Dolphin Girl and the wartime secret keeper

Book comments: Jim Humphreys' faxed letter about Dolphin Girl.

A man who knew one of the big secrets of the Second World War has died at 100.

James Humphreys Jr also wrote kind words about Dolphin Girl shortly after it first appeared in the Eating Clouds collection in 2008. He felt it should be turned into a movie and suggested who might be the perfect producer.

More on that in a moment, but first some words on Jim. He was a US Navy Lieutenant during the Second World War and was stationed in Bermuda in 1944, where he met his future wife Shirley. She was a volunteer nurse's aide and tended to patients at the US military hospital in Southampton. She was tasked with looking after a German U-boat commander, Admiral Harald Lange, who along with his submarine and crew members had been captured by the Americans.

The big secret was that the capture in 1944 had resulted in an Enigma machine and assorted codebooks falling into the hands of the Allies. While codebreakers in the UK had already cracked many of the Enigma codes, the additional resources from the captured U-boat gave further insights, including a coordinate code for locating the rendezvous locations of the submarines.

Of significant value was the capture of the submarine U-505. It was towed to Bermuda, where its acoustic homing torpedoes were analysed and tested. This gave the Allies crucial information on ways to counter the technology.

It was vital that the capture of the U-boat and its crew remained a secret - lest the Germans find out how much the Allies had learned from the codes and torpedoes. Shirley was sworn to secrecy, although she shared the secret with her beloved Jim. Together they kept the information under wraps for 50 years. The couple married and after the war lived in the US before returning to Bermuda in 1980. It was only in 1992 that the wartime secret was revealed during interviews.

Shirley died in 1999. By all accounts, Jim felt Bermuda was his home as it had played such a significant part in his life and he remained on the island for the rest of his days.
I met Jim in November 2005. He was a wartime veteran taking part in the annual Remembrance Day parade on Front Street, Hamilton. I was compiling a report for The Royal Gazette newspaper and I spoke to him and a number of the other veterans. Jim was 88, and in our brief exchange he did not mention the drama of the U-boat secret.

Three years later, the original edition of Eating Clouds was published. It contained a mixture of journalism and life stories that I had collected over the years. The second part of the book featured the short novel Dolphin Girl, which became an expanded and improved standalone novel in 2015.

An article about Eating Clouds appeared in the newspaper in December 2005, and two weeks later a fax arrived at the newspaper office from Jim. It was addressed to me, and in it Jim wrote he had enjoyed the book "especially Dolphin Girl" and added: "I recommend that you consult Michael Douglas and ask him to consider being the producer of the film, Dolphin Girl. Special effects rendition of Dolphin Girl changing from a dolphin to a gorgeous blonde as the Scottish team, led by Josh and Katrina, save her is an Academy candidate winner."

Jim also mentioned that I had interviewed him a few years earlier. I wrote back thanking him for his words, which were among the first positive feedback received regarding Eating Clouds and Dolphin Girl. I've yet to take up Jim's recommendation to approach Mr Douglas (who occasionally resides in Bermuda) regarding a Dolphin Girl film.

It was sad to hear of Jim's passing this week. However, I'm glad he lived a full and remarkable life, that our paths crossed and that he stayed happy and engaged with the world to such a grand age - as evident by an interview a colleague conducted with him last year on his 100th birthday.
This is a salute to retired US Navy Lt Jim Humphreys. Fair winds and following seas.

A Royal Gazette obituary article on Mr Humphreys: https://tinyurl.com/y7cmvd7r

Eating Clouds (2008 edition) being retired

Two editions: The original Eating Clouds, on the left, was released in
late 2008. It was followed in 2009 by a more compact edition.

The original edition of Eating Clouds is being retired. That is, the 2008 version published through Lulu will no longer be available.

That edition contained the first version of the later stand-alone novel Dolphin Girl.

But don't worry if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Eating Clouds, because the smaller edition, published in 2009 through CreateSpace, will continue to be the available worldwide.

