Category: HISTORY

Blog: Playing for Keeps – by Lazlo Ferran

This week: Sneak Preview, Free offer results, Short Stirlings, philosophy.

Sneak Preview is back!
Yes, I am writing again! It’s taken a few weeks but here is an excerpt from the forthcoming (in the next few years!) novel with the working title December Radio.

December Radio

“Scary the first time but don’t look too long; you’ll be fine,” said Max Schickert, coiling the blue nylon safety line around the taut muscles in his forearm.
It was Davis Connaughy’s first trip to ‘The Telescope’. He looked at the innocent-looking gap between the two boulders with distrust. The noon-day heat of Peru in October was making him sweat slightly after the long hike up the hill above San Ramon. He glanced at the blonde Apollo in front of him and grinned. He turned to look back out across the vast valley of refulgent green, ruffled nearby by the gentle east-north east breeze.
“No problemo. I have done The Cave of Swallows twice!”
“You do realise how privileged you are to be here? Don’t fuck up! And pay attention.” Continue reading “Blog: Playing for Keeps – by Lazlo Ferran” →

Blog: Back to the Future

This week: Social Networking website dev and RDF, Lord of the Rings radio series, review of La Vie en Rose (Edith Piaf biopic).

No sneak preview this week. God! Another week when I haven’t a clue what to write. I will just have to wing it!

Social Networking Site
This week’s blog title is due to my first tentative steps into the AI world of Web 3.0. For the last two or three years – since stumbling upon an article about Resource Description Framework (RDF), I have been championing the whole idea of large data sets of triplets describing resources in a meta-data kind of way. Tim Berners-Lee – inventor, if you like, of the World Wide Web – has pronounced it as the precursor to and foundation of Internet Artificial Intelligence. I believe him. Without some way of aggregating data and meta-data there will soon be just too much information around to be used by humans. We need an intermediary, an intelligence that can filter it for us. For that we need large data stores of meta-data. That is where RDF comes in. It has been around for many years but, like HTML, it has been adopted by developers in a role for which it was never intended. It’s simplicity is probably it’s main virtue, and asset – as with HTML. Continue reading “Blog: Back to the Future” →

Blog: Operation Crossbow

This week: Sneak Preview, Reviews and Sales of Attack Hitler’s Bunker!

Sneak Preview

This week’s is from December Radio (aka The Farmer’s Wife). By the way the tongue-in-cheek title of the blog this week refers to the mediocre George Peppard film featuring V2 rockets; these feature in the current project December Radio.

December Radio

The needle scratched yet another circuit of acetate from Duke Ellington’s Cotton Tail locked groove. A ray of sun threw its first shadow over the boy’s buttock cheeks, muscular escapees from a pair of Levi’s. From under them a Maria had only minutes before unhooked herself, checked her purse and quietly shut the door. The click had opened one of the boy’s blue eyes. Without moving he surveyed the strewn cushions, vino stains, fag buts and ash; soirée memorials. No neighbour complained. Membership of the right-wing NSB party guaranteed this. Continue reading “Blog: Operation Crossbow” →

Carnival of Souls and Hammer Movie Review

This week: a story’s soul, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Strunk & White: The Elements of Style.

A Story’s Soul
This week I have returned to another incomplete work, December Radio. The story is a sci-fi WWII whodunnit of sorts. So far I haven’t written much, although I have spent many hours thinking about it. The problem is that the story’s soul as I last envisaged it may be too obvious. The problem has been compounded by the recommendation by a friend, based on my description, to read Gravity’s Rainbow. I am on page 50, and so far I have very little idea what is going on; a British Agent is investigating V2 rockets amidst a chaotic kaleidoscope of disjointed feelings, weird characters and disparate locations. What is clear is that the main story is uncomfortably close to mine. A battle has begun for the soul of my story. Attack Hitler’s Bunker was a simple story; men fighting against immense odds for Good. Its soul was born without hiccups on page one. The Ordo Lupus series have their origins in my own private obsessions with the darker side of Religion and more specifically, Faith, God, the Devil and luck. However, both Escher’s Staircase and December Radio have been born of the nebulous (to quote William Shatner) inspiration of a relationship; they have neither a beginning or end. I think the former title has now settled into a comfortable childhood, but the latter may lack something to distinguish it from its distinguished competition. Once I have the soul, the story will tell me what to write. This probably probably sounds kinda whimsy and not a little bit pretentious, but I believe it! If a book doesn’t have a soul it can’t live. Continue reading “Carnival of Souls and Hammer Movie Review” →

Blog: Adolf Hitler – My Part in His Downfall

This week: Attack Hitler’s Bunker released and a sneak preview.

Attack Hitler’s Bunker
This book is now available as a kindle book on Amazon and will be available as a paperback in the next 6 days. Response has been good so far, plenty of people have responded to my posts and tweets: 190 people read the first post on Facebook which is a higher figure than in the past.

Sneak Preview
This week’s is from a story which I am provisionally calling December Radio (I might have referred to it in the past as September Radio but it’s just a working title). I am back working on this now and I will attempt to complete this before December. This book can best be described as WWII/sci-fi and is about a whole number of characters in the War gradually discovering a secret plot by some unknown enemy. They do this through evidence from a series of supernatural events. It’s quite an existential project. Continue reading “Blog: Adolf Hitler – My Part in His Downfall” →

Blog: How to Model a Life

ORDO LUPUS AND THE TEMPLE GATE IS FREE FROM TODAY – 30 AUGUST UNTIL 3 SEPTEMBER ON AMAZON SO TELL EVERYONE, THEIR DOGS, THEIR DOGS AND THEIR DOG’S BEST FRIENDS!

This week’s subject is modelling but I simply couldn’t find a well-known movie with the word ‘Model’ in the title. Hence the break in tradition for the blog’s title.

Sneak Preview
This week it is from a section called Monk in Lotus. This is the penultimate chapter of the book so I am not far from completing the first draft.

Lotus
Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved

At the eleventh hour of the day, my duties in the dairy being completed for the morning, I was, as usual, in contemplation. Kneeling in the third pew back of the main Abbey Chapel, I watched the glossed back of the black ant. Reflecting the pillar of holy light shafting through the stained-glass window, the tiny ant’s carapace dipped up and down as it negotiated the uneven surface of the bible rail. This was my favourite time of day. Continue reading “Blog: How to Model a Life” →

Deep Cover: Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate

Excerpt of the week.

Here is the new Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate cover – designed and completed by Omri Koresh.

I hope you like it! Omri and I have worked together over the last few weeks to produce a cover which expresses the soul of the book as well as illustrating one of the scenes in the book. Those of you who have read it will recognise the Cover Girl. The cover will appear on the Kindle in the next 48 hours and on the paperback in the next two months.

I am also repositioning this book as an Occult Thriller. I have always had problems fitting this book into any genre: mystery/detective, historical fiction and fantasy/historical or fantasy/myths and legends don’t seem quite right so let’s see how the new genre works.Amazon applies categories very loosely to the books anyway so it might not make much difference.

Free Books! Continue reading “Deep Cover: Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate” →

25 May Updates – Attack Hitler’s Bunker!

This Week’s Excerpt
This week’s excerpt is from Attack Hitler’s Bunker! which is due to be published on 29 June.

Attack Hitler’s Bunker

(Unedited excerpt)

Hugo Knopfl and Klaas Zapruder stepped onto the pavement. They had to move briskly to let the convoy of Wehrmacht vehicles pass. Half-tracks carrying troops and pulling 88 mm guns rumbled, creaking, over the cobbled stones. One of the camouflaged SS troops waved at them. Above, a cloud passed in front of the sun, casting the town square into dusk instantly. Sonnerberg was one of those pretty German towns, nestled in the fold of verdant hills, populated by slate-roofed houses with walls painted many colours. Ironically it was the home both of toy-making and the Dutch Waffen SS.
Klaas waved back at the soldier leaving.
Hugo threw the butt of his cigarette on the ground. “Don’t do that,” he said in quiet Dutch. “Why pretend when we don’t have to anymore?”
“You’re right. We won’t be coming back.”
“That’s not what I meant. Come on.” Continue reading “25 May Updates – Attack Hitler’s Bunker!” →

11 May Updates – Preview of Lotus

Sneak Preview
This week’s is a unique (to date) look at a book I have been working on on and off for two years. It has no title as yet, but for the purpose of this I will call it Escher’s Staircase. It’s not easily categorized, so I think I will just give you the excerpt and let it speak for itself.

“I’m not fucking going down that! You gotta be crazy!”
I pulled away from the open hatch. “Don’t anybody think about pushing me either! Six hundred and eighty bloody feet! That’s … that’s like as high as a bloody sky-scraper!”
“Well, if you don’t do it, you will never get beyond Cadet Helmsman. Up to you matey!”quipped Shorty, lifting the glass bottle’s open neck to his scowling lips. Everything about Shorty was a tattoo – gaudy, colourful and in bad taste. Continue reading “11 May Updates – Preview of Lotus” →

4 May Updates – Preview of WWII Drama

Sneak Preview
This week’s sneak preview is from the soon-to-be-published Attack Hitler’s Bunker! and features the gorgeous Anna meeting Richard, one of the two heroes she is having affairs with.

Archibald led Richard out into the corridor and to the door of the next room. He fought off the pilot’s questions.” But Archie, how can I plan this if I don’t know …”
At that moment he saw Anna for the first time, and was silenced. She smelled of Pears soap.
“Richard, this is Anna Styles. Anna, this is Richard Earlgood.”
“Hello,” she said, smiling, and holding out a well-manicured hand. The man opposite clearly appreciated of her looks. Unimpressed by this, she looked beyond his stare. He had the lived-in good looks of a square-jawed film star, but there was something coy about his gaze. ‘He slouches!’ she also noted to herself, scoffing. However, his smile, which broke out as soon as she spoke to him, made her want to smile back. Continue reading “4 May Updates – Preview of WWII Drama” →