had my own little bunnies I decided that I would never impose this type of insecurity on them. That was until my ex husband bought the first pair of baby shoes and put them on the table. I had to divorce him to clear the curse although for years he clung on by saying “Good morning Sir” to the magpies just to please me. Believe it or not when we split up, the removal men dropped my mirror but I told them to pack it with his stuff so that he would take the bad luck with him. 


So, having said the magic word I clicked on my Amazon KDP account to see if the new month brown bar of doom had disappeared. As you will recognise comrades, my sense of personal worth is linked to my sales figures. As the new month arrives the counters return to zero and there is just this brown nihilistic line. (Ooooh – I’ve been trying to get that intellectual word into something for years!) 1st of May – 0004 hours, a sale was made. I slept secure. By morning two books had been returned. The brown line had gone – but I am less than nothing. As I drove my bus around the town there was not a single magpie to greet to lift my gloom. A seagull dumped his entire bowel contents onto my windscreen and I shouted at it to F*** off. When I got home I had made some sales. Yes – that old mystic seagull oath never fails.


It’s all a load of tosh isn’t it. My wonderful partner works and works to help me and he has never thrown salt or said rhymes to spiders. He tells me that more effort means more success. He’s a kinda business type. I know he’s right. That’s why I’ve doubled up on my lottery tickets.

Emma thinx: You can make your own luck, but the ready meals taste the same.



When the Saints go Marching Up

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On you Reds

I bet some of you thought I had gone into a convent. It would certainly be a challenge to write a Romance in that setting – but by no means impossible. I’ll never forget seeing “The Nun’s Story” starring Audrey Hepburn. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say this – but I’ve always liked those sexy priest type stories – you know, broken hearted hunk turns his back on love and celebrates the celibate by performing some kinda priestease. Oooh – all the ladies want him but no one can admit it or make a move. But there’s always one isn’t there!


My guess is that hobbling about on one leg is not likely to attract any kind of hunk. Until my meeting with the wet deck of the Brittany ferry “Bretagne”, the words medial collateral ligament were unknown to me. Now, I trot them out all the time. On Friday I made it back to the steering wheel of the bus. I was just in time to share in the public mood surrounding one of the greatest moments of all historical time. A great unity between religion and legs gelled into a synthesis. The Saints have been promoted to the Premier Division of English football. For anyone not familiar with the “Saints” this is the popular name for the Southampton football club.


The kids on the bus are hardly the most advantaged or ambitious in our society. On Friday, a rare unity gripped the city. The following day, Saints had to win or draw to gain the greatest prize in many lives. As I dropped them off we exchanged tense glances and repeated the magic formula “On You Reds”. Fists were clenched but there were few smiles. We all knew that the next time we met, the world would be a different place.


Now, in fact I’m not any kind of football fan – but I do not entirely mind the odd muscular leg. (By the way, I think they shave them – does anyone know about this?). Football stands as a metaphor for many things that real community used to be. It offers shared aims and equality of voice. We know that in a merciless money driven society the greedy and the selfish get the most, but no supporter is more or less than the other. Many poorer fans could not afford to see the matches very often and yet their tribal passion is no less. Last week Gilles and I had dinner with a local University Professor. In all seriousness he told me that they were watching the league tables intently because as a Premiership football town, many more students would apply. 

And here is the world business news: My book “Knockout” is now available on Amazon USA in paperback, priced at $9.99 +P&P.   The UK is slightly more complicated as the book has to be shipped from the USA so it costs a bit more on Amazon UK £12.41 + £ 2.80 P&P.  I will be holding stock in the UK too and this will be available for £10 per copy, including 3-5 day shipping.  Just email me if you would like to buy a copy by this method.

COMPETITION…
In addition I am giving away two signed paperback copies to winners of a draw on Goodreads. To register your chance to win, click this link before May 21st. The prizes will be mailed to the winners,  anywhere in the world. 

In total now there are 28,000 Kindle copies of “Knockout” somewhere out there thank you to all the kind folks who have purchased or downloaded for free – will you be one of the first to grab the paperback?




Emma thinx: Struggling writers – Enjoy your posthumous success on credit today. 

Kiss-met Hardy.