The later edition is by far the more popular seller and the most widely distributed; the main difference between it and the original is the absence of Dolphin Girl. Removing the novel meant the smaller version could be retailed at a more attractive price, and also made sense as I had started to work on an expanded version of Dolphin Girl, which eventually was released in its own right in 2015.

I have decided to discontinue the bulky, Lulu edition of Eating Clouds as it makes no sense for the outdated version of Dolphin Girl to still be out there. Online retailers such as Amazon are likely to have a few of the old editions in stock, but once they are gone only be the compact edition will be available. As of yet, there is no e-book version of Eating Clouds.

Tips for promoting an e-book

Dolphin Girl at No.9 in the literary fiction (British & Irish) sub category
 of the Amazon.com Kindle Store on September 28, 2015

One morning in September Dolphin Girl reached the top 6,000 bestsellers in Amazon.com's Kindle Store. At its peak it was briefly No.9 in the British & Irish literary fiction sub category, alongside novels by Salman Rushdie and Mark Haddon.

To date the book has collected eight reviews across the various Amazon sites, ranging from five-star to one-star. Presented here is a short road map describing what I did to initially promote Dolphin Girl. I hope these details might act as a partial resource guide for others who are looking to expand the audience for their books.

As Dolphin Girl was my first venture into the world of e-books, it took me some time to get going with promotion and marketing. I was learning all the way and soon discovered that a key requirement was to attract some reviews on Amazon.

Readers are less likely to buy a book that has no reviews. Reviews generally add a degree of legitimacy and reassurance about the quality and authenticity of a book. However, getting reviews in the first place presents a Catch-22 situation, because if people are unlikely to purchase a book with no reviews, how are you supposed to sell any copies in the hope of generating a few reviews?

If you are fortunate, one or two reviews might come through friends and acquaintances, which is a good start. Beyond that, the avenue I took was to make Dolphin Girl briefly available for download on the Story Cartel website. This is a great, free resource for authors and readers. An e-book is promoted for 21 days, allowing readers to download it for free. The only request is that the reader leave an honest review in return (on Amazon or Goodreads, etc). The review request is simply that, a request. There is no binding obligation. As a result, you might end up with only a fraction of readers following through with a review.

At the same time I ran a small, targeted ad campaign on Facebook, encouraging readers to check out Dolphin Girl on Story Cartel. This generated further downloads from potential reviewers.

Once I had five reviews on the Amazon.com website I was able to move on to paid promotional slots at a number of websites and newsletters. Most required a minimum of five Amazon reviews before they would consider listing a book in a one-day reduced price promotion. The effectiveness of these services varies, and a book's genre also plays a part in how much interest it attracts. I used a number of sites and ran a few "price pulse" promotions, spreading them across different days rather than in one big hit. By doing so I could monitor the effectiveness of the competing sites more accurately.

Most of these promotional outlets charge a fee, varying from $5 to $50. There are some that are free. The results vary from good to barely noticeable. From my experience the best were ENT & FK Books and Tips, Book Gorilla, and Book Butterfly. Others worth considering are Book Sends (with eReaderIQ) and Genre Pulse.

I should mention the "granddaddy" of these sites is BookBub. It has a colossal reach and charges hundred of dollars for a promo slot - and that's if you are lucky enough to be accepted. The current word among authors is that if you don't have at least 50 decent reviews already, you're probably going to be turned down. What BookBub also has going for it is the virtually guaranteed "positive return on investment" for an author, so the number of books they sell covers the cost of the promotional slot with a chunk of profit on top. Dolphin Girl, alas, was not featured on BookBub.

As a further aside, these sites and newsletters do a roaring trade in promoting free e-books. This was not something I did, but the theory behind making your book free, either for a limited time or permanently, is to generate more interest, more readers and more feedback.

On its promotional spotlight days, when priced at $0.99 or 99p, Dolphin Girl moved higher in both the British & Irish literary fiction and the fantasy/magical realism sub categories of Amazon's Kindle Store. It reached the top 50 in these sub categories on a number of occasions, and briefly peaked at No. 9 in the British & Irish category on September 28.

