Ooooh New Socks

I bought and wore a brand new pair of socks today.  Not because I had to but because I wanted to – and very nice it is indeed.

maybe I should do this every day…..

A Dime Bag of Magic

Yesterday I went to a Sangoma – a South African which doctor.

I asked him if he had any medicine that would produce good luck for the launch of a fantasy novel based on Irish mythology – amazingly enough – he did.  For 10 rand (about a dollar) he prepared me a little baggie of white powder and a dried root.  He instructed me to light the stick so it smoulders then place a pinch of the powder under my tongue, inhale the smoke three times, rub some of the powder over my face then repeated with the smoke. As you all know, I’m Mr Sceptic but I liked this guy and I’m gonna do it.  So you all better buy as many of my paperbacks on August 6th as you can carry, cause if this works they’ll be a collectors item.

I have to perform the magic before I leave South Africa though, cause the baggie looks like a dime bag of crack.

The collective noun for a group of zebras?

I’m in South Africa and just got back from a Safari in a lovely private game reserve a couple of hours north of Cape Town.  With my new camera I feel like the shutter bug I was when I was a teenager.  Here is a lovely pic of a couple of zebra.  (Does anyone know the collective noun for a group of zebra?)  And the hippo shot is my new computer desktop. 

JL

Name this Antlope

Sorry got no socks left but I never got around to sending them anyway.

John L

No, Danny La Rue is on tonight.

Danny La Rue died this week.  .

For you yanks, Danny was the first British drag act (he preferred to be called A Comic in a Frock) ever to break through into popular culture.  Here in the 60’s he was one of the UK’s highest paid performers.

I did a cruise once with Danny (not to be confused with cruising with Danny) he was a lovely man.  On our second day, in the Bay of Biscay, we sailed into a force-ten storm.  I have never been in weather like this.  It was like being thrown off the top of a rollercoaster every four minutes.  Everyone on the ship was sick – including many of the crew.

During the worst of it, the cruise director called me in my cabin and said, “You’re on tonight.”

“Oh no I’m not,” I replied between retching into a trash can, “Danny La Rue is on tonight.  Is he sick?”

“No, the cruise director said, “but he can’t stand in his high-heels in this weather.”

I did the show to an audience made up mostly of elderly deaf passengers.  (Apparently if your middle ear is gone you don’t get sea-sick.)  After the storm Danny bought me a bottle of champagne.

RIP Danny

Hedgehoglet

He’s something you don’t see every day.  An eight hour old baby hedgehog.

My REFOL Nadene was the midwife.

Aw Shucks

This Canadian guy named Jamieson Wolf has a nice book blog and he wrote me a very nice review.  Check it out at   http://jamiesonwolf.blogspot.com/2009/05/shadow-magic-by-john-lenahan-listen-for.html

Shadowmagic in Paperback Aug. 6th

Shadowmagic is out in paperback here in the UK on August 6^th.   Here’s the new cover.

 

I’ve been brainstorming about ways to drum up publicity.  The other day it occurred to me that since I got my publishing deal by podcasting on the internet, that maybe the science and technology sections of the newspapers would be interested.  Also the readers of tech sections probably read more fantasy then the readers of the book/arts section.  I decided to call the London Time’s technology editor and try to pitch him a story.

The Time’s switchboard put me through to the Tech Department.  A woman answered and I went straight into my spiel.  “Hello I’m John Lenahan.  I’m the author of a novel that at first no publisher was interested in and then I podcasted it on the net and …”  I went on like this for about four minutes.  She periodically tried to stop me but I plowed forward. 

Finally she said. “This is the tech department.” 

I explained that I knew that and told her that I felt the tech readers were more my audience than the arts readers. 

That’s when she said, “You don’t understand, this is the tech department.  We’re the people you call if your computer stops working or you spill coffee on your keyboard – but good luck with your book.”

Tarzan of the E-Reader

As Tarzan walked down the wild canon beneath the brilliant African moon the call of the jungle was strong upon him. The solitude and the savage freedom filled his heart with life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of the Apes—every sense alert against the chance of surprise by some jungle enemy—yet treading lightly and with head erect, in proud consciousness of his might.

 

Thus begins Chapter 10 of Tarzan Returns by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  I just finished reading it on my new toy, The Sony Reader eBook, PRS-505S.  I know I’ve jumped the technological gun and really should have waited until there was more e-book readers out there to choose from but my luddite neighbor got one and I just couldn’t stand to be technologically inferior. 

Saying that – I love it.  I might even prefer it to paper.  www.gutenberg.org has almost every book that is out of copyright on their site and I’m catching up on classics.  I had read Tarzan a couple of years ago and was impressed and delighted with an unexpected story not about savagery but cultural sophistication.  (It also has a cracking ending.)  The sequel is no less a delight. 

This is not Shakespeare.  Burroughs was one of the founding fathers of pulp fiction but if you have read me, then you know I consider pulp fiction a high art.  I often worry in my novels about improbable coincidences but Burrows obviously didn’t lose any sleep over that.  In The Return of, Tarzan is pitched overboard from a cruise ship.  In the middle of the ocean he finds a sunken wreck and recovers a lifeboat.  He then rows to the same African beach where his old hut is!  Two weeks later Jane, on a different boat, shipwrecks only a mile away. 

But it doesn’t matter.  The book is a romping joy to read – as is the Sony Reader.  Buy one and catch up on all of that: Twain, Austin, London, Melville, Bronte, Doyle, Baum, Stoker, Dickens etc, for free.

I’m reading Jack London’s, White Fang at the moment – wow – kids books were rough back in the day.

 

John L

Who needs David Attenborough?

Who needs David Attenborough when you have this kind of drama in the back yard?

 

Longtime readers of this blog will remember that the beast fighting with the vixen is my cat Burt.  I was cheering for the vixen.   They both back down.

JL