Make a date - 1st, 14th, 23rd and 30th April

War, Wolf and Who

 

Some time ago a series of my articles were published in a regular monthly column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 14 April, here are a number of linked events for that date plus three other April dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets.

The three dates for this article are:

1, 14, 23 and 30 April

 
April has a close connection with warfare, as an unusually large number of wars have started or ended in April and many military leaders have been born in April. Just a few wars that started/ended in April - American Revolution started (Paul Revere’s Ride: April 18-19, 1775) American Civil War (started April 1861, Ended April 1865) and the Second World War (Germany Surrendered in April, 1945).

The latter had a lot to do with the massed forces of the Allies but it was also highly relevant that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide the day after they were married in their Berlin bunker (30).

As a precursor to the Normandy landings, the Allies needed to penetrate the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’ and the success of the Allied landings in Sicily depended on a British Intelligence ploy to get the German High Command to shift its forces to Greece. Operation Mincemeat was devised in which the submarine HMS Seraph surfaced off the Mediterranean coast of Spain in 1943 and released a dead man into the sea (30). ‘Major Martin’ was carrying papers showing false invasion plans for Greece. This event was immortalised by the film The Man Who Never Was and was one of the greatest wartime hoaxes ever. It fooled the Nazis, which was the point. [An excellent book, by the way...]

 

Which was appropriate in the month of April Fool’s Day. Sadly, not all things that happened on this day (1) were foolish or funny.

In 1924 Hitler was sentenced to jail for five years (1) for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (essentially, treason), though he only spent nine months there – long enough for his world-shaking ideas to gestate in the form of his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). And on the same day seven years later, the newly elected Nazis organised a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, ushering in a series of anti-Semitic laws which eventually culminated in the Holocaust.

A disaster on a vastly smaller scale than the Second World War was the sinking of the British steamer SS Atlantic (1) off Nova Scotia, killing 547 in 1873. Thirty-nine years later RMS Titanic struck an iceberg (14) and sank the next morning.

The same day that the iceberg was struck so was Abraham Lincoln (14) - by a bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.

Two years later the president’s namesake William Lincoln patented (23) the Zoetrope, a machine which shows animated pictures by mounting a strip of drawings in a wheel and rotating it. And in 1894 the ubiquitous Thomas Edison demonstrated the kinetoscope (14), a device for peep-show viewing utilising photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor of movies.

 

And seventy-five years later to the day (14) at the Academy Awards there was a tie for best actress between Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. Another Oscar winner was Rod Steiger (for In the Heat of the Night in 1967) – he was born on the same day (14) in 1925, sharing the same birthday with Julie Christie (1941), who appeared with him in Dr Zhivago, and Sir John Gielgud, though twenty-one years younger than the illustrious thespian.
 
On the same day (14) in 1986, that actor who never won an Oscar but became president – Ronald Reagan - ordered bombing raids against Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya, killing sixty people, in retaliation for the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub where a US serviceman was killed.

Yet nature still manages to kill more people than man ever could: on the same day and year as Reagan’s raid (14), 2.2lb hailstones fell on a district in Bangladesh, killing 92. Apparently, these are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded. Bangladesh suffers regularly from natural disasters and April in 1991 was no exception (30) when a tropical cyclone killed about 125,000 people.

 
Meteorologists can actually save lives these days though this science was in its infancy in 1865 when Robert Fitzroy died (30). He was the captain of HMS Beagle and took Darwin on his trip to the Galapagos where he developed his theory of evolution. Fitzroy became an admiral and was the first to issue ‘weather forecasts’ – and the sea area Finisterre was renamed after him in 2002 for the shipping forecasts. [See my blog on the novel about Fitzroy here]
 
Definitely less devastating than the Asian tsunami, a modern instance when forecasting didn’t save lives, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 1946 near the Aleutian Islands caused a tidal wave that struck the Hawaiian islands (1) and killed 159. Many commentators lay the blame for natural disasters such as these on modern industrialisation. That famous ecologist, Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and founder of the modern environmental movement, died (14) in 1964.

