Just a comment to let you know that I have absolutely no idea why the heading on my last blog was a number. It wasn’t a secret code or anything, it just appeared from nowhere and I only discovered it after I had posted. Once I press that publish button, I have not found a way to grab it back and put anything right, but maybe one day, who knows!
I have just gone back into my blog list and the last blog I wrote is not there at all! I know I wasn’t dreaming, and I did have an email sending it to me as in my early fumbling attempts, I actually signed up to my own blog – bit embarrassing that 😦 But there seems to be two different sign up pages and …. no I can’t cope with this, it will do my head in.
I wanted to check if I had thanked everyone for your support with the Author Shout Cover Wars. ‘Amie’ won and is now featured on their page as the ‘Book of the Week’ and I am absolutely thrilled. So thank you all again, so much for your support. 🙂
I did take one step forward this week by posting my first pic on a tweet. I have to admit it was less than a raging success, and I have now announced to the tweet world my new book is called ‘Propaganda’, by an unknown author. Some unseen force decided to compress the picture in some peculiar way and squashed both the title and author name off it. However, it was the first colourful tweet I have sent out so that was a sort of consolation prize.
I have posted up a couple of extracts from ‘Truth, Lies and Propaganda’, on my Facebook timeline, but I will post one here just in case you’ve not seen it. It will give you an idea what the book is all about. While working on the radio I decided to hold a quiz show – big mistake!
As we were recording three shows at a time, I was not prepared for the final show which, much to everyone’s horror, was won by a snotty young man who was over in Libya, lecturing at the Garyounis University in some bizarre subject. He and I had nearly come to blows over several answers he gave. He of course knew all the answers and sneered at us slightly older folk who struggled to remember what we’d been taught in primary school. And it always seemed to be the case that he got the easy questions as well, the ones we all knew. Even I was aware that the lead in pencils is not real lead, so what was it? I asked him.
“C, with a hexagonal dihexagonal dipyramidal crystal symmetry, under the Strunz classification of 01.CB.05a,” he answered with a decided snigger.
I mean you can see what we were up against can’t you? But I had him this time.
“Wrong!” I chortled. “Anyone else know the answer? Julia?”
“It’s not lead, but graphite,” she replied with a huge smile.
And then the fight started. It appeared that Big Head had quoted the chemical symbol for graphite, C, which it shares with diamonds and soot, and so to be quite clear, he had included its classification in his answer. This was of course long before the days of the quick check-up on Google, but I tried to stand firm.
“Sorry, I am only allowed to accept the answer I have on the card,” I said cheerfully. “Well done Julia.”
“It’s my point, and I want it,” sneered Big Head. “And, even if you are supposed to be running the show, you can’t change and make up the rules as you go along.”
I looked at Julia’s crestfallen face. It was the only question she had got right so far, (I’d removed the cheat sheet for the finals), and it seemed cruel to deprive her of her only point. Big Head was several dozen points in the lead even if you added everyone else’s score together, but he was not about to let this one slip through his fingers.
No, this is not the snotty guy who won the quiz show, but Shaun Pollock – international cricketer who plays for SA. I interviewed him and made a total idiot of myself. That’s also in the book.
I am planning to post another extract tomorrow on FB and maybe even on Sunday. In the meantime, my fingers are itching to continue with ‘More TLP’ as I am two thirds way through, but there is something called Xmas coming up and that will delay things a bit.
lucinda E Clarke 