Author Archives: emmacalin

Going For Gold

Posted on by
2
Bradley Wiggins on the blocks before the bell in his record breaking hour cycle ride

21st Century knight in Art Deco helmet

It’s not long now you know. The full unedited padded crotch Lycra fest of the Tour de France begins on July 4th in Utrecht. These guys are my absolute heroes. They battle in the spirit of ancient knights on the slopes of mountains. They leave their skin skidded on the pitiless tarmac and gravel of 60 mph descents. The sprinters pound in stampedes of branded head-down buffaloes never forgetting to point out the logo of the guys who bought their shirt as they cross the line. Yes – it’s all a big show biz commerce orgy but what the hell? The pain  is real. The scars and bruises weep and sting through the nights in stark shared hotel rooms. Keep up or fail. There are no hiding places. Racing cyclists are the modern day ballet dancers in a Degas masterpiece.

Exhausted dancers behind the scenes in a Degas painting

The stretch and the groan – the muscular truth of poetry

I’ve begun my own preparation. I’ve got out my indoor turbo trainer and studied all the TV schedules. I know, I know I’m a glamorous perfumed lady Eroticon of the purple passion but you can’t beat a spinning session with Mike Michels to bring out the cadence kitten in a woman. Let me tell you now that Passion Patrol 3 will feature a sweating woman in a spinning class. Dudes – if you want authenticity, you gotta grind it to find it. Well, at least you’ve gotta get out of breath a bit.

Poster for the Art Deco film Rocketeer

Inspiration for cyclists

My other preparation was to head for the Olympic Park in London to be in the presence of a real royal knight of the realm. I was there at the moment when Sir Bradley Wiggins broke the record for how far a man could cycle in one hour. I was in the Mexican wave and shouting “Wiggo”. Even the weight of his gold hat and shoes didn’t hold him back. I must confess that as I saw him hurtling around the track my mind flashed to the 1991 film “The Rocketeer”. Man, there’s no bizness like fizz bizness.

And today sees the first stage of the Aviva Women’s Tour Of Britain cycle race. The first running of this event was a great success last year. This year we may well see a British winner in the shape of Lizzie Armitstead. If you’re reading this in the UK or can get ITV4 don’t miss the evening highlight show. And then you can switch to BBC 3 to see the England women’s football team play Columbia. All you’ll need then is a few cans of beer and a domestic Adonis to fix you a sandwich. Seriously though, I think the guys are starting to sit up and notice.

Last year I produced an audio book by Les Woodland all about the Tour de France. It was a real labour of love. If you wanna wise up – it’s all in here. To mark this year’s gruelling tour I’m giving away three free audio versions of the book:

CLICK HERE to enter.

Emma Thinx: Alchemy validated. It takes a lot of steel to get a piece of gold.

Royal Diet – Let them eat cakes! pic.twitter.com/IZHc6rHmx8

Posted on by
Reply
I do not struggle with my weight. My weight struggles with me and owing to its superior artillery of temptation, I don’t resist.  Until now! 

I have joined the underground resistance. I’m working by sabotage and secrecy – so much so that I’ve not even told myself I’m dieting. In that way if I’m captured and tortured by the Guessmyweightstapo with a chocolate eclair I will not give myself away. I’ll just eat it so as not to betray my secret plan.

So, I’m on a pleasure based diet. This means long country walks, poetic contemplation and writing ‘Passion Patrol 3′ in my head.

Oh Cinders – I shall go to the ball at the Hall when I can get into my dress


Today my route took me to the grounds of Broadlands House in Hampshire England.  This is the stately home of Lord Romsey who inherited when Lord Mountbatten (cousin of the Queen and uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh) was assassinated during the Irish troubles. Prince Charles went to the scene a few days ago. I’m not a royalist groupie but I like the guy. He’s been in trouble for writing to ministers about providing better kit for the poor old squaddies who fight for us. Well – Good on ya mate. If they don’t like it ride down to parliament and close’em down.

My path to bodily perfection and infinity

My new royal protection squad heroine was feeling the surge and pulse of life in her inner core longing for release as she took in the view through my eyes this afternoon. Well – maybe it was me rumbling…..but I’m pretty sure the earth moved.

‘The Sane Max’ – Passion Patrol 3  – coming soon to an e-reader near you. 


So here I am on my long and winding road to health and fitness.  Have you ever been on a secret diet? What tips would you share to keep me on track?​






Emma Thinx: The straight and narrow only works if the Earth is flat

Black Beauty Has A Beady Eye On The World pic.twitter.com/2lWfIdXcUI #birds

Posted on by
Reply
Who’s a pretty boy then?