Dolphin Girl peaked in the Amazon.com Kindle Store rankings on September 28, 2015

When the book returned to its normal retail price it occasionally picked up residual sales. This was probably due to its higher sales profile during the previous promotional days. As a further benefit, Dolphin Girl is now occasionally included in the "readers of this book also bought..." section that appears below books as they are browsed by customers on Amazon.

Along the way, the book attracted further reviews. Across all Amazon platforms, Dolphin Girl currently has a total of eight reviews, of which five are 5-star, one is 4-star and two are 1-star reviews. Some people loved it, while others found it unengaging.

Whether good, bad or indifferent, reviews are useful feedback and add to a book's credibility in the eyes of potential customers weighing up whether or not to make a purchase.

All-in-all, the experience of promoting my debut e-book novel was rewarding. Although Dolphin Girl is currently not part of a promotional campaign it continues to pick up occasional online sales.

Other authors have noted that being able to promote more than one book, and ideally having four, five or more available, builds greater sales momentum than can be achieved with a single book.

I'm still learning the ropes regarding promoting and marketing an e-book. I hope this summary will assist others embarking on the same journey.

Dolphin Girl: e-book vs paperback

When Dolphin Girl was released in April it was my first foray into the world of e-books. Considering the explosion in the number of people now reading on devices such as Kindle, Kobo and other tablet apps, it made sense to bring out an e-book version alongside the paperback.

For readers and authors the cost of buying and selling e-books is far more economical in comparison with a physical book, quite apart from the instant availability and convenience of an e-book, which can be bought and downloaded in a matter of seconds from virtually anywhere in the world.

So, I decided to step into the brave new world of e-books with Dolphin Girl - albeit as a latecomer to the party.

To my surprise, all my initial sales were of physical copies of the book, even though the paperback cost three times more than the e-book. I began to wonder if I'd got the sums wrong and my readership simply preferred to have and hold a "book book".

Then, almost four months after Dolphin Girl was published it achieved its first e-book sales. It was a relief to see it finally being downloaded electronically. As a result, it briefly climbed into the top 400 in two sub-categories at the Amazon.com store twice in the space of a week. (Below is the e-book's ranking as it appeared on August 20)

It was pleasing to see Dolphin Girl attracting some attention, even though it has yet to be featured in any major advertising promotion. During the coming weeks and months I will apply some of the things I've learnt, and continue to learn, regarding e-book marketing.

A major factor to being accepted by some of the bigger book promotion outlets is the number of reviews or readers' ratings a book garners. It seems like a Catch-22 scenario - and in a way it is. But there are smaller steps that can be taken to help build momentum and with it the likelihood of a few reviews and ultimately a slot with a promotion outlet.

So I'm thankful for, and encouraged by, the words of the handful of early reviewers of Dolphin Girl.

The marketing and promotion process for Dolphin Girl is still at an early stage, although had I known what I know now it would be much further along the line. I hope to share future progress at a later date.

For now, I would like to thank all readers who have given Dolphin Girl a chance, whether as an e-book or "book book."

Dolphin Girl available here on Amazon, and also on Kobo

Book signing event this month

For those who live in Bermuda and are interested in picking up a copy of Dolphin Girl or Lennon Bermuda (or both). I'll be signing copies outside the Bermuda National Library on Saturday June 27, from 11am until 3pm.

There will be a number of other Bermuda resident authors there also signing copies of their work. The event is being staged by the National Library as it launches its summer reading programme.

The book signing will be on the lower verandah, facing onto Queen Elizabeth Park (formerly Par-la-Ville Park).

Book cover artist coincidence

Kit Foster's cover art

Last summer I mentioned in a blog post a coincidence involving the artist who designed the cover for Dolphin Girl.

I said I'd return to the story once the book was published, so here goes. It begins in March 2013, when I wrote a short play entitled FAE. As the title indicates, it was a play with a faeries theme.

