Several of the early chapters almost stand on their own. Bod has various little adventures, facing ghouls and witches, trying to go to school or experiencing ancient traditions. Yet, all the way through the book, there’s the mystery of the man Jack and why he still wants Bod dead.

What I liked about this book was the sense of depth. I got the feeling of this world of ghosts and magic was rich and developed. There were glimpses of old traditions, allusions to other groups of people and such things that give an impression that this is a huge world, seen through the narrow view of a young boy. There are some questions which are never really answered. The backstory of Bod’s guardian Silas, described as being neither living nor dead, is never really explained. In many ways, this is a strength of the book because it does provide the impression that the world is so much bigger than this one book.

The style of the stories is quite light-hearted. Though the book, unsurprisingly, deals with the serious subject of death, it does so in a relatively cheerful way. There are some entertaining off-hand moments that provide entertainment through a story that could be otherwise quite dark.

The book is populated by an interesting mix of characters. Because they’re mostly ghosts, the characters are from different periods of history, with different backgrounds, which makes for very interesting interactions.

Overall, this is an amusing book. It’s a fun, easy read, suitable for older kids and younger teens.

The book is written about the Radley family. Peter and Helen live in a quiet English village with their teenage children Rowan and Clara. At first glance, they appear like a perfectly ordinary family. However, they have a secret.

One of my biggest problems with the book was the fact that I’d worked out what the secret was by reading the blurb on the back cover. It was very frustrating to have to work through about eighty pages of the narrative skirting around the massive topic, while dropping clues that were about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the skull. In the book’s favour, it picked up considerably once the secret was out in the open. Then we got to see the emotion and tension caused by this fact – which I won’t reveal, just in case you want to read the book want to figure it out for yourselves.

But it wasn’t the only secret. One family member had another secret, hidden from the other characters. Again, I guessed this secret as soon as it was alluded to, which meant pages of frustration as the topic was hinted at but not addressed. This time, it took over a hundred pages before the secret was discovered and then we got the interesting emotions the characters were feeling about the truth.

Another thing that I struggled with while reading this book was the perspective. Everyone was a point of view character. You got sections from the perspective of the four Radleys, Peter’s brother Will, the next door neighbours, the kids in school, police officers, parents of the kids in school, people in a club in Manchester, and on and on. It got to the point when I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a chapter from the perspective of the neighbour’s dog.

I could have lived with that. What really got me was when the perspective jumped. There would be, for example, a scene with Helen and Will talking in the kitchen. We’d start off seeing the conversation from Helen’s perspective. Then there’d be a glimpse of what’s going on in Will’s head. Then Rowan walks into the kitchen and there are a couple of paragraphs from his view point. Then we’re back inside Helen’s thoughts. This head-hopping happened so many times in the book and each time it was confusing and jarring, throwing me out of the story. This annoyed me probably more than the handling of the big family secrets.

The story was built on a really strong idea, approaching issues of family strife and fitting in from an unusual angle. I just struggled so much with the execution of the idea that I really can’t recommend this novel.

How times change. Maybe book signings were once about having loads of fans turn up to meet a beloved author. Maybe, if you’re a big enough name, they still are. For most of us though, a book signing is a way to get people to notice we even exist.

As a brand new author, when your first book arrives from the publisher, there’s a dizzying moment of pure joy. A few days later, you realise that the bookshops aren’t rushing out to order in copies and display them with a big label saying, “New and brilliant.” Unless you’re lucky enough to have landed a deal with a major publisher who’s got lots of money to spend on marketing. For a first time author, the odds of that are extremely slim. If, however, you’re in that category, I’m extremely jealous. For most of us, getting a first book onto the shelves of a bookshop involves a lot of legwork and going to every bookshop where you could conceivably be considered a local author (it’s where you grew up, it’s where you were born, it’s near an old school, it’s within a couple of hour’s drive, you just happen to be passing and it can’t hurt to ask, and so on) and asking them if they’ll stock your book. Some shops are very dismissive. Some have all their decisions made somewhere else. Some are tiny and have to restrict their stock to things they know will sell. But others will be friendly, supportive and happy to order in a copy to put on their shelves. In general, I’ve found Waterstones to be the most likely to order in a copy.

If you offer to do a signing, they’ll do more than that. They’ll order in a couple of dozen copies, give you a place to stand, put your name on their events list and maybe even put up posters. The odds of sales dramatically increase simply because there’s more than one lonely copy buried somewhere in the shelves.

But you can do more to help yourself. Here’s some advice based on my own signings and on signings I’ve seen other people do.

1) You have to make an effort.

