DEATH DOESN'T STOP BANKS CHASING YOU!

Mastercard, Absolutely Priceless ....

CANCEL YOUR CREDIT CARD BEFORE YOU DIE !!!

Reported in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle U.K. recently:

Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die! This is so priceless.  And so easy to see happening - customer service, being what it is today!

A lady died this past September, and MBNA bank billed her in October and November for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then in December added late fees and interest on the monthly charge.

The balance that had been £0.00, now is somewhere around £60.00.

A family member placed a call to the MBNA Bank . . .  :

Family Member: 'I am calling to tell you that my grandma died in September.'

MBNA: 'But the account was never closed and so the late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member: 'Maybe, you should turn it over to your collections section.'

MBNA: ‘Since it is two months over due, it already has been.'

Family Member: ‘So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?'

MBNA: 'Either report her account to the Frauds Department or report her to The Credit bureau, maybe both!'

Family Member: 'Do you think God will be mad at her?'

MBNA: 'Excuse me?'

Family Member: 'Did you just get what I was telling you . . The part about her being dead?'

MBNA: 'Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor.'

Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member: 'I'm calling to tell you, she died in September.'

MBNA: 'But the account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member: 'You mean you want to collect from her estate?'

MBNA: (Stammer) 'Are you her solicitor?'

Family Member: 'No, I'm her grandson'

MBNA: 'Could you fax us a  death certificate?'

Family Member: 'Sure.'

( fax number is given )

After they get the fax:

MBNA: 'Our system just isn't set up for death. I don't know what more I can do to help.'

Family Member: 'Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her.  I don't think she will care.'

MBNA: 'Well, the late fees and charges will still apply.'
 
Family Member: ‘Would you like her new billing address?'

MBNA: 'That would help.'

Family Member: ' Plot 1049.' Heaton Cemetary, Heaton Road , Newcastle upon Tyne

MBNA: 'But, that's a cemetery!'

Family Member: 'Well, what the f*** do you do with dead people on your planet?'

The MBNA were not available for comment when a reporter from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle rang them.

The above is unbelievable, but it actually happened. I've blogged before about banks and Indian call centers. I have to admit I don't know whether the call center was in Indoia, but my own dealings with MBNA would indicate it is. It just goes to show that banks have no sympathy and little understanding od theEnglish language. Compassion isn't a word they understand, though "solicitor" seems to be one they dread!

And still the bankers want massive bonuses and presumably the easy way to get them is to levy charges on dead people, who actually owe them no money when they died and can't argue, let alone pay up. Doubtless MBNA would have eventually "sold" the debt to a collections agency who would literally have gone to Heaven and Hell to get their money. At least they'd have felt at home in Hell.

Blog on, Dudes!

Oh... and check out my new page on Amazon and why not buy one of my books while you're at it?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Hardie/e/B00BEZ21R0/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

MY INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ROBINSON

My guest tonight is a retired trucker, hypnotherapist and adult education teacher with a one-megaton sense of humour. He is a Yorkshireman from the outskirts of Manchester, northwest England, where he lives with his wife and a crazy Jack Russell Terrier named Joe (because he looks like a Joe).

He writes in several genres under different pseudonyms, but his mainstay is crime and mystery. He also produces darker, edgier thrillers which are aimed exclusively at an adult audience and which question the perceptions of reality. In a more light-hearted mood again, he turns out the occasional sci-fi or paranormal adventure and he has also published some non-fiction.

Often mistaken for the comedian David Walliams (it must be the dark, good looks), my guest tonight is David William Robinson.

David, firstly many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. We exchange comments on Facebook, but tonight I want to find out something about the man behind the keyboard.

Nervous? Shaking like a leaf. I really must cut back on my caffeine intake.

Orange juice from now on then! When did you start writing and what was your first book about (published, or not!)?