Four months later, unbeknown to me, a novel was published entitled Fae, by writers Colet and Jasmine Abedi (the sisters write under the single name CJ Abedi). It too has a faerie world setting.

By December, the Abedis' Fae had been optioned as a possible future movie by film director Ridley Scott.

I was still unaware of Fae the novel when, in the early summer of 2014, I sought out a professional book cover artist for Dolphin Girl. There was a good chance that the Forth Bridge would feature somewhere (it is the image on the back cover), so having an artist familiar with the iconic Scottish bridge was preferable. I found Scotland-based Kit Foster and he came up with a number of cover designs, including the one which was ultimately chosen.

It was only later that I discovered Kit had designed the cover for CJ Abedi's Fae - a book that by coincidence had an identical title to my play, was published a few months after I'd written FAE, and is now optioned by one of my top five favourite directors.

As John, Riva, Fay and Fae, the characters in the play FAE might surmise, a little faerie magic appears to have been at work.

The Forth Bridge

On the back cover of the soon to be released Dolphin Girl novel is this artistic image of the Forth Bridge created by book cover artist Kit Foster.

Dolphin Girl is set almost entirely in and around Edinburgh, so it is perhaps not surprising that the nearby iconic landmark features throughout the novel. Indeed, there is a short chapter entitled Forth Bridge, a passage from which appears at the bottom of this blog post.

You don't need to have visited Edinburgh, or Scotland, to be familiar with the steel bridge that spans the Firth of Forth within sight of the capital city. The cantilever bridge is one of the most enduring and picturesque representations of the country; a tin of Scottish shortbread would not be complete without an image of the bridge's three great cantilever structures.

Having spent a number of childhood years in Edinburgh, I know how this imposing marvel of the Victorian age sears itself into the mind and conscience of anyone who has viewed it from near or afar. It is anchored like an steadfast old friend in my recollections of youth.

Built between 1882 and 1890, it is 1.6 miles long and is a rail-only crossing (the nearby Forth Road Bridge for motor vehicles opened in the 1970s).

When people talk about 'painting the Forth Bridge' they are using a phrase that is shorthand for any seemingly never-ending task. This is rooted in the belief that when the bridge is repainted it is such a major and lengthy undertaking that once complete a new repaint job must commence immediately. A myth, but a well-worn one.

In recent years, when flying to Glasgow I have scanned the horizon below to pick out the distant 'humps' of the bridge which are visible from the air even from a distance of 30 or 40 miles away. There is something reassuring and timeless about the bridge.

And so, just as it proved to be for me in my younger years, the Forth Bridge is a constant background presence in the lives of the characters in Dolphin Girl. The novel is currently undergoing final readings and adjustments and is scheduled for release in April.

As an advance taster, here is a brief section from the start of the Forth Bridge chapter.

Katrina lowered her eyes and contemplated the choppy waves a hundred feet below in the river that thought it was a sea. Even at such a distance the cold water reached up with invisible hands chilling her face. She looked away and up towards the soaring magnificence of the Forth Bridge, a marvel of the Victorian age. Its rugged splendor matched the wilderness it adorned. It belonged and it was hard to imagine a time before, or to come, when the railway bridge would not stand sentinel over the Forth’s murky waters.
Standing inside the belly of the three-humped red monster she was a lost ant buffeted by the incessant wind whistling and swirling through this steel behemoth.

A 50-year gap between books

The revised version of Dolphin Girl is now in the home stretch, and I anticipate a mid-March date for a final read-through before publishing.

It is at least 12 years since I started writing the novel. It first appeared in print in 2008 as an anchor to the Lulu edition of Eating Clouds. Revisiting the story, re-ordering some sections and adding a few additional scenes has taken longer than anticipated. As that process nears completion the novel now carries a ‘decade-plus’ gestation tag.

