Today—which is, by the way, the Ides of March—I had news from a friend in the United Kingdom from whom I sought advice when writing the action for the finale of my spy novel.  I needed to know what would be a good rifle to feature in the book and Guy Wood was incredibly helpful.  He also kindly made sure that I knew how to delineate between what is a bullet, a cartridge and so forth, commenting to me at the time that a book he’d read was somewhat spoiled by the author’s lack of knowledge in this area.  So no worries, we got it sorted and one of Guy’s favorite rifles makes a brief but definitely significant appearance in the finale.

Now, Guy’s website is a brilliant tech resource for firearm enthusiasts, target shooters, hunters and the like.  But upon visiting it recently I discovered that he now does book reviews.  I therefore asked if he would be kind enough to review my novel when it’s published and guess what?  He said yes!  I therefore think that the least he deserves is a mention in my blogger postings and I plan to include his website in a Resources page which will go live after the novel becomes available.  But for now, here’s Guy’s awesome website, Rifles In The UK.  Please go and check it out!

I met with Jon the artist today and he kindly gave me a whole bunch of materials he’d worked on to ‘rehearse’, if you like, for the cover painting.  Now, I find this stuff absolutely fascinating, so I think what I might do at some point is to make a video of the ‘evolution of the cover’ and morph between the different iterations.  I think it would be fascinating to watch how it changes.

If you’re new to my website but not social media, why don’t you go and befriend me on Facebook or follow my inane ramblings on Twitter?  Both of them now get my Question Of The Day, a little feature I’ve started doing for fun.  Each day a new (and hopefully challenging) espionage-related question is posted.  There are no prizes right now, it’s just a bit of fun.  But why don’t you have a go?

Finally, did you hear that the Encyclopedia Britannica is to cease of publication as a piece of printed literature?  That’s tragic!  I suppose like most things the online revolution has affected it, because it’ll only be available in future via that outlet.  Shame but, hey, they call it progress.  I’m not entirely sure I agree.

Roger and out, X.