Agent Alert: My books in a nutshell:

The Expensive Cravat and Defining Alternative Media are published. Quotilucious, the semi-serious book of factoids I put together originally for publication on Twitter (Now X) and my popular history book, Did Hitler Eat Strawberry Cake? are all mapped out and ready to go... 

I've also got two new projects, a second action-packed crime novel, and a local history book that focuses on Cornwall's capital through the lens of Truro Cathedral...  Sh*t Views of Truro Cathedral should be available in the Autumn. 

Don't click off yet because I want to tell you a bit more about my books:

Book One | Fiction | The Expensive Cravat and English Gentleman and the Imperfect Crime

The Expensive Cravat is a crime novel set 1980s rural England and was triggered by my involuntary exposure to the English Middle Class and their silly ways... You can read a free sample from the e-book here or buy the whole thing for half the price of two-shot cappuccino. 

Here's another extract from the book: 

There had been times when he’d been close to jumping into that grey canal, but something stopped him thankfully.  What would they have thought of him at Finchbury if they knew he could think like this?  Parental deprivation, cold showers and regular thrashings were supposed to have conditioned Tarquin to cope with anything, but Finchbury had made him fidgety and incapable of forming relationships with girls.  Most Old-Finchburians benefited massively from their suffering at school and being spanked publicly by an older boy prefect or private canings by the headmaster, had set them up for life, but Tarquin simply hadn’t responded to the process.  Yes, he’d put a brave face on it and his mother made all sorts of excuses for her son’s failings, but deep down, behind all the adjectives and awful pretentious nonsense, Tarquin was a typical young man with a slightly unnatural crush on Gary Lineker.

Book Two | Non-fiction | Did Hitler Eat Strawberry Cake?

If you're an agent or publisher of popular history you might like to take a look at Did Hitler Eat Strawberry Cake? the first of a series of books that takes an imaginative look at one of history’s most frightening tyrants.

I can't draw, but I did I draw this as Hitler images are expensive

 I can't draw, but I did I draw this as Hitler images are expensive 

Written for a popular audience, Did Hitler Eat Strawberry Cake? is peppered with interesting facts and nuggets of information that are communicated to its audience in a range of publishing styles.

While Did Hitler Eat Strawberry Cake? is emphatically History light, the research upon which it is grounded is extensive and is derived from: distinguished biography, academic journals and historical and media archives.

Did Hitler Eat Strawberry will be promoted by this blog and my in-house Social Media Marketing service the Writers Guardian that has over 5000 reader and writer followers.

Read the extended synopsis... 

Book Three | Textbook | Defining Alternative Media

Defining Alternative Media is the first book of its kind to explore what it means to be alternative and critically explores whether the way in which alternative journalists operate is able to circumvent mainstream media practices.

Using examples from the UK alternative Press, the book identifies two distinct types of alternative journalist; those who desire radical structural social change and overhaul of the mainstream media and those that seek to encourage a sense of community by widening participation in the media. The two alternative journalisms are similar in that they encourage readers to participate, however, they differ in their ideological motivation and political orientation. 

The author argues that defining alternative media as participatory is insufficiently critical of, and in practice, presents too weak a challenge to the dominant practices of the mainstream capitalist press to be considered alternative.

Try before you buy.   Here's a free sample for you 

In the spirit of Alternative Media I set-up the Student Guardian. The sites purpose is to encourage wider participation in journalism and at the same time as provide students with useful information to help them through university. In a nut-shell the Student Guardian gives new writers and journalists a chance to get their articles published without having to mould their writing into what's expected of them by vested interest lurking in the mass media.

NB.  I've recently had to upgrade the site to a more secure version of Joomla. The sites will be back to normal when I have the time, the articles are all there if you can find them... 

If you are interested in Partcipatory, citizen, or Alternative Journalism you can contribute to the Student Guardian here and read more articles from the Alternative Media News community too.

Book Four | Fun Facts | Quotilucious

Written with stocking fillers in mind, or as one of those little books you pick up at the checkout in book shops, Quotilucious is jam-packed with fun-facts and Quotations you won't find anywhere else on the web... 

Quotilucious would also work well as an App too, popping out randomised fun-facts and quotations. Already tested on the web Quotilucious attracted thousands of followers on Twitter, has had its own Blog and Facebook and webpage that I plan  to resurrect ahead of the book launch... 

Here's three to be getting on with: 

Fun Facts | Chicken, or Egg? The answer is Egg

Fun Facts | An Oxymoron is a upper-class twit who's Dad got him into University

Fun Facts | Salavador Deli painted beautiful representations of meats and 

                    sundry cheeses..

Quotilucious | Funny makes money...

New Book coming soon: 

Book Five| Sh*t views of Truro Cathedral

What at sh*t view?

If you're a publisher, or agent interested in publishing Sh*t views of Truro Cathedral please message me... 

This is the first of a series of posts promoting my forthcoming book: Sh*t views of Truro Cathedral. 