So it was with a smile a few days ago that I read a newspaper article about Harper Lee. The author of To Kill A Mockingbird is to become a two-book author. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer will release her second book, Go Set A Watchman, this summer. It will mean there has been a gap of more than 50 years between the publishing of her first and second books. Against that timescale the delay in the arrival of the complete version of Dolphin Girl does not appear quite so tardy.

Of course, any comparison is merely cosmetic. Lee has not spent the past half century writing Go Set A Watchman, which is essentially a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird. The new novel was actually written in the 1950s before Mockingbird. Lee’s editor at the time persuaded her to go back and write another novel based on the flashbacks of the character Scout in Watchman. She did, and the result was the renowned To Kill A Mockingbird.

The unpublished manuscript for Go Set A Watchman was put aside and only rediscovered last autumn. Lee, now 88, allowed a few trusted friends to read the story, and encouraged by the feedback she has signed a publishing deal. The book is due to go on sale in July.

As for Dolphin Girl, while I feel at times that 50 years have passed since the first lines were written, the complete version of the novel is on the horizon for a spring 2015 release.

An update on Dolphin Girl

A new cover will be revealed soon

I haven't said anything about Dolphin Girl for a while, so here is an update. The novel is currently undergoing a second draft run-through. I've been making small changes, re-ordering chapters and scenes to achieve a more chronologically linear story, and generally ironing out typos and clunky grammar.

This has been progressing step-by-step for some time, although not as quickly as I had hoped. The reason for that is due to the demands of my day job, which at times have been daunting. As a consequence there has been little time or energy left some weeks to work through more than a page or two of Dolphin Girl.

The good news is a brighter dawn appears to have arrived and I'm now getting more opportunity to sit down and give the novel the focus and attention it deserves.

As part of the drafting process I’m fleshing out parts of the narrative that were previously on the fringe, but which I now recognise as a worthy part of the overall story arc. Doing so creates its own challenges as scenes are either expanded, or new ones added.

Presently, the second draft process is somewhere just beyond the halfway point, and Dolphin Girl is now likely to appear early in 2015.

A cover has been designed by a professional artist, which will be unveiled in the near future. For the moment my own basic working cover, created many moons ago, remains on show.

Stay tuned for news on Dolphin Girl in the coming months.

A useful writing tip

A writer can often become so closely involved in their work that they forgot to step back and take in the bigger picture. An analogy would be a painter or artist engrossed in the details of their latest piece failing to take a few backward steps from the canvas to view the totality of their endeavour.

A writer who doesn't take those metaphorical backward steps to view the bigger picture is missing out on an element of the creative process worth its weight in gold.

I'm currently putting the finishing touches to an expanded version of Dolphin Girl, including an ending that continues beyond that of the original short novel featured in 2008's Eating Clouds.

At the same time I've come up with a blurb to feature on the back of the book. A blurb is the few paragraphs on the back cover that effectively 'sell' the story to a reader. An effective blurb entices and intrigues a potential reader, but equally importantly accurately reflects what the book, and its story, offer.

A reader will soon become disgruntled if they don't find what they expected to find as a result of the blurb. Worse case scenario, a colossal asteroid slams into the Earth. Second worse case scenario, the reader feels conned by the misleading blurb and in future avoids your books.

Dolphin Girl was included at the back of the original Lulu version of Eating Clouds and so never had it own blurb. Now that it is to be a stand-alone novel, it does. That has entailed some contemplation of what exactly the story is about. And as I have gone through this process, and it can take quite a few hours, it has brought clarity into my mind about what the story sets out to portray. In doing so, it has prompted ideas on how to streamline and better highlight the overarching themes.

As I go through the book, tweaking and reordering a few things and adding some new scenes, the process has been made easier knowing exactly what needs to be achieved through the characters and events.

A well-crafted blurb can be a hugely useful blueprint or roadmap to guide a writer through the story arc they are creating.

I've come to the blurb very close to the end of the story-writing process for Dolphin Girl, but I can certainly see the value in having such a guide earlier in the day, perhaps even at the outset.