I saw one author doing a signing. He had a plain table with no cloth or cover that looked very ugly. And he was just sitting there behind a few books. It took me ages to realise that he was doing a signing because all he was doing was sitting and looking sulky. There were no signs, nothing to tell me who he was or what his book was about. I approached him (mostly because I now, having done a few of my own, get guilty if I see an author doing a signing and don’t approach). I tried to get him to talk about his book and he just gave short answers that did not convince me his book was worth buying. It sounded dull. He seemed dull. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t sell a thing that day.

2) Be noticeable

Have something which will attract attention and make it obvious that something different is going on, otherwise you’ll spend all day being mistaken for a shop assistant. Get a poster, or a cardboard cut-out or something that will stand out. The best example of this was a guy who’d written a book about Australia. He’d decked out a corner of the shop with an Australian flag, an inflatable kangaroo, a stuff koala and various other items. You noticed him the second you walked in. People were going up to him to ask him what the Australian stuff was all about and he’d talk about his book.

3) Get fliers

I didn’t have fliers on my first signing and I felt really awkward trying to start a conversation with people. When I had fliers, it was easier. Fliers give you an opening, a way of starting to speak to someone. Admittedly, half the people will avoid your gaze and act like you’re invisible, but the other half will at least take the flier and nod politely. I saw a signing of an author with a few books to his name and we got talking about doing signings. The first piece of advice he gave me was to get fliers. Another author had a friend standing outside the shop with fliers, asking passers-by if they wanted to come in and meet him. Fliers are a massive help with a signing.

4) Smile

The sulky guy in example one was never going to sell any books because he was unapproachable. You’ve got to be friendly and smiling to draw people into a conversation. Every author I’ve seen doing well at a signing has been smiling. And keep smiling, whether or not they buy a book. I’ve had people come and talk to me for half an hour, picking my brain for advice on writing or finding a publisher, and then they’ll walk away without so much as picking up a copy of my book to look at. You just have to keep smiling and hope that they’ll feel guilty and look you up on Amazon later. If you act angry that they’re not buying, they’re never going to buy. I have once had someone come back. About an hour after he wandered away, he came back, made a comment about needing to support local authors, and bought a copy. I doubt he would have done that if I hadn’t stayed friendly as he was leaving the first time.

5) Have a spare pen

This may seem fairly obvious, but it’s worth saying. You don’t want to run out of ink mid-signature.

I’m sure I’ll think of more tips after tomorrow’s signing, but that’s enough to get you started. There’s just one more, very important, thing to note. You have to be willing to organise these things yourself. Bookshops aren’t going to be knocking on your door asking you to come in. You have to go to them. You have to offer.

And remember to smile even when they say no.  

Oh, and if you’re in the Reading area, stop by and see me between 11am and 3pm tomorrow in the Waterstones in the Oracle shopping centre.

She was right!

It was useful for when I was applying for summer jobs as a student. One temp agency was so impressed by my typing speed that the first job they gave me was actually in their offices typing up CVs.

What’s more relevant however, is the impact it’s had on my writing. I read a blog post on another writing blog talking about using speech recognition software as a tool for writing. I realised that using something like that would actually slow me down. I can type at least as fast as I speak. If you consider that using speech recognition software would require me to pause and say that I wanted to have a comma or a full stop, then I definitely type faster than I can talk.

Watching others who haven’t learned touch typing is sometimes painful. I watch them carefully pressing a single button at a time and I want to throw them off the keyboard and just do it myself.

As writers, we spend an enormous amount of time on computers writing. Or, more accurately, typing. If you assume the length of a novel is 80000 words, that’s a lot of typing. Apparently the average typing speed of an adult professional is 38-40 words per minutes, according to wiki answers. If you type at 40 words per minute, you’ll spend about thirty three hours typing. That might not sound too bad, but that doesn’t include time for thinking about what to write, rereading, correcting errors, going back and editing earlier sections and everything else that’s involved in the writing process.

If you’re a two-figure typist, you’ll be lucky if you score close to that speed.

According to http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php, I have a typing speed of 79 words per minute. That’s almost twice the average, saving me about 16 hours of typing time.

Improving your typing speed can make the process of putting text on the screen more efficient, letting you spend more time thinking about what to write and less time thinking about what key to press. I think a good typing speed is a massive help to a modern writer.  

I have a bachelor degree in police forensics and a master’s degree in criminology.  Up until about five years ago, I worked in the corporate world in the area of business and accounting.  I decided to change my current path into the criminal justice field, but an interesting thing happened during that process.  My love of writing took over and I decided to write my first novel.  Writing wasn’t anything new to me, I’ve written articles, copywriting, screenplays, and other types of stories throughout my adult life.  I published my first novel in 2008.      
 
