“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...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d27r/storyville-jonestown-terror-in-the-jungle-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d28j/storyville-jonestown-terror-in-the-jungle-episode-2 Most news stories start their pitch with the headline and in an inverted triangular shape begins to tell the rest of the story in terms of cause and effect. I’ll modify this a little here. Jim Jones was born in rural Indiana at the height of the...

History doesn’t run in straight lines. Robert A. Caro has focussed on a fixed point to talk about power. What it is? How it comes about. Who wields it? And how do they use that power? And in his biography of Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), in this first of four volumes, we follow not only the tale of LBJ, who becomes 36 th President of the United States, but the story of the United States, a modern history. Novels begin with flawed characters that need...

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...

Happy New Year everyone! We're already off to a great start on the writing front - let's make a mutual resolution to write, post and read more. I have to give a big shout out to Lavadis and his use of extraordinary imagery to conjure up the rawest of emotions: https://www.abctales.com/story/lavadis/emergency-bassoonist Poem of the week goes to Onemorething's delicate and profound: https://www.abctales.com/story/onemorething/you-can%E2%80%99t-...

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...

The 2020 Cerasus Poetry Olympics is a competition that will run over 6 qualifying heats in July-August 2020.

Seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War. We’ve had a few close calls. The Cuban Missile Crisis, for example. Like an old Corporation bus running late the apocalypse rumbles into view. All writers are prophets for hire, waiting for the Virgin Mary to make an appearance before we take the fare. Here we have a Vision of Geronda Ephraim Addressing the Ukrainian Situation and casually flinging in his bombshell, don’t worry about that...

Reading is my religion. This book is billed as a true story, marked down as a genre somewhere between The Tattooist of Auschwitz a nd The Choice . The latter was a life-affirming, marvellous book, beautifully written with a clear moral message. The former – I only read the first fifty pages. I find myself in the same misgivings with The Librarian of Auschwitz as I did with The Tattooist Here are a few examples. A black shadow, darker than all...

I’d a gut feeling Celtic would lose today and a gut feeling they’ll lose the Championship. Hope I’m wrong, of course. Last year we were behind Rangers and went on to win it comfortably. I remember being 13 points behind Hearts a few years ago. No need to go overboard and get bogged down in hype and hysteria. Rangers not if, when, they win their game in hand will be a point ahead in the league. In terms of performance this was on par with the...