And, if you want to supercharge the whole thing, pull yourself away from the story-writing and compose both a blurb and a half-page synopsis. A synopsis is a more structured and detailed blueprint of the story.

With a blurb and a synopsis in hand a writer can confidently set forth to tell a tale and avoid getting snagged, and perhaps even lost, in the undergrowth that hides in the woods and forest of the imagination.

A new short play

Although I haven't been blogging regularly of late, I have been productive elsewhere. Namely writing a new short play titled FAE.

The short work has been entered in Bermuda's annual 'Famous For Fifteen Minutes' competition, where six plays will be chosen from the entries to be staged during a mini-festival with one of those six ultimately being judged the winner.

It has been some time since I have written a creative piece to a deadline. I had around one month to come up with the idea and get it down in a stage play format.

For me, the preferred way of writing is to do a draft in story format, I just write out my short story as a piece of prose. Once that is complete I go back and type it out in stage play format.

The criteria stipulated that it had to be a simplified play (a 'box set') with no more than four characters and 'NO helicopters!'

Well, it was hard, but I managed to keep helicopters out of the story line.

FAE is set in a remote cottage in the mountains, with a husband and wife and their poorly teenage daughter. The fourth character is a rather mysterious woman who is taken into the shelter of the cottage one stormy night.

Without going into further detail at this point, I would say that FAE could well be a companion story to my previous short stage play Faeries of Green Lochan, which was turned into an animation-live action short film a few years ago, and can be viewed on YouTube. In time I may end up with a small compendium of faerie story vignettes - who knows. The magic of the faery world of celtic tradition tugs at my imagination from time to time.

The disciplined task of writing again, to deadline and within the constraints of a 15-minute maximum play with a limited number of players, was a fun workout. It has given me an added impetus to wrap up the almost complete final chapter of Dolphin Girl.

Positive comments to book

A month has almost passed since the Lennon Bermuda book was launched and the reaction has been very encouraging. In the first few days I received positive comments in person and through phone calls and e-mails from people telling me how they had enjoyed reading the 120-page story.

The gentle manner in which it was written, and the descriptive Bermuda passages all helped. One of the island commentators said she was struck particularly by the many references to people and places on the island - a rarity for Bermuda to have a book so deeply focused on itself.

Now the work begins to spread the book far and wide. It is already available online, but the prohibitive shipping costs for anyone outside the USA is a stumbling block (at least one potential reader in Japan is waiting instead for it to be more readily available with lower postage attached).

Preparations are underway for a UK launch in early 2013, while I am doing my bit to seek out a publishing/marketing outlet with a greater global reach. I've no doubt that the potential interest in the book - and the CD box set version - could add up to many tens of thousands of people if we can get the word out through the right channels.

At the same time as all this I am focusing on my own future writing projects, which immediately involve wrapping up Dolphin Girl and then doing an outline treatment for a new novel.

A spotted eagle ray

There's a tropical storm on the horizon, which in all likelihood will be a hurricane by the time it visits Bermuda this coming weekend. The storm is called 'Leslie', and while that name did not strike terror in anyone when it was assigned to this weather system, the storm is too big to ignore. The winds reach out some 200 miles from its centre and it might be a Category 2 hurricane by the time it reaches Bermuda.

Hurricanes are rated 1 to 5, with Cat 1 being the weakest and Cat 5 the most powerful. A Cat 2 will be the highest rated to have reached Bermuda since I came to live on the island.

While that remains in the background for the time being, the weather here is benign and calm. Perfect conditions, in fact, for viewing the many types of fish that abound in the semi-tropical ocean around the shore.

Two days ago, while I sat admiring the view from my favourite spot in the shade cast by a small olivewood tree on a grassy hillside by the ocean, I spied a spotted eagle ray jump out of the water. It rose maybe two feet then flopped back into the sea. It was probably hunting small fry fish - an abundant food source at this time of year. It is only the second time I've seen a ray leap from the ocean, so it was a privilege and a tad lucky on my part to have been there at the right moment early on a Saturday morning.