I might write some blurb up one day... 

More sh*t views

Quotations and Fun Facts you won't find anywhere else on the web...

Book Four | Fun Facts | Quotilucious

Written with stocking fillers in mind, or as one of those little books you pick up at the checkout in book shops, Quotilucious is jam-packed with Fun-facts and Quotations you won't find anywhere else on the web... 

Quotilucious would also work well as an App too, popping out randomised fun-facts and quotations.

Already tested on the web Quotilucious attracted thousands of followers on Twitter, has its own Blog andFacebook and webpage... 

                                Quotilucious | Funny makes money...

"Bed-wettingly funny" Lord Tarquin Bolloux

Why your expensive home will make carers of your kids

The way in which society has been organised since the 1980s has meant that, unless that have inherited wealth, all but the most able and determined young people, will struggle to buy their own home.

The reasons for this are complex, but put simply, while building costs have risen because of a shortage of trained labour and resources being used up by rapidly developing countries, the main reason houses are so expensive is because successive governments have created a shortage of housing to artificially elevated house prices.

To achieve this shortage the first thing the government did was to sell off large chunks of the public housing stock. So worried we're they that those living in their Council House would be reluctant to part with housing security, they sold off the public assets at a discounted price. After a short while the responsibility for housing shifted away from from Local Authorities to private builders and landlords.

At the same time as selling off the publicly owned housing stock on the cheap, successive governments have further exacerbated the shortage of housing by making it easy for those that can afford it to buy as many houses as they like.
Demographic changes and out of control migration have played their part too, but engineering a housing shortage is the primary reason why young people are unable to buy a home of their own.

There is however, a silver lining in that as a consequence of government policy to keep property prices high, more people will now be forced to live at home until their 40s and 50s and will be available, therefore, to look after their elderly parents. Care that would otherwise have had to be funded by the state through Adult Social Care will increasingly be off-loaded to children of those too frail to look after themselves.

This hoodwinked generation, mesmerised by Social Media and the fantasy-world provided by their games consoles, may grow up to think otherwise, but it's a win-win for government and the elites they represent.

I'm arguing that the current housing crisis, rather than the supposed headache it's presented to be, will be a huge fiscal benefit to government because not only is government abrogating responsibility to house the population, they'll no longer have the cost to care for the elderly either.

In a democracy, we get the governments we deserve, but that doesn't mean that future generations won't feel conned by the governments that failed satisfy their basic need for shelter, or look after mum and dad when they get old.

Will AI allow us early retirement?

In the 1960s, politicians told us that technology would herald a leisure economy.  This didn't happen. Today, those in power are preaching the same message about AI and predict that robots will soon do our jobs so we don't have to.

If we take a step back, history teaches us a different lesson. Since the invention of the microchip, most people have had to work harder and longer to put a roof over their heads. This wasn’t how the technological age was sold to us was it? It would appear that those putting about such ideas, either lied to working people about the benefits of technology, or just got it wrong.

We must remember too, that the only thing that working men and women have to bargain with is their labour, so if robots can be programmed to work in their factories and farm their land, then the rest of us will be increasingly less useful to prospective employers,

Before pushing the AI button, however, those that own the country’s wealth have a problem. because at the moment, they are hopelessly unsure how far the technology should be allowed to go.  Too little consciousness and the robots won't be able to do the jobs they are predicted to be able to do, too much awareness and they will start making their own plans, that may or may not involve the ruling elite.   

We were told in the 60s by the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, that new technology would mean working less. The sound-bites of the day was "The White Heat of Technology and the Leisure Economy". Back in the real world, the consequences of new technologies is that when once a single person could afford to buy their own home on an working wage, it is now difficult for two or three working adults earning an average income to get on the property ladder.

The intelligence they call artificial may well alter the way we live, but don't be fooled that those that invest in the technology are doing so for the benefit of working men and women. They are sinking billions into AI so that robots and not humans, will do their chores, and fight their wars.  While the ruling elites plan your redundancy, the big issue for them is whether they are able to control the technology they crave as easily as they do their current human workforce.     

 

The debate around A1 is dressed up as an immeasurable benefit to mankind, whose champions pretend that it will mean humans will no need be to work.  Theoretically, for some this may well be true, but the practical reality is that the benefit of AI to you and me is dependent on who controls it.

As I write, the multi-national tech giants with money to burn, are engaged in a desperate scramble to see who can crack the AI code first.  This is where the danger lies.  In the race to be first, the tech-giants and the governments dependent on them, have lost sight of the probability that, if their technology is successful, robots, despite their fake intelligence, will be less easy to manipulate than we are.

 

There is little doubt, that one way or another, AI will provide benefits we may be allowed to share, but in the end, I believe it is extremely unlikely that AI will reduce the retirement age or make it easier for ours or future generations to rent or buy their own home, any more than the technological age of the 60s and 70s did.