ADVENTURES IN EBOOKS

Writing is not everyone's favourite pastime, or as my mother would have said, not everybody's cup of tea. Sometimes I wonder why I bother and I will do anything to put off the much dreaded moment of actually starting - even ironing if only I still owned an ironing board. Sadly the last ironing board went the way of the piles of paperbacks, chipped cups and clothes that hadn't been worn for more than a year when we sold up in the Beach Suburb of St. Heliers and moved to the City Fringe Suburb of Parnell where, in our new bijou residence I was going to embark on a great deal of creative writing. It did not actually pan out quite as I'd imagined though to be fair, I did manage to finish EIGHT TEN TO CHARING CROSS and I’d love anyone who feels so inclined to have a look at my latest book IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE (A Chronicle of Harlotry) at Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/543243) and also available on Amazon. This latest is a very personal slice of life in nineteen sixties London where I worked as showgirl and hostess. Highlights feature something of the Stephen Ward drama and a peep into the combined psyche of the Kray twins. Now even I thought such snippets would attract some of the over seventies among us but I have to admit this particular age group has not been as keen as one might imagine. The books are not exactly selling like hot cakes. To give a little background IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE is the third and final volume of what was supposed to simply be a personal memoir. It is what my friend Bridget calls `the spiciest of the trilogy' by which she means it contains a number of titillating sex scenes. Titillating if you happen to be a masochist or a rubber fetishist that is and not particularly so if you are of a more straightforward disposition. The first two volumes, CHALK PITS & CHERRY STONES and EIGHT TEN TO CHARING CROSS sold, and are sporadically still selling, somewhat better though not tumbling off the E-Shelves it must be admitted. And if anyone's interested they can also be found via Smashwords and Amazon without too much trouble. This duo may not have increased my bank balance to any discernable effect but they certainly seem to have upset some members of my family. I am reliably informed that irate cousins have bridled (yes, bridled) when quoting from the first volume and maintained that the family I write of was never, ever quite as bottom-of-the-heap dysfunctional as I describe. Poor they may have been but not as grindingly impoverished as I seem to imagine. I was wrong, say the cousins; we were poor but we were honest, and we were respectable which is of course not quite how I recall things. And as for `the other things I claim' well they of course are complete nonsense, figments of my over active imagination of which I had a surfeit. Presumably it was something I had written in volume one that promoted the vitriolic comments on the tribute I placed on this blog to my brother, Bernard Hendy, upon his death in early April. Hurtful? - oh yes indeed but of course those who don't enjoy the heat should stay firmly out of the kitchen....and there is a part of me that still enjoys cooking.