This weekend I sat down twice to compose three pages of the final chapter of Dolphin Girl. I'm pleased with how it is shaping up. At this stage it is all about getting ideas, story and dialogue down onto the paper. I can improve on it once it is in rough form. Doing it this way also avoids self-censorship, where I might be put off and beat myself up thinking what I've written isn't good enough. It's far easier to improve something that exists than it is to improve a blank piece of paper.

Should Tropical Storm Leslie, or should I say Hurricane Leslie, visit these shores, there will no doubt be more golden time to write away.

The missing chapter

As I set to work on the final chapter of Dolphin Girl I noticed something about the story. When I wrote it for the original edition of Eating Clouds in 2008 I chose to tell in the present tense.

Having read parts of it again to refresh myself before creating the 'missing' last chapter, I was struck that the tense was unusual and almost jarring. It would be perfect for a film screenplay treatment, but in a book the more natural choice past tense.

Now, as I begin the writing of the last chapter (of which 250 words today), I am using the past tense and will rework the rest of the novel accordingly. Reworking also gives me an opportunity to sharpen things up.

The initial reaction I received to Dolphin Girl in 2008 and 2009 was favourable - more than I had hoped - which gives me added faith in the story and the way it is written. The abrupt ending always seemed a bit of a cop-out. The new ending will tie things together, and that is what has been taxing my mind for the past few months as I've juggled scenarios.

Once written and re-worked I shall approach suitable agencies, while also keeping an eye on the possibility of making it a trial e-book release, having read much about the success of a number of others who have blazed that particular trail.

Returning to Dolphin Girl some four years after it was completed is an interesting experience, and one where I have had to revive my knowledge of the characters and their mannerisms - in actions and words.

Two hundred and fifty words done, and there is a long weekend stretching ahead to add to that total.

Farewell, Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died at the weekend aged 82. He was the Columbus of our time.

During the weekend I also finished reading the biography of George Mackay Brown. Inspired by the creativity of expression he achieved through his writing - even in letters to friends - I applied some of that to this epitaph to Neil Armstrong:

The night galleon sails through the darkness and gazes upon Earth's gardens, sighing, no longer able to see the gentle ambassador who was the first to visit.

There is magic in the way Mackay Brown weaved and juxtaposed words and images to create vivid, memorable imagery and moods.

From the biography I take many things, not just the fascinating tale of the poet-writer's life in the remote Orkney islands but also his methods and the way he set his working schedule whereby he would write for a given time each day (three or four hours after breakfast in the morning). His words were shaped and immersed in the surroundings he loved, treasured and rarely left. Also, when he was not writing, he would read regularly.

I shall apply these lessons to my own writing as I polish up, and complete, Dolphin Girl.

Today is also a special day, being the 32nd anniversary of my first recorded training run in 1980. Beneath the blazing August sun I ran along the trailway by the aquamarine and turquoise waters of the north shore, flushing countless buckeye butterflies from the grassy path near Bailey's Bay as I sweated out six miles in the 30C (85F) heat.

Running is both exercise and thinking time when I often explore story ideas, dreaming up plots and dialogue. My mind now is on Dolphin Girl.

A man who played with the Beatles

Even though it was my day off, I switched into journalism mode today and interviewed a man who once played with The Beatles before they were superstars.

Roy Young was fairly well-known in England in the early 1960s and was in demand on the booming rock and roll scene in Hamburg, Germany. It was there he shared the stage with the young Beatles before they had even secured a record contract.

Roy is coming to Bermuda to play at the John Lennon tribute event on September 21, hence my reason for doing a phone interview for the newspaper.

Having watched films like 'Backbeat' and 'Nowhere Boy', which detail those early years of the Beatles story, I can only imagine what it was like to have actually been there and been friends with the group. Roy has that story, and I felt it was a privilege to hear him talk about it.