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, and my first “novel” was 5,000 words long, written in a school exercise book, and it was blatant rip-off of Ian Fleming’s Moonraker. I can’t remember when I wrote my first serious novel. Probably some time in the 80s, but my first major effort came in 1997. I’d been working with a TV company, Trailblazer Productions, on a 5-hour thriller entitled Murder by Suggestion. We were close to a commission when we were rejected. I rewrote it as a novel entitled The Handshaker. After years of near-misses, I self-published it in 2011, and Crooked Cat have recently re-published it. The novel (and TV series) centres on the abuse of hypnosis and how far it can be pushed.

Hypnotherapist and teacher to author….. do you use many of your past working experiences as plots?

Curiously enough, no. Even The Handshaker is concerned more with abduction, abuse and murder than it is hypnosis. Naturally, there are experiences which I put to good use in all my fiction. Although my work history appears grand, I actually spent the greater part of my life as a trucker, and I have an excellent geographical knowledge of Great Britain, which is useful for the STAC series, and the repartee between Joe and his customers at the Lazy Luncheonette.

As a hypnotist, Alex Croft makes use of my training in the field, and other characters, like Chris Deacon in Voices, take from my work as an adult education teacher.

The STAC murder mystery series is doing very well and I see The Filey Connection is now #16 in British Detectives on Amazon. How did you get the idea for the STAC?

The STAC Mysteries are a comparatively new venture, born sometime around 2009. I was 59 years old at the time, and I’d always had two great passions: whodunits and humour. I decided to combine the pair in a series of light-hearted murder mysteries.

Using the Sanford 3rd Age Club as a fulcrum allowed me to bring in middle-aged people, like myself. I have this thing about growing old disgracefully. I can be a huge embarrassment to my wife, who is always a little shy and retiring, whereas I’m a born-again teenager, determined to enjoy myself without giving much of a hoot what anyone else thinks.

There’s a lot of me in Joe: getting on in years, still grafting, a workaholic, but harbouring his private passions in the background. He’s curmudgeonly, certainly, but if you look beneath his grumbling, you’ll find it’s cynicism, a dissatisfaction with the world and the way it has deteriorated – in his eyes – since he was a 20-something lad about town.

Rings a bell! Tell me, how do you promote your books?

Blatantly. I find that so many writers believe “I’ve written the book, and that’s it.” Not if you want to sell, it isn’t. You must let people know it’s there. I use social media: Facebook and Twitteand I use my blog, but it’s not a hard sell. I don’t believe you can hard sell books like you do insurance, mobile phones, and home improvements. Instead, I will use a little prompt and lead naturally to my book. Allow me to give you an example.  “Snowed in? Dreaming of long, hot, sunny days. The Filey Connection, murder in a heatwave.”

One thing I find important when you’re working like this, is to keep abreast of the news. Here’s another example. “It took over 500 years to find Richard III buried under a car park. Pity Joe Murray wasn’t on the job. The STAC Mysteries; traditional British murder mysteries for your Kindle.”

I publicise my work a lot through social media and my blog, and some may say, “Give it a rest, will you?” My answer? No. I won’t. You don’t have to read the post, you can hide it on Facebook, you can block me on Twitter, but there are millions of people out there who don’t know about me yet, so I won’t shut up.

Does it work? Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend entered the top 20 of its genre chart on the UK Kindle, on January 6th, as I write, it’s slipped slightly, dropping back into the top 30, but The Filey Connection is in the top 20, and ALL FIVE STAC Mysteries are in the top 100.

It’s too early to say whether the sixth, My Deadly Valentine, which was released on February 6th, will be as successful.

You write books for adults. Have you ever written for younger people?

No. There is a good reason. I simply do not identify with youngsters. I don’t understand them. Their values and aspirations are so much different to when I was their age. Don’t misunderstand me. I have no downer on kids. I’m not particularly fond of very young children, but I don’t mind teenagers. I think they’re having a rough time of it. Their future is not so rosy or assured as was ours, and if I see some kid making an effort, striving for his/her ambitions, then I can applaud him. But I can’t pretend that I have anything to say that may entertain him.

Do you have a set routine as a writer and a special place where you work?