2. Now please tell us about your books.

I’ve been a big fan of thrillers, mysteries, crime fiction and anything with a suspenseful storyline. I love to write thrillers and crime fiction.  Compulsion and Dead Game are two books in an ongoing series that revolves around Emily Stone who hunts down serial killers and child predators anonymously, then emails her investigation to the local police.  She’s been described as a vigilante detective or an angel of justice.  My third novel Silent Partner pushes a K9 cop into the dark world of police corruption and a taunting serial killer.   
 
3. When did you decide to be a writer?

I can’t say that I decided to become a writer because I’ve been writing for most of my life.  In a way, it chose me.  It gets into your blood and you begin to live, eat, and breath it.  Maybe there’s a gene for it?  Life is too short not doing what you love to do.  Since 2008, I’ve not looked back after deciding to pursue my writing career. 

4. Was it difficult to get a publisher for Compulsion?

I weighed the pros and cons of a traditional publisher and becoming an independent self-published author.  I decided that I wanted to get my first book out and to test the waters to see if my book was something that I could build an audience.  I looked around at publishers and decided to go with Outskirts Press, Inc.  It was a good experience at the time and I learned quite a bit how publishing and marketing worked.  I published my second book Dead Game with Outskirts Press, Inc as well.  This time around, I wasn’t as thrilled, so I researched becoming my own publisher JEC Press.  I couldn’t be happier.  It was the best decision that I could’ve made.  Now becoming a publisher is not for everyone, but it’s worth your time to investigate all avenues in order to make an informed decision for your books.   
 
5. Are there any authors who particularly inspire you?

Yes, many authors, but the two that stand out the most to me are Dean Koontz and Jeffrey Deaver.  I love the way these authors spin a story and create characters.  I’m a big fan of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series with a quadriplegic criminalist.  I find it inspiring how they build their stories, pacing, and the intricate twists and turns.  I love that!  Also, I like the way that they both can write male and female characters equally well.
 
6. Are the events in your book inspired by real-life events?

My first book Compulsion was actually loosely inspired by my experience of living next door to a violent person who threatened my life on a regular basis for more than two years.  Talk about stress!  Everything finally worked out fine.  I met many members of local law enforcement, learned about crime and investigations, and decided to go back to school to study forensics and criminology.  I took this bad situation and turned it into something good in my life.  It’s proof that something good can come out something bad.

 7. Tell us a bit about your latest book?

I just released my third Emily Stone Thriller, Dark Mind.  I write all my books in the series to stand-alone. 

 A Serial Killer Plagues an Island Paradise…

Vigilante detective Emily Stone continues her covert pursuits to find serial killers and child abductors, all under the radar while shadowing police investigations.

Emily searches for an abducted nine-year-old girl taken by ruthless and enterprising slave brokers. Following the clues from California to the garden island of Kauai, she begins to piece together the evidence and ventures deep into the jungle.

It doesn’t take long before Emily is thrown into the middle of murder, mayhem, and conspiracy. Locals aren’t talking as a serial killer now stalks the island, taking women in a brutal frenzy of ancient superstitions and folklore. Local cops are unprepared for what lies ahead. In a race against the clock, Emily and her team must identify the killer before time runs out.

8. Are you ever tempted to write different types of stories?

Yes, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing more horror influenced stories, and even a zombie story.  My first and most favorite type of stories are thriller and crime fiction, but you never know what I’ll come up with next.

9. What was your most exciting moment about being an author?  

It’s the most exciting moment when you physically hold that novel in your hands.  There’s nothing quite like it.  Everything you’ve worked so hard for and spent all of your time on comes together in a reality.  No matter how many books you write, every finished physical book is as exciting as the first.

10. What will you be working on next?

I’m currently working on a couple of horror short stories that I will post on my blog.  I will be writing the next Emily Stone Thriller this year as well.  You can find out all the most up to date information about my books and me at: http://authorjenniferchase.com/

But I’m sitting typing this blog post in England. Surely a law being passed in the USA doesn’t apply to me. Right?

Actually, it does, largely because of the ridiculous definitions of foreign or domestic sites that are included in the text of SOPA. These definitions seem proof that whoever wrote the bill doesn’t really understand how the internet works. Websites are divided into two buckets: those that are domestic to the USA and those that are foreign. How is this decided? By where the domain name was registered. So you could have a web designer in the UK building a website, hosting all the data on a server in the UK, targeting content at UK customers, talking about things relating to the UK – but it could be classed as a domestic site under SOPA if it has a .com domain name registered in the USA. There’s no thought in the bill for where the data resides, where content was created, where users are or many other elements. So, despite the fact I’m in the UK, my blog would count as a domestic site as far as SOPA is concerned.

