Thursday 27 December 2012

Are the days of blogs numbered?

Are the days of the blog numbered? Or is it that those people I once followed with keen interest have moved on to other more important projects in their lives? I would like to think that is the case because there was a lot of talented and interesting people out there, and I enjoyed following their literary adventures on a day to day basis.

This thought was prompted when I took a scan through the blogs that I followed and found a lot of them hadn't been updated for months, or had disappeared all together. Now, in some ways I'm guilty of apathy towards my blog, and there is a specific reason for it. I started this blog to chronicle my adventures in publishing. Now that was all well and good in the early days when everything about the process was new and fresh and not a little daunting. Yet it feels now that I'm beginning to rehash old thoughts and ideas, and I'm not sure that is what my readers want to read. Either that, or those who once followed my tales and advice have also moved on and are now past the kind of advice that I was able to offer.

Looking back over the last year, I've noticed that many of the blogs I followed, my own included, have become nothing more than marketing devices. Everyone has a book to sell it seems. I don't want my blog to fall into the trap of simply pimping my latest book - although it's obviously somewhere where anyone interested in my writing might come to find information on my latest works - and am in the process of trying to figure out where i want to take my blog next.

OK, I won't be absconding to wordpress (tried it, didn't work out), but over the next few weeks i hope to relaunch my blog so that it's a bit more interesting than "Hey! Here's my latest book". Watch this space....

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Twas Two Nights Before Christmas - Redux

Twas Two Nights Before Christmas

A poem featuring Joe Hunter

Twas two nights before Christmas, when all through the house the killer was stirring, the heartless louse. The stocking was pulled over his head with care, in hopes no one would know him if they seen him there.

The children were tied up in their beds, while chloroform fumes danced in their heads. And Mamma with her ‘kerchief employed as a gag, had just lost her mind after her husband was whacked! When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, the killer sprang from her body to see what was the matter.


Away to the window he flew like a flash, tugging up his zipper as he threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the luster of mid-day to objects below. When, what to his worried eyes should appear, but a jet black Porsche, that should not have been there.

With a big ol’ driver, so lively and quick, he knew in a moment it must be that Rink. More rapid than an eagle his partner came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called the killer by name! "Now killer! Now, murderer! Now, rapist, I’m fixing, on coming on, stupid, to give you a Blitzing!” To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall the killer should dash away or else he would fall!

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. So up to the house-door Joe Hunter he flew, with his hand full of gun, and a KABAR too. And then, in a twinkling, the killer heard the clicks, the racking and chambering of the SIG-Sauer P226.

As he drew in his head, and was turning around, through the front window Hunter came with a bound. He was dressed all in black, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all spotted with glass and with blood.

A bundle of hurt Hunter brought to this place, and he looked like the Grim Reaper, with his KABAR raised. His eyes-how they twinkled, his grim smile so scary! He brought up his gun, but he was in no hurry! His tight-lipped mouth was drawn up like a bow, as he unloaded the SIG like a flurry of snow.

There was a stump of an arm and a scatter of teeth, and the blood it encircled the killer’s head like a wreath. He had a wound in his face and more in his belly, where his intestines were pulped like a bowlful of jelly! He was shuddering and pumping, the guts right out his self, Hunter laughed when he saw him, in spite of himself!

A round through the eye and a chunk from his head, soon told Hunter that the killer was dead. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and pulled down the stocking, to identify the jerk. And spotting the prison tattoo aside the killer’s nose, he gave a nod, and he pulled out his phone!

He sprang to the Porsche, and Rink gave it throttle, and away they flew like the cork from a bottle. No one heard Hunter exclaim, ‘ere they drove out of sight, "Hi, Walter, a clean up crew’s required tonight!"

Based on ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ a poem by Clement Moore