I’m up between five and six every morning. I check my emails and newsfeeds for the first hour, track my overnight book positions, which is often an indicator to sales, then I set to work, usually by seven in the morning. I work for most of the morning, catch up a bit of sleep in the afternoon, and then do a little more before we have our evening meal. And I always work in the same place: at the back of the room where the workstation stands.

What projects are you’re working on right now?

Priority for now is the seventh STAC Mystery, The Chocolate Egg Murders. It’s targeted for an Easter release. Beyond that I already have outlines for the eighth and ninth STACs, and I’ll be working on a non-fiction title, explaining exactly how I sell using social media, and I have ideas for other crime series which I’ll be pitching to Crooked Cat later in the year.

What is the most important piece of advice you could give a budding writer?

I have this mantra: doubt everyone, never doubt yourself. It’s as simple as that. I have some wonderful people who help me along, particularly my dear friend and editor, Maureen Vincent-Northam, and Laurence and Steph at Crooked Cat Books, but essentially it’s up to me to get those words down on the page, and every writer must have that inner-belief. Without it, you’ll get nowhere.

One other piece of advice. Remember that most overnight successes take 20 years to achieve.

One last question, David. If you could achieve one important goal within the next 5 years, what would it be?

To see Joe, Sheila and Brenda on TV. At my time of life, most of my goals and ambitions have been achieved, but was it Mark Twain who said every man should die a failure. I take that to mean, you should be striving for something even on your death bed. To see the STAC Mysteries materialise as a TV series would probably be the crowning glory for... but then, I’d have to find another ambition.

David, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, and my thanks for not trying to hypnotise me. At least I assume you haven’t!

My pleasure. You are in my power, you are in my power, you are in my power…

Yes, O Master! Must buy STAC books, must buy all STAC books!.....

David has an excellent web site which includes his blog at: http://www.dwrob.com/

David’s latest book, the 6th STAC Mystery My Deadly Valentine is available on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B9HHF8I

Or in all e-formats from Smashwords at: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/281516

MY INTERVIEW WITH ME! (Updated... again!)

My American publisher, Publerati, has just issued their Fall (Autumn to you and me) catalogue. A bit early. It's not bad and my books are included on the last page. The link is http://freepdfhosting.com/e2c49a5609.pdf

Over the past month I've posted a weekly interview with both well-known and less well-known authors, all of whom had an interesting story to tell. During the next few weeks I have a number of interviews (some scheduled and others completed) and every on of them will have the Wow! factor,,,,,, I promise!

But I decided tonight to interview myself, so here goes!



My guest tonight is an author (most of the time), a dog walker some of the time, and a blogger (quite a lot of the time). Married with two kids and a cocker spaniel he has reputedly been to 47 countries around the world and actually seen some of them.
Yes, my guest tonight is me.



Hello Richard. It's great to have you here tonight. I'm so glad you could join me, rather than amusing yourself and having fun.

Did I have an option? One minute I was watching a rerun of QI and the next I was plonked by me in front of a laptop and told to answer questions I have to ask myself! How fair is that? Having said that, Dave repeats the same QI programmes month after month so it'll be on again tomorrow. Ask away!



That's as maybe, and please stop fiddling with the mouse. Tell me, why on earth did you decide you could write. Sorry, I mean of course when did you decide to write books?

Chose your next words carefully! I blame my next door neighbour. He put me forward to the then producer of the Gang Show for Scouts & Guides as a volunteer to help write the thing. The first I knew was this phone call wishing me a Ging Gang Gooley. How could I resist. Trouble is I ended up writing the next 4 shows and even producing one of them. The captive audience seemed to like the stories and I decided one of them was ideal for turning into a novel. The show, not the audience! They were turned into rabbits.


Understandable as your main charater is Merlin. What happened? Did it become the overnight best-seller it fully deserved to be?