There are some other major issues with SOPA, as it is currently written. One of them allows sites to be taken down for suspected pirate activity. Note the word: suspected. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? A company that makes all their money online might have their site taken down because someone accuses them of pirate activity, even if they’ve done nothing wrong. This would be enough to put many start-ups out of business completely. It also opens the door to potential abuse. If two companies are offering competing services in the same area, one could accuse the other under SOPA to get the website taken down. While most companies wouldn’t dream of doing something like this, the fact that it would be possible, even easy, to do so, would open the door for those with less of a social conscience to completely abuse the system for their own gain.

Aside from the ease of abuse, there is a big problem with the fact that SOPA would call for the entire site to be taken down. Let’s say, hypothetically, that there was a single blog hosted on blog.com that was engaged in dubious activity. Under SOPA, the whole of the blog.com domain could be stopped, including my blog and hundreds of others that have done nothing wrong. A law to block or take down offending content is one thing, but what’s allowed by SOPA would be the equivalent of blowing up a small down in order to kill an individual living there. The bill takes overkill to extremes.

Then there’s the issue of what counts as pirate activity under SOPA. A single link to a site with illegal content would count, whether it’s deliberate or not. On this blog, I get hundreds of spam comments, often with links to random content. Most are automatically filtered by the system and sit in a pile awaiting moderation. But they’re still on the site. If a spambot posts a comment that contains a link to some pirated material, my site is instantly in violation of SOPA. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t me who posted the link, or that I would delete the comment on my next trawl through the moderation pile.

So, under the SOPA rules, hundreds of perfectly innocent blogs could be instantly pulled down without trial or due process, because a spambot posts a comment on a single blog with a single link to pirated content.

There’s an anti-SOPA petition that included a link to a copyrighted image on a post on the White House’s website. Under the terms of SOPA, the White House website is now in violation and the US government could arrest the US government, put them in prison for five years and fine themselves millions of dollars. Read about the ridiculousness here. Or you could just go and sign the petition.

The ideas behind SOPA are reasonable. The bill proposes to stop online piracy and make sure that people who create content get the money they should for it. As an author, I don’t want to lose royalties because someone pirated an ebook of my novel. So I agree with the principles behind it.

But what’s actually described in the text of the bill just doesn’t make sense. It would damage individual creative as well as companies. It is too full of loopholes that could be abused and would let authorities act on mere suspicion rather than proof. And it probably won’t stop piracy.

It could cause massive amounts of hurt with very little benefit.

SOPA, in its current form, needs to be stopped. Then the US government can sit down with experts who actually understand how the internet works and come up with a bill that would achieve the desired effect without causing problems for millions of innocent people.

This post, is about Turing Machines. He called them a(utomatic)-machines but they later became known after their inventor. To my knowledge, Turing never actually made one of these machines but he described them in 1936 as a theoretical exercise. By defining a machine that could calculate, or computer, answers to problems, he was able to know whether or not certain problems were actually solvable.

But what is a Turing Machine?

A Turing Machine consists of a few elements. First, you have a tape, broken down into equal sized sections. Each of these sections may be blank or may have symbols written in them (usually, 0 and 1, but you can have more). In general, when people talk about Turing Machines, it’s considered that this tape can be as long as necessary to complete the computation, so the tape is theoretically infinite.

The second element of the machine what’s called a head. This head is something which is pointed at a single section of the tape. It can read whatever symbol is written there as well as write a symbol onto the tape, replacing whatever symbol was there to begin with.

The machine also has a set of rules. These rules look at the state the machine currently is in as well as the symbol written on the tape and determines a next action. For example, if the machine is in state A and 1 is written on the tape, write a 0 onto the tape, move the tape to the right and go to state B, if 0 is written on the tape, write a 0 onto the tape, move the tape to the left and go to state C.

You also need to define what the starting state is for the machine and one or more stopping states. If a machine arrives at a stopping state, the calculation is over.

But why should people care about Turing Machines? Nowadays, computers can do a lot more than just move a tape back and forth. Yet Turing Machines were discussed in two different modules of my university course because they are still significant in understanding computing.

One reason is the power behind this apparently simple model. You can, in theory, calculate using a Turing Machine anything that you could calculate using a more complex computer. I say in theory because there are a couple of things that Turing Machines aren’t good at (solving two problems at the same time, for example) and because it wouldn’t be practical to use a Turing Machine as the complexity of the problem increases. While the model allows for the tape to be as long as necessary and for the machine to have as many rules as required, you wouldn’t want to build or simulate a Turing Machine with a tape twenty thousand miles long with five thousand states and a few million rules. You’d be sitting forever waiting for the calculation to complete.

