Thursday 21 April 2011

A Private Eye for the 1700's

OK...

Blog to follow, but I have to let you know that, not only has Rod Rees, author of The Demi-Monde: Winter, which I am actually reading at the moment, posted a comment and started following my blog, but Win Scott Eckert, God of The Wold Newton Universe and co-writer WITH PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER of The Evil in Pemberley House has also posted a comment AND started following. As if that's not enough to be chuffed about, it appears, thanks to a local news story about The Old Mill Hotel and Restaurant (fresh local food cooked to order!) being near Wold Newton, I've prompted Mr Rees into pre-volume 2 action!

Now, normally I have to wait until the next book before I get the answer I need from a series. There was a time when I didn't think I could wait a week to find out whether Tom Baker's Doctor would survive being drowned by Chancellor Goth in The Matrix, let alone a year for an author to write another volume.


Of course, reading the books of Douglas Adams taught me to develop a surprising amount of patience over the years.

I also seem to have picked up a few things from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency if Rod Rees' latest Demi-Monde blog post is anything to go by. Have I magically picked up on a vibe in the Demi-Monde: Winter and deduced that there is a Wold Newton Connection? Looking back at the posts, though, he mentioned it first, but I did pick up on it because I live near there and now - TA DA! - he treats us to a pre-second book piece of Rees. Roll on more Rees' Pieces I say.



Have I discovered a secret that has lain hidden these past 200 years? Have my deductive powers of reasoning lead me to become a detective capable of unravelling a plot from the 1700's by piecing fragments of fiction together to form a coherent whole. Or did I just dangle a bait too tempting in front of  Mr Rees?

I'm not saying I goaded him into it. That is for other to say. But none the less, it looks like Mr Scott Eckert got here just in time. We may need a mediator. Why? Well, I've read The Demi-Monde: Winter once and am embarking on my second go round imminently (yes, really, this time) and it is, as you may know, set in a virtual world peopled with real characters from history. If it is anything to do with the Wold Newton Universe, or indeed the Wold Newton Family themselves, it would surely be set in the real world and peopled with fictional character from history? Maybe I'm jumping the gun on book two ("The Demi-Monde: Spring" one imagines), but I'm going to have to look damned hard at Winter this time round if I'm going to find the Wold Newton connection.

During the summer holidays, as a kid, I remember watching Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers Saturday Morning Cinema shorts. The repeats on TV of course - I'm not that old. Being part of the summer schedule they showed them every day instead of weekly as would have originally been the case. This meant that, having seen them fall over a balcony to their certain deaths at the end of one episode, you were painfully aware that you'd been cheated when, at the beginning of the next episode, they didn't  fall over the balcony at all! I'm pretty sure that was more Rogers than Gordon (in the picture below they do fall into the moat - you can probably rely on Flash not to cheat so much as Buck).


I may have an increased reading list now, courtesy of Win Scott Eckert's recommendations  –  The Evil in Pemberley House (Philip José Farmer with Win Scott Eckert) and The Peerless Peer (Philip José Farmer) lined up after the second reading of The Demi-Monde: Winter  –  but when I get around to The Demi-Monde: Spring, having waited a whole year, I'll be watching out for a smooth, cheat-free next episode.

I'm making notes Mr Rees.


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