Category: HISTORY

Cliff Robertson Honorary Documentary

My all-time favourite film, set during wartime, is 633 Squadron (1964), starring Academy Award Winner Cliff Robertson. You may know him better as Peter Parker’s uncle in Spider Man.

633 Squadron is also one of my favourite movies of all time. The editing is tight and the action is the edge-of-your-seat stuff of legend. Here’s some trivia for you: did you know 633 Squadron was George Lucas’s inspiration for the Death Star attack in Star Wars IV – A New Hope? A great deal of the credit for the film’s taught style and human depth can be attributed to Cliff Robertson, who had enough influence in Hollywood at this time to ask for rewrites of film scripts. Cliff was at the very pinnacle of Hollywood’s acting elite and is still, to my knowledge the only actor to win a Grammy each for film, theatre and advertising. His Oscar for Charly was well-deserved and if you haven’t seen that, PT 109 (where Cliff played John F Kennedy) or 633 Squadron, see them.

Cliff was one of my childhood heroes and I was lucky enough to correspond with with Cliff at the end of his life. Along with many other fans, I always wondered what happened to his character, Roy Grant, at the end of the film. He is badly wounded but we can’t be sure whether he survives or not. After a heated discussion on youtube, I decided to try and contact Cliff to find out. With the help of Stephen Thompson, Cliff’s Press Agent, I was able to write a letter with a set of questions and get these to Cliff. Continue reading “Cliff Robertson Honorary Documentary” →

Banned: Infinite Blue Heaven

Infinite Blue Heaven has been banned by Amazon. It is my first book available from me directly: https://payhip.com/b/yth1. Read on to find out more:

Cover of Infinite Blue Heaven - A King and A Queen
Cover of Infinite Blue Heaven – A King and A Queen

Infinite Blue Heaven – A King and A Queen The eBook has recently been banned by Amazon although they do not specify why. Despite repeated requests by me for the reason, they refuse to be drawn. If it is because of the incest, then there are books on Amazon which peddle this theme as pornography. There are also writers like Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon who treat this subject more sensitively. If this is the reason, I really don’t understand it; I have always used the word ‘incest’ in the description and the book has been on Amazon since 2009. I have made no changes to it in that time. I also treat the subject sensitively and include it because incest was not rare in royal circles of the 17th Century. Let’s be plain, it existed and Amazon can’t simply wipe out the bits of history they don’t like.

Buy Infinite Blue Heaven on Payhip here: https://payhip.com/b/yth1

The paperback continues to be available on Amazon through their subdivision CreateSpace. But you can now purchase it directly from me using Payhip. Just click on ‘Lazlo in Your Country‘ in the main menu above to find this book from now on.

Ordo Lupus: who do you think they are?

This week: Grammar and Onomatopoeia and – Ordo Lupus (The Order of the Wolf): who do you think they are?

Grammar and Onomatopoeia

Grammar
I am just doing a light re-edit of the second book in the Ordo Lupus series: The Devil’s Own Dice. I have been pleasantly surprised how good it is! I occasionally go back to old books to just bring the grammar up to date. This is because, not only do my grammar skills improve as I publish more work but also there are fashions in grammar and these gradually change! Yes, it’s true!

Of course everybody knows that the meaning of a word can change over time. This field of study is called semantics. The obvious example is ‘gay’. When I was young this simply meant ‘happy’ or ‘bright and cheerful’. Now it most usually denotes someone physically attracted to the same sex.

Another word which changes meaning with time is ‘insidious’. The meaning of this word seems to actually fluctuate during cycles of about ten years. It can sometimes mean ‘subtle’ and sometimes mean ‘subtly bad’.

In two of my books, written in the mid-noughties, the phrase ‘in-control’ comes up quite a lot. People actually used said that a lot during the 80s and 90s. Now, nobody seems to use it so I take it out wherever I see it. Continue reading “Ordo Lupus: who do you think they are?” →

Secret Codes; Should I use them?

This week: Secret Codes; should I use them? FREE eBook and a Sneak Preview.

It’s been a very busy week. My first newsletter went out on Sunday so today’s blog will be quite a short one.

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Share: Occult thriller- Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate is still free until tomorrow at 8am BST. http://bit.ly/15R1xOL “Wild ride” “Exciting read” “Rich, complex” “Well plotted”

“Am I? Beautiful?” She turned her face towards me and I longed to kiss it but I couldn’t.