Once you’ve accepted the limits of practicality however, these machines are very useful in the theory of computability. This is the study of what can or can’t be computed. Essentially, there are some problems a computer is capable of solving and some which is can’t. A problem is proved to be computable if you can design a Turing Machine that would solve it. As stated above, this isn’t necessarily practical, so a problem is also proved to be computable if you can solve it using functions which have been proved by Turing Machines. For example, it’s possible to design a Turing Machine that adds two numbers together, therefore addition of two numbers is solvable. Multiplication can be thought of as repeated addition (e.g. 3×4 is just 3+3+3+3) and since we’ve proved with a Turing Machine that addition is computable, multiplication is computable. You can do this again and again, building up the complexity until you can work out if very complex functions can be computed.

When computers were first created, they were a long way from the machines we have today. The earliest computers were machines that, as the name implies, computed the answers to calculations. Turing Machines were the first of these and so were the foundation that led to the massive range of computers available to us today.

In Death Cloud, young Sherlock is told that he can’t go home from boarding school for the summer holidays but must go stay with an aunt and uncle. While there, he befriends the independent Matty Arnatt, who recently saw a strange black cloud that was somehow connected with a death. Sherlock is informed that he is to have a tutor, Amyus Crowe, a cheerful man determined to teach Sherlock how to think. When they find a second dead body, Sherlock’s curiosity is peaked and he is determined to unravel the mystery behind the two deaths and the strange, black cloud.

Together with Matty, Crowe and Crowe’s daughter Virginia, Sherlock begins to uncover the facts and come to face with the man behind the deaths, whose plot could spell disaster for Britain. The story is written much more in the style of an adventure or thriller than a standard murder mystery. The tension is kept throughout not so much to find out who was behind the deaths but how, why and, more importantly, how to stop him. The mystery, combined with a sense of danger, keeps you turning the pages to find out what happens next. There were a couple of not quite believable escapes, but that’s all part of a fun adventure.

Altogether, the book is an action-packed tale that gives a bit of insight into a beloved fictional character. The supporting characters are interesting and believable. The mystery is very cleverly constructed and the adventure is maintained throughout. I would recommend this book, regardless of whether you know anything about Sherlock Holmes. I’ll certainly be looking out for the other books in this series to see how young Sherlock continues with his second mystery.

The story is an adventure that grips from start to finish, luring you in with the mystery of Jazz’s life. It quickly becomes apparent that more coincidence brought Jazz to Harry and the pieces come together in an intricate plot.

The characters are excellent, from the mysterious Harry, to the suave Terrance, to the amusing Hattie, whose main care is the hat collection for which she’s nicknamed. Every character has their own motives, which feed together into the main plot. The all feel real and plausible in a way which supports the fantastic plot.

The magic element of the story is layered in subtly. Although I found this book in the SF&F section of the bookshop, it’s not immediately obvious that it’s a fantasy story. The existence of the ghosts in the Underground are a key part of the plot but they are brought in in such a way that you can almost believe that there’s something mysterious down in the tunnels.

There was one thing that jarred me as unbelievable. The members of the United Kingdom get to and from their hideouts from Tube platforms. On more than one occasion, there’s mention of characters waiting until the platform is clear and then heading along the tracks. On some of the business stations in the London Underground. In the middle of the day. There’s always someone on those platforms; either they just missed the previous train, or they’re waiting for one that was less like a sardine can, or they’re trying to figure out where they should go to cross to another line. I’m quite happy to believe there are spirits of old London floating around the Underground tunnels but the idea of finding an empty platform at Piccadilly Circus during peak times is too unbelievable.

Other than that, it was an excellent book, with interesting characters drawing you into a cleverly thought out plot. Definitely recommended.

A Japanese group developed a coat which allows the wearer to appear transparent. The coat acts as a projector screen, displaying an image being detected by a camera on the other side of the person. This means that if you look at the front of a person, you can see what’s going on behind them.

It’s not quite invisibility and the perspective is a little skewed, but it’s a good start.

In this BBC news article, the creators say that they hope this technology can be applied to more practical uses, such as showing surgeons what’s going on in a person’s body, even when their hands are in the way.

It’s also something that the US military having been looking into to create adaptive camouflage for soldiers.

More recent research has been focused on cloaking devices by bending light around the object. They’ve apparently been able to hide a bump in a layer of gold. At the moment though, this is working in infrared rather than visible light.

So we’re a little way off having a working invisibility cloak, but we’re getting there.