The ecological movement has become legitimate these days and has followers worldwide. The same can be said for Esperanto, the constructed language invented by Ludovich Lazarus Zamenhof (14) who died in 1917. He introduced it under the pseudonym Dr Esperanto, hence the name. His intention was to create an easy-to-learn neutral language to supplement other languages, not replace them. It currently has two million speakers.

Certainly Esperanto might have been useful for Columbus if it had been invented in 1492 when he was given his commission of exploration (30). Little did he realise what he’d set in motion. Some 311 years later, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for fifteen million dollars (30).

 
That’s not a lot of money for such a massive amount of land. The French have probably regretted it ever since. Talking of money, the first UK decimal coins were introduced this month (23) in 1968 in anticipation of the big event three years later.

Decimalisation certainly made calculations easier – especially on the computer which was in its infancy in those days. In fact, the Apple Computer company was formed in 1976 by Jobs and Wozniak (1). Things moved apace after that, of course, yet it was twenty-five years (23) before Intel introduced the Pentium IV processor.

It’s doubtful if modern synthesised music would have been invented without computers. And one of the most famous composers in this field is Morton Subotnick, who was born (14) in 1933 [and it’s pure coincidence that my name is submerged in his!] A composer of the more traditional sort was Georg Friedrich Handel, who died (14) on Subotnick’s birthday in 1759. Two composers with the name Sergei were born in April: Rachmaninoff (1) in 1873 and Prokofiev (23) in 1891.

Prokofiev is famous for many compositions, notably though Peter and the Wolf which has echoes of old vampire stories. Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Sarah Michelle Gellar was born (14) in 1977 and none of the vampire characters would have been possible without the discovery of blood circulation by William Harvey who was born (1) in 1578.

Another William is the first Dr Who, William Hartnell, who died (23) in 1975 though he’s now destined to be remembered for all Time.

 

Science fiction author Anne McCaffrey, creator of the series of books about the Dragons of Pern, was born (1) in 1926, the same day as the silent movie star of the Phantom of the Opera, Lon Chaney, in 1883. Another actor who featured in science fiction films – Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers – was Buster Crabbe, who won Olympic gold medals for swimming in 1928 and 1932. He died this month (23) in 1983.

 
It would be remiss not to mention that England’s patron saint, St. George, was murdered in 303 AD because of his strong faith (23) and that both William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes died on this day in 1616. One wonders what Darwin would have thought about prolific author Edgar Wallace who was born (1) in 1875, the same year as another prolific author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Among many other books, Wallace wrote To Have and To Hold (which starred William Hartnell), The Four Just Men and King Kong, which has been remade into a state-of-the-art feature film by antipodean Peter Jackson. Fellow New Zealander Dame Ngaio Marsh was born (23) in 1899 and wrote about Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

  

The two Edgars - Wallace and Rice Burroughs

Blog guest – Gary M. Dobbs

Today, my blog guest is Gary Dobbs who also writes as Jack Martin and Vincent Stark. Gary is also an actor and has appeared in Doctor Who, Torchwood, Gavin and Stacey, Moonmonkeys, Larkrise to Candleford, The Reverend, and The Risen. Gary is just recovering from an operation that excised a cancerous tumour from his forehead. Some say it was to remove his 'third eye' while others believe an alien artefact was inserted.

My review of THE BALLAD OF DELTA ROSE by Jack Martin

 
Grim stuff, this. After more than 20 years away, Delta returns to the ranch he started with Etta James. He upped and left, itchy to make it rich elsewhere. He always planned on coming back – but it took him over two decades to get around to it. The main reason probably had something to do with the bullet lodged in his chest, working its way towards his heart. Delta was on borrowed time.

When he learns that he has a son by Etta, and the boy’s running with the wrong crowd, Delta finds a reason for living. If only for a little while longer – so he can seek redemption and turn the boy away from the road of crime.

Jack Martin’s third novel is sombre affair about lost chances. There’s some good writing in here, too:

“With death peering over a man’s shoulder, its icy breath felt on the back of a man’s neck, everything was enhanced. The cobalt sky was saturated and the landscape vividly exaggerated.”

Etta has problems, it seems, not only from her wayward son. Despotic Maxwell King owns half the town and now wants to own her. Which isn’t too surprising, since Etta’s “beauty was more than physical. It came from within, a radiance that positively shone in her eyes.”

