-
What did we do in 2019?
It’s the end of the year. In fact, it’s the end of the decade. And there’s a lot of ‘what have I achieved’ blogs doing the rounds. So we thought we’d do a little recap of what we’ve done in the last twelves months. January 2019 The fourth book in our “Clovenhoof’s Diary” series was […]
-
Book Restoration: a story
Have you ever wondered what is involved in a book restoration? I grew up with this cookery book. It holds the recipes of my childhood. I’m not so keen on liver, but you can see from the stains that we ate it a lot. The book was in a very sorry state. There was hardly a single page […]
-
2017-2018 – What did we do? Where are we going?
What did we do in 2017… We started 2017 hotly promoting our latest Clovenhoof novella, Clovenhoof and the Trump of Doom. This was a story, written in the days after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. We had great fun writing it and fans have taken really well to it, although some readers […]
-
Fairy Tales relating to Spring
Spring time in fairy tales What do fairy tales have to say about spring time? Quite a lot, it seems. To celebrate the equinox, let’s take a look. DIY The familiar zeal for carrying out maintenance tasks on the home during spring time is seen in the fairy tale The Wayward Castle where a servant […]
-
Fairy Tale traditions associated with Pancake Day
Pancake day and fairy tales. Pancakes are traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday (or indeed any Tuesday). In medieval times, the pancake was seen as terribly indulgent. Eating pancakes was a way of letting your hair down and celebrating the end of week. We should point out that, before the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, […]
-
10 ways to fight Blue Monday
Blue Monday – a fake media construct? Blue Monday used to refer to washing, but in recent years it’s the day that the newspapers tell us that we are all supposed to be at our most miserable. The combination of weather, dark days and debt culminates specifically on the third Monday in January, we are told. For […]
-
Festive Excess. Can you recognise it?
This is a handy guide to festive excess. If you find yourself doing the things described here over the Christmas season, you are almost certainly overdoing it. Be warned. Len Deighton’s Action Cookbook This book is for you if you want to emulate the lifestyle of a 1960’s action hero. Len Deighton is most famous for writing […]
-
Guest Post – Hilary Mortz looks at Christmas Films
Today’s post is written by Hilary Mortz, who wrote one of the stories in Festive Treats (the free Christmas anthology, have you got your copy yet?) Christmas Films I got my ultimate guilty pleasure FESTIVE TREAT today – a glossy shiny 14 Day What’s On At Xmas TV Guide. Christmas is finally here – forget […]
-
Spotted! A monster in Birmingham’s canals.
Why we did it We wrote a book about Birmingham, a book about the unkillable gods who live there (of the tentacled and untentacled variety). Dreaming up ways to get our efforts in front of the maximum number of people is something that we like to do. There’s no escaping the fact that Amazon do […]