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I have that first Wednesday insecure feeling. Looking back on previous insecure posts I see that I have rambled on about broken love affairs whilst trees fell around my ears. Just imagine – I thought I knew something about insecurity. Until a few days ago I knew nothing. That was when I could stand up and support myself on two legs. That was before the Red Cross issued me with a wheelchair and crutches. 
Being a believer in determinism I have to accept that since my birth and the first design concepts of the Brittany ferry “Bretagne”, I had been hurtling towards a moment of destiny. Ahead of us lay a starry night, our traditional Earth moving kiss on the deck as Angleterre slipped away to the north and a hairy Frenchman in orange overalls spraying water with a hose. As we crossed the heli-pad my leg folded under me with an agonising pop. As I lay felled by the French like Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar, I began to wonder how the crew of the rescue helicopter would be able to reach me on the treacherous gloss painted skid pan deck. I guess they carry a good supply of crutches. I knew that my Easter at home in France was not to be. Gilles cajoled and dragged me to the cabin and we summoned the nurse. She found the solitary ship’s ice pack. 


On arrival in France my leg resembled a black blue and green mottled snake that had swallowed a football. Our home lay 300 miles to the south and I could not bend my leg. We decided to keep me on ice in the cabin (they pickled Nelson in Brandy – but I did not think that Brittany Ferries would supply a barrel) and go back to the UK where we live a few minutes from the port. As a Brit I can get medical attention in the UK without complication and a long stay in a hospital miles from any home lacked appeal.

If you really want to feel insecure – plonk yourself in a wheelchair as a captive patient. The following afternoon as we approached the shores of Britain, Gilles decided to take me out for a spin. Watching paralympic sport on TV had obviously inspired him into some kinda wheelchair sprint fantasy accompanied by Formula One racing car noises. He’ll make someone a lovely husband when he grows up. He does the same tricks with supermarket trolleys. You do realise just how tough it is for folks in wheelchairs. All manner of lumps and gulleys become hazards. With my leg straight out in front of me like a lance I felt like a jousting knight on a runaway horse. At the self service restaurant a chef tapped rather impatiently on his steel pots of vegetables demanding to know which I wanted. I would have told him but my eyes were about level with the tray track. “Does she like beans?” he asked Gilles. 


About halfway across the English Channel the UK coastguard carried out a helicopter rescue exercise. Gilles wanted to offer me to the Captain  as an authentic casualty. The red and white whirly-bird 
hovered above the ship while a guy dangled with a stretcher above the deck. Luckily he kept himself clipped on to his rope. 


Eventually I was trundled back to the car deck and levered into the car. Some 23 hours after we had boarded the ferry we got off again at exactly the same point. I must say that all of the crew of the Brittany ferry Bretagne were kind and helpful – but I’m not so sure about the orange guy with the hose. 


As for the future – well it looks a bit insecure on one leg. Much talk of quadriceps tendons and cartilage looks certain.  


Emma thinx: If you’re hoping the Earth will move, find firm ground.











Collidescope

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Stepping up to the job

Oh dear – I’ve been a bit peaky you know. Some new virus from outer space has been withering me bronichals if you will excuse the expression. It’s not that I need a pick-me-up, it’s more a case of needing a crane. I knew when I signed up for the gym that it would all come to no good. How many times do you hear that so and so famous sporty sparty athlete has had to pull out of events because they have a sporty sparty virus? Huh – and what type of person do you meet at fitness centres? Yes – it’s sick athletes passing on their bugs. When did you ever hear of anyone pulling out of competition because of chocolate? When did you ever hear of a virus that singled out wine merchants or foie gras manufacturers. I would rest my case but it’s a bit wobbly.

We are not amused. Obama was far more fun than this.

What got me back to the keyboard was of course Her Majesty the Queen. She’s been on the throne for 60 years. Now, what a waste of a career. Anyone who can sit on the same seat year after year with no hope of getting any further should have been a novelist. Today she gave a speech to Parliament and they gave her a stained glass window. Now what sort of gift is that?  You can’t just put it on e-bay  tagged as “unwanted gift”.  Where would you put it?

Schism of prism

The speaker of the House (of Parliament) John Bercow, gave a speech first, welcoming the Queen’s speech. Oh dear – oh no -PM Dave did not like it! Bercow called her “The kaleidoscope Queen”.(Police outside fought with crowds to hold back Freddie Mercury fans). But no – he meant Her Majesty. Obviously he set the wrong tone. The Tower of London is being prepared. Heads will roll.

Queen of Romance

One demi-royal was in fact a novelist. The step-grandmother of Princess Diana was Barbara Cartland who is probably the most successful writer of all time. Her Romances sold at least a billion copies and in her lifetime she published 723 books. I wrote to her about 35 years ago asking for the name of her agent. It is beginning to look like she was too busy to reply.


Now let’s cheer you up. Dear old Oscar has been in an online Arts mag (The Altered Scale) featuring all manner of music, performance and general fusion. I checked out the event and came across a group that are pure sexy grunge dirty blues that absolutely grips me. I wanna write love and sex like this music. The artists are called “Purgatory Hill”. This moooosic howls pure celestial bestial luvstuff.


