The Blood Red Widow

There’s a story behind this book…

I was invited to write a novel as part of an intended series. There were all sorts of rules and conditions and bits and pieces that needed including for continuity’s sake and to make sure my volume dove-tailed with all the others in the series. Also, if it worked well, then there would be others in my “series within a series”.

So I spent a long time coming up with a group of characters that would see me through multiple novels, I gave them back-stories and I looked ahead at how these back-stories would influence future plots, and… well, all sorts of stuff.

Despite having to adhere to all of these conditions I was really pleased with the outcome. The overall editor said mine was one of the best westerns he’d read in a few years and added “I read a lot of westerns!”

But then it never happened. Market forces, and all that.

So I took the opportunity to strip out all those conditions and linkages and I changed a few things that, for reasons I forget, I wasn’t allowed to include. I made the ending more like I’d originally planned, and I submitted it elsewhere.

Anyway, long story, short, this book remains a favourite of mine and it’s now available in an excellent audio version:

LISTEN TO A SAMPLE: https://amzn.to/3vkmSxh

The Gypsy Project – Lockdown Music!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here. Blame lockdown. For me, it’s actually been very busy with work (luckily working from home), in fact busier than ever. It’s also meant no gigs. So to fill that gap a new project has been initiated.

A very long story boils down: a bunch of us who have never met, in most cases, never even spoken, have put together a series of gypsy jazz tunes.

It’s been fun. Hard. A steep learning curve. And, at times, very frustrating. But it’s part of “stuff I do”, so here they are:

#1 Sweet Georgia Brown

#2 I Can’t Give You Anything But Love

#3 Avalon

#4 Minor Swing

#5 Nuages

#6 All Of Me

#7 Swing 42

I hope you enjoy these!

Derek

Drawing # 3

Just to keep the story ticking over, following two previous posts documenting my slow wend through Dobson’s Keys to Drawing book, here are a few more drawings / paintings. Slowly edging in on getting things to look how I want them to look. But long long way to go yet.

 

The Last One Standing – new book

I took a slightly different approach with this, something I half stole from James Lee Burke. The novel is written in first person, but when a character is telling my narrator a story from their past, instead of having that person simply relate their story, we jump into the narrative as if it were a third person narrative. It sounds harder to explain than it really is, and hopefully it’s seamless. I think it gives the narrative a nice momentum and a richness in these back stories that would otherwise have been missing.

Anyway, the tale is the first of a new series featuring Callum Johnson, son of the legendary bounty hunter Sam Johnson. In this first instalment Callum heads off to exact revenge for his father’s death at the hands of the monstrous Moose Schmidt. Callum is joined by the beautiful Lin Wu Jia, a young Chinese woman seeking her own retribution, and One Leg Hawk, his father’s old Cherokee scout.

 

Drawing # 2

My previous post on the subject of drawing was about my journey through the early chapters of Bert Dodson’s Keys to Drawing and some Stan Miller YT videos. The artwork on that posting is a good indication of where I was at that moment in time. Even if the work is a little embarrassing, I believe it’s still good to retain it, and even share it, as it helps illustrate one’s journey, and hopefully one’s improvements.

I’m still only one chapter further into Dodson, and I’m still on the same Stan Miller video (lesson # 6), but I keep practising, and today I actually produced something that I felt showed some promise. It’s a watercolour Marvin Gaye.

Here is then (approx six months ago) and now.

Bert Dodson via Stan Miller # 6

A Good Year For Westerns

It’s been a good year for westerns, back in February “Dead Man’s Return” was accepted. This is the third and final part of the Dead Man trilogy, and it came out in October and actually reached number 1 in one of Amazon’s charts. Not bad! Okay, not their main chart, but nonetheless I can still declare myself an Amazon bestseller.

Then in May “Easy Money” was accepted. A standalone novel about an ex-Pinkerton headed for the snowy wastes of the North country to try and find out who killed his brother. This one was so much fun to write I simply flew through it.

It’s due out in Feb 19.

Equally as much fun to write was “The Last One Standing” which was accepted in Dec 18 and is all about a young man and a Chinese girl who head into the Territories searching for the man who killed their kin.

And on top of all that I’m almost done with the first draft of “Bullet for a Bride” which will come out in 2019 as part of Piccadilly Western’s series on the OK Detective agency.

A good year!

Drawing!

Been an age since I posted anything – so here’s something totally different. Some artwork. I’ve always enjoyed looking at art and so recently have started working my way through Bert Dodson’s Key’s to Drawing book in an effort to be able to do some myself.

What a marvellous and amazing book this is. You really don’t want to see my output from Chapters One and Two, but I’m now getting towards the end of Chapter Three – the chapter on measuring, finding the midpoint, vertical and horizontal lines, looking for relationships between shapes and points and all that great stuff, and suddenly I’m starting to come up with a few things that I’m not too unhappy with.

In parallel to the Dodson book I’ve also been working through a few watercolour lessons that Stan Miller has on YouTube. It’s early days, but I have tried to combine the two – i.e. using the exercises from Dodson’s book as the basis for a few of Stan Miller’s exercises.

Anyway, all great fun. Following Dodson’s order of exercises I started with some straight on heads, then some profiles, then three quarter views, and now I’m just getting to a few of the odd-angle / foreshortened views.

Bert Dodson # 1

Bert Dodson # 2

Bert Dodson via Stan Miller # 3

Bert Dodson # 4

Bert Dodson # 6

Bert Dodson via Stan Miller # 6

Bert Dodson # 7

x100s Goes to Eastnor

Was lucky enough to do a rock’n’roll gig at Eastnor castle last weekend. I took the little Fuji x100s along to grab a coupe before we started:

The load-in part 1

The load-in part 2:

Pre-gig sandwich room:

The Castle

The Castle Again:

The Set-Up:

 

 

 

Photo-Walk Around Manchester

It was a rainy few days, but I took the x100s (interiors) and the D7100 (exteriors) for a wander around Manchester. I took in the Rochdale Canal, Castlefields, the Central Library, the John Rylands library, the Cathedral, the Art Gallery, the Science and Industrial museum, and various streets. Didn’t take photos in all those places – the museum and art gallery I simply enjoyed as a non-photographing tourist. Both were great. Anyway, here are a few of the snaps.

 

 

 

Bike Ride…

A few images from yesterday’s bike ride around England and Wales. All taken on the tiny Lumix GM1.

Set off from Gloucester as the sun rose:

Here you can see Gloucester Cathedral if you look closely:

The River Severn:

Tea break at The Old Station, Tintern:

The old bridge at Tintern:

On the old bridge – a tad rickety!

Obligatory bike shot to prove I was there:

Tintern Abbey:

Heading back into England:

Severn Bridge:

Arty Severn Bridge & the muddy waters of the Severn: