charles barrow's writing

I've been dipping into AirBorne over the last few days. It's a massive free airshow in the skies over Eastbourne that's been running for the past four days. Luckily for me, I live only a ten minute walk to the seafront, where the whole spectacle takes place. I had some family come down to stay, and we made a day of it on the beach with a picnic both yesterday and on Friday, and I wondered down again today to catch some highlights. The variety of aircraft and talent on display was incredible. We'd no sooner finished applauding the stunt pilot, when the paragliders leapt from a plane and coasted down to land on the beach in front of us. We'd only just waved off the wing-walkers (hats off to those insanely brave women), when we had to jamb our fingers into our ears to stop from being deafened by the Typhoon jet. The Battle of Britain Memorial flight, brought a Lancaster bomber and a Spitfire jet into view, and a tear to the eye. There was a Chinook helicopter, and a co...

My summer tbr* shelf.  I set these books aside in June *to be read over the summer. I will often do this, choose a handful of books to be read in the coming months, and I am often spectacularly unsuccessful at sticking with my choices. Earmarking, or, bookmarking, if you will, five books to read in succession, patently ignores the fact that there are shops out in the world dedicated to selling me more books. And it also assumes that I have the willpower to avoid buying said books, and opening one of them instead of one from my existing, carefully curated, selection. What I'm trying to say is that there is very little chance I will actually read through this selection over the summer, and that there will be other titles, not pictured, that I will choose to read (on a whim) instead. This is the quandary of every reader. There are too many books in the world, all vying for our time and attention. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Also, despite knowing all of the above, in th...

I've been thinking about re-designing my ebook covers, so I've been checking out book covers generally, seeing what's in vogue, what's not, and found these two inexplicably similar examples. One book is a novel, so fiction, the other is nonfiction, both with different authors & publishers. But surely the same designer, right? Same diver, in the same trunks, on the same board. Almost the same colour sky, and white & blue font colours. Weird. Too much of a co-incidence, surely. If these are done by two different designers perhaps one of them can claim/blame zeitgeist. I like that the diver is poised and ready in the first image, and just starting his fall in the second. A moment in time, captured nicely. I'd pick up both of these titles in a bookshop, judging them on their covers alone.

I've been pirated. I've had one of my books - The Stolen Days of John Mann - stolen (oh the irony). A website that calls itself an on-line library, has been recruiting 'editors' whose task it is to upload ebooks that will then be available to download from the site. The 'library' doesn't seem to much care where their 'editors' are sourcing their uploads from. Obviously self-published authors are an easy target for this kind of scam because we have no big publishing house behind us to threaten legal action if the uploads aren't removed. Users subscribe to the site and pay a membership fee for access to all the 'free' content. So the website's creators are receiving payment for content that they don't own, and the authors and creators of said content get nothing, no royalties at all.  I found out about this this morning from @BookSpotlight on Twitter. They tweeted about it as several authors had contacted them to highlight what was ...

Okay so the last couple of weeks have been tough ones for me - mental health wise. I was motoring along quite well, beforehand, and then I hit a brick wall. It's really not uncommon that this is the way it happens, which I suppose makes it a pattern for me. There was no particular big event, or inciting incident if you will, that tipped me over into depression, just a drip, drip of small things that added to the pool of worries and anxieties (if they aren't the same thing), and suddenly I can't get off the sofa. I'm single, so it's easy not to have to get up, get dressed, leave the flat. There is no-one to chivvy me along. I don't work at the moment so I have nowhere to get to by 9am, and no one to call me for missing my shift. And I recently moved to a town where almost no one knows me, just a couple of folk I say hello to in the communal hallways of the building where I live. So it's really easy for me to just not participate in the day. I'm in a kind ...

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago, while I was walking on the seafront. It was a sunny Easter Day, the sea was calm, and that blue sailed boat was coasting along lazily, tacking parallel with the shore. I'm really pleased with the picture, the outlook I mean. There is something tropical about the sea when it's viewed through trees and shrubs, it's as if I'm on a desert island watching the boat warily - is it rescue, or is it peril? The whole idea puts me immediately, and firmly, in Robinson Crusoe territory. The 'romance' of being stranded on an island, living on my wits, eating coconut and herring, sleeping in a hammock, wearing a grass skirt (that's got to be itchy, right?). And then....and then one day I spot a footprint in the sand. I'm not alone.  I've never actually read the book, so all of my experience of the story comes from the 1964 TV version, that had the most glorious theme tune, and a handsome Crusoe. It was escapist kids televisi...

Well, happy to report that the short story I wrote about in the February posting entitled Emergence, got chosen for publication in a Sussex Wildlife Trust anthology of writing to celebrate spring. The anthology is called Emergence. If you'd like to read it you can do just that via this link  Sussex Wildlife Trust It was a very quick turnaround. The submission deadline was February 28th and I received the email to say the anthology had been published on Friday 15th April. Very speedy then, as these things go. It's always good news to get something published. Except your own Obituary, maybe. I've been trying to work on building a portfolio of published writing, in a variety of places, and it's been slow going I'll admit. This is the fourth thing I've had accepted for publication, so I'm happy about it. It's done wonders for my confidence, and my state of mind, when I struggle sometimes to believe that I'm any good at writing at all. I intend to focus m...