Download the free Kindle apps here: http://www.amzn.to/13aluuF Continue reading “Secret Codes; Should I use them?” →

Get a RAF fighter to ‘43 Berlin and back?

This week: U-Boat through Straits of Gibraltar Competition Winner and the new competition: How do you get an RAF fighter to Berlin and back in July 1943?

Sorry for the hiatus in the last week: first I had a bad cold and then my fridge-freezer broke two days ago! Anyway I’m back.

How do you get an RAF fighter to Berlin and back in July 1943?
Since my post about getting a U-boat through the Straits of Gibraltar was my most popular yet, here is a similar post. Let me explain the mission: you need a fighter small enough to fly down Unter den Linden (the equivalent of Oxford Street in Berlin), carrying 1000 lb bombs. The fighter needs to be able to negotiate the Brandenburg gate and fly low over the Reich Chancellery garden and still manage to land somewhere far enough from Berlin that the pilot can safely get back to England. There is only one RAF fighter that could do all this in 1943: the Hawker Hurricane II. Continue reading “Get a RAF fighter to ‘43 Berlin and back?” →

Get U-Boats through 1945 Gibraltar Straits?

Did you know the typical U-Boat torpedo was steam-driven and had a range of 12 Km?
Below in this post is an excerpt from my forthcoming book December Radio. This part is where a team of fanatical German nuclear scientists are being smuggled out of German held territory in a U-Boat. But I don’t want to give too much away…

I did have to think very hard about how even a very talented U-Boat captain would get through the Gibraltar Straits. Every trick seems to have been tried in the Hollywood movies like Torpedo Run, The Cruel Sea, and Run Silent, Run Deep. What is more, by 1945 the Royal Navy pretty much owned the Straits and no U-boat had got out through the Straits since 1942. They had got in, but not out. Continue reading “Get U-Boats through 1945 Gibraltar Straits?” →

The Moon, Shape-changers and Consciousness

This week: The Moon, Shape-changers and Consciousness – what is the truth?

The Moon, Shape-changers and Consciousness – what is the truth?
I recently started a discussion group around the concepts in my Ordo Lupus series. You can find the group here and I invite you to join. I am planning a pure Vampire novel as a follow up to this series and I want to try to understand further how shape-changing has become buried so deeply in our consciousness and explore whether it actually exists in humans.

Notice how I carefully say ‘humans’, for it certainly exists in other animals. Look at butterflies, moths and flies for instance. The crysalis stage is a fascinating example of metamorphosis in nature. Continue reading “The Moon, Shape-changers and Consciousness” →

What keeps you writing?

This week: sneak preview and what keeps you writing?

Sneak Preview
This week it’s from the new project provisonally entitled December Radio a sci-fi World War II story.

The following scene takes place in an aeronautical centrifuge in Cologne. Remember those? I seem to remember they featured in a few 60s films and as a very young boy, one of these left a lasting impression on me. In fact the scene has such a powerful effect on me personally – it almost disturbs me in the same way OCD does sometimes – that I would love to pin down the film I originally watched and see it again. The Gerry Anderson film Doppelganger, sometimes called Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, may well have been the one. It is reputed to have a centrifuge scene in it and the only other film I know if is the Roger Moor Bond film Moonraker, but this would have been too late for it to have affected me so powerfully and yet be a vague memory. If anybody knows of any other film where a man has trouble surviving a centrifuge, please get in touch. Continue reading “What keeps you writing?” →

Romania and some of its Vampires Part 2

A great article on Romanian vampires and their names, by Mari Wells.

Abstract
”Moloi are Romanian vampire spirits. These vampires can only life if it eats human hearts. It’s created when one of its parents kills an illegitimate child. A girl is called Moloica.”

mari wells's avatarMari Wells

Moloi

Moloi are Romanian vampire spirits. These vampires can only life if it eats human hearts. It’s created when one of its parents kills an illegitimate child. A girl is called Moloica.

Necurat

The Necurat or Orgoi means “accursed or “dishonest” in Romania. Romanians call all of their vampire creatures this. It’s believed using this name instead of a specific name will keep from calling the vampire to them.

Another name for Vampires in Romania is Baboana for females and Babon for males.

Baba Coajo

A vampire forest spirit in Romania is a bloodthirsty monster.
She’s described as half bear and half woman. Baba Coajo pronounced Baba Co-ya means the Old Woman of the Tree Bark. She’s also called “Queen of the Forest” and has total control over the evil within the woods.

She is very dangerous evil entity. She catches children who wander into the forest alone, or those…

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