There’s also a humorous cross-reference to the earlier novel, Arkansas Smith.

Delta is a man of few words, but, despite his days being numbered, he won’t compromise on right and wrong. He’ll fight for what is right. Which makes him a dangerous man – since he has nothing to lose. Recommended.

 

Q & A

Your first book The Tarnished Star was published in 2009 and since then you’ve had 9 books published.

Arkansas Smith

The Ballad of Delta Rose

Wild Bill Williams

The Afterlife of Slim McCord

Savage Slaughter

 

Granny Smith Investigates

Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs

 

The Dead Walked book 1 – Outbreak

The Dead Walked book 2 – Dead Days

 

 Most debut novels take a long time to gestate. How long did you work on The Tarnished Star?

Strangely enough Tarnished Star didn’t take long to gestate but rather arrived in my mind almost fully formed. I’d tried several novels before but these were usually in the crime/thriller genre and none seemed to work and yet as soon as I decided to write a western the character of Cole Masters, who I saw as a kind of cross between John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, popped into my head and I knew what the basic idea of his story would be and the rest just came as I wrote. I re-read the novel recently and although I think I’ve progressed a bit since that first one I think the story still reads well and the tale holds together. I’ve a lot of respect for Cole Masters and do have plans to revisit him one day but then again I’ve had those plans for a long time so maybe he’ll return and maybe he won’t.

In many ways, second novels are easier, because you’ve learned a lot from the first. (Some feel cursed by the expectations implicit in a second novel after a successful first one). You quickly produced a second book, featuring Police Inspector Frank Parade in The Welsh Ripper Killings. Was the second one easier?

I think the second book was a lot more difficult but only because the story was much more complex and I was dealing with a lot of historical fact. I had to get the details of the Ripper Killings correct and work these facts into my own fiction so that my story made sense. I must be honest and admit that I don’t think the book’s done as well sales-wise as I expected. I think it’s yet to really find its audience. I’m very proud of that book and will certainly be writing about Inspector Frank Parade again. Perhaps I’ll tackle his second story when readers discover the first book. The answer the book gives to the Ripper killings is, I think, unique and may even be the truth. Who can say?

 

 

How long have you been writing? 

Forever and a day. I used to write novels, or at least what I called novels, when I was a kid. In longhand in school exercise books and although these so-called novels rarely went longer than ten pages, they certainly felt like books to little old schoolboy me. I think I started writing seriously in my twenties but it took until I was forty to have my first novel accepted. Though before that I had managed to place a story with BBC Radio Four as well as selling to magazines like Interzone, Samhain, Skeleton Crew and several others. I’ve always wanted to tell stories and I love the art of writing, the way when you enter that special zone the world around you ceases to exist and you become one with the story.

What influenced you to start?

My mother taught me to read and my grandfather used to tell me wild stories of his own invented adventures – between them they gave me my love of reading and storytelling. There’s nothing finer than looking at a blank page and then filling that space with words that magically work together to create something where there was nothing.

There is also the fact that I devoured comic books when I was a kid, and I was also a big TV viewer. I learned very early in life that great excitement could be had from fictional stories, that all things could be explored. In many ways I think comic book writers like John Wagner and Pat Mills have influenced me as much as authors like Louis L’Amour, George Gillman, Raymond Chandler, Donald Westlake, Tom Sharpe and Ian Fleming. On the face of it, they may seem like very different writers but they all have one thing in common, and that is the ability to create a world that becomes utterly real to the reader. And that’s what I want to do – I don’t want to be a serious writer in the sense of literary writers, but rather to entertain, to grip readers as tightly as say Stephen King does. I want to create beauty on the page and I want to somehow work my way into my readers’ hearts.

How do your family/friends feel about your writing?

I think you’d have to ask them about that but to be honest my family are really supportive, while my friends think I’m the same dickhead I always was. But seriously, friends and family are important and I love and cherish each and every one of them. And that’s including the community of friends I’ve gathered from my writing and online life. Love you all and hope my Facebook status messages entertain you.

