AD Hartley

The demise of the venerable old iPod has been predicted many times. With each new iPhone announcement from Apple it was generally expected that  the music-baring beast of burden would be chopped from the roster, only to see it march on against the tide. A betamax dancing alone at a Bluray-only night club. A Dickensian Spectrum 48k peering forlornly through the window of a next-gen console restaurant.  Until, later than predicted but in no way a surprise, the curtain was quietly brought down during the recent release of the iPhone 6. No announcement, no fanfare, just the hasty removal of the product from the Apple website. A silent death for a device that only wanted to sing. So why should we mourn? In this world of solid state ultra portability, who would want to carry an actual hard disk around in their pocket? Who on earth needed to carry their entire music collection with them? Well, me, for one. And I'm not alone if the many other ...

Because writers need to make sure their self-published book is available across all possible channels, I've spent most of this morning trying to publish mine on Google Play.  And because this was a less than easy task, I've spent most of the afternoon venting my frustration into a long, unhelpful and rather dull blog tirade. Once finished I felt better about things... Then I realised that few people would care and rightly enough.  So, for those of you having problems uploading your file onto Google Play and especially anyone receiving the message  Error: Unable to sanitize epub, here is a more concise and a lot less cynical post about how I got round it. There are probably easier methods but I couldn't find any so this is just my attempt. Feel free to suggest different approaches. Unlike Amazon and Smashwords, Google require you to upload a ready formatted eBook file in epub format, rat...

Where is this bridge? A few people have asked where "Secrets" is set. Whilst it's true that the book never specifically states the name of the town, there are certainly clues to the location, not least in the full name of the owner of Hill's confections, Carlo's main antagonist.  There are other clues in other character names too, though these have only been revealed in full on my Facebook  page. For example, Newton's full name is Newton Aycliffe. And while Norton's full name may not lead you anywhere, his first name certainly could. And who knew that Abi was actually short for Thornaby, rather than Abigail? Or that the surname of the two siblings was Teesdale? Those character names should certainly point someone in the know (or someone with ready access to Google Maps) to roughly the right spot. But for anyone still unsure, a quick trawl of my Twitter  and FB accounts should reveal the secret, where there are certain locations and sporting te...