The Peeping Parisian

A new story up on the DAC, and a return for Tiberius O'Donnell.

The Womens Lawn Tennis competition in Paris is the settting and Tiberius finds himself having to deal with a blasted ragamuffin.

Read here

The Desert Knows My Name

New story up on the DAC "The Desert Knows My Name"


Which you can read here

The Dead Adventurers Club

I have been pretty hectic the last month with the Leeds Savage Club so there have been no new stories on the DAC since March, but why not check out some of the existing stories ?

There is the DAC map here which shows you where all the stories take place. Click and explore..

More Fridayflash Statistics, Writing and a New Tale From Tiberius...

It's been a few weeks, since I have done a fridayflash. Mainly down to my work in getting the Leeds Savage Club up and running, plus there has been a lot going on around my film Mortus Illumina. I 've also got quite a few longer pieces in progress, including an early transatlantic crossing attempt, an archeologist and a whole load of dead Romans and a return to Break Creek

My Novella progress monitor hasn't moved since December, mainly because as mentioned here, It would always be the first thing to go on the backburner - which it has.

But, A new tale From Tiberius O'Donnell this week, entitled "The Right Rollicking Race" set around the university town of Oxford, and a penny farthing race.  You can also get the first six Tiberius O'Donnell stories for your Kindle here and they will be appearing in the reading room soon(maybe even today).

I also notice, I am up to 22 stories on the DAC (not including Mount Norfolk) and when I did the first 10, I posted some statistics which you can see here, so I thought I would do the same, with the next ten stories.

This Period is December 11th 2009 to February 18th 2010, covering the ten stories posted in that time.
There were a total of 809 Visits (up 52 from last time) from 29 countries (14 last time) with the bulk of my traffic coming from United Kingdom, United States and Canada (Germany knocked down to 6th spot)

The most popular story was "The Nth Page of Henry Lamberton's Journal " with a 138 visits. In the last ten, it was "The Backstreet Berlin Brawl" with 114 visits

The most commented story was "A Northern Swan Song" with 26 comments, compared to "E Tu Brute" which had 22 comments

and the story with the highest comment to post ratio was The Sabotaging Swede with 24% compared to 36%, which was "E Tu Brute" in the last period.

On average, I got 86.5 reads per a story (up 10.5 from last time ) and I can expect 1 in 6 people to leave a comment (down from 1 in 5)
.
The least read story was  Queen of Sheba with just 45 views,  which was just one above The Most Blasted Blizzard  from last time.  This was also the lowest commented with 8 comments, compared to the Blasted Blizzard which only had 4.

Titles	Visits	Comments	Perc
The Nth Page of Henry Lamberton’s Journal	138	19	13%
A Northern Swan Song	112	26	23%
Wisdom From the Chorus Line	102	19	18%
The Complexing Conundrum	99	16	16%
The Foreign Looking Fellow	97	16	16%
The Sabotaging Swede	77	19	24%
At the Village Doctors	71	10	14%
A Letter Home To Mammy	66	13	19%
Speranza	58	11	18%
Queen of Sheba	45	8	17%

Finally, The Top Five stories all time from my fridayflash contibutions are;

The Backstreet Berlin Brawl
Day 8
The Nth Page of Henry Lambertons Journal
Georgie
The Last Page of Henry Lambertons Journal

Of course, what post on statistics would be complete without a good picture of a dangle. Pictured is Brit Ekland and you can find more photos on this unappreciated pose at Film Noir Photos

At the Village Doctors....

I'll make no secret of the inspiration behind my #fridayflash this week, for it is Captain Flashheart. You can read "At The Village Doctors...." by clicking here

Can you believe that it has been twenty years since there was a series of Blackadder?

The Sabotaging Swede

New Tiberius Story up on the DAC entitled "The Sabotaging Swede"

I follow several victorian, Edwardian and history blogs to look out for ideas for the DAC, as well as general interest. One of these, the Victorian Peeper had a post, which mentioned the first body building competition. This was organised by Eugen Sandow  who is called the father of modern bodybuilding.  What struck my attention, was the fact the judges included Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Charles Lawes.

There is an excellent article on the IFBB site, about the competition, which you can read here .

Took a fair time to write this story, so I hope you enjoy it.

Up Norf for this helping of Gentlemen's Spice

Up north (well technically south for myself) for this helping of Gentlemen's Spice, which you can read .... here

 You may also be interested to know, that Rotherham United FC holds the record for the highest pie consumption.  With a rate that is 40% above the football league average.

The Nth Page of Henry Lamberton's Journal

Henry Lamberton first appeared on the  DAC with an entry in the last page of his Journal . I have bought him back this week with the Nth Page in his Journal...


[SPOILER ALERT!] I would recommend reading the stories first, before continuing with the below..[/SPOILER ALERT!] 

