Catch-ups

Not so long ago, when recommending to you the free online magazine, the Jimston Journal, I quite overlooked one important feature. It is that the editor of said journal, Jim Jimston aka Andrew F. O'Hara, is himself the author of a recently published book called The Swan.

Subtitled 'Tales of the Sacramento Valley', this is a work inspired by John Steinbeck. You can buy The Swan in hardback or paperback, but, as in the case of all sensible publications these days, you can download the whole thing in pdf form first.

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Mike French is the author of a novel called The Dandelion Tree, and he has a blog on which he talks about the processes of writing and marketing the book. But wait, before you rush off to the next item, thinking that this is all very familiar -- he covers a lot of other ground as well. And in any case, those of you in a similar position can learn quite a lot from Mr French's experience.

Said author also has another web site, on which he is posting the book chapter by chapter, but only when encouraged to do so by readers' votes. Interesting idea. Both web sites, by the way, are a cut above the average in terms of design.

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Back in September 2005, I wrote a post entitled 'Who is John Twelve Hawks?' During the past two years, this has generated a surprising amount of comment.

Now I find that Steve Huff has been doing some serious research into the author's true identity. Steve describes his extensive enquiries on his blog, and he has also written a longer and somewhat varied version of the same piece on Blogger News Network.

Steve chooses not to state the name of the man whom he believes to be lurking behind the Twelve Hawks pseudonym, but, with the aid of Google, it really isn't difficult to work out who he has in mind.

And who, you may be wondering, is Steve Huff? Well, he says he's a crime writer and a tenor. But that doesn't sound very likely, does it? Could it be that this is just another pseudonym for the Twelve Hawks guy, banging the drum in a different way?