Emma thinx: If you have to set the tone – avoid the purple concrete.



Bi-Polar Bare

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A while ago a lad on the bus was chatting to me about his girlfriend. The mere fact of having obtained such an asset positively changed his demeanour. Instead of his normal monosyllabic grunt and slouch he became a young gent. His acne receded and was transformed into vocabulary.


About ten days ago he did not come out to board the bus to go home. Unsympathetic teenagers grew restive in my mirror. I cranked up the music but that brought complaints from the headphone wearers. At the last minute he appeared being led by a teacher. His tear stained face was swollen. It was over. Over. Over, with that terrible brick wall finality of a dead hamster in the palm of a young hand and the rest of mortality. The vocabulary acne inversion flipped like the magnetic poles of the planet in history.

Yesterday, they got back together. Compasses started to work again. GPS systems stopped talking backwards. No one should feel insecure. It won’t last.


I’ve been giving away books on Amazon KDP. I am one of the more successful donors of the American literary world. However, in the UK, the natural sense of cool reserve and dissimulation prevents the accepting of gifts from strangers. I have the feeling that if I were to tour in my white Rolls Royce cabriolet throwing bank notes to the crowd, they would run after me handing them back. Probably I would get a ticket for littering. 

blueprint for a question not yet asked

Then the unthinkable happened. I started to sell books. Maybe after all I was a writer. I exchanged my life and personality for  sales figures. Some days I see myself as a pie chart, other days a block graph. Yesterday I had that corporate spreadsheet feeling. Personality and self image issues – surely not!
As I looked out from my window yesterday into the cold clear dusk I saw a tree reflecting the direction of life, albeit very simplified. 


Today sales dipped a little. A reviewer thought I should give up and drive a bus or something. The GPS is talking babble. I think I’m too old for acne. Insecure? Me?




Emma thinx: Whatever you’ve put in someone’s life today – they’re already passing it on.



Roll Play Exercise

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Spot the difference



There’s a song by Janis Ian which contains the line “Let’s drink a toast to those who best survived the life they led”. Well – here’s to all those who’ve survived the drink and the toast – and the butter, the foie gras and the chocolate. Life catches up with us doesn’t it. The bus driving blogger novelist carboholic lifestyle has done its worst. It is not that the situation has got out of hand. It has got out of both hands. Soon I’ll have enough spare tyres for every wheel on the bus. It had to stop. I have joined a gym. When I finish my morning shift I go straight to a modern cathedral of techno-flab where there are merciless machines that have ways of making you squawk.

 Even worse the place is half full of skinny pert anorexics who do not need to be there and spend their self righteous time watching the sagging wobblers gasping for survival. If that were not bad enough I encounter neighbours and acquaintances to whom I would never present myself in rippling Spandex. I have seen a few films of an erotic and anatomical/educational nature where the participants wear masks so as not to be recognised (I assume) by friends, work colleagues or members of the book club. A small comfort like this would double membership. Luckily a little ray of sunshine fell upon me today. I staggered back through the door after a treadmill session watching a TV show about liposuction and heart transplants. There on the mat was a lovely sample selection from “Hotel Chocolat”. Damn – I must have forgotten to cancel my subscription. And before I move on to literary matters here is a video clip I found whilst researching Vladimir rootin tootin Putin. I think it’s about dieting. Keep watching until you see the ballet dancers! Wow – Oscar likes this video, but only the classical paintings. Seriously though – this world has so many cultures! Rejoice.


Tomorrow (Saturday 3rd March) is a free KDP day for “Knockout”. The tweetbots and all the engines of cyber triberr will be whirring. I apologise for all the self promo. If you’ve not got your copy roll up roll up. Here are the links:
Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Amazon France
Amazon Germany
Amazon Italy
Amazon Spain



Emma thinx: Beauty is only deep skin.

Hacking Coughs

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OK – I’m a News junkie. At lunch time I watched the BBC NEWS. For an hour I followed a story that James Murdoch had resigned from News International. There was a 40 second interruption to tell me that North Korea had appeared to modify their approach to nuclear annihilation of  Earth. Thank goodness they did not linger on that limp little column filler. 


