Robert Craven's blog

Echoes of Sound and Vision - Get Lenin on audible

When I was young, living in Manchester, my parents had an old valve radio. It was big, brown, and beige. It sat pride of place on the dresser in the living room of our house, shiny and smelling of furniture polish. The valves would hum and glow when you turned it on. Twisting the dial, the thin red line would slide along the station bandwidths, bringing the world in through the speakers. Everyday our home was filled with music, local news and...

The Great Durham Swindle

I was once told by a Liverpool author that the difference between the UK and the USA when it came to power is that while in the US power came from wealth in the UK, power came from privilege. This side of the Irish Sea, the current narrative rings true with the unelected advisor to the current government: Dominic Cummings. Julien Temple’s flawed but at times brilliant ‘The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle’ springs to mind. The Sex Pistols under the...

How JAWS was an inspiration for Eagles Hunt Wolves

Anyone walking along the riverside of the Limmat might have picked her out; a pretty girl of about twenty, whose maroon-looking lipstick accentuated her wan complexion. Her arm, bent at the elbow and carried at an awkward angle, might have given pause for thought; her fist, balled up into a permanent clench, was concealed between the buttons of her expensively cut overcoat. An attentive eye might even have noticed the small spattering of blood...

Rush, Neil Peart & being independent

I read with sadness this morning that Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist of RUSH has died. He was 67. He and his bandmates, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were a soundtrack and voice to my teenage years. Peart was a hugely accomplished drummer and undertook writing the band's lyrics when no-one else wanted to and drove the band's direction. For anyone who grew up in Ireland or the UK in the 1980's, the time was bleak, the weather seemed bleak, the...

A New Decade,- The Author “Netizen”

“For there’s no-one with endurance like the man who sells insurance.” (Crumit / Curtis 1935) Or the modern author too. Eighty-five years after this song was composed and the start of a new decade, it’s all about endurance, persistence, self-belief and hard graft. I have just published my seventh novel: Eagles Hunt Wolves . It is the fifth and final part of a wartime series I started in 2006, beginning with Get Lenin which was published in 2011...

Eagles Hunt Wolves - improbable adventures 04-01-20

EAGLES HUNT WOLVES (and Improbable Adventures) – Robert Craven In 2006, I started writing an adventure story in the vein I grew up reading. In June 2011 it was published – Get Lenin . Five years of rewrites, excruciating edits, rejection letters and emails led to it being spotted on the now-defunct peer review site Authonomy. What sealed the modest publishing deal was the principal character Eva Molenaar. I wanted Eva to be a strong female...

*** PRESS RELEASE - EAGLES HUNT WOLVES ***

EAGLES HUNT WOLVES LAUNCH DATE 30/01/20 For fans of John le Carre, Mick Herron, Ian Fleming, Phillip K Dick and Alastair Maclean – meet Eva Molenaar. 1946: The guns have fallen silent over Europe. For now. Searching for her lover Nicklaus Brandt after a mission three years earlier with the French Resistance in Lyon, Eva finds herself in lawless war-torn Berlin. Reunited with her old MI6 handler, Henry Chainbridge, she finds Brandt in a secret...

Murder One Festival - Pitching from the pulpit 02/11/19

Situated along the River Liffey, past the Temple Bar area of Dublin stands Smock Alley Theatre. Founded in 1662 as a Theatre Royal (the only one ever built outside of London) under Charles II, it has assumed many guises including a reconsecrated Church in the Victorian era. Falling into ruin after the 1916 rising and independence from England it was recently restored to its full glory including an impressive theatre space in 2012. For the next...

Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland 2019

I am sitting in the front row of The Allan Park Church Hall in Stirling, Scotland. It is nearly 11am. Its nearly showtime. Beside me sit my fellow pitchers for Perfect Pitch 2019; Suzie, Libby, David, Anne, Dave, Elissa and Cheralyn. Selected from seventy submissions earlier this year, we have made it here on a wet Sunday morning from all over the UK and Ireland. We all sent 100 word pitches only, no details, nothing to indicate who we were...

*** PRESS RELEASE *** The Road of a Thousand Tigers

**** PRESS RELEASE *** T he Road of a Thousand Tigers is Robert Craven’s sixth novel published independently on KOBO and Amazon platforms. Inspired by the 007 ® franchise, The Road of a Thousand Tigers , ditches the gadgets, and big production endings of the Bond novels and introduces a romantic leading man; Sebastian Holt; a ‘combination of strength, culture and sensitivity’. Two strong female characters; Marianne Aubuchon, a French journalist...

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