Here is some of what Roy had to say: "John (Lennon) was really the funny guy, you really had to watch your step with him because he would do some strange things. He was my favourite friend. He was a good guy to be around. He was a lot of laughs. He just had that sort of magic about him. It was nice to be in his company. I found him to be an absolute gentleman, as much as he was fooling around.

"John was always chewing gum when he was singing. I don't know how he could sing and chew gum. And of course he and I were always on the same microphone and one night he was chewing this gum, he must have thought about it and he spat it out and it hit me on the nose and stuck there. I looked like Pinocchio. John started laughing when he saw it stuck there. Paul and George looked over and John pointed at my face, I had left it there because I could see the funny side of it. Paul and George fell on the floor."

It was a toss up whether to seek out this interview or spend time on Dolphin Girl. I'm glad I did reach out to Roy. It was an enlightening and engaging hour on the phone.

It also gives me a little more time to consider a shift in Dolphin Girl, from present tense to past tense presentation; a debate of which I shall write more very shortly.

UPDATE (24 August 2012): Link to interview with Roy Young CLICK HERE

The lights of the Olympics go out

Finally the London Olympics are over.

It have been great, but also a great big distraction that has kept me from writing. I had anticipated that would be the case, particularly as the Games were taking place in the UK - my far off home.

If I couldn't be there, the next best thing was to immerse myself in the experience through online live broadcasts - which I did, without regret.

The closing ceremony included a video of John Lennon singing 'Imagine' - a song that more than ever is recognised the world over for its peaceful sentiments.

Imagine a world where we all get along happily, with shared experiences of an uplifting nature like those provided in abundance by these Olympic Games.

Farewell Olympics 2012 - it was a great journey.

Tom Newton Dunn, political editor at The Sun newspaper, captures something poignant with these few words: "The lights are going out all over East London, we will not see them lit again. But we will always remember the greatest ever Olympics."

And now my focus returns to that final chapter of Dolphin Girl.

1980s music at the Olympics

In between writing the final chapter of Dolphin Girl, I have been catching up on the London Olympics. I've been struck by how much of the incidental music - the tunes played between the action - comes from the 1980s.

Today, for example, I heard 'You Spin My Round' by Dead or Alive, and 'This Charming Man' by The Smiths.

Not that I'm complaining. I love it. It's the music I remember from my youth. Could it be that these are the songs the organisers feel the general audience will most readily identify with, even if much of the music harks back almost 30 years old?

I'm sure it wasn't like this when I was growing up. If, as a youngster watching the 1980 or 1984 Olympics, the interlude music was from the 1950s, I'd have been miffed.

Perhaps the music of that era (and the late 70s) is better loved generally. Who knows. I enjoy it even if it, and the Olympics coverage, distracts me from writing at times.

So, why blog?

So, why blog?

To say a few things about my writing. To say where I am at the moment, and where I'm heading to.

It is four years since I brought out Eating Clouds, a collection of life stories and journalism that had amassed in my life. That was a print-on-demand release.

Next month will see the publication of my non-fiction book on John Lennon, which is being handled by a publishing house, and of which I shall write more in September.

Currently, I'm working on the final chapter of Dolphin Girl. The novel debuted as the anchor to the original edition of Eating Clouds. As rounded as I felt the story was when I finished it, on reflection it needs a final chapter to tie up things and give it a less abrupt conclusion.

Dolphin Girl may become my first foray in the world of e-books. In the past two years there have been a number of notable success stories about writers who have broken with tradition and gone on to achieve wide acclaims and readership as e-book authors. One of the most celebrated being Amanda Hocking. The freedom and leveling of the playing field which e-book publishing offers is exciting and refreshing.

Genre writing seems to be the real forte for the successful e-book authors. That said, I do wonder if Dolphin Girl, with its sprinkled use of Scottish lexicon and its real world setting, can capture a ready audience, for it doesn't fall neatly into any given genre.

Time will provide the answers. For now, if I can drag myself away from checking on the Olympics medal table, I must write and complete the Dolphin Girl tale.