I was first in the queue on Sunday morning to buy the new disgusting filth soaked pack of lies, scandal and gossip that the Murdochs have launched to replace the degraded, vile, sex obsessed and delicious News of the World. To me it was a bit disappointing to be honest. I wanted a story of top toff politicians in frilly ladies’ panties  being whipped by pouting sexy Russian spies in an exclusive underworld vice den. I wanted the dark soil of alliterative  adjectives raked open. The new Sun was a bit PC and non confrontational. It was like an anger management course for boxers. (Yes comrades – this is the latest wheeze of the world controllers. A British boxer, Dereck Chisora, has been ordered to seek anger management counselling after a punch up with another pugilist.)


Now – I am no Murdoch fan. He is a Union breaker and a tyrant. Normally I would have no sympathy but here is the truth of it all. Murdoch got in amongst the toffs and the self seekers at the top. They took his cash. They courted his affection. They were elected on his say so. They chortled and bloated at his overflowing table – glad to see lesser nobles, commoners and opponents beaten with shitty sticks. Then – the baron forgot who was king. He attacked other barons – not realizing that he was NOT actually himself in the club. He is a foreigner and a bruiser. You can guffaw and chortle inside the club but you cannot attack the club. Sadly, in the UK, affairs of the boudoir are in the public interest and light fell on several erect parliamentary members. 

Now sensational News! Newspapers have been paying police and officials for juicy inside information!!! Journalists and cops intermingle, drink and chat together! CLAMOROSO as they say in Italia – although these days they can only afford lower case to save ink. Surely the sweet innocent public are astounded by such notions. Even worse, the hapless  ex-editor Rebekah Brooks was given a retired police horse to look after. Can civilization withstand any more immorality on this scale? Such a tale of kindness to animals has elevated her in the opinion polls above every single politician in the land. 


I’m no fan of Murdoch or News Corp. All the same I’ll tell you who was afraid of the News of The World. It was the drug dealers, the child pornsters, the hypocrites who would control you, the pimps, the corrupt sports stars, the arms dealers and the perfumed icons who rolled in filth.  I loved the News of the World and I doubt it will ever be replaced. 


No one needs me to tell them that this a grubby old world. While we are waiting for the broom to sweep it clean let’s keep the lights on and shining in the corners. When you live in shit, light may have to pass through a sewer to reach you. 


Emma thinx: Scandal – the tabloid word for desire.

Biting the bullet

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Mystery headless man in white spotted at crime scene

I diesel droned the bus by the police tape that closed the block of flats and the shopping parade. Regulars might remember my little moan about derelict buildings and the vision of children. Well, the area is closed because of a shooting. Various young men have been arrested and the judicial processes set in train. Gowns and wigs will be televised. Pronouncements will be boomed in posh voices about violence and the protection of  decent society. No one is surprised. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are lottery days. This time….this time!!! Such things can happen anywhere I know. Circles are vicious. Cones and spirals can take you up or down. I’ll leave it to you to judge the general direction. 


Now – I’ve spent several months in a dilemma. When your name is Emma that can tear you in two. It’s not that I have not been writing – it is more that I’ve been uncertain as to the direction to go. To be frank – I am under frilled to be a Romance writer. I am a real person with tubes, follicles, on lazy/writing days occasional armpit and leg fur and the beginning of a tummy. Well actually – quite a mature tummy. Maybe it is time to write that gritty Earth moving novel about poverty and greed set against a backdrop of boiling revolution.  A young peasant girl gives her only remaining kidney to save a dying investment banker who once tossed her mother a dollar to buy the baby milk that saved her life.  He falls in love with her but with both her kidneys gone, she dies. Oooh – I’ve told you the story now so there’s no need to bother. By the way – she sold her other kidney to pay off her dying father’s pay day loan and a new winter jacket for the elderly three legged dog they rescued from the burning barricades.


So – I have actually scrapped most things I have been doing. The fact is that I love the escape of Romance and the its ability to blend sex with glamour and true love. Good sexy romance can educate women and men a little too!  (My theory is that if a few of the angry young Kalashnakids had a bit more sex they’d be a bit more mellow).  If you think kids get told it all at school – think again. The facts sure ain’t the whole truth. It’s gonna be Romance with all the sex-joy-love-passion power I can muster. I’ve been writing the story in my head for a while and things might go a bit quiet for a few weeks. 


Now –let’s talk serious bus driving. I am a full bodied Lycra clad righteous planet saving eco green cyclist AND a bus driver. You know, the real problem here is the way we manage traffic. Basically we are savages. I’ve never had any sort of impulse to injure a cyclist but driving long, wide and heavy vehicles in crowded tense situations is difficult and stressful. Big trucks and buses do not mix with bikes! Why do we think they should??? Now I’ve upset the  the cyclists.  Guess I might be the subject of a flatwa. You gotta laugh.


Emma thinx: When in Romance. Do!