I stand with Israel. I always have and I always will. Am Yisrael Chai!
Originally posted 2021-01-08 11:55:56.
Fifty-Two articles from the popular site Rod Fleming’s World, covering Travel, Sex, Politics, Religion and Humour. A bumper bundle of fun and comment. The articles have been carefully chosen to remain fresh and the book is illustrated with original photographs and artwork. The ideal holiday read!
296 pages.
Print ISBN: 978-09572612-6-6
Order paperback from Amazon.com
Ebooks:
Originally posted 2021-01-08 11:12:04.
Most of the stories are set in genuine Scottish locations, mostly in and around Edinburgh, so they are replete with local colour and history. The tales bring to life the Gothic charm and mystery of the ‘Florence of the North’ and will be loved by both aficionados of the horror genre and of Scotland and its unique ambience.
Ebooks available through Amazon
Originally posted 2021-01-08 10:47:24.
With the lovable and roguish characters you first met in French Onion Soup!, this book will keep you entertained all right, so much you’ll come back for a second read!
Available now in paperback: ISBN: 978-0-9572612-4-2
Originally posted 2022-06-19 15:14:43.
In Immersive journalism, the writer makes no attempt to distance himself from the action; instead he attempts to get as close to the events going on around him and to the people he is writing about as he can. He is inside the aquarium swimming with the angel fish, not outside it looking in. But this remains journalism; he is always a reporter. It’s just that he himself is at the centre.
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Originally posted 2013-03-07 02:02:33.
I don’t know why it is that I have accumulated such a collection of ─ well, I suppose you might say ghost stories, though I tend to think of them in less definite terms myself. The fact is that I have never seen a ghost with my two eyes, and in fact I long ago gave up any hope of doing so. I must not be one of those gifted with the sight, as it were. However that may be, though, I seem to be a magnet for stories of the weird and the macabre, as if they seek me out─ and in the strangest of places.
The most recent addition to my collection was found in just such a casual way as all the others. I had been on holiday in France, when I was suddenly called back because of an illness─a very severe one─in the family. It happened that the nearest airport from which I could get a flight home was Lyon, so I made my reservation and got myself there as soon as I possibly could. Continue reading “The Horror of the Blocked-Up Window”
Originally posted 2013-02-12 12:45:26.
I wrote this piece about a sea-monster in 2008 and always liked it. It was aimed at children and those with young minds. I hope you enjoy it. It’s about the right length for a bedtime story too.
Long, long years he had slept, resting on a coral beach. His head lay on the sand and his body and tail stretched for miles out into the sea; and as men began to navigate the world, again and again ships crashed into the scales of his back, wrecking themselves.
Read more fiction like this in the epic trilogy The Children of Aldebaran
Originally posted 2016-10-25 13:17:01.
When I was a child, madness was the most terrifying affliction I could imagine. The idea that I might not be able to control my own life was bad enough. But to think that I might be controlling it, yet in ways that my conscious mind would never allow, was enough to give me nightmares. The irrational unknown inside me was terrifying.
The notion that I might be someone other than the sane person I thought I saw, when I looked into the mirror, was simply horrific. The idea of losing rationality and, with it, my central core of me, that hub around which my life revolves, has always been more frightening than anything else I can think of.
This sense of horror is not unique to me.
Originally posted 2016-05-17 12:53:54.
J Michael Bailey’s seminal book, The Man Who Would Be Queen (TMWWBQ) sparked huge controversy when it was published in 2003. The furore it caused, while small in focus, was spectacular in its incandescent rage at the author. This was categorically different from the conservative reaction to works of other controversial authors like D H Lawrence, or even Vladimir Nabokov’s deeply unsettling study of male attraction to pubescent girls. In those, the hostility was principally against the work; not so here. It was J Michael Bailey in person who was vilified.
And to cap that, TMWWBQ is not a work of fiction, but of popular science. It is well written, in non-scientific language, is easy to read and deeply sympathetic to its subject. So what on Earth happened, to provoke such a furious backlash? It included entirely spurious attempts to end Bailey’s career, personal slurs and threats of violence against him. His attackers even accused him of sexually molesting his children.
The campaign against Bailey, coordinated by a small group of internet bullies, amounted to nothing more or less than a blatant attempt at censorship associated with a virulent personal attack on the author. It’s time, now, to revisit this book and see why it caused such a storm in a latte cup. Continue reading “The Man Who Would Be Queen”
Originally posted 2020-10-02 18:30:19.
I’m at the local motorcycle repair shop where Sherwyn, a most competent mechanic and pleasant cove, is replacing a brake master cylinder on the Blaze. He first thought to replace only the seals, but he can’t find the right size. A new cylinder is 400 pesos, just under six quid, an unwell encephalopod. I just tell him to get on with it. Sherwyn works in the open space outside a motorcycle parts shop, where he seems to buy most of his stuff, although, as today, sometimes he has to go further afield. While I wait I sit on a wooden bench in the shade and observe the street life. Baklas soon begin to appear; it’s like they’re in the woodwork.
Originally posted 2013-06-22 15:02:15.
Poaching the River is back on the shelves, both physical and virtual, so I have been addressing the next issue.
Poaching the River was written only partly in English, or at least the Scottish version of it, and all the dialogue is in authentic Mearns Doric. That is my native tongue of course, although I didn’t really know it until I was at school.
The book was written as a homage to that culture, but it is a sad fact that there are few of us left who understand Doric, or can speak it. Ever since Poaching was first published I have had requests to translate it into English, something I have always resisted, for a number of reasons.