You write in more than one genre: you’ve published western, crime with humour, and horror. Is there a genre you haven’t tried but would like to?

I’m due to publish another Granny Smith adventure so at the moment I’m working in the humour/crime genres, but I’ve another western on the backburner too. I don’t think there’s any genre I particularly want to try nor is there one I think I wouldn’t try. I suppose it comes story to story and, who knows, I may one day end up writing erotic industrial thrillers, but I think that whatever genres I work in, there is a good deal of humour.

My last western Wild Bill Williams contained much humour and my next one (published this November) The Afterlife of Slim McCord contains a lot of gentle character driven humour. I do like humour and think that maybe the fact that I’ve done some stand-up comedy means that I tend to see the funny sides of the blackest of situations. That’s not to say I pepper my work with jokes but I think that fully drawn characters will often bring humour with them. We all like to smile and I hope my work brings as many smiles as it does thrills.

 
Tell us a little more about THE AFTERLIFE OF SLIM MCCORD
 
I really do think that this is a different kind of western. For one thing, that main character plays a very active part in the story, despite being a mummified corpse. The book is told through the point of view of two aged outlaws who come across the mummified remains of Slim McCord, the man they once rode with, and after stealing his mummy in order to give him a decent burial, end up involved in the most audacious robbery of their careers. The three outlaws are together again but one of them is dead. Though you’d never tell from the way he plays out his part in the story…

Hale loved the book and I do too.  I think it may even bring a tear to the eyes as well as telling a pretty traditional western tale. You know, in terms of imaginative storytelling I think this book will take some beating.

 

The new Granny Smith is due this December. Tell us about it.

I love Granny – that pipe smoking Miss Marple on steroids, that Batman with dentures. The new book’s called The Welsh Connection and sees Granny on holiday in Disneyland Paris and having to solve a murder. It’s another fast-paced, fun-filled read in the farcical tradition of Tom Sharpe with just a twist of Agatha Christie and a smattering of Conan Doyle.

 

The Granny series grows with each book and the lives of the secondary characters are built upon. In many ways, I think the series is a satire of both crime thrillers and soap operas. I also love the fact that Granny doesn’t give a shit for political correctness and is not afraid to say the things than we all think from time to time. She’s an anti-establishment figure and someone who won’t take growing old lying down. What, after all, is age? You can be an old twenty-one-year-old and a young seventy-five-year-old. Granny’s also been very popular and continues to be so with pretty strong sales.

A tall order, I know, but what is your favourite book? And why?

This answer would change from day to day. Wow, that’s a difficult one to answer. In fact that’s an impossible question since I’ve got so many favourite books. I think that maybe the book I’ve read more times than any other is Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and I think that grim little story contains most of the elements common to all of my favourite books. In this book Ian Fleming gave the reader a pace that is truly breathtaking, and at the same time managed to create this world that is tremendously larger than life and yet somehow seems utterly realistic. The character of James Bond here truly is the man every man would want to be and every woman would want to be with. You can’t get better than that. It’s a totally escapist story and that’s what I think all great fiction should be – an escape from the mundane realities of this world we live in.

 

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Sitting at a nicer desk, in a nicer house with a bigger readership. I just hope that in five years time I’ve created at least half a dozen new worlds and entertained many more readers with those imagined worlds. I also want to be the next Doctor Who, the creator of something really addictive and an aging sex symbol…

 

Your blog Tainted Archive has been around since 2008. Can you tell us how this came about?

I’m proud of the Archive. It started out as somewhere to pimp my books but it developed into some kind of anarchistic blog-cum-magazine that covers pretty much everything. I think it’s somewhere where anything can crop up and I think that for all the nonsense on there you will often find something that will raise a smile… I’ve spent my life trying to make people smile.

Where can readers find you?

The Tainted Archive  http://tainted-archive.blogspot.co.uk/

Jack Martin  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Martin/e/B002DMN17C/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

G M Dobbs  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gary-M.-Dobbs/e/B0080GNDKA/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

The Welsh Ripper Killings - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Welsh-Ripper-Killings-ebook/dp/B00CQ35194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382937924&sr=1-1

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/gary.m.dobbs?ref=tn_tnmn

Thank you, Gary.