In our house we’re celebrating the recovery of a favorite ‘pet’ – a wise old crow who’s been coming to our garden for years. Just as the dog in “Alf The Workshop Dog” is a real mutt, ‘The Crow of the World’ from the same story is also based on my real-life bird friend. We call him ‘Hook Beak’ – for reasons you can guess from his photo.

He’s the cleverest and bravest of the crows, always first to come down when we throw out food. He swaggers up, looks right in at the window with his beady eyes and squarks at us when he’s hungry. If food is too dry – he takes it to a bowl of water and sits for a few minutes whilst it soaks and softens. If there’s any left over, he hides it for later – digging little holes in the grass and covering with leaves or moss.

Recently he showed up with a wounded leg, hardly able to walk. The other crows were pecking at him, keeping him away from food. He became increasingly bedraggled and we were worried he wouldn’t survive, especially with the constant bullying. We knew he was braver and more confident than most of his oppressors. We guessed he would approach closer than the others if we stayed in the garden to frighten them away. We made up some pasta (his favorite!) mixed with tinned dog meat. Sure enough he flapped down to feed while we stood guard. The bullies just squawked and postured at a distance. His courage and intelligence got him his three meals a day in peace.  This weekend he’s looking glossy and sleek. His limp has more or less gone and he can once more hold his own in the pecking order. He’s also very busy delivering food to a nest in a nearby oak tree – we think he may soon be teaching a young apprentice all his tricks!

The Great Crow Of The World is a major character in my kid’s book Alf The Workshop Dog which  has been doing great and has reached #1 Bestseller in Time Travel, Pets, and Chapter Books in USA, UK and Canada.  To celebrate, the second book in the series Isabella’s Pink Bicycle is going free 12-13-14 May. Come along and meet another animal – that cool pole cat for a tight spot – Frankie Ferret.  Who needs a Fairy Godmother when you’ve got a Ferret Godfather?

http://www.smarturl.it/IsabellaPink

Emma Thinx: You can’t bully your way to courage.







The Wind Weeps by @Anneli33 pic.twitter.com/d2V5UDsn3A smarturl.it/WindWeeps #Canadian #suspense

Posted on by
5
Look inside

I’m using my blog today to proclaim the new cover for an excellent novel The Wind Weeps by Anneli Purchase. I reviewed this story when it was first published. It is a dramatic read with a sexually sophisticated ambiance. To my eyes, the repackage is fantastic.

A novel as emotionally charged as this one needs a cover to reflect its contrasts and nuances. When fear and desperation threaten to sweep aside all gentleness and consideration the cover has a job of work to do. The new design conveys every element of this beautifully written story and for sure proclaims its worth.

The brutal truth of Nature displays itself along the lonely coast as much as it does through the lives of handsome men and beautiful women. Set in the commercial  fishing world of British Columbia, the depth of the story offers a range of choice for a cover. Anneli’s designer, Anita B. Carroll of http://race-point.com created a design that embodies the passion and emotion that simmer even within the cruel unforgiving sea.

Remember the terror Julia Roberts felt in the movie Sleeping with the Enemy? That’s the kind of terror Andrea feels about her husband, Robert. But, in her case it isn’t so easy to escape him. He has taken her to live in a remote cabin on the coast, cut off from all communication.

Andrea once loved orchids, but Robert has transmuted them into a symbol of his control over her. The orchid on the cover seems to be weeping. The blood red sky, the bleak churning sea add their abstract shadows. And yet Andrea is determined to survive and get back to the man she wishes she had married, the one who has never stopped loving her.

For more than just a romance, why not click on the link to download The Wind Weeps. You won’t sleep until you finish it….


For those with e-readers other than Kindle, go to Smashwords.com

My Review of The Wind Weeps:

FIVE STARS: A really good story! We don’t always make the right choices. We always think we can change people but human nature is very complex. Set in an unforgiving landscape of fittest survival, the human is a fragile and troubled creature. This is a book where the writer clearly knows that small mistakes can hook you in the mouth like a salmon on a merciless steel line. The water is cold for any warm blooded stranger who falls in the struggle. Yet this is the true life for these characters on the fishing grounds of the North. No ice can freeze the heat of desire and no innocence of springtime can un-cry the tears of youthful regret. Set in an awesome savage beauty, the human spirit goes on through real and imagined kisses and wine to find a wider perspective. We are free because love imprisons us. I adored this book for its exploration of this dilemma set in the real lives of real folk. No highfalutin literati posturing but a hand on the winch, a knife in the hand and a pulse in the flesh mix in this story. The style is straightforward without gratuitous flourishes – a bit like ice and a loving kiss. A sexually sophisticated and tension packed story. A good good read!

AUTHOR BIO

Anneli Purchase is an author and freelance copy-editor. She writes for the Loveahappyending Lifestyle Magazine, which she also helps to edit. Anneli lives on her little acre of paradise on Vancouver Island with her husband and two spaniels. She has published three novels and is working on her fourth.