I wasn't any good, that's what. The agents were too clever for me and presumably actually read what I sent them. A sneaky trick. One lady did take me on, purely on the strength of .... er, something. Thanks, Mum! It took 5 years, but eventually we got there and she decided to split. Such is life being an author! What she did though was to convince me to rewrite the book (numerous times) and to reduce it from nearly 500 pages to 230 (reminiscent of JK Rawling at her rambling best. I have so much in common with her, except she's a woman and I'm a man,,,, oh, and she sells million of books, whereas I sell.....but I digress!). She, the agent that is not JKR, also taught me GOWTS (Get On With The Story), or in this case Get On With The Interview!



Sorry.So  how did America come into things then?

I haven't mentioned America yet! Ok, I will now. I gave up on the UK (I hadn't heard of the wonderful Crooked Cat then) and looked around the States and eventually came across this small bijou (probably means the same thing) publishing company specialising in eBooks. The CEO had run publishing companies for other people and now wanted to do the same thing, but be the owner. He snapped me up and we launched Leap of Faith in May last year, a landmark in American publishing circles,,,, at least in small circles. Trouble With Swords came out in December and a third book is planned for release in May / June time this year. That's if I you / I stop blogging and Facebooking and get back to writing again!



Do you enjoy writing?

I must do. I'm doing it for virtually no money. I always had this ambition to be a struggling author and I've successfully achieved that! Nobody struggles more than me... except my readers, of course. I love writing, especially when I know exactly what's going to happen and it's just a matter of tapping on a keyboard before I forget. The plot thinking can be a bit of a black hole. But you know that, of course.



Certainly do, Richard. Black Hole is my middle name. My parents had a great sense of humour! Where do you write.

Like you, I write in my study (my study? I share it with my son who plays war games on the main computer). I sit on the settee with my laptop. I use one of those TV trays because the laptop gets red hot after an hour or two of constant thumping! Mind you, so do I after an hour of being thumped! I usually have a cocker spaniel curled up next to me until 2.00pm when it's time for the afternoon walkies. Who needs a watch when you have a dog?





What's your latest project?

Interviewing. Other than that, it's the third in the Temporal Detective Agency series, loosely called  The Bigger Bang Theory. I've written the first 45 pages and the last 30, so it's just the middle bit I need to do now. Actually I'll leave that bit to you.



Have you got other interviews planned?

Of course I have! There's a fantastic one already finished and I'm posting it this coming Friday. The one for the week after that is nearly ready and there are three famous TV people coming up soon. Watch this space! There may be one or two surprises.







Richard, many thanks for talking to me tonight. I know you're a terribly busy person with a legion of potential readers waiting for your next book (I hope!).

Can I go? Now QI has finished, I want to watch Brian Cox telling everyone we're full of space and that if there were no spaces between atoms the whole of mankind could be squeezed into the size of a walnut. That would solve the housing crisis at a stroke!



Give me a couple of minutes while I give your books and website a plug, then I'll join you for a quick whiskey. I'll have the single malt if I'm pouring. Better make it a double if we're both drinking. What do I mean there's no single malt! 



Richard Hardie has an incredibly wonderful website at www.rhardie.com which also links to his fantastically interesting blog, which of course you're reading now.

His blog is on http://richardhardies.blogspot.co.uk/ as if you didn't know.

His books are available on all good eReader sites and some pretty awful ones as well, but the Amazon link is http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=richard+hardie. Trips off the tongue, doesn't it!

Over 800 people have viewed this interview since it was posted and it continues to be one of the most popular interview I've done. Don't just read the interview, go to Amazon on the following link and find out why I interviewed Trevor and why his books are so funny!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tracys-Celebrity-Hot-Mail-Belshaw-ebook/dp/B00MI3Z2GY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1-fkmr0&qid=1425076901

Tracy's Hot Mail, Trevor's hilarious book for adults of all ages 

MY INTERVIEW WITH TREVOR BELSHAW

Married with two grown-up kids and two springer spaniels, my guest today is a British author of numerous books for children and lives in a village in Nottinghamshire… which might explain why he’s a fanatical supporter of Nottingham Forest Football Club. There has to be one!