I made a comment, where I wrote about the Bhagavad Gita ,  how you sometimes read a New scientist article(several times!) and though you don't understand it, you enjoyed reading it. I remember one such article, about three years ago, about Quantum Mechanics. I think through the tons of text, the point they were trying to make, was it was all well and good, but they don't know if they are looking at things the right way up - They don't know how to tell up from down.

This got us thinking, and I made a post in a forum afterwards along these lines
'
If im walking past a person in the street who i have never met before , then that night i have a dream where that person who i passed is in it.

That Person who i dont know now exists in three states.

There is there real state - which I dont know
There is the state where I passed them
There is the state where I dreamt them


Now Say that person who I passed did exactly the same thing. I now exist in three states except I know my real state and they dont...

Original post here

And this is the starting point of Henry Lamberton's tale. I rewrote it first just to make if from his point of view. The first draft, after feedback came across a bit illogical,  so I went off and watched quite a few videos on youtube about quantum mechanics. I was interested more in the language, than the science and I think the main theme I picked up on  was about Observation.

For example, Here is Dr.Quantum explaining the Double Slit experiment


It does seem observation, plays a lot in Quantum Mechanics , another example is Shrodingers Cat . So I went through and put the focus on observation. I am most annoyed, that due to the 1000 line word limit on flash fiction, I could not work in the paragraph where I explained about the restrictive observation point of Victorian gentlemen, due to over starched collars - Hence why he can not verify his existence in the first state.

The other, and more harder thing, was Henry Lamberton's world is a pre Einstein world and he has a chip on his shoulder about Newton. I tried to make this piece sound if it could come from someone whose view of the universe is Newtonian based. I will know if this has worked, if anyone picks up on my Relativity joke in the piece.

To end with, Here is Dr. Quantum explaining entanglement - just to confuse your day

Coming soon on the DAC

Just finished the draft for this weeks upcoming #fridayflash. Why is that blog worthy I hear you ask ? Well I will be returning to the very first Billiard Room tale I wrote

"The Last Page Of Henry Lamberton's Journal"

I may, or may not be answering whether did he go ahead with his experiment in the end and if it worked. I may drop a hint, that maybe he decides to take on the academy to get the funding - armed. Or I may be making all of the following up.

Find out on friday.

Custom Google Maps

Been editing today, and in those render times have been playing around with google maps. I've created a map for The Dead Adventurers Club which you can see by clicking here

So, if you ever wondered where Tiberius exactly bought those smugglers to justice, now you can find out.

Its not the most fluid of processes to create a custom map, if it wasn't for the fact that I have had all these windows when waiting for rendering to complete, then I wouldn't of bothered.  There are a couple of glitches with size and images for starters.

You can also see the map here where you can subscribe to the URL feed for it  and also open it up in google earth. 

New Tale From Tiberius O'Donnell

The Complexing Conundrum, which you can read here 

 The Action takes place deep in the Tuscany countryside in a village called Montespertoli, which was a place I visited last year  where I stayed on the most delightful vinyard Podere Dell'Anselmo. I hope they see this plug and send me a bottle of their great wine ;-)

Talking of drink, As its the sixth Tall Tale from Tiberius, and we all know Tiberius likes one. I thought I would produce this handy Drink A Long list;

The Despicable Beast of Marrakesh	Red Wine
The Backstreet Berlin Brawl	Cognac
The Dabble With The Occult	Champagne
The Most Blasted Blizzard	Bourbon
The Foreign Looking Fellow	Cider
The Complexing Condundrum	Gin & Tonic

* The above picture is of a Murgese Horse, which I rode when I was there, it seemed fitting to place this story here because of the association with the Horse.  Also of note, after you have read the story, is we did indeed meet a Bavarian called Hermann whilst we were there.  Some more photos I took, over here

Wisdom From The Chorus Line

... and this is why I was looking for pictures of Chorus Girls .  My #fridayflash this week is another helping of Gentlemen's Spice; set in the 1920's and the glamour of the Music hall.  Click here to read "Wisdom From The Chorus Line"


Out of interest, the picture on the left is done by Henry Gerbault (in french), who I would say is one of my favourite Belle Époque artists.

Speranza

First Fridayflash of 2010 and this time its a race against the clock.  I quite like the idea of doing an older action character(no thats not Indiana jones in a wheel chair) and I think this piece is really a sketch for a longer possible future piece.

you can read it by clicking here

A Letter Home To Mammy

Just a quick one to say that a Christmas Eve Tall Tale from Tiberius called "A Letter Home to Mammy" is now up at the DAC - slightly early #fridayflash as I will be celebrating Cigarmus and will be in bed early awaiting  Santa Castro

Dead Adventurer Statistics, Friday Flash and a question.

I was going to start this post off with a pretty graph, but numbers is really p*ssing me off so instead, for your enjoyment is a picture of Virna Lisi showing a textbook example of 'the Dangle'. More examples of this highly unappreciated pose can be found at Film Noir Photos

Now onto the statistics. I have pulled this together as I'm debating which three stories to submit for the fridayflash anthology and, well Im a bit of sucker for numbers.

The Stories I am condisdering submitting are the following:

"An Unsent Letter from a Tommy"
"The Backstreet Berlin brawl"

and then im torn between

"Et Tu Brute?"
or
"Break Creek"

I would appreciate input on which of those two to choose, please drop us a comment.

Now onto the statistics; I am looking at  the period of 2nd October to December 10th 2009 and the ten stories I submitted in that time.

I have had 757 Visits in Total from 14 different countries. The bulk of my traffic comes from the United Kingdom, United States,  Germany and then Canada *

The Most popular story by number of Visitors is Tiberius in "The BackStreet Brawl" with 114 visits and my most commented story is "E Tu Brute?" with 22 comments.  This story also has the highest visitor/comment ratio at 36.07 %

On average it appears that I get 76 reads per a story and an average of 14 comments. I can expect roughly one in five visitors to leave a comment.

The Lowest visited story with 36 visits was Tiberius in "The Most Blasted Blizzard"  and the lowest commented: Tiberius again in "The Dabble With The Occult" with only 4 comments

Here is the complete table

Title	Visits	Comments	Perc
Day 8	112	14	12.5%
The Backstreet Berlin Brawl	114	17	14.91%
The Last Page of Henry Lambertons Journal	70	9	12.86%
Georgie	82	17	20.73%
The Dabble with the Occult	50	4	8%
Break Creek	67	7	10.45%
An Unsent Letter From a Tommy	83	15	18.07%
The Most Blasted Blizzard	36	10	27.28%
A Cocktale	82	21	25.61%
E Tu Brute?	61	22	36.07%

As mentioned I'm curious to what people think about Break Creek Vs E Tu Brute so please leave a comment. I am also curious to see how these figures compare to other fridayflashers - I've shown you mine now you show me yours ;-)

* also on my site appears two non fridayflash stories, Mount Norfolk and The Despicable Beast of Marrakesh which were not excluded from the country figures

The Foreign Looking Fellow - First singalong #fridayflash

A nod to the old Music Hall Songs in this Tall Tale of Tiberius O'Donnell entitled "The Foreign Looking Fellow"

If you want to sing along,

Two Lovely Black Eyes

Where Did You Get That Hat?

The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo
youtube
Lyrics

image courtesy of NLS "Word on the Street"

E Tu Brute ?

My #fridayflash this week was bit of a last minute affair , I had drafted a sequel to Break Creek which came in at 1200 words, 200 more than the fridayflash limit. When I went back to edit the piece , instead of getting the word count down it actually went the other way and ended up being 1700 words - I expect it will be about 2000 words when I come to finish it off.


So, "E Tu Brute ?" was written in a rush yesterday and I'm actually quite pleased with the result. Originally I had the Duke being English, but I was struggling to make it work - when I changed the character to be French it fell into place.

I think that is because, I can't imagine a Victorian English gentlemen being a recluse over the arts - engineering and the sciences yes.

I admit its not the most original stories, but its one I might come back to with a longer piece - even a short film ...

You can read it here

A Cocktale ...

My #fridayflash entitled "A Cocktale" is now up on the Dead Adventurers Site and you can read it by clicking on this hyperlink

Mount Norfolk (13,016ft) Part IV

The Penultimate part is now up on the DAC and you can read it here , The image to the left I took myself when I was a helicopter ride in Revelstoke, British Columbia earlier this year which is partly where the idea of the Mount Norfolk story came from.

Gentlemens Spice

Just finished the draft for this weeks #fridayflash which is going to be another helping of Gentlemen's Spice on my  Dead Adventurers Club Site. The Gentlemen's spice section is my salute to Ronnie Barker who did a series of books in the late seventies and early eighties with titles such as Gentlemen's Relish and,  as pictured Sauce.

The Books are a collection of old saucy postcards, early erotic photographs and other paraphernalia packed full of vintage innuendoss and on top of that, a narration by Barker himself.  I think I own all the books; in probably the wrong order

Sauce
Gentlemen's Relish
Books of Boudoir Beauties
Oh La La - The Ladies of Paris
Sugar and Spice

All the Characters in the Dead Adventurers Club exist in the same universe no matter what heading the stories are under. A More subtle nod to Barker, is the Duchess Bloemfontein who has a name check in Tiberius'd Dabble with The Occult and will also appear in this weeks Gentlemen Spice and no doubt future stories.

The Duchess Bloemfontein In Ronnie Barkers own words;"... served in Paris during the first world war and now serves in my local."