The Ship That Died of Shame. pic.twitter.com/sb6Uq0fBOw Fly Tipping Horrors in the UK

Posted on by
Reply
Disgusting criminals ahoy

What beauty there is in the Springtime. Who could be blind to its joy? Who cannot know in their own heart the joy this beauty brings to others be they rich or poor? Who would SHIT in the face of innocence and loveliness? Who would SHIT in the face of our communities?

Fly tippers – that’s who! These creatures are a curse in both urban and rural areas. Generally they are “contractors” who offer to clear rubbish. Instead of registering their business and joining in the community need for recycling, they dump the trash anywhere. Needless to say these barbarians avoid legitimate disposal fees although they charge their clients for them. Nowhere is safe. They are utter low-lifes with no care for their fellow man.

Close to the church of St Margaret’s church in Wellow, a small Hampshire village (famous as the burial place of Florence Nightingale) I chanced upon a rare outrage of fly tipping. It’s not often you wander along a country lane and find yourself confronted with a speedboat. Yes – a speedboat filled with bags of rubbish. Nearby there is a fridge and some other debris from a previous incident. Someone must be able to recognise this boat.

 Shipping lane



Being a writer I do get the chance to express my own views through characters. In Passion Patrol 2 WPC Shannon Aguerri confronts a band of fly tippers. Things turn ugly and there is violence. In researching the book I spoke to officers who had dealt with this kind of incident in real life. The fiction in the book is no exaggeration. 

I know this is just a futile rant and I doubt fly-tippers read my blog. Let me know your thoughts and maybe you will recognise this boat. If you do let me know and this passion patrol girl will get on the case.

Emma Thinx: You can’t fly-tip your conscience.

A Spring Postcard From Exbury Gardens: Breathtaking Beauty pic.twitter.com/1tODNEQdUJ @exburygardens

Posted on by
2
Lucky I had a camera because when I got home I couldn’t believe what I’d seen
The house – a noble perspective of lawn

Exbury Gardens is a visitor attraction set in the New Forest of Hampshire UK. The grounds run down to the Beaulieu River. Wild ponies wander the roads as you approach. The Isle of Wight and the Solent are visible as you wander along the river path. I had the fortune to go there yesterday. It’s a job to write about the place without sounding like an OTT tourist brochure. It is just SO beautiful that really you just have to see the photos. The beauty has a quality of unreality which I suppose is to be expected in a created garden.  I wish I knew more about plants. Certainly there are 

From the dressing room palette of Madame Butterfly

azaleas and rhododendrons. I also spotted some king cups which have always been a favourite with me. They seem to cry out the joy of the sun and lush meadow land with their open faces. I had not seen any for years and suddenly I spotted them. My mind raced back decades to a John Clare poem.   

Green lush and beaming out vibrant joy

A Bank Holiday weekend lies ahead. If you get the chance give yourself a real overdose of beauty and get down to Exbury. Be sure to take your camera. My final shot is a close up of a Rhododendron. To me it represents an abstraction beyond reality. Maybe this is the way we are supposed to see things – as if everything is something more than itself. I guess this is what great gardeners seek to achieve – a transcendence beyond the truth of itself – a fiction of beauty – like a once dreamed kiss that suddenly is on your living lips.

Maybe dancers, maybe a melody – always beyond this world.

PS. Keep an eye out for Her Majesty. Seemingly she’s a fan

Emma thinx:  We tolerate beliefs because no one knows the truth.

If you go down to the woods today – #Bluebells #poetry #video pic.twitter.com/kq9vFPaOJP

Posted on by
Reply
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RLFb15nKmgo?feature=player_embedded

Oh to be in England
Now that April’s there…..

So begins the famous poem Home Thoughts, From Abroad  by Robert Browning, written in 1845 when he was feeling homesick in Italy. It is a lovely poem and I have always taken pleasure from poems of Nature. One of the few “arty” things I learned at school was the poem “Daffodils” by William Wordsworth.  In later life as a wannabee poet I discovered the words of John Clare and wept with frustration at my dullness. These days what poetry I have I secrete in my novels like a pinch of mono-sodium glutamate among the stir fried bean sprouts of new love. (Guess what I’ve been cooking for dinner?)

It was a release to get away from the office and go to the Bluebell woods at Mottisfont in Hampshire. I took my camera and tried to capture the crushing fragility of such beauty. All I could think of was the poem by Oscar Sparrow entitled simply “Bluebells”.  So much of our longing as humans comes down to a need to hold on and endure. Humble flowers with their immense beauty and perfume fade before our eyes and we cannot hold them any more than we can hold ourselves on the shingle shores of Time. And yet in poetry we can pass on a few moments that in the act itself of sharing, flower over and over as seeds, roll over and over as waves, kiss over and over as innocent lovers: as if no bloom before had offered such beauty or no lips before had ever known the joy of the kiss.

These were my feelings when I first read Oscar Sparrow’s poem. Putting away all the bawdy splash and dash of selling the stuff and beating the drum which is a novelist’s/publisher’s life, I was in those woods – trying to hold back Time, trying to breathe in the blue. 

Emma thinx: Memory is your portrait. Select your poses to paint you. 

Putting Some #Free Love And Sex On Your Tablet pic.twitter.com/QP68aAdQV #romance

Posted on by
Reply

Cop on the cover – definitely NOT undercover!



I could not believe my ears. I was driving along listening to “Woman’s Hour “ on the BBC radio. The presenter announced the result of the latest official sex survey in the UK. People are having less and less sex! They are having less sex than in Victorian times which was before evolution had provided polite ladies with any orgasmic bits. (Didn’t they have hands or curiosity?)

 The official reason is that the tablet and the smart phone are our true love mates. We even play with them in bed. The result is that on average folk are doing it THREE TIMES A MONTH. 

Now, without shocking you with my domestic survey stats I feel I can speak as an active writer of Romantica. The production process requires a fair bit of imaginative role play. Serious academic literary critics call this unashamed erotic fantasy. You can imagine the state of me at the end of a hard day. Three times a month wouldn’t get me through a couple of scrappy chapters of drugs, crime and car chases. I’ve always wondered why writing about sex makes me feel sexy but writing about burglary doesn’t make me want to steal other people’s televisions.

At once I realised something had to be done. I had to save the British nation from further decline. I knew it would be impossible to convince lovers not to take their digital devices to bed. Of course the answer was simple; supply everyone with a free copy of  Passion Patrol 2. It wouldn’t be long before the manhood of Britain would rise up and the ladies would lie back and think of England as they did in the time of sexy Queen Victoria. 

And, if you believe the reviews it’s a thumping good tale of action, crime, love and sexual pleasure set in the crucible of race, class and wealth of modern Britain.

Emma Thinx: The idea of free love is for those who’ve never loved.




French Resistance – a nation of #bookshops against the world

Posted on by
3
A book shop – a true symbol of modern French Resistance

In France there are book shops.  In England a few still cling on but they are hard to find. Whilst the French have embraced much of the out of town retail centre/shopping mall culture, the book trade is still in independent hands. The sale of books online lags far behind the UK and The USA. A few Parisian sophistogauls possess Kindles but I suspect even they read e books about propagating chic organic cucumbers in their attics.

Eventually I plucked up courage to enter my local “librairie”. After all, I am Anglaise and so are my books. I imagined they would not be impressed by some Femme Franglaise swaggering in to anounce myself as the only International Number One Best Seller of female fantasm in the village. So – I took in some respectable material – my series of children’s books and of course some serious poetry which I publish at Gallo-Romano media. I met a wonderful French lady.

“No one buys poetry or children’s books,” she said, selecting instead the crime soaked oversexed romance which is my more worldly genre. “There are many English in the region – this is the stuff they like,” she assured me. Obviously  she knows what appeals to the daring fantasy follicles of the Anglo Saxon lady.

The bookshop “Le Passage des Heures” is a little marvel. Books on The Forgotten Vegetables of France lounge casually on the shoulder of Emile Zola. The place is adorable for a book groupie like me. We talked about the price of my books. I mentioned Amazon. A Gallic eyebrow shot out the roof of the building. Seemingly, the affairs of Amazon are of no interest. 

“We resist!” said the lady. 

A Corner of a foreign fenetre that is whatever Emma

Indeed they do. France is still a very foreign country – no matter where you are from. Being French is a talent and I will never be equal to it. Generally they understand how awful it is to be foreign and are very kind. As a result there is a bookshop in Saint Savinien with my books in the window. Merci beaucoup.  Eat your heart out Waterstone’s. 


Emma Thinx: Foreign – a land of fear, spice and possibility. 











Give A #Dog A #Free Home – http://t.co/bWCW8z7aMy 11-13th April Amazon Worldwide

Posted on by
Reply
You can’t drive a better bargain than free!

There is a long tradition of novelists taking real characters and turning them into literary figures. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Severus Snape, Indiana Jones, Dorian Gray and Alf The Workshop Dog were all based on real people …..and a dog of course. 

If you want to check out the real Alf  FOR FREE you will able to see him live by using the interactive features in Alf The Workshop Dog which goes free on 11th, 12th and 13th April.

In the story Alf the homeless mutt helps out at a Bus depot workshop by finding tools and sniffing out waste food on a fleet of buses. Do I hear you saying “Aah – poor thing”.  Well, here’s your chance to give a dog a home and learn the whole story. 


Emma thinx: Police dogs work on leads.