His books are all humorous, verging on funny, and they are all for children… of any age. His Stanley Stickle and Magic Molly (probably named after one of his Springer Spaniels) books are a treat to read and it’s great to welcome their author Trevor Belshaw as my guest today.

Trevor, firstly many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. We exchange comments on Facebook, frequently on football, but tonight I want to find out something about the man behind the profile photo. Nervous?

Thanks for inviting me. I’m always nervous when people ask me questions, especially when the person asking the question is wearing a policeman’s uniform.

Sorry, I’ll take it off! Tell me, how did you get into writing and what was your first book about (published, or not!)?

I’ve always had an ambition to be a writer. I longed to own a typewriter. I saw myself hunched over it, a basket full of screwed up paper at my side, an empty whisky bottle on the desk and a cigarette permanently hanging from my lips. It’s a strange vision for a ten year old I have to admit.

The dream was never fulfilled. I gave up smoking long before I became an author, I never did develop a taste for whisky and sadly, the waste paper bin is full of old newspapers, not my alcohol induced imaginings. I never did get the typewriter. By the time I could actually afford to buy one they had been superseded by computer programs. I still think about picking one up at a car boot sale, even if it’s just to stick on the desk to look at when I’m struggling for motivation.

In my childhood I was a voracious reader. If it had words then I’d read it; the content didn’t matter too much. I devoured everything: Just William, Paddington, Swallows and Amazons, The Famous Five. I remember reading an old book called The Bell Family that I found on a rubbish tip. The pages were damp and smelly but I dried it out and read it. I’d have a go at anything from A Tale of Two Cities to Woman’s Own.  I even read the ingredients list on the cornflakes packet at breakfast. Mum’s women’s magazines were a mine of information to a ten year old. I remember reading about monthly periods when women could get a little testy. I worked out that our mum must have had weekly periods as she got testy regularly. I’ve since worked out that her testiness was more likely to have been caused by having five kids under her feet than any biological reason.

I used to write silly plays with my brothers which we performed in front of our long suffering parent’s on Sunday evenings. My sister was in a pram and too young to take part. I wrote a lot of stories back then, mostly about spaceships and aliens. The aliens always had two heads and sharp teeth for some reason. One alien used to eat spaceships for lunch so my spaceman hero painted the ship with Marmite. In my late teens I wrote a bit of poetry which I shared with my flatmates. I received little in the way of positive feedback and even less by way of encouragement, so I decided that the world wasn’t quite ready for me and reluctantly gave it up.

 I wrote my first novel in the early 1990s. It was a fantasy story with a Narnia-like theme. The lead characters entered the magic land via an ancient, oak tree. They came back to their own land via a creepy old house on the hill where the old hag with a big nose and warty face lived. I wrote it on an Amiga A1200 computer that doubled up as a games machine. I printed it all off on an Epson, dot matrix printer. It was quite a long book as I remember. I know I got through a couple of printer ribbons and five reams of continuous paper while I was working on it. In those days I worked away from home so I only really got to work on the book at weekends and holidays. I used to jot down ideas in a notebook in my room at whichever bed and breakfast I was staying in after work. There is no surviving copy of that book although I made three at the time. It wasn’t very good if I’m honest, and it borrowed heavily from Narnia and Middle Earth. I still write a lot of children’s fantasy in my Trevor Forest persona but I like to think I’m a little more creative these days.

Like me you write books for the younger generation. Have you always written for younger people and do you find it easier than writing for adults?

My first completed book was Magic Molly. Initially it was little more than short story but after falling in with an agent for a few weeks I expanded it to what it is now. (The agent disappeared as quickly as she arrived.) At the same time as I was writing Magic Molly I was working on a series of short, gossipy emails, supposedly written by a teenage girl who had just started work in an office. The emails were posted up on a website over the period of a year and the regular website readers encouraged me to put the emails together to see if I could find a publisher. Luckily Crooked Cat Publishing liked the look of it and the book was published as Tracy’s Hot Mail last year.

I don’t personally see that much difference between writing for adults and children. I’m lucky in that I can vividly remember what sort of thing excited me when I was a kid and I find it quite easy to regress. (My wife claims I do this even when I’m not writing.) To me it’s just a matter of making sure my head is in the right place before I begin.

Have you tried writing an adult book, other than Tracy’s Hot Mail?

I have started lots and they all show promise, but for some reason I leave them half finished. I don’t think it’s because the story isn’t up to it, most of them are. I think it might be something to do with the longer book length that is usually required in adult fiction. I like to get the story going then whizz through it in a breathless gallop. I don’t like padding a story out just to make a word count. Unfortunately I find a lot of adult books have more padding than story.

When I was writing Tracy’s Hot Mail I began a web serial called The Westwich Writer’s Club about an aspiring writer who joins his local writers group, with, as the saying goes, hilarious consequences. http://thewestwichwritersclub.blogspot.co.uk/ The serial is still online and I fully intend to finish it one day. Since then I’ve begun another serial called The Diary of an Aspiring Adulteress which tells the tale of a woman fast approaching forty, who feels that life is rapidly passing her by. http://aspiringadulteressdiary.blogspot.co.uk/ I also have unfinished books about a stalker and a housewife who plots her husband’s demise to get at the insurance money.

Pratchett, Rawlings, now you and me…. We’re all writing YA books about witches and wizards. Do you think this is becoming an overworked genre?

I don’t see my books as being YA. I believe they are all firmly cemented in the upper primary genre. (Mid Grade Chapbook.) I have thought about writing YA; it’s very popular. It would be a large step into the unknown for me though. I think there is quite a difference in language between primary and YA fiction. Sadly, for me at least, there are far too many vampires and werewolves in YA. Hopefully authors in the genre will find a way to move on from the vampire/werewolf quagmire that it has been stuck in for the last 5 years. Twilight has a lot to answer for. You seem to have found a niche with The Temporal Detective Agency. I might investigate it again this year.

I think there will always be a place for magic in storytelling. Those of us who still nurture the child inside, love it. My favourite quote of all was provided by the wonderful, Roald Dahl. “Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”

Do your book plots about Molly and Stanley come from past experience, what you hear kids say, or do you just have an incredible imagination?

It’s all down to imagination I’m afraid, I actually think this way; scary isn’t it?  You wouldn’t like to be inside my head; it’s a strange place. I have a very strong sense of the ridiculous and the unusual. In Magic Molly, the witches live among the ordinary people, (I flatly refuse to call them ‘muggles.’ The people in Molly’s town don’t see anything odd in a child walking round wearing a witch’s hat, though they probably wouldn’t like to see wands being carried in full view. The town has a witch’s academy and the junior witches also attend normal schools. They do get witchcraft lessons but still have to learn cookery, maths and geography. Most writers tend to hide the witch, (or wizard,) away from public view. I just thought, if a talking Peruvian bear can live amongst us without being questioned, then a junior witch shouldn’t be a problem.

Regarding Stanley Stickle. Things just happen to Stanley, usually because a master plan has gone dreadfully wrong. This does have a connection with my childhood. I used to daydream all the time, especially in class or walking home from school. I saw the opportunity for adventure everywhere I went. I saw monsters in dark alleyways, under beds, in wardrobes and in the teacher’s staff room.

To my astonishment, I’ve been compared to both Blyton and Dahl. This is not only a huge compliment but also a bit of a puzzle, as they are such different writers. I have read their books; Blyton as a child and Dahl when my kids were growing up, so I’ve almost certainly been influenced by both of them. I can’t see the resemblance myself, but I can assure you, I glow with pride every time I read that someone else does.

Do you have a set routine as a writer and a special place where you work?

I always write at my desk on the desktop computer. I did buy a laptop and a tablet but I don’t use them as writing tools. I bought a laptop for the same reason I bought a kindle; it enables my wife to borrow them before claiming them as her own.

My desk is situated in the extension which we bolted onto the side of the house in 2005. My two Springer Spaniels are usually out here with me. They let me know when the phone rings, when someone is at the door, or when someone is parking their car thirty yards down the road. I talk to them a lot and (unlike my wife,) they listen. All my ideas are tried out on them first. If they don’t like it, we don’t continue with it. Now I think about it, they weren’t fond of any of my discarded adult books. I think we may have stumbled on something here.

I don’t have a set writing routine. I can, (and do) go months without writing a word. Then I’ll suddenly knock out two or three books over the rest of the year. I should write more, but like all writers I suffer the nagging doubts. Do people really want to read this rubbish? Is there any point in writing it if they don’t? Sadly, my reply to these questions is often a negative one. I assured my adult book publisher, Crooked Cat, that I’m working on the sequel to Tracy’s Hot Mail but I never seem to get round to actually doing it. I’m a lazy bugger at heart, that’s the truth of it. I have made a conscious decision to try to finish Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail this year. I know where the story is going; I know, (more or less,) how Tracy’s life will pan out. I have the funny situations in place, new characters have been developed; it’s just the usual problem of finding the motivation.

What project are you’re working on right now?

I am, as actors say, ‘resting,’ at the moment, though I do have a few suspended, irons hanging over the fire. I am five chapters into Magic Molly book four and I’ve plotted out the third Stanley Stickle book. I have also mapped out a story about a boy who becomes apprenticed to a sorcerer at the time of the Black Death and I have a story called, Clarissa Crumb, Changeling, on the back burner. It’s about a baby who was swapped for a fairy child a few weeks after it was born. Nine years later the fairy child has to be returned to its family, but the Hags, (witches hidden in the community,) need to find the changeling and make soup out of her to enable them to keep their young appearances and stop them getting old.

I started a book a couple of years ago, called The Duck Pond Lane Detectives which is still on hold. I keep telling myself to finish it but it sits alone and unloved in its folder. (The folder was moved from its desktop position to the ‘ideas’ folder a while ago, so it’s not looking likely any time soon.)

The Duck Pond Lane Detectives tells the tale of a group of kids who enter a local treasure hunt competition, but stumble across the final clue from a national treasure hunt with a huge unclaimed, cash prize that started twenty five years earlier.

As I mentioned, I’m a lazy bugger, and I tend to write in bursts. When I do hit the zone I can easily write 4000 good words a day. The average is about 3000. I really do wish I could write every day like other authors. I tell myself every night that I will write tomorrow… then I find something else to do instead. Like Facebook and Twitter… drinking coffee, clearing the snow from the patio table… patting a random dog…

What is the most important piece of advice you could give a budding writer?

Don’t let the nagging doubts get to you. Keep at it. Don’t be frightened to let others read your stuff; it’s the only way you will ever know how good your work is. Smile and hug relatives who say nice things about your project, then share it with people who actually know something about the craft. Always remember, not everyone will like what you turn out but then not everyone likes everything J K Rowling and Dan Brown have written either, (especially me). Join an online writers site or a local, face to face group if you can find one. Hopefully it won’t be as cliquey as the Westwich Writers Club
.

One last question, Trevor. If you could achieve one important goal within the next 5 years, what would it be?

I’d still like to have one of my kid’s books published by a mainstream traditional publisher. I know it’s not the be all and end all these days, but it would be nice to see Magic Molly or The Wishnotist in the window of Waterstones.

Trevor, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, and my thanks for not mentioning Notts Forest Football Club more than ten times!

It’s. a pleasure. Thanks for having me

It’s NOTTINGHAM Forest by the way. J

Trevor has an excellent web site at:  www.trevorbelshaw.com.

Trevor’s children’s books, written under the name Trevor Forest, are available in paperback and kindle versions on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/10qAmGA

His adult book, Tracy’s Hot Mail, published by Crooked Cat Publishing, can be found at: http://amzn.to/M9ajwI and from the Crooked Cat Website at